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all who would save their lives. The wolves are here."
    Accustomed to tight places, Hugo twisted his mustache and shrugged. Ahead of him in the narrow streets of Kob, between the flat-roofed clay houses, he heard the clash of weapons, saw smoke uprise, to make of the sun a red ball. Behind him, the flood of the flying.
    He had no wish to thrust himself into the crowd pressing out of the city. So he drew the bay into an archway and pondered. Soon the alleys around him were deserted.
    A last bevy of Tatar riders galloped past-archers without bows, old men, wounded and silent. A man who carried a musket turned and flung his weapon at a group of helmeted, black-coated horsemen.
    Hugo saw several Tatars struck down in the doors of the houses they tried to defend.
    "The cattle!" he thought. "They are driven like animals. No discipline, no powder for their muskets, no leaders. Pfagh! The Turks at least know what they are about."
    A sharp-featured bey of a Kazak regiment led his men up to the alley, stared long at the quiet Frenchman, lifted his hand in a salute.
    "Salamet, effendi!"
    He called out to his men, who began to run into the deserted houses, laughing and jesting. Hugo, palpably not of the Tatars, remembered that there were Europeans with Galdan Khan, and that the feather in his cap was some kind of a symbol of rank. The bey must have thought him a man of Galdan Khan. Seeking to leave the alleys, he turned back through the arch, into a small square.
    Here he reined in sharply with an oath. This was the quarter of the Chinese merchants. In the teakwood doorway of a cedar house sat a fat man in embroidered silk, a knife in his hand. Through the opened door Hugo could see the bodies of several women, some still stirring feebly. There was blood on the knife in the merchant's hand. His broad, olive face was expressionless. Having killed his women, according to the code of his caste, the Oriental was awaiting his own fate.
    Hugo could go no farther in that direction. A group of Kalmucks were harrying a small pagoda. Others were intent on seeking out the unfortunates who still lived in nearby dwellings. Captives were being roped together by the necks. Children were lifted on lances, to guttural shouts.
    Almost within reach, Hugo saw a Tatar's eyes torn out by a soldier's fingers.
    A sound caused him to turn. From a post by the gate of the merchant's house the Kalmucks had cut a stake. Upon this they had drawn the passive Chinese. While Hugo looked he wriggled convulsively, his eyes standing from his sweating face.
    Never before in the wars had Hugo seen the deliberate slaughter of a people. It sickened him, and he was beating his way through the square when a song arrested him.

    It was dusk now in Kob, a dusk thickened by a pall of smoke and reddened by mounting fires. The song had come from the entrance of the pagoda. Aruk was the singer. Hugo could see the little hunter clearly in the glow from a burning house across the square. Beside Aruk were clustered a handful of Tatars, women among them.
    With spears and swords they were defending themselves, for they had used up all their arrows. Aruk, half-naked, was fighting desperately, swinging a scimitar too large for his short arms. His broken body was streaked with sweat and shining blood; his teeth bared in a grin of rage.
    Suddenly he caught sight of the tall form of the Krit.
    "Aid!" called Aruk. "Aid, my falcon."
    For a space the clash of weapons had stopped. The Kalmucks, ringed around the pagoda steps, were waiting the coming of more men.
    "Aid, my Krit," urged the hunter. "Chase these wolves away before others come."
    It simply did not occur to Hugo to draw his sword in a quarrel between peasants and common soldiers. He was already gathering up his reins when his eye caught the anxious face of Yulga. She did not call to him, but her clasped hands were eloquent of appeal.
    This made him ill at ease. Yulga had come daily to say her garbled prayer at the grave of his brother.