Chapter XXI: I Am Given a Following

The road to Aornos was bright in the November sunshine, and the light breeze rustled the falling leaves which dropped, russet-brown, from the trees bordering the road above the water-channels: glinting, rippling, sun-flecked water, splashed with patches of vivid turquoise from the white-flecked blue sky overhead.

We were riding into Aornos to meet the rest of Kyrlos’s troops, concentrated there to march into the Shaman country. There were daily reports from the frontier of enemy concentrations, the majority of them to the south in the country beyond Henga’s fort; but so far there had been no sign of any general offensive movement, and it was considered that the frontier troops, strengthened by the levies of the border districts, would be quite sufficient to stop any advance the enemy might try to make.

The scene was mediæval in the extreme, and yet had that sameness which must have characterized all bodies of troops since the first leader conceived some idea of discipline, and man began to fight in formed groups rather than in primeval fashion, individual against individual, with rough-chipped flint and sharpened bone.

Ahead of the column moved a body of mail-clad mounted men, their long yellow bows swaying as they rode. Mounted fighting is uncommon among the Sakae, whose horses are but a means of extra mobility. Mounted or on foot, the equipment is ever the same, all designed for dismounted combat: the long bow, carried slung from the shoulder, the point supported in a stirrup bucket for mounted men; the well-filled leather quivers with the long gay-coloured shafts; the short straight Sakae sword designed for point-work, more deadly than any cut; and sometimes the small round shield with its bosses of brass. One man in three carried the short spear.

At the head of the main body was Kyrlos, with Andros on one hand and Wrexham on the other, all alike in mail shirt and under-jerkin of leather, steel caps winking in the sun, the gay-coloured saddles forming the only splash of colour that relieved the sombre background of fawn and leather and dull steel, save where a few paces in front of Kyrlos rose his blue standard with his family device, the big chenar leaf in autumn tint that Forsyth always said made him homesick for the maple of Canada. Behind them the long column of men three abreast: first mounted men, and then, as far as the eye could reach, company after company of footmen, with glint of steel spear-point and nodding bow-tip topping the low dust haze.

I was riding in silence, with mixed feelings of relief at being on the move once more with definite work in front, a great longing for the open desert and the silent plodding camels, and a very bitter impression that Fate had played the most deliberate of scurvy tricks in ever bringing me to Sakaeland.

For as Andros turned sometimes in his saddle to cast an eye down the ranks, I could see the little tuft of eagle feathers bound into his steel cap, the eagle feathers that marked the officer of high rank, and--which was the cause of all my ill-humour--note the mauve binding that spread them cunningly into a little fan. The day before I had seen Aryenis with a handful of eagle feathers, and later, looking out from my window, noticed her sitting in the sun with her embroidery-basket by her--she has clever fingers. My field-glasses were near me, and such an opportunity of watching my lady unobserved was not to be missed. I love watching Aryenis when she thinks there is no one looking at her, for her under-self seems to come so much more to the surface then. But unfortunately my glasses had merely served to show me that those eagle feathers were being formed with mauve ribbon and green silk into some kind of ornament; and then in the morning, lo, Andros with the little fanlike plume gay against the dark coldness of his steel cap.

And all I got from Aryenis was a long cool hand-clasp with a kind wish for my safety and much honour. Annais and Ziné gave me as much.

Just in front of me rode a yellow-haired giant on a white pony, who carried a green banner with an embroidered device, a bear, Paulos’s own mark. As I looked back--despite my ill-humour--I could have smiled at the idea of me, Harry Lake, with many years of soldiering and six years of war, as the modern world knows it, behind me, war of machine-gun and rifle, of heavy howitzer and aeroplane bomb, of tank and armoured car, riding with a following that might have come straight out of the pages of an old history book. Steel-capped, mail-shirted men on rough ponies, tall, bobbed-haired, hawk-faced bowmen in leather jerkins, nodding spear-points and dancing gleam of mail-ringed caps; and behind me, with my trumpeter, Payindah in mail with his anachronistic magazine-rifle slung over his shoulder, his straight Greek features and his wheat-coloured face alive with the joy of coming battle.

For here was I riding at the head of what was for the moment my own following, and the banner ahead bore almost my own crest, save that the bear on my signet ring carries a chain.

And the reason of my position was a note which Paulos had sent me the day after I had listened to him thought-reading, bidding me come again and see him quickly, for he desired me to help him in a small matter. I told Aryenis, but my lady had found important matters which prevented her coming, despite her insistence the previous day.

