Rusudan/Chapter 1
IT WAS Avak the shepherd who first beheld the miracle—Avak and his dog. In that year, the year of Our Lord 1222, the winter was a hard time and snow fell heavily in the higher ranges so that the khodas, or trails, were almost blocked. For this reason Avak kept his fat-tail sheep and goats penned up. Avak had built around his pens a fence of oak limbs, high and sturdy enough to keep out the wolves that sometimes ventured into the street of the village. So he was at liberty to spend most of his days watching for enemies.
His hut was on the outskirts of the village of Nakha in the foothills of the Khaukesh, beneath the ranges that stretched from the Black Sea to the Caspian. Through these ranges ran the highway that led from Asia to the threshold of Europe—though Avak knew or cared little about that matter. To him, the highway was a source of trouble. And he relished fighting.
Avak, being the head of his family, had more than one feud on his hands. In the last harvest-time a Cherkessian horse-trader who had stopped overnight at Nakha had sworn to come back and cut out his heart and other organs. Avak had not stolen the trader's bald-faced Kabarda mare. The shepherd was not clever enough to steal; but he was much too proud to refuse a quarrel when it came his way.
And the four Ermeni[1]—Avak's mild brown eyes glinted when he thought of them. Four ragged and hungry Ermeni who had wandered up the road, one at a time. The first had asked why Avak kept such a starved dog, at the same time pointing out a small sheep that had strayed from the flock. Avak had said that it was a sheep and not a dog. But when two other men had stopped and told him that it was indeed a dog, and an evil looking beast, he had been doubtful. And he had believed the fourth, who swore that the beast had been bewitched by a pagan sorcerer. This fourth Ermeni had carried off the sheep, unharmed.
Avak had bought holy water to sprinkle his flock, and—when he learned that the four wanderers had eaten the sheep in the village—he remembered the saying of his people that two Greeks are a match for a devil, and one Ermeni is a match for two devils.
So he kept an eye out for the four wanderers—himself a Georgian and a sword bearer, and a descendent of the Orphelians who had carried sword and fire over all the Khaukesh[2] in by-gone generations. The evidence of his nobility was the blade itself, a heavy yataghan in a leather sheath hanging from his shoulder by a strap ornamented with all the silver coins Avak had been able to get together.
And, as his father had done before him, Avak watched the mountain road for enemies—his personal adversaries and the foes of the blessed young queen of the Georgians.
The Road of the Warriors, it was called, this narrow track that wound up from the wide steppes into the east. And on this Road of the Warriors Avak had seen all that came out of the east—the laden camels of Bokharians plodding in the dust of midsummer, the donkey trains of purple-clad Jews, the creaking carts of turbaned Hindus. By night he had caught fleeting glimpses of raiding Turkoman horsemen.
But this road that came out of the unknown East had been deserted since the first snow. Until the day of the miracle.
Then Avak, going out to his aerie, had beheld with keen eyes a change in the aspect of the plain beneath. The gray surface of the steppe was covered with round black objects like tiny domes. And between these objects moved specks that were men. Here and there were dark blurs that changed shape as he watched, and he knew instinctively that these must be horse herds, or perhaps cattle.
After a while he reasoned that the black domes must be tents, of a kind he had never beheld. He did not know how to count over a hundred and so he told the priest in Nakha that there were many hundreds of foemen camped on the plain under the mountains of Georgia, and the priest had agreed that this was so.
“Eh, Avak, it is true that last night I saw in the sky a fiery cross. Now it is clear that this was an omen. There will be war in the Khaukesh.”
“In that case,” agreed the shepherd, “crows will eat the flesh of the foemen. Aye, the wolf packs will not go unfed.”
He had heard his father tell how the hosts of Islam had tried to force the mountain rampart in the day of the prophet Muhammad, and how in the end they had failed. He himself had seen armies of the Persian atabegs come up one valley or another, only to draw back licking their wounds.
It was the glory and the pride of the Georgians that they had never submitted, like the Armenians and Circassians, to a monarch of Islam. In their mountain fastness they still worshiped the Cross that had come to them in the days of the apostles, and they were still unconquered.
Now, Avak reflected, messengers would be sent forth by the young queen to all the distant clans; the banners would be lifted at Tphilis[3] and trumpets would blare from ridge to ridge.
He was not surprized when Shotha Kupri, a thawad, or prince of the kingdom, came to the frontier village of Nakha with his henchmen to keep watch on the invaders.
Shotha Kupri was a grizzled nobleman, the clasp of his cloak being two bronze eagles, and Avak gave him a fat-tailed sheep without payment, because after all it was a Jew's part in life to haggle, and a Georgian's to bear himself boldly in war. Like the shepherd, Shotha Kupri was astonished when he beheld the thousands of black domes on the plain by the river; but he said nothing.
He sent two men down to spy upon the strange encampment, and the two men did not return.
Then came a storm of wind and snow, and after that days of heavy mist. Avak still went daily to his aerie because he wanted to be the first to see one of the invaders appear out of the mist.
IT WAS late in the afternoon, and Avak, huddled in his sheepskin burka, was drowsing comfortably when his dog growled, and the shepherd got to his feet to peer down the road.
Fog, driven by a fitful wind, hid the tips of the firs and swirled through the gaunt gray limbs of oaks. Wraiths of mist danced up the narrow lane in the forest mesh that was the road. Avak could hear nothing except the rush of the wind, but when the mist lifted for a moment he saw a man coming up the road—a tall man wrapped in a wolf-skin cloak, who strode steadily through the drifts and paused at times to study the tracks upon the trail.
