Swords of the Steppes Read online

  © 2007 by the Board of Regents of the

  University of Nebraska All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lamb, Harold, 1892-1962.

  Swords of the steppes / Harold Lamb ;

  edited by Howard Andrew Jones ; introduction by Barrie Tait Collins. p. cm.—(The complete Cossack adventures ; v. 4) ISBN-13: 978-0-8032-8051-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) isbn-io: 0-8032-8051-3 (pbk. : alk. paper) i. Cossacks—Fiction. 2. Steppes—Asia, Central—Fiction.

  3. Asia, Central—History—16th century—Fiction.

  I. Jones, Howard A. II. Jones, Howard Andrew. III. Title. PS3523.A4235S96 2007 8i3'.52—dc22 2006035910

  Set in Trump Mediaeval by Kim Essman. Designed by R. W. Boeche.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction

  The Wolf Master

  Chapter III The Eagle's My Brother

  Chapter V The Black Hour

  Chapter IX Black Smoke Ahead

  Chapter XII The Trail Beyond the River

  Chapter XVI Tevakel Khan

  The Outrider

  The Cossack sprang up, his hand groping for his sw

  Koum

  Over the River

  The Post in the Steppe

  "Have you got them all—the prisoners?"

  The Devil's Song

  Mark of Astrakhan

  girl."

  Red Hands

  Witch Woman

  Sangar

  The Vampire of Kohr

  Singing Girl

  The Moon of Shawwul

  The Cossack bent his head and took her chin in his

  Cossack Wolf

  The Stone Woman

  City Under the Sea

  The Two Swords of Genghis Khan

  The Phantom Caravan

  Wolf-Hounds of the Steppe

  Chapter VIII Face to Face

  Appendix

  About the Author

  Source Acknowledgments

  Contents

  Foreword vii Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv

  The Wolf Master i The Outrider 146 Koum 223 Over the River 239 The Post in the Steppe 257 The Devil's Song 305 Mark of Astrakhan 321 Red Hands 383 Witch Woman 402 Sangar 414 The Vampire of Khor 428 Singing Girl 444 The Moon of Shawwul 458 Cossack Wolf 504 The Stone Woman 518 City Under the Sea 531 The Two Swords of Genghis Khan 544

  The Phantom Caravan 558 Wolf-Hounds of the Steppe 572

  Appendix 6ii About the Author 617 Source Acknowledgments 619

  Foreword

  In the preceding three Khlit the Cossack adventures, printed in the third volume in this series, readers saw Kirdy being groomed by his grandfather to become a leader of men and a sterling Cossack. In the story that opens this volume, "The Wolf Master" (reprinted as Kirdy in 1933 by Doubleday) Kirdy is his own man at last. Khlit appears only briefly to send Kirdy on a deadly mission, and then the young man rides off alone, leaving even Ayub behind. It is the last time readers see Khlit, although he is mentioned in two more tales.

  Throughout this series of reprint the editors at Bison Books and I have chosen to leave the stories themselves as originally presented, with the exception of minor adjustments for editorial consistency. Certain attitudes expressed by the characters or used by the author remain just as they were printed in the early twentieth century. It should go without saying that what is privately and even publicly acceptable in one century may make for uncomfortable reading in the next. Some of Lamb's character portrayals would today be considered anti-Semitic, sexist, or prejudiced against certain ethnic groups. Though Lamb may have been trying to capture the biased attitudes of his characters, or reflect those of his society, he seems to have been uncomfortable with some of these portrayals later in his life, for he left stories with the most offensive of these elements out of the only collection prepared for re-publication before his death. "The Wolf Master" features the worst of these scenes; Lamb was never to write another remotely similar.

  Up until this novel it seemed as though Harold Lamb was readying Kirdy for a cycle of adventures of his own; in steps we saw him gain Khlit's curved saber and a title and learn to see through schemers, both men and women. Instead of providing further adventures, Lamb chose to conclude "The Wolf Master" with a finale he could never have given Khlit, and as a result it is the last readers see of the young man.

