Swords From the East (38 page)

Whenever the soldiers came near the gate side of the drill ground they hushed and walked more quickly. Here stood a rude church of logs, with a painting on the planks of the door and a weather-stained cross of silver gilt at the peak.

Beside the church and abreast the stocks was the two-storied bulk of the governor's house, its mica windows tinted with orange light, the watchtower built up from its roof. A deep voice within roared out a song of the steppe:

As Zaritzan was on the river route of the Volga, and was the point on the steppe nearest the highway to Moscow, in this building the pristof Kichinskoi had his quarters-Kichinskoi, nominally Great Commissioner of the Tatars, was actually surveillant of the frontier for the Empress, an informant who had authority even over the military commanders, and whose word was law on the Volga.

Kichinskoi was in his office when Billings entered-a heavy man, with a smooth pale face and small features. He lay back on a sofa, one foot in a polished boot, on the table in front of him. He paid no attention to the captain after one swift glance, but went on talking to a timid-looking priest who sat on a stool close to the charcoal.

"Old wives' tales, I tell you, my dear batko. There will be no rising among the Torgut Tatars. I have talked with the Torgut Khan and told him a thing or two to put in his ear with the fleas. Pah! Didn't you see, Father Obe, that the Khan was afraid to answer me?"

"Yes, excellency, the Khan did not answer."

"Of course not."

Thrusting both hands deep into the pockets of a sable-lined overcoat, the pristof yawned and began to pick at his teeth.

"The Tatars are dogs. A little lashing, you know, goes a long way with them. Didn't they come to the steppe of their own accord several generations ago to beg for lands when they were driven out of China or some such thing? We need them, of course. The ministry wants horses and taxes, and the Torguts can give us both. And their Khan raised a levy of forty thousand cavalry in the war with the Sultan-killed a lot of infidels for the glory of God, and we got Azov. Isn't that true, priest?"

"True," muttered the small priest, with more assurance this time.

Kichinskoi took snuff from a gilt box. Without offering it to Billings, he closed the box and dusted off his chest with a silk kerchief.

"Dogs, or rather wolves," he resumed, "but we would fight them rather than lose them. I know what is whispered behind the doors of the ministry. Every house has its watchdog, Father Obe. You feed them bones-ha, yes! Our watchdogs are the Cos-"

He glanced toward the door whence came the noise of carousal and the mellow voice of the singer. While he seemed to pay no attention to Billings he was covertly scanning the visitor.

"I was going to say Tatars. Under my advice, they fight the Baskirs, Turks, and other accursed savages. Dog eat dog. You take my point. I have my hand on the lash, and they won't dare to rebel, whatever fools like Governor Beketoff may say-ha, Captain Billings, what does your friend the governor say now about those pagans over the river?"

He turned swiftly on his visitor. Billings had savored how he was being received in the first moment. Instead of standing, or trying to interrupt the self-satisfied official, he had seated himself on the stool opposite the priest, had thrown open his coat and taken out his pipe. After filling this, he took his time about answering, stooping instead to draw a coal from the brazier to light his pipe. "Beketoff," he responded calmly, "does not wag his tongue for the sake of hearing it go."

Kichinskoi brought his boot down from the table with a thump and frowned.

"Confound it, captain, you make yourself fiendishly at home, I must say. You're sitting down, I must call your attention to that. And am I smoking, pray?"

"No, you took snuff."

The priest cringed back into the shadows and raised his hands; Kichinskoi stared banefully into the emotionless, leather-like face of the adventurer. Billings's greenish eyes were frank and not at all cordial. Kichinskoi noted with some interest the smartly cut coat and the embroidered waistcoat of the captain.

Kichinskoi was a clever man, but-as is often the case-thought himself cleverer than he was. Already in the third rank of the nobility, he liked to be addressed as of the second. His weakness was vanity. He looked meaningly at Father Obe.