The upshot of my visit was his wish that I should lead the men from his lands to the war, since he had no son to lead them and no man of sufficient standing among his following to whom he could entrust the command. I pleaded my ignorance of Sakae, my lack of knowledge of their customs and their methods of war, and the fact that I was a stranger in the country. He would take no refusal.

“Regarding the matter of the language,” he had said, “the officers and some of the N.C.O.’s speak Greek. For the matter of our methods of war, there is to my mind but one kind of war--no matter what the weapons be. At the last it is the man who is ready to close and anxious to kill who wins. From a leader all we seek is bravery and the knowledge of men. The first you have, or Aryenis would not be here now. The second you have also, unless I have lost my gift of character-reading. And for the fact of your being a stranger--that you are not. Your name is known in all my villages. Such things do not depend upon time, but upon deeds; and my people--who love Aryenis--speak of you as one of ourselves. My folk will follow you for her sake as well as for your own.”

The coincidence of the device on his banner and the friendly reception I had met with from his landholders, who officered the levies which he sent to the war, clinched the matter, and so you see me with thirty mail-clad mounted men and four companies of stout bowmen, each eighty or ninety strong, riding into Aornos near the head of Kyrlos’s army.

I had spent very near a fortnight with Paulos, getting to know the officers and the levies and picking up details about their methods. They were stout fighting material--sturdy peasantry, ready at all costs to defend their homes and their women from the Shaman menace. I have gone to war with many worse, but never, I think, with any better, and I have led good men upon occasion.

Looking back, I called up Payindah.

“We be back in the days of the Emperors,” said I, pointing to the men behind us. “Bows and arrows, men in mail, just the same as thy folk when first they came over the passes into the Punjab.”

“And good days to be in, sahib. This is a man’s war--man to man--not a killing by guns a day’s march away, or fighting like rats in a hole underground. These men of the old sick chief’s are good fighting stuff, too. _I_ know such when I see them.”

Payindah first, last, and all the time is a fighting man, and like all his folk of the Salt Range will be so as long as his finger can press trigger or his arm retain strength to drive a bayonet home. At his belt hung a new possession which he fondled now and then. It was a bayonet made under Wrexham’s supervision by Kyrlos’s smiths, rather more ornate than the ordinary G.S. pattern, but none the less a serviceable piece of steel. There are good armourers among the Sakae. Payindah is a believer in the cold steel, and the idea of going out to war without a bayonet--a weapon he had used notably well more than once in France--was heavy upon his soul, and he had gone to Wrexham begging him to have one made. His first appearance with it on his rifle had caused quite an excitement among his friends of Kyrlos’s guard when he gave them a little demonstration of its use.

“You will be fortunate in this war,” he went on, “since you ride with the banner of your own folk, just the same as over the gate of your house in England, which I saw when I was at the convalescent hospital at Berighton, and you took me to your home one day in a motor when you came on leave.”

“Why shall I be fortunate?”

“Because the bear shows that you must be in some way the same folk as the old chief, and he has no son and much rich land. He will be glad to find a son in his old age. And also”--very deliberately--“a daughter-in-law like the Shahzadi.”

I think Payindah only escaped a sudden violent death after that remark by his falling back to make place for Philos, my second in command, who came up to tell me about quartering arrangements in Aornos. A little way back he had fallen out at a side road, where his wife--a very pretty girl on a handsome black mare--was waiting to bid him good-bye. A mounted servant beside her carried, on his saddle bow, the bonniest blue-eyed flaxen-haired boy of about three that I have ever seen. As I had ridden on after a word with the girl, whom I had met while staying with Paulos, I had felt very, very lonely. And yet I have gone to war two or three times before and never felt lonely at going.

A little later we rode through Aornos and out of the south gate to the open grass land beyond, now covered with the tents and standards of the Blue Sakae army. I saw my people fix up camp--Philos proved a first-class quartermaster as well as a very capable leader--and then, with Payindah and a couple of my archers behind me, rode up to Torka’s house, where Kyrlos and his staff--including Wrexham and Forsyth--were lodging.

Next morning very early I rode down to my people’s camp. Behind me were two mounted archers of my personal troop, loose-stirruped, their keen eyes seeking out the prettiest of the girls already afoot for the morning marketing. We had just reached our camp where the sentries stood on either side of Paulos’s banner, which, furled in leather, stood before our guard tent, when from up the road in front in a cloud of dust came a single horseman.

I pulled up to see who was riding so fast and what tidings he bore, for the previous evