Swords From the East (25 page)

He broke off, eyeing Mingan thoughtfully.

"Ah, my Cathayan-meseems you have shrunk somewhat, like a driedup waterskin. It is the fortune of a spy, sometimes, not to eat from gold dishes, nor to ride the horses of a king."

He swept the well and the gully with an appraising glance and spat at the dog who stood, short legs planted wide, menacingly before his mistress. Jamuka's thin, handsome face and down-curving nose revealed more strongly than ever the Turkish blood in him.

"So, Burta, you hate Temujin, or, I should say Genghis?"

Color flooded into the girl's face and she did not respond.

"And you will lead your Gipsies to Prester John? Good. He will have gold for your men and pastures for your horses, within Tangut. You have never seen Tangut, little Burta; it is green and pleasant while the desert is brown and bare. The castle is a pearl set in splendors-gardens and lakes, wherein every kind of beast and bird is to be found. He has a hundred snowwhite peregrine falcons, and as many hunting leopards-"

He glanced half-scornfully at the small brown gyrfalcon on the perch by the girl.

"Does the chief hero of Prester John wear a bear's head upon his own?" she asked thoughtfully.

"Why, so he does," Jamuka smiled. "When he goes forth from his castle, so that all his men will know him from afar and his enemies will not see his face."

"Then is he my foe!" Burta tossed her head and her white teeth gleamed between parted lips. "It was a man in a bear's mask that slew Podu, Iny father, and the guard at his tent. Another Gipsy, too, was surprised and struck down, but lived to tell me the truth afterward."

Jamuka frowned and tapped the jewel-studded hilt of his sword.

"And, if so? You cannot bring life to Podu again, and you must think of yourself. Prester John is wiser than other men; his acts are stones that pave the way to success. You may not stand alone-a woman served by a handful of wanderers."

"And so, Jamuka, must I choose between Prester John and Genghis Khan-aye, choosing the first, you will honor me with your protection and love. Is not that what you would say?"

For the second time in as many minutes the quick-thinking chief was surprised.

"By Allah, you have the right of it! It was for that I sought you out, even though an army waits without a leader in my absence. Prester John has named me his ally-"

"You, the cousin of Genghis Khan!"

Not often was Jamuka put upon the defensive in this manner, and it ruffled him.

"Aye, but your Great Khan and I cannot sleep on the same side of the fire. He is a warrior, true, but a luster after blood. I-though this you may not know-am master of the caravan trade from India to Cathay, and must needs keep open the caravan routes so that the silks, spices, tea, and cotton-aye, the goods of the world-can pass-"

"Under your hand that doubtless keeps much within its grasp. Oh, I have heard many things from my-wanderers-Jamuka. Tales of your wealth and the women of many lands that you have bought. You will never win me to your hand, for your master is Podu's murderer."

She stamped furiously and brushed the hair back from her forehead. Jamuka considered her with glowing eyes, and seemed not ill-pleased at her anger.

"Genghis Khan is a scourge-a man-slayer. Burta, your Gipsies have enriched their tents and increased their herds by taking toll of my caravans. This is ordained, perhaps, and I have no quarrel with you; but Genghis would turn every camel and pony, aye, and cameleer of the caravans into a beast of war, or a warrior. By trade Cathay rose to greatness, aye, and the empire of the Turks, my fathers, in the mountains that are called the Roof of the World; and by trade I would make the empire of the Horde equal to Cathay, while Genghis would make of it a field of white bones."

She held her brown head high, although her chin came only to the shoulder of the tall Turk.

"White bones, you say, Jamuka-ah, tell me what else has Wang Khan made of my father? Is trade a god that demands human life for sacrifice? Nay, you cannot paint a wrong to make it shine like a righteous act, nor ask me to tread softly and speak not of vengeance when I am wronged. Go, Master of Plotting, I abide here until the coming of Genghis Khan, who will listen to my plea."

