03-Riders of the Steppes by Harold Lamb

Author:Harold Lamb [Lamb, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Central, Historical, Action & Adventure, Steppes - Asia, Cossacks, Steppes, Asia, General, Fantasy, Adventure Fiction, Historical Fiction, Central - History - 16th Century, Fiction, Short Stories
ISBN: 9780803280502
Publisher: Bison Books: 2007
Published: 2015-11-24T05:00:00+00:00

II

Ayub was not long in coming to himself, because the blood on his neck had not dried yet. It was still dripping from his broken scalp, and he sat up, spitting it out savagely. His head hurt him and he swallowed a groan when he stood up, leaning on the sword that was still fast in one fist.

To take a man's horse—to set him afoot in that part of the steppe—was something beyond belief. To take a horse like the Kabarda stallion was a blacker crime, to Ayub's way of thinking, than to strip him naked. They had carried him a good way from the palisade. Possibly they had meant to toss him into the river but had found him too heavy to carry.

Better for them, perhaps, if they had. Because the Cossack had no intention of leaving Sirog until he had recovered his horse or settled the account.

He remembered that the man-at-arms, Durak, had said something about a camp near at hand, and he could see, in the half-light of a quarter moon, a road leading from the blockhouse off into the tall grass. Sheathing his sword, he began to walk away, cursing the weight of the heavy blade, his silver heels that were made to grip the stirrup, not the earth, and all Muscovites of past and future generations.

In a little while he came to the lights of a village. A cluster of wattle and daub huts stood around a log kortchma, a tavern, and a half-finished church. Farther off were sheep folds and cattle pens. It was plainly a frontier settlement, like a thousand others that had crawled out into the plain protected by Cossack outposts. But he did not understand what it was doing on the Donetz.

When he kicked open the tavern door a half dozen men stared at him apathetically. They had long, unkempt hair and hollow cheeks and were smaller in build than the Zaporogians. One wore the leather apron of a smith, and another, seated by the fire, was making a pair of shoes out of a strip of horsehide.

"Give me corn brandy—food—anything," he cried, and, seeing a bucket of water standing near the door, emptied it over his head. Wiping his eyes clear with his sleeve he moved toward the fire, noticing that a young fellow in a white svitza rose to make way for him.

When he had emptied the last bowl of gruel and had downed his fourth cup, he stretched his arms, rubbed his head and spread his legs out to the fire.

"Well, forgive me. God be with you, brothers, Cossacks! I had a little rap on the dome up there at the castle—but who are you and what the —— are you doing in this place?"

To this the tavern-keeper, a dour man, and heavily bearded, made answer slowly.

"We saw that you had met with misfortune, good sir, but that is nothing strange in this country. Are you a Zaporogian?"

Ayub wrung the water out of his mustaches, and from the long scalp lock that hung down one shoulder.

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