The Wolf Master/Chapter 19
THE END OF THE ROAD
“GREGORY OTRIPIEV,” Nada mused, “would have gone down to that city. He would like to see what the ruins are, and what people live there.”
“Eagles live there,” Kirdy made answer, “and vipers—not men.”
“We will soon know. At least some one has gone down the trail.”
That much the Cossack had already ascertained. He had seen tracks in a cascade of soft earth, where one horse had rubbed against the slope, and another had trampled the fresh dirt. They were half-way down the traverse road, and the worst of it was before them. That slide of earth told a story of frightened horses rearing back, and riders hovering over eternity.
But Otrèpiev had gone on, and Kirdy meant to follow. He bade Nada dismount, and took the rein of the bay stallion. The hardy Tatar ponies kept their footing wisely but the charger was all nerves. The Cossack talked to him and Nada coaxed, and it was one of the ponies that missed a short jump, and hurtled screaming down the face of the cliff, with a thunder of rock and loosened dirt.
The charger took the jump with a yard to spare, and it needed all Nada's weight on the rein to keep him from plunging ahead with the sudden spurt of a high-strung horse that thinks danger lurks under his rear.
“Well done!” Kirdy cried, as the girl quieted the bay stallion. “Here Otrèpiev lost one of his mounts.”
A speck on the valley bed had caught his eye—a cluster of vultures that had dined on something. Obviously something a day or more old, because a score of the flapping creatures rose into the air to investigate the Tatar pony that had finally stopped, an inert huddle, not so far away. The distance was too great to make out whether they had been feeding on a horse or a man, but Kirdy prayed that it was a horse and that Otrèpiev who had led him across the Earth Girdle, still lived on the plateau, now near at hand.
And Nada read his mind with a single glance.
“What will you do, White Falcon, when you meet with Otrèpiev?”
“Bid him to sabers.”
Both had jumped to the same conclusion at once. If Otrèpiev and his companion were living and on the plateau, they might well have noticed the fall of the pony and the miniature avalanche that set a hundred echoes flying. If they happened go be on the cliff side of the city, they might have seen the two pursuers.
“Ech boula, ni boula,” Nada tossed her head. “Maybe death to me, maybe not—what matter! So the Cossack says. And what, O my hero, if both fools die—and I am left alive with the Tsar's dog, who has been trained since birth to torture and who carries a sword as long as himself? Take heed! If you must fight Otrèpiev, agree with him as to that. But first do you and he and the other band together to journey safely back across the Earth Girdle.”
Kirdy frowned and shook his head. The sun was well up by now and the glare of it against the white limestone had made him throw off the tattered sable coat, so that he walked in a worn red shirt, slashed and stained where he had been wounded. His lean head was dark as the long hair that fell over one shoulder—Nada, considering him, thought that he did look like a falcon, swift and merciless.
“If Otrèpiev were a true Cossack, or even a boyarin of honor, I would do that,” he made response curtly. “But he has betrayed men too often.”
“And if he comes to you sick, asking aid?”
Kirdy laughed grimly.
“Let him first do it.”
“He has another with him, and he himself is a match for you. What if the other draws and strikes when your blade is turned against Otrèpiev?”
Again the Cossack laughed shortly, touching the splendid hilt of his curved sword.
“God gives. I desire only that.”
Under veiling lashes, the girl looked at him steadily, and a sudden purpose made her tingle.
“Nada,” Kirdy said gravely, “whatever happens, you must not draw that plaything, the yataghan.”
“Could I draw against the man in black with the sword that is longer than I?” she demanded reasonably. “And would you suffer me to stand against Otrèpiev?”
She sighed, and fell silent—unwontedly silent. Kirdy became grimly intent on their surroundings. They had reached the foot of the ramp and here a shelving ledge allowed them to walk oposite the plateau.
They discovered what had been concealed from sight until now. Somewhere in the mountains a river had its source, a river that foamed down in flood when winter loosened its hold on the heights, but that now was no more than a bed of round stones, far below them.
This river ran, in season, between the mountainside and the mass of the plateau where the city stood. During countless ages it had eaten through the soft stone and clay until it formed a chasm. The chasm was thirty yards or so across—its depth unguessable.
And now there was no doubt at all that the city on the plateau had been built by men. The ruin of a wall ran along the rim across the defile. The wall had been built of hewn stone blocks and the Cossack knew that this city of the Golden Horde had been invulnerable to attack. No enemy, advancing down the ramp and forming, shelterless, along the ledge, could have stormed the city wall.
The other three sides of the plateau looked unclimbable. Probably there was—or had been—a way down from the city to the lower valley. But this other road, being hung on the face of a cliff, could not be stormed. The city, then, could not have been taken by an enemy from without. Why had it been abandoned? Kirdy was too busy finding a way across the chasm to wonder.
His search for a while was fruitless. The river that had cut the plateau from the mountain a thousand centuries ago, had done its work well—except at one spot. Here he had noticed twin gate towers rising on the other side. Since these towers must have defended the entrance, he led the way along the ledge toward them, praying that the bridge or whatever it might be, was still standing.
So at midday they reached the gate and found not a bridge man-made, but an arch of limestone that spanned the chasm.
Once the river must have plunged underground here—or dipped below a broad shelf of rock to thunder over a fall. The rock bridge had been worn by the elements until at the middle a tall man's arms might have spanned it. Also, it had been eaten down to the center.
In the white dust atop the limestone were the tracks of a horse and two men, leading fairly through the opening between the towers—where a barrier of wood and iron must have stood in other years.
“Go last, Nada!” Kirdy swept the ruined wall, the expanse between the towers, with a swift glance and started down the natural bridge, leading the charger. If his enemies were hidden in the ruins with so much as a pistol or a bow between them, he was doomed; but he felt no fear and the proof of it was that the charger followed him willingly, with only a pricking of ears and shortening of strides. The ponies ambled across indifferently, and Nada brought up the rear, laughing.
A BLAZING sun, beating on the white dust of streets and the gray and red ruins, half blinded them, and a vagrant wind clutched at them. They stood within sight of what had been the registan, the open square of the city.
Here a gray scum of tamarisk impeded progress, and the crumbling stone was covered with thorn and creepers. A sluggish gray snake with mottled red back crept past their feet. Remembering that little water remained in the goatskins, Kirdy investigated a pool of water that lay between two houses. It was bordered with sparkling salt incrustations, and small plants covered with brilliant orange and red berries. A glance convinced the Cossack that the water was undrinkable, the berries inedible.
Then his head jerked up, and the horses moved restlessly.
“O-ho-o! O-HO-O! O-ho!”
Some one had laughed and started up the echoes again. It was a mad, exulting laugh that seemed anything but human. It might mean that they were both watched and mocked, or their presence entirely unsuspected. Nada shivered and drew closer to Kirdy.
“Let us go to the palace. I think it is yonder on the height. From there we can see—”
Taking the horses, which were as precious as life itself, the Cossack wound through vine-cumbered alleys and over fallen walls to an edifice that was marked by several stone columns, still standing. He avoided the registan and the wider streets, and only paused when in a bed of clay or sand he saw scattered bones that had fallen away from the skeleton of a man.
Not long before, he had come upon rows of tombs—square chambers of granite sunk into the earth and surmounted by stone pyramids. Several of these tombs stood open, and he had gone into one.
“An evil fate came upon this place,” he muttered to Nada. “Here be many bodies lying in the houses, and few in the tombs. How did it happen that the men of the Horde died in dwellings and were not buried?”
Nada only shook her head. But when they had climbed out of the alleys to a brick roadway that led up to a granite-flagged courtyard, she gasped. The place was large enough for the tents of a whole tribe.
Slender aspens and twisted oaks, thrusting through the stones, had grown to full stature in the years since the city had been deserted. And from the courtyard a stairway of veined marble ascended to the pillars.
At the summit of the stair Kirdy pushed aside a mesh of undergrowth and stepped through to what had been an anteroom of the palace. From here other stairs led up to the central hall, marked by the columns still standing and by others like prone giants, fallen across the ruins.
He was hidden from the sight of any one in the city below by the fringe of tamarisks and trees around the knoll. But by climbing to the dais at the far end he had a view of the more distant portion of the city, and the first thing he saw was a line of smoke rising from an open spot. A horse was picketed near the smoke, and the horse was not saddled.
“Hai,” he cried, “there is the camp of Otrèpiev.”
Although he watched attentively for some moments, he could see no men moving among the ruins. Nada sat down, chin on hand, to gaze up at the Earth Girdle they had left that morning—the bulwarks of mighty mountains, rising into wisps of clouds, through which appeared at times the snow of the summits. The sun shone out of a blazing sky and eagles, floating against the gray veil of mist, were sharply etched as black jewels sewn upon silk.
So Nada mused. But Kirdy, striding up and down the dais, was burning with impatience.
“It is the end of the road,” he laughed. “I seek the false Dmitri, and you—”
“I shall stay here with the horses.”
He turned in his stride, to frown and think. He did not want to part from the girl, but to take her, and the horses—no, the danger was below.
“Abide here then,” he advised her, “and if God sends death to me and I come not by the next dawn, take the stallion and go up the pass without halting.”
“God and His holy angels keep you, White Falcon.”
So she responded, without looking at him, her lips close pressed and her eyes shut. She heard the grating of steel as he tried his sword in its scabbard, and his steps moving away, down the hall of the columns.
He left the palace at a spot where he could not be seen, and struck through the hollows until he reached the edge of the registan again. Here he sighted the thin line of smoke, and ran, crouching, from ruin to ruin, stopping at times to listen with his head close to the ground.
But Nada remained without moving, chin on hand, gazing up at the Earth Girdle, listening to the horses that were grazing upon the bushes and scattered grass. So she sat, wondering why she had determined to stay where she was, in spite of the grief that chilled her veins and heart, until a voice near at hand aroused her.
“So, little Nada, you have kept your promise. Behold, I have kept mine!”
Blinking—for the sun was full in her eyes—she turned and saw Gregory Otrèpiev sitting on a block of marble upon the dais and smiling at her.
HIS powerful arms rested on his knees, and the woman in her took note of the rents and tears in the long coat that covered his rusted armor. A scruff of beard had grown over his chin, and his long blue eyes gleamed from his dark skin.
“My court,” he said, “is small, yet when you sit at my feet I am more honored than any emperor.”
Her lips parted to cry out, when she remembered that the Cossack was far beyond hearing. Then, too, she saw Otrèpiev's courtier. A man taller than Kirdy leaned on a five-foot sword, holding in the crook of his arm the silvered casque with the eagle crest of the false Dmitri. His black satin garments were gray with dust, and his drawn, sun-blackened face was expressionless as a mask. His lips smiled.
“My armorer, my counselor, my equerry and executioner!” Otrèpiev waved a scarred hand at the oprichniky, the torturer. “Faith, lass, he stands upon the edge of madness. 'Twas his laugh enriched this silence a while ago, and spurred your Cossack on to stalk my camp. I love him like a brother—” his restless eyes roamed the ruins—“By the Horned One, here are five good horses!”
“Have you ever kept a promise, False Dmitri?”
“Rarely—only when it suited me. The weak promise when they have no other surety. Nay, I said to you—'I will make myself master of that city beyond the Earth Girdle.' Have you forgotten? I think not. So, I sit on what is left of the throne.”
“Yet you are not master here.”
Otrèpiev considered her.
“I could find fault in you for telling me of this place—Satan's playground! What a city! Majestic it may be, but empty—too empty.”
“Have you not seen, or heard, its people?”
“If you mean the wild Cossack—I saw him climbing up the pass with you. It was a goodly sight, but it puzzled me. In the Turco-Tatar slaughter I saw him riding at me, and how was I to know whether the pair of you came to render allegiance or put me in my grave? Which was it?”
Nada's dark eyes surveyed him steadily and she did not speak.
“Well,” Otrèpiev mused aloud, “if the fellow is your lover, you must have lost your wit. When I found your city to be an empty shell, I occupied myself with preparing a reception for my pursuers, watching you descend that accursed path. I sent my faithful servitor to set up a camp within plain sight—a smoking fire and a foundered horse. By now your Cossack is squatting on his haunches near it—we saw him circle it. But I was here, behind this dais, before you came. When he returns to you we will be waiting, and Feodor will slice off another head.”
“The people of this city are the dead. We heard them ride upon the Earth Girdle.”
“Doubtless. They did not trouble my dreams. But we shall strike east from here. The valley below has a pleasant look.”
“You are not master of this place, Otrèpiev, because it is peopled with the dead!”
The man on the marble throne slab smiled.
“I remember now, little Nada, you said that peace was to be found here. A beautiful girl may be pardoned a bad jest—”
“But you are not dead, Otrèpiev—how can you be lord of this Horde?”
“Ah, you are grinding wheat to look for chaff. What matter, if you have come to sit at my feet?”
