Read Online Swords From the East by Harold Lamb - Free Book Online

the North," he proclaimed in the council of chieftains assembled. "Thousands of captives I will keep to serve my army and do siege work. The rest my men will slay, for a dead enemy cannot strike again."
    Years after the events narrated here, Galdan Khan had carved for himself an empire out of the heart of Asia. He had driven the Chinese back across the Gobi; he held the northern Himalayas, Samarkand, Varkand. His men had looted the lamaseries of Thibet. His "wolves" pushed the Russians back from Turkestan.
    But his first step was toward the pastures and villages of the nomad Tatar tribes beyond the snow wall of the Altai. And in Tartary a strange thing happened.
    "The van of my army," he had explained to the mirzas of the Kalmuck and Kazak hordes, who sat picking their teeth and chewing dates, "will be under your standards. Your scimitars will be resistless as the sword of Mohammed-upon whose name be praise."
    Galdan was not a Moslem, but saw fit to cater to his savage allies.
    "I will supply you with siege cannon and mailed footmen. You will sweep through the Gate of the Winds like a storm and gobble up Kob. The clay walls of the city of the herdsmen will melt before you like butter. The sack of the city will fill your girdles. Your swords will exterminate the unbelievers, their wives and children. Then you wilt set the captives to rebuilding the walls, this time with stone."
    Nothing could have been more to the liking of the chiefs of the wolves.
    "By holding the Urkhogaitu Pass, which is the only path into Tartary, and the nearby city of Kob," Galdan had pointed out, "you will make clear the way for the main army which I shall lead to join you, and together we will rub off the face of the earth two hundred thousand Tatars; for, like the plague, we will spread over the valleys of the North, through the lands of the Torguts and Chakars to the far Buriats before they can unite to defend themselves."
    By this it might be seen that Galdan was a shrewd schemer, that he arranged to make his allies bear the brunt of the fighting, and that he knew how to appeal to the religious zeal and the lust of men.
    Perhaps because of this, the first part of his plan was carried out to a word.
    At the first rumble of cannon the wise bay horse of Hugo of Hainault pricked up its ears. Long before dawn that day, Hugo, unable to sleep, had mounted and galloped to the shore of Kobdo Lake, beyond the city.
    Returning after sleep for the man and rest for the horse, they met lines of riders, silent women and tired children, bellowing cattle and disordered sheep. Often he had to turn aside into a grove to let a flock of the fleeing pass. There was no outcry.
    Pressing on with some difficulty and making his way toward the north wall, by avoiding the main highways that were choked with humanity, he caught the unmistakable rattle of musketry.
    Mounting a rise in the plain, his experienced eye could discern the lines of the besiegers on the far side of the city. He traced the cannon by puffs of smoke and the breaches in the clay rampart by clouds of dust. It meant to him merely that it would be difficult to retrace his way to the cabin in the grove.
    This had been but a rude hotel for monsieur le comte, and he had fared haphazard on game brought there by Aruk, and grain and fruits bought from Yulga. Still, he found that he was unwilling to leave it. It held him. It was, he reflected, the grave of his brother.
    Forcing his way through one of the gates, he beheld the scrawny figure of Gorun, the baksa, his cap gone, his eyes starting from his head. The priest, followed by a cavalcade of his kind, struck and kicked children and animals in a mad endeavor to clear the city.
    "My faith," thought Hugo, "he seems as anxious to leave as I am to arrive."
    On the heels of the priest came a sheepskin-clad rider, blood flowing from his forehead and his shield broken in two.
    "Wo! The wolves of Galdan Khan are in the marketplace!" the man was crying, over and over. "Fly,