The stranger wore no helm and carried no shield. His right hand grasped a stout staff. And it seemed to Avak as if he bore on his shoulders a cross, because above his black sable cap projected a long and gleaming bar of metal.
Avak could not be certain, in that ever-changing mist, whether the stranger was alone or followed by others. So the shepherd flung back his head and howled like a wolf—a quavering cry that was carried far up-wind. Then he took his dog between his knees and crouched down in the laurel growth that screened him from the road.
When he heard leather-shod feet crunch the hard snow he peered out of his covert and beheld the stranger close at hand. Then Avak knew beyond doubt that this was no Georgian. The man of the wolf-skin cloak was taller than the race of mountaineers, and spare in build. His beard and thick long hair were the hue of red gold.
And what Avak had taken to be a cross was in reality the two-foot hilt and the wide cross-bar of a sword slung in its leather sheath upon his shoulders.
“He carries himself with pride,” thought Avak. “Ai, what a blade. The thawad will rejoice in this captive.”
The stranger had halted for good reason. Out of a mass of young firs appeared five Georgians, come to learn the meaning of Avak's signal that had been heard in the huts of Nakha; four warriors armed with boar spears and simitars, and Shotha Kupri, broad as a bear, with high shoulders and limbs shaped and knotted by climbing cliffs.
Thus reinforced, Avak emerged from hiding, and circled to the back of the stranger, who glanced at him once from bleak gray eyes.
Shotha Kupri advanced to spear's length of the man in the wolfskins, and stopped to chew his mustache in a moment of contemplation.
“Hail!” he cried.
The stranger shook his head, and made answer in another tongue, sonorous and musical:
“Yah kawánnah? What men are ye?”
Only Shotha Kupri understood the words, and he frowned, for the stranger had addressed him in Arabic, the common speech of half Asia.
“Thy masters!”cried the thawad harshly. “What seek ye?”
“A road.”
Shotha Kupri grinned.
“A spy art thou, from the dog-pack below. Throw down thy weapon and yield thee, and by the beard of thy prophet, I will show thee a road! Else wilt thou tread the path to Jehannum.”
The stranger lifted his right hand, as if about to speak again, but the Georgian signed to his men.
“Seize him!”
Avak saw one of the henchmen draw a simitar and flourish it at the stranger's head, while another ran in to grasp his arms. Skilled were they in facing the rush of a wild boar, or in leaping out of cover upon feudal enemies that ventured into the Khaukesh, and Avak thought that the tall man was as good as bound and trussed, for he made no move to draw the long sword at his back.
Instead, he dropped his right hand to his staff. Stepping back a pace, he thrust the blunt end of the staff into the stalwart throat of the warrior who leaped to grapple him. Then, slipping both hands to the end of the pole, he brought it swiftly against the simitar blade near the hilt.
The blade snapped and with a strident whirr the point shot into the snow. Avak yelped with surprize, because he knew well how to handle a cudgel, but until now he had never seen the play of a long quarterstaff. The next moment the shepherd lay prone beside the warrior, who coughed and fingered his throat tenderly. The man in the wolf-skins had turned and whirled his oaken weapon down on Avak's temple. A light blow, but it drew blood and the trees and the men merged together in the mist before Avak's eyes.
Then the stranger laughed.
“O ye men of the mountain, this is no time for the sword!”
But the muscles tensed in Shotha Kupri's broad face, and he drew from his belt a heavy ax.
“Whoso thou art, draw thy sword ere I strike thee down!”
The thawad motioned back the three warriors who had started forward at the first blows. His anger was roused and he meant to try the stranger with edged steel. His left hand slipped down to his boot-top and gripped a curved knife. Holding both weapons close to his sides, he bent his head.
Before he could rush in, Avak cried out—
“'Ware, my Lord!”
Out of the veil of mist a dozen riders were urging their horses at a plunging gallop up the road. Avak glanced at them again, and rolled over, gaining his feet at the side of his prince, where the Georgians had gathered in a knot.
In all his days Avak had never seen horsemen like these, who were garbed in dark leather, shining with lacquer, under long loose khalats or fur surtouts—tigerskins, sable, and silver and black fox. Their helmets were bronze or polished Damascus-work, crested with red horse hair. Their high-peaked saddles gleamed with silver-work, and the horses were utterly unlike the bony little beasts of the Khaukesh—jet black Kabardas, mottled gray Arabs, splendid mounts that would have made the Circassian traders finger their wallet strings. And the riders were fitting arrows to string as they reined in by the man of the wolf-skin.
“Go back, my Lord!” Avak cried to the thawad. “We will stand against them.”
“Nay,” growled Shotha Kupri, gripping his ax.
But no arrows smote the Georgians. The tall stranger spoke a brief word to the riders and they slipped their shafts back into the quivers, gazing at the mountaineers with slant eyes expressionless as those of the horses they bestrode. The man of the broadsword mounted a led horse, a powerful gray stallion, and gathered up his reins.
He glanced up the road at the thatched roofs of Nakha from which other Georgians were beginning to throng.
“Say, now,” he asked bluntly, “thou of the ax—to what country leads this road?”
Old Shotha Kupri was no man to do another's bidding. Fearless and untamed was he, as the eagles of the higher ranges.
“To purgatory—for an infidel!”
And he spat into the trampled snow. The gray eyes of the stranger dwelt upon the grim Georgian an instant.
“A vain word,” he made answer quietly, “avails not. Go, with thy life, and by that same token bear this message to thy people: There is one at your gate who heeds not God or Satan or any power of earth!”