The close-set blue eyes blazed upon her restlessly. Whenever Otrèpiev spoke, neither eyes nor hands were still, and yet his voice was full and deep. A man of great physical strength, acting impulsively, he made no secret of his delight in Nada's beauty and youth. He addressed her as a child, to be humored—a woman to be desired.
He glanced down at the ruined hall of columns.
“Eh, little Nada, the weeds and lizards keep the court of ancient kings. Was this place built by an emperor of Cathay, or by the Macedonian, Alexander, who made himself master of the world? I might have aroused the Muscovites as he did the Macedonians, except for one thing—superstition. The beast would not come out of its stall! I showed them the path of glory, and they harkened to the chants of bald priests. I brought to Moscow a Polish bride, and they cringed. Fools!”
He shrugged and smiled wryly.
“How fared the lady of Sandomir? She was a painted stick beside you, Nada, lass. Eh—eh!”
The girl stood up, tossing back the mass of gleaming hair from her shoulders. The heat of the day had been so great she had thrown off her svitka and was clad only in white linen shirt and slender embroidered vest, over the loose Turkish trousers.
“A handsome Cossack—hi, Feodor!” Otrèpiev looked up at the silent headsman.
“I am here,” Nada said, “at your feet. But if you would so much as touch me with your hand, you must first overpower me with the sword.”
Otrèpiev frowned, and then his brow cleared.
“Why, so you said in the steppes. I will do it at once, my lass.”
“And will you wear mail, my lord, in facing a woman's sword?”
For an instant Otrèpiev hesitated, and Nada laughed at him.
“Do you fear the Cossack, then, O my emperor?”
“Not I—nor shall you mock me.”
Otrèpiev cast loose his cloak and the tall Feodor assisted him out of the rusty mail shirt.
OTRÈPIEV turned to the brief bit of weapon-play with the relish that he felt in anything that diverted his thoughts. His restlessness covered black brooding, and he dreaded to be left to himself; when another was with him he talked constantly, and until his flight from the Tatars he drank heavily of the spirits among his stores. He had been morose since the defeat of the Turkomans whom he had expected to sweep over Tevakel Khan, but Nada's coming had restored his good humor. It was a good omen—the girl and fresh horses.
“To one death,” Nada breathed, “to the other life!”
Otrèpiev lowered his blade and glanced at her keenly. Her face was ashen and her lips trembled, as she spoke the Cossack salutation before a duel.
“Answer me one question!” he demanded. “Do you love this Cossack?”
Nada flushed and met his eyes fairly.
“Aye—the White Falcon has my love. When we met in Moscow he was master of my heart, and it was to follow him that I joined you in the steppe. You—the traitor that played at kingship. In the steppes he took leadership among the Tatars and it was he who overthrew you and the Turkomans. But he has thought that I serve you, and he has no faith in me.”
“The !” said Otrèpiev, thoughtfully.
The next instant with eye and foot and hand, he was fighting for his life.
Nada had sprung at him as a Cossack rushes, recklessly, raining cut upon cut. Surprized, Otrèpiev gave ground a little, and settled himself to parry the flashing blade that darted at his throat and slashed at his side.
Again he stepped back, and Nada pressed in, her eyes narrowed, her lip gripped between her teeth. Once he parried and tried a quick twist of the saber that should have disarmed her, but the yataghan slid clear.
The brain of Otrèpiev fought coolly, telling him that his saber was heavier than the girl's weapon, his strength greater. He only needed to ward off her first rush, and then—
Again Nada pressed him back, making no effort to parry, but striving to thrust inside his close-drawn guard.
“The girl is mad!” he thought, and then the evil impulse of desire that always lurked behind his brain seized upon him. The struggle had stirred him—he wanted to drive his blade past Nada's weapon, to strike it deep into her breast. To slay always delighted him, and, after all, if this wild Cossack lass loved the warrior, she might work him harm. Aye, better deal with her as he desired!
A moment later Otrèpiev stepped back, smiling, and lowered his saber, glancing at the darkened tip.
Nada's yataghan clattered on the stones, and she bent her head, fumbling with a long lock of hair that had fallen over her shoulder. Gathering the golden tresses in her hand, she pressed against her side, where Otrèpiev's saber had pierced under the heart.
Then she sank to her knees and lay down, as if utterly weary, on the stones. Tall Feodor came and bent over her with professional interest.