  It was not quite the end for the family of Lamb's recurring Cossack characters, however, for in 1929 Lamb returned to feature Ayub in a short novel of the Cossack's later years, "The Outrider," which is the second tale in this collection.

  All the contents of this volume are rarities. "The Wolf Master" is rare enough, but the rest of the stories, gleaned from Adventure, Collier’s, and other magazines, have never seen reprint. Herein you'll find a short series featuring the Cossack Koum, set a hundred years after Khlit and Kirdy. One tale introduces the bagpipe-playing Cossack, another introduces his friend Gurka, and a third, one of Lamb's best, is a novella of their adventure together. More tales of these two could have followed, but by this point in his career Lamb was busily co-writing screenplays for Cecil B. DeMille. He had become a respected and successful writer of histories and biographies, and besides, the pulp market itself was changing with the coming of the Great Depression. It's no wonder that Lamb wrote less short fiction, though we can regret it, for by the early 1930 s, fifteen years or so after Lamb had begun writing for Adventure, his fiction had reached a poetic peak only hinted at in prior years. While he sometimes wrote for Collier’s and other magazines in the '30s and '40s, he was constrained by space and editorial preferences and seldom got to spin more lengthy tales—or even to vary too much from a formula.

  In addition to the stories mentioned above you'll find two tales of Stenka Razin, whom Lamb described as a kind of Robin Hood of the Steppe, and other stand-alone tales of Cossacks in perilous times. There's Borasun, with his delightful joie de vivre; Charnomar and Mark, American adventurers; and even another Demid, who journeys to another fortress of Khor— names recycled from Adventure for a short tale in Collier’s, although the character is not the same Demid who adventured with Ayub. Perhaps the greatest surprise are the five tales of a World War II Cossack who is something like Khlit, gleaned from Argosy and Collier’s—stories different in tone from Lamb's earlier work but enjoyable nonetheless.

  The final story in this volume, long sought for in an early issue of a little-known pulp magazine, didn't turn up until mere days before this text was due to be turned over to Bison. "Wolf-Hounds of the Steppe" is, so far as I know, Lamb's earliest Cossack tale. Although likely penned only a half year before the first Khlit stories, it is heavy with melodrama, and there is an excess of offstage machinations in which the hero plays little part.

  Still, there are hints within as to what Lamb would later be capable of, and it is included here in the interest of completeness.

  Although there was no peril on this road to reprint, assembling these stories, like life upon the steppe, had its challenges. A big part of preparing manuscripts for these four volumes was the finding of them, for they were scattered through dozens of rare magazines, the longer stories sometimes divided in parts over multiple issues. Once in hand (a process which involved many years of searching), they had to be scanned, then formatted and proofread—for the scanning process, while immensely swifter than retyping almost close to a million words, isn't perfect. The letter B sometimes turns up as an h and vice versa; a capital O gets confused with a zero, and other little peculiarities pop up as well. The endeavor would not have been possible without the assistance of dedicated volunteers— all our efforts bolstered by other Harold Lamb fans w
ho had located www. haroldlamb.net and written in to proclaim their appreciation for Lamb's work. So many of us thought we were the only ones who treasured these stories, but it turned out that there was a small, scattered army of us, and we tracked down the tales and exchanged them and hoped that we could one day see all of them collected between covers, as they deserved.

  First among all of the volunteers was Bruce Nordstrom, who located every single Collier’s and Saturday Evening Post issue in which Harold Lamb had written a story, not to mention a number of Blue Books and other magazines less well known. Bruce found these tales, scanned every one, and sent them my way, along with the text of The Wolf Master. Bruce was a private man, so I never prodded him for his real-world address. One day several years ago my e-mail letters to him began to bounce and his web site disappeared. I've never heard from him since. I wish him well but I fear the worst. All Harold Lamb fans owe him a debt of gratitude.

