Swords of the Steppes by Harold Lamb

Author:Harold Lamb [Harold Lamb]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Central, Action & Adventure, Fantasy, Steppes - Asia, Cossacks, Steppes, Asia, General, Adventure Fiction, Historical Fiction, Central - History - 16th Century, Fiction, Short Stories, Historical
ISBN: 9780803280519
Publisher: Bison Books
Published: 2007-05-31T22:00:00+00:00

The Devil's Song

They were drifting down the river. Thirty and seven of them, sailing the ships of the Volga pirates, drifting through the red glow of sunset.

Southward they were going, on the Spring flood—the ice was breaking out far behind them south through the grass steppes—to raid Gorod town.

Zamourza the Tartar sniffed the night coming on, and he lifted his head where he lay curled like a bear asleep. Zamourza could cut the skin off a man with his knife. Ay, he was deft enough with a knife, but he had in him the skill of a wizard. He could hear the whispering of the dead where they lay.

Now he lifted his head, for it was his way to look around once at the ending of a day, to fix in his mind all that was there before Allah drew the curtain of night over the earth. He looked at the setting sun, and that deep red sky.

"Yah ahmaut," he murmured. "Allah hath hung the banner of death in the sky."

When the sun touched the dark line of reeds on the bank, a crane winged past it. Zamourza nodded, puckering his lined face. He listened and heard a wolf howl on the other hand. The omens were clear. "One of us," the old Tartar thought, "will die. A great one. The wings of the wild birds pass over him, and the wolves drink his blood."

Satisfied of this, Zamourza got to his feet, to see if a sign would be evident as to who the doomed man might be. And, standing behind him, framed against the loosening sail, he saw Stenka Razin.

Stenka Razin, lord of the river, master of the bourlaki—the river-men. Taller he was than Zamourza by two heads, heavy and powerful as a gray buffalo. Like Zamourza's, his skull was shaved except for a scalp lock;

his short beard was black and lustrous. He held in hand the oak staff with the iron spike that served him better than a sword. His crimson shirt was embroidered with gold.

Under that shirt, Zamourza knew, on Stenka Razin's left shoulder the word CAIN had been branded. Stenka took pride in that branding. Sometimes when the whim seized him, he would pull back his shirt and show these letters to a man, saying, "See, dog, that is what I am." And he would kill the man. Because the letters reminded him of the ten years he had spent in Kazan Prison in the hands of the Muscovites.

Now he hunted down the Muscovites, the tsar's men of Moscow, to pay for those years and that branding. They hunted him along the Volga, putting a price on his head and laying traps for him—without success. Some said that Stenka Razin had sold his soul to Satan for immunity from steel, fire, or bullets. But they lied. Stenka Razin kept alive because he was as wary as a wolf and as merciless.

"A-ha-a-y," a voice hailed from the river.

Like a cat Zamourza slipped to the rail and looked over.

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