Jamuka's dark eyes glistened with admiration.

"B'illah, little daughter of fury, you will do no such thing. Why do you think I sought you out, at some pains, while your Khan tarried?"

He knew when to make an end of words in dealing with a woman. Calling to his men to bring up their horses, he strode toward Burta, who glanced around swiftly, seeking some means of escape. The Jelairs ringed her in. Mingan started up from his seat, but was stayed by two spearmen, while Jamuka took the reins of a pony and caught Burta's arm.

When he did so the brown dog sprang at the chief. Jamuka kicked it aside, and one of his men launched a javelin at it, knocking Burta's fourlegged guardian whimpering to the sand. Meanwhile, the chieftain, not without a deal of trouble, had lifted the girl into the saddle and tied her ankles to the stirrups.

"You have less honor than that dog," said Mingan angrily.

"But more wit," smiled Jamuka. "By the ninety and nine holy names, what is that?"

The hawk, aroused by the scuffle, was screaming and beating its wing, its claws gripping the perch and its hooded head bristling.

"Slay me that squawker," ordered the chief, "or it may break loose and be seen in the air by some of Burta's bands. So!"

An arrow struck the falcon from its stand, whereupon Jamuka was pleased to order his men to dig a grave at one side of the gully, near the rocks, with their swords and axes. The sand yielded to their efforts easily, but they kept on, at a nod from their leader, until they had worked down into the clay bottom, and completed a hole a yard wide and as deep and a little longer.

"You have more wit than the dog, Mingan," observed the chief, frowning. "Too much, I think. I cannot decide whether you are faithful to Genghis Khan or merely a spy sent by the Cathayans. That being the case I shall leave the issue to destiny, and put you in your grave alive instead of slaying you."

Whereupon the two spearmen seized Mingan and led him to the hole. The Cathayan stifled the compelling impulse to struggle, to throw off the hands that held him. In his weakened condition resistance would have been useless, and he had been trained to submit to ordeals without showing fear. He forced himself to walk to the edge of the hole without compulsion and to look down into it.

Jamuka seemed disappointed in his tranquility, but Burta cried out indignantly that he was a prince of the dynasty of Cathay, and should be treated as a prisoner of rank.

No attention was paid her, and the warriors tied Mingan's feet together with stout leather thongs; then his knees were bound in similar fashion; lastly his wrists were secured together behind his back. The two men at a sign from Jamuka lifted him and sat him down in the hole, placing his legs, stiffened with the bonds, out in front of him. His back was now against one end of the excavation, the soles of his feet against the other, and his wide shoulders pressed upon the sides.

So placed, his chin was on a level with the ground, and he saw that it was not the purpose of the tribesmen to bury him. Instead they began to cast back the clay, sand and stones, first over his legs, then about his waist. Jamuka reined his horse close, to lean down from the saddle and watch his prisoner's face.

"0 Cathayan, if it is true that you are a prince," he whispered so that Burta could not hear, "it is not fitting that you suffer the fate of a slave. Nay, by the prophet's beard! Tell me then the plans of Genghis Khan and what he knows of Prester John, and you shall be sent back to the wall with the first caravan that departs from Tangut after we have overthrown the Mongol scourge."

Mingan shook his head gravely.

"Yah Allah. As you have chosen your bed you shall lie in it."

Jamuka left him, and the men finished filling in the hole, so that the earth came to Mingan's chin. After stamping it down firmly with a covert kick or two at the helpless face, they went to seek out their horses, well contented with the day's work.

One last thing remained to be done, to complete the ceremony of the burial alive, and Jamuka did it, wheeling his horse in front of Mingan and then driving in his heels so that the pony started directly at the filled-in grave and the man's head, and passed over with a thudding of uneasy hoofs in the soft earth. No horse will tread on a man if he can help it-but this knowledge did not save the Cathayan the agony of sitting tense and powerless while beast and rider passed over him.

Left alone, Mingan's first feeling was one of relief, as he listened to the dwindling sounds of creaking saddles and jangling bits. Forthwith he began to strain upward with his knees, only to discover that his legs, stretched out flat, had no power to push into the three feet of earth. If he could bend them-but he could not.

Then he tried working his body back and forth, and this succeeded a little better. He could press the dirt forward an inch or two. His bound arms he could not move at all, nor was he able to loosen the thongs at his wrists.

In five minutes Mingan, who was a philosophic thinker, was convinced of what the Jelairs who planted him in the earth would have assured him gratis-that he was absolutely helpless. The hard-packed clay at his back and at the soles of his feet wedged him in. The sun, now at its zenith, poured down into the gully on his bare head, and sweat stung his eyes. His legs began to cramp him, then his arms.

An ant crawled up behind his ears and refused to drop off when he shook his head savagely.

The heat from the upper crust of sand and the rocks behind him pierced the skin of his skull, and his throat became dry, even while his eyes sought the cool stones that surrounded the well. From the level of the earth itself, Mingan became aware of many things that lived and moved on its surface. A lizard ran out from between two stones and turned back hastily when he moved his head; from the skins nearby a scorpion crawled toward him slowly. Mingan felt grateful when it altered its course and turned toward the ruffled body of the dead hawk to investigate.

Before an hour passed he had lost control of himself, shouting and struggling to throw off the weight that pressed down his legs, raging aloud at the ants that came more thickly now.

It was the dog that restored his spirits a little. The cut over its head and shoulder had knocked it senseless for a moment, but an animal seldom loses consciousness for long. Mukuli had half-crawled, half-limped after his mistress when the horsemen rode away, but now returned from its fruitless effort, and sighted Mingan. It made no difference to the dog that only the man's head was perceptible. He whined and licked the perspiration from Mingan's cheek, and aroused the man's frantic hopes by digging weakly with his forepaws in the soft earth under his nose.

But when Mukuli had hollowed out enough space to curl himself up in, he slumped down and fell to licking his gashed shoulder, whimpering. When Mingan spoke, Mukuli thumped his tail a little, as evidence of appreciation. Digging had passed out of his canine brain for the time being.

When the sun was halfway down to the horizon Mukuli went to the well and drank thirstily, growling at a jackal that drifted in among the rocks and snatched up the dead hawk savagely, making off with its prey.

Presently the jackal came back and sat down on its haunches. Mukuli retreated to the neighborhood of the man and lay down, too weak to stand on his legs for long. At once the jackal started up, but veered off when Mingan shouted hoarsely. Puzzled, but still hungry, the lean little beast circled the man's head and the snarling dog, darting away, only to draw back a step at a time, until it took up a position for observation and reflection at the spring.

Mukuli looked at Mingan anxiously as if wondering why the man did not get up out of the earth and drive the jackal away. Presently the dog whined and drew closer.

The sun passed behind the rocks, stripping the gully of all color and heat in a moment. But overhead the sky was a brilliant blue, cloudless and clear as space itself. Mingan took a little comfort from the fact that the jackal was no nearer. He had ceased to think of the sky, of Jamuka, or anything except the animal ten paces away.

And then his teeth clicked together spasmodically and the blood roared in his ears. Mukuli lifted his muzzle inquiringly, and the jackal retreated, shadow-like among the rocks, never to be seen again.

Near the well a man was singing and the sound of it was drawing nearer.

Two camels loomed over the edge of the gully, and, having made one of the pair kneel, the singer climbed down to the well. He was alone, for the other beast bore only a light pack. Against the shimmering sky of twilight Mingan made out a slender warrior wearing a bronze Mongol helmet, the nose piece and the leather drop all but hiding his face.

It was the Tiger; but, beholding the scattered sleeping furs, the dark stains and many footprints in the sand, and the empty perch of the falcon, his mirth vanished. He picked up and examined some articles left behind by the Gipsy girl and groaned.