  I have thanked Victor Dreger for his diligent research behind the map that appears in each of these volumes, but "diligence" is a poor word for what Victor did. He spent countless hours and many dollars tracking down old maps and searching them for the hard-to-find place names Lamb used in his Cossack tales. He found more information than could even easily fit on the map, alas, although Darrel Stevens' beautiful map somehow works in most of it. In addition to the maps, Victor has supplied me with texts and information and has proved an excellent sounding board about various features and problems that have cropped up over the course of the project.

  Speaking of that lovely map, not only did Darrell Stevens go all out to produce it, he drafted four vibrant, exciting covers that captured the spirit of Lamb's stories with real class. Darrell went so far as to design the font used on each volume. It's hard now to imagine these stories without the accompaniment of Stevens' perfectly suited illustrations.

  Jan Van Heiningen has been a true friend and scholar since he first found out about the project. It is he who discovered "Wolf-Hounds of the Steppe," and it would not be published within these pages without him.

  Bill Prather, business manager for Thacher School (the copyright holder for Lamb's work) and a friend and true gentleman, has supported and endorsed my efforts even when the idea of getting this collection into print probably seemed absurd. Without his backing this collection could never have happened, and he deserves all of our thanks.

  Alfred Lybeck, pulp scholar, wrote a wonderful retrospective of Lamb's work in the pulps (published in Pulpdom in July 1996) that serves as an excellent reference about Lamb and his publication history. It was of great aid up through the final days of manuscript preparation.

  Lastly, I must thank my father, Victor H. Jones, who helped me track down more than a dozen Lamb Adventure texts in the years before his death, and a man I never met, Dr. John Drury Clark. Dr. Clark had hunted down a large number of Lamb stories from Adventure, placed a few between homemade covers, as some pulp magazine collectors do, and separated dozens more from magazines in preparation for binding. I purchased all of these from his widow. Dr. Clark's texts saved me years of searching and made preparation of the stories for these volumes far, far simpler than it would otherwise have been. I think Dr. Clark would have been happy that the time he spent preserving Harold Lamb stories has benefited all of us.

  We may have reached the end of Harold Lamb's Cossack trail, but in an ideal world these books will be followed with a collection of Lamb's moody Crusader tales, most of which were written at the height of his powers, like the two outstanding Nial O'Gordon novellas and "The Making of the Morning Star," one of Lamb's very best novels. Its companion volume would be a book collecting Lamb's Arabian and Asian adventures, including three novellas narrated by swordsman-turned-physician Daril ibn Athir, and a prequel to Lamb's Durandal told by none other than Khalil el Kadr, Sir Hugh's loyal friend. It would be a simple matter to fill another volume with Lamb's tales of Vikings and sea explorers, including novel-length stories of both the search for the Northeast passage and the American expedition against the Barbary pirates, not to mention stories of John Paul Jones among the Russian fleet.

  For now, though, you have four volumes of stories rescued from obscurity. It was sad indeed that such fine adventures were so close to oblivion, to disintegrating forever into a dry rain of brown flaking paper, and it is with great pride that we present them to you, in hopes that this vibrant, exciting fiction finds the audience denied it for so many years.

  Enjoy!

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank Bill Prather of Thacher School for his continued support, encouragement, enthusiasm, and friendship. I also would like to express my appreciation for the tireless efforts of Victor Dreger, who pored over acres of old maps to compile a map of the locations that appear in the final version printed within this book. Thank yous also are due to the tireless Bruce Nordstrom, Dr. Victor H. Jones, and Jan Van Heinin-gen for aid in manuscript acquisition, as well as S. C. Bryce, who kindly provided a timely and time-consuming last-minute check of some key issues of Adventure, and Dr. James Pfundstein and Doug Ellis for similar aid. A great deal of time was saved because of the manuscript preservation efforts of the late Dr. John Drury Clark. I'm grateful to the staff at the University of Nebraska Press, for their support of the project and for efficiently shepherding the manuscript through the publication process. I'm likewise appreciative and delighted by the hard work of cover artist and map artist Darrel Stevens. My old friend Sean Connelly and his wife Kay provided a home base during an important final research trip to Indiana University. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication—you have helped bring Khlit the Cossack and his world to life.