“Kniaz veliky,” he spoke for the first time, “my prince, your blade did not go deep. To make sure, another thrust is best.”
Otrèpiev stared eagerly at the girl's drawn face, the pallid lips and the circles under her eyes.
“Keep back, you dog,” he muttered at his follower.
And after a moment Feodor touched his shoulder.
“Great Prince, guard yourself!”
Startled, Otrèpiev heard the impact of boots on the stones, and looked up as Kirdy leaped a fallen column.
The Cossack must have seen Nada as he leaped, because he came at them without pause or spoken word. He was panting from the long run, and his sword arm quivered. In his eyes, under tortured brows, was the glare of death itself.
He swerved toward Otrèpiev and his heavy blade rang on the Muscovite's saber as the other stepped back to put space between them and Feodor.
“Slash him down, dog!” he panted at the headsman who was swinging up his broadsword silently.
Kirdy heard and swerved away as Feodor struck, the long blade hissing through the air.
“From two sides!” snarled Otrèpiev. “Come at him from the other side!”
As he cried out, he parried swiftly, because Kirdy had put him between himself and the headsman. For an instant Otrèpiev could do no more than ward the whirling blade that sought head and throat as a wolf strikes. Meanwhile Feodor circled warily, swinging up his broadsword. Kirdy did not seem to notice him—certainly did not glide away as before.
Feodor tensed his arms and the Cossack leaped high in the air, turning as he did so. His saber hissed down and in, and for an instant Feodor stood poised on massive limbs.
The man's head fell down on his chest, held only by one of the throat muscles—and the throat had been all but cut through.
“Ha!” Otrèpiev gasped.
He heard Feodor's sword and then the giant body fall to the stone flags; but his saber was locked fast by the Cossack's blade. For a moment the eyes of the two, beaded with sweat and blood-shot, glared, and then Kirdy wrenched free.
A wave of hot anger swept over Otrèpiev, and fear beat at his heart, like a hammering pulse. With a cry he sprang forward, and his right hand, grasping the saber, flew off and slid along the stone slabs. Kirdy struck twice at the bent head of his foe, and, cut through the temples on either side, the body of Otrèpiev stumbled and dropped beside his henchman.
Kirdy wasted no second's thought upon him. Running to Nada, he cut the fastenings of her vest and drew it off, then gently pulled away the hand and the clotted tresses. With quivering fingers he felt the narrow wound.
Then he turned her on her left side, to check the inward bleeding, and as he did so, her hand touched his arm and felt up it, until she could stroke his head.
“The end—” her lips moved—“of the road.”
The Cossack glanced around wildly. To heal such a wound in a comrade he would have given a draft of powder mixed in vodka. But he had neither powder nor vodka, and he did not know what more to do, except to bring water.
“O Father and Son, hear me,” he cried. “The spirit of little Nada flutters like a pigeon in the storm wind. It goes, her spirit, from my hands. Harken, O White Christ, and thou, souls of the Cossack heroes who dwell in the regions above—there is faith in this maiden, and knightly honor. Did she not draw her sword bravely? Is it fitting she should die by the sword of a traitor and a dog?”
When he returned with water, Nada drank a little, and signed for him to bend closer.
“I love you, White Falcon—even your shadow and the horse you ride. I stayed behind because I feared he was hiding near by. Truly, then, I thought I might slay him, so they could not fall upon you. But—promise me you will not leave me, White Falcon. Hold me in your arms and take me from this place, down to the valley, my Falcon.”
The rush of words ceased and her lips quivered.
Kirdy looked up. Already vultures were dropping down on the columns and the throne slab. The wind threshed through the dry growth, and up the Earth Girdle clouds of driven dust hid the pass and the heights.
“Aye, little Nada,” he said, gently, “I promise.”
Here was something he could do. Yet no living man could carry the suffering girl up that wind-whipped ramp to the desolate pass—or make the horses follow. When he had circled Otrèpiev's bait of a camp—and had noticed that the fire was left to die and the horse likewise—he had suspected the trap set for him and had gone back instantly, until he heard the clash of weapons and had run like one possessed. But before then he had seen what Otrèpiev had discovered, a road winding down the east face of the plateau.