"Do you know, sir," the priest hastened to say, "that, Captain Billings, you are addressing the pristof himself? His excellency is commissioner over the Torguts, who are the Tatars along the Volga. Governor Beketoff has seen fit to send couriers to St. Petersburg-to high officials-charging that the Torguts are about to take up the sword against Christians. He asked you whether Beketoff still persists in that delusion.

"His excellency," he added in a whisper, "has denied to the Empress herself, the viceroy of the Church, that the Tatars would rebel."

"Then tell his excellency, Father Obe," said Billings quickly, "if he has brought me from Astrakan merely to repeat the confidences of Governor Beketoff, I shall make haste to return tomorrow morning."

Father Obe looked at Kichinskoi, who blinked like a disturbed owl. But, having studied the mapmaker, he changed his tactics.

"By the ashes of Sodom, my dear captain, you speak our Russian language well. Foi de ma foi! And my inform-I hear from Astrakan that you have completed a splendid chart of the Caspian shore for my friend Governor Beketoff, who did not pay you a kopeck. Also, you speak Tatar somewhat. I take it you are versed in-ah, astronomic science, and are-yes, a master hand at making a map."

Billings bowed without answering.

"Now unfortunately, Captain Billings, our Russian cartographers have given us poor charts of the Volga and the great plain to the east. Vraiment, mon ami! What do you think of those charts of the steppe?"

"Hum!" Billings smiled grimly.

"Exactly. I am commissioned by the Empress herself to prepare a map to present with my report."

"A map-of what?" Billings asked.

"Ah, you perceive the point. A map, my dear sir, of the great Tatar steppe." Kichinskoi drew a paper from the pile on his desk and read from it:

"It is desired an officer be commissioned to set out from the river Volga for the river Yaik, and from there to the Torgai. From this point he will journey to the Lake that is called Tengis, or Balkash, and he will complete a true and fine map of this territory.

He is furthermore instructed to settle by astronomic observation the exact position of the Lake of Balkash, concerning which divers opinions are held. In all instances this officer is to conciliate the natives and confirm them in their favorable opinion of the Russian gov ernment, to which they have recently submitted. By order of the Imperial Society of St. Petersburg."

"Practically the whole of the Tatar steppe," assented Billings. "Fifteen hundred miles-five thousand versts. First, plains down below sea level, then a desert-a blank place in your charts, ornamented by a picture of a tribesman sitting in front of his tent. And then-"

He hesitated. An old Armenian merchant at the Astrakan waterfront had sold him a map of the East. The traders of the caravan routes had a good knowledge of the terrain. And the Armenian had tales to tell.

"And then," prompted Kichinskoi, surprised at his visitor's knowledge.

"Mountains, pristof, shown on your maps by a pretty sketch of a lion emerging from a cave. But instead of lions-so I have heard-a race of men that are like animals. They bring women to sell as slaves in the bazaars of Tashkent and Bokhara to the south."

Kichinskoi frowned angrily.

"Tales-tales. My agents have provided against a revolt. Come now, my dear sir, you would be the-ah, avant-coureur upon the steppe that is still a blank space to us. Your name will be known by this map. Will you undertake it?"

He had spoken shrewdly.

"Your terms?" demanded Billings.

"Ah-four rubles a day while you are on your journey. Two hundred rubles when the map is approved by me."

"Four rubles-to hire horses and caravaneer's supplies?" Billings flushed.

"My dear captain! You have your own horse; and your outfit-planisphere, compass, and spirit level-is coming up the Volga under a Cossack sotnik. Besides, what will you do if you do not accept my offer?"

Indeed there would be nothing for Billings to do but return as best he could to Astrakan and walk the jetties. Kichinskoi had heard that the adventurer was penniless and so the pristof offered less than he had been instructed to pay for the making of the map. It is the way of the world's officials to drive a hard bargain with him whose purse is empty. Billings had reason to know this.

Some years before he had commanded a Russian sloop that made the voyage from St. Petersburg north along the White Sea, and thence along the edge of what was then called "The Frozen Ocean" to the mouths of the Yenesei, to establish a trading route for furs with the Mongol-Tatar tribes of the Arctic Circle.

The Russians bought, at very low prices, a huge amount of furs annually from the Tatar tribes-"sea otters," sables, ermine, black and red foxes. Billings knew that a large portion of the great fur trade passed through Zaritzan-the Torguts fetching the skins from the interior-and a goodly interest of the profits must stick to the fingers of Kichinskoi.

"I should return to Astrakan as soon as my luggage arrives," he responded thoughtfully. "And I should write to the ministry suggesting-as I have already done, you know-that the fur trade could be handled more cheaply through Orenburg or Astrakan than through Zaritzan. More cheaply, that is, where the officials are honest."

Again Father Obe looked troubled, but Kichinskoi managed to smile agreeably.

"On my oath, my dear fellow, I had forgotten your former services. But by the ashes of Sodom, the Empress must have her map. What are your terms?"

"Six rubles a day for the expenses of a small caravan. Five hundred rubles paid to me in advance. As much more when the map is delivered to you at Zaritzan. Also, your written promise that you will approve the chart. I want no retraction when the work is in your hands. It will be good, on the word of Minard Billings."

Kichinskoi inspected the well-kept fingers of a plump hand. His smile hid a sudden hatred for the adventurer. No one had dared to outface the pristof in that manner since he had come to Zaritzan. Billings, in reality, had no intention of writing to the ministry. But his shot had gone home.

"Oh, agreed, by all means," purred Kichinskoi. "my soul, should gentlemen quarrel over pennies? I will make up the sum out of my own pocket."

Even as he spoke he was planning to force harsher terms on the mapmaker. (Inasmuch as it was learned afterward that Kichinskoi had been furnished with sufficient funds to outfit Billings and pay him two thousand rubles to boot, it was literally true that what he surrendered to the mapmaker came out of his own pocket.)

Just then a house serf entered and informed the commissioner that his matushna-his lady-wished to see him. With a bow he excused himself and left Billings alone with the priest.

"That devil," remarked the maker of maps, "no, not Kichinskoi but the one we were talking about, across the river-you have seen him, Father Obe?"

The priest glanced involuntarily toward the door that had just closed. He had seen monks who refused to sanction the acts of Russian officials tortured in the prisons of Moscow. Even the Metropolitan of Moscow had been whipped by order of Catherine, herself a profligate woman. So he did not want to say anything that would interfere with the plans of the pristof.

"No," he responded. All at once a kind of flame came into his weak eyes. "But I have heard the talk of the heathen across the river. It is their high priest who is the archfiend. He has the face of an animal and is as tall as a tree. Our soldiers say he calls them, from the steppe. The pristof, Captain Billings, would save the souls of the heathen. We are sending the sons of the Tatars to our kaleka, our colleges, to instruct them in Christian knowledge."

"Do the sons stay in the kaleka?"

"You have the gift of foreknowledge. Nay, even today we heard that Alashan, the young son of the Torgut Khan, had escaped from Astrakan. A detachment of Cossacks pursued him in vain as far as Zaritzan."

Billings rose, having found out from the priest two things he wanted to know. The Tatars would be hostile to anyone attempting to chart their steppe on behalf of the Russian government. And the youth he had rescued on the post road was in all probability Alashan.

All at once he noticed that Father Obe was gasping and pointing at him. Following the direction of the trembling finger, Billings looked down. In place of his plain leather belt, he found that he was wearing beneath the overcoat a girdle of soft, red leather. Where the coat was parted he could see the clasp, a head of a wolf shaped in black iron.

"The sign of the fiend from over the river!" cried Father Obe.

In the dininghall, to which the pristof ushered the mapmaker upon his return, the sight of Billings's belt produced instant silence. Dancers, Cossacks and women who had been flinging themselves about until the sweat flew from their faces and their hair came down-these stopped to stare and cross themselves.