  Introduction

  Barrie Tait Collins

  Harold Albert Lamb grew up in an extended family of prominent artists in New York City and New Jersey.

  His father, Frederick S. Lamb, was the head stained glass designer for the J. & R. Lamb Studios, the ecclesiastical art firm founded in 1857 in New York City by Harold's grandfather, Joseph Lamb, and his great-uncle, Richard. His uncle, Charles Rollinson Lamb, an architect-designer, was president of the family firm. (Although no longer under family ownership, the Studios is the oldest stained glass studio in the United States.) Both men were leaders in the art organizations of the times and in pressing for the recognition of art in public buildings and in America's cultural life.

  In addition to demanding careers, Frederick and Charles also played important roles in the City Beautiful movement and reform politics in New York City as well as in successful conservation efforts to preserve the Palisades, the cliffs looming above the Hudson River for twelve miles north of the George Washington Bridge in New Jersey. Frederick was one of the commissioners appointed by New York State Governor Theodore Roosevelt to form the interstate park on New York's doorstep.

  I knew of Harold Lamb from an early age because he was my mother's first cousin and grew up with her and her three brothers. My mother (an artist and stained glass designer successor to Frederick) remembered Harold as shy and quiet in contrast to his outgoing younger brother, Adrian (who became a noted portrait painter later in life in New York City). The brothers were close to their cousins and, as they grew older, tennis was a favorite sport on a homemade court at their adjoining summer homes on Lambs Lane, Cresskill, New Jersey. The two families lived in New York City the rest of the year.

  Harold turned to the world of writing after graduation from Columbia University and gradually found increasing success. He moved to California, probably in the early 1920 s, and married Ruth Barbour. An article later in his career in "Better Homes & Gardens" (October 1948) shows the new study with fireplace he added onto his Beverly Hills home to provide a quieter place for his writing.

  With my early interest in history, geography, and "adventure" (a la Richard Halliburton!), it was natural for me to explore my parents' library and to come across The Crusades. It fired my imagination in ninth grade in a way I still remember. This, of course, led to reading many
of Lamb's other books over the years. Alexander of Macedon is a particular favorite.

  Although Harold Lamb grew up in New York City he only passed through it briefly on the way to and from short or extended trips to Europe, the Middle East, and Asia after he moved to California. In one of two letters I treasure from him he said he did not like the hectic pace that life had become in the city: "Being a recluse, the New York of today appalls me, and I spend as few hours there as possible, which is not right. In memory, my native city has become a blurred vista of preoccupied people hurrying to cocktail parties or away from the parties to trains and theatres."

  I remember meeting him when I was beginning my nonfiction writing career in the 1950 s in New York and he was already a very successful writer. "Uncle Harold," as my brothers and I called him, was a slim, scholarly, distinguished-looking man, still somewhat shy but gracious to a young aspiring writer-cum-"niece." He was always an inspiration to me because almost everyone else in the creative Lamb family was an artist! We exchanged several letters in his later years, and my "Aunt" Ruth also kept me posted occasionally on his trips.

  Harold Lamb's life and writings always seemed magical to me, but the knowledge that most of his stories were well grounded in fact and personal knowledge of the faraway peoples and landscapes and described so vividly fascinates me to this day. I am happy that others also continue to read him with great pleasure.

  The Wolf Master

  Chapter I My Saddle's My Home

  I’ve been to Roum, and I’ve been to Rome,

  Through the Black Mountains,

  On the White Sea!

  My hat is my house-top, my saddle’s my home—

  Hai-a—come away with me!

  Song of the Cossack Wanderers

  The streets of the village were deserted. On every hand deep snow covered the steppe; even the thatched roofs of the cottages were blanketed in white.