So, only stopping to bind Feodor's great sword and Otrèpiev's helmet on the charger's saddle, he tied up Nada's wound with strips of his shirt and lifted her in his arms, keeping the stallion's rein in his fingers. The ponies trailed after, and no sooner had they moved away than the vultures closed in upon the bodies of the false Dmitri and his solitary companion, the torturer.
“IT WAS a dog's burial,” Kirdy thought, “but it is well suited to Gregory Otrèpiev, because he has left his bones in the hall of a king. Bold he was, but not a good Cossack. He kept faith with no one, and he handled a sword badly.”
Weary beyond knowing, Kirdy strode on into darkness and wind. The night had brought the first of the autumn's storms, and gusts of rain whipped the mesh of the tayga over his head. The burden of the unconscious girl had numbed his arms long since, but as long as he could feel Nada's heart pulsing slowly under his fingers he kept on.
When neither wind, nor the bitter air of the heights that hinted at snow penetrated to him, he halted and laid Nada down in the darkness, upon ferns and pine needles. When he was able to raise his arms again, he took down the broadsword from the stallion's saddle, and groped for branches and fallen wood.
A fire kindled and fed to roaring flames, he shook the stupor of sleep from his brain and hacked down young firs, working incessantly until he put together the framework of a low hut, and covered three sides with branches. Then he took the saddle from the stallion and the packs from the two ponies that had followed patiently, to be unloaded. He watched them go down at once toward the muttering rush of a stream.
Then he hurried back to listen to the girl's even breathing. And the glare of exhaustion and anger left his dark eyes.
“She sleeps, the little Nada,” he smiled. “Eh, there is faith in her, in all things. When the Muscovites would have taken her captive, she met them with the sword. With the dawn she will open her eyes.”
He glanced up, at the whirling sparks. The hut was in a grove of gigantic deodars, whose branches rose beyond the firelight, whose tips threshed under the wind gusts that could not move the massive trunks.
A light flurry of snow came down on the Cossack—snow that powdered the hut without melting. He looked out at it thoughtfully.
“Aye, the pass through the Earth Girdle is closed. And here there is no road of any kind.”
He was in a new world, where the sun rises. And Nada had given him her love. What matter the way, if they could ride forth together with no shadow of doubt between them and all the unknown ahead?
And yet, if Nada's eyes were closed, never to look up at him again, he would have no heart to fare forth or to live longer.
IT WAS the next summer that Arslan, the ax-man, came to the yurta of old Tevakel Khan, and squatted down at the edge of the white horseskin, announcing that he came as a bearer of tidings.
“Upon thee, O Khan of the Altyn Juz, Lord of the Lesser Horde, master of the plain, mirror of the faith, tree of the fruit of understanding—the salute!
“The words of caravan men from Cathay have reached my ears, and this is the tale:
“Where the forest meets the desert, far—far—these men beheld a pair of the tengri that come down at seasons from the heights and are visible to mortal eyes, as is well known. The tale was that one of these spirits was a man, wearing a silver helmet and bearing a sword as long as a spear. The other was a woman with hair like gold, glittering in the sun. Their faces were dark, yet in their voices was no sorrow. They asked, 'What land is this?' And the men of the caravan, being fearful, kneeled at a distance.
“Because, O Khan this twain spoke in pride and had the bearing of kings. So the caravan men went away swiftly, leaving gifts, thinking that they had seen the tengri that come down from the high places.
“And my thought is this—that the two are they I led up to the Earth Girdle in the month of the Ox. They followed thine enemy the Fanga nialma and surely they have overcome him, since they carry his sword and helmet. They have set at naught his magic. And now, being spirits, they wander without fear. That is my word, O Khan, my master.”
With the tranquillity of the very old Tevakel Khan considered this, looking into the fire.
“It is evident,” he said at length, “that this youth and maiden have crossed the Earth Girdle and passed through the city of the dead. It is known to me that in former days this city was built by our ancestors. And treachery arose in it as a viper lifts its head. The Khan of all the Hordes was slain, and his warriors, and brother fought with brother, until no more than a few families lived to flee. So, it is accursed and the unburied dead ride about it at night.”
“And the youth and the maiden?” Arslan demanded, for his curiosity was very great.
Tevakel Khan smiled.
“Surely they are living mortals, or the caravan men would have seen them at night, not during the hours of the day.”
He meditated upon this for a moment and came to a conclusion.
“In this twain there was great faith and little fear. Kai, the wolves harmed them not and the dead passed them by. To such as they, God hath given the keys of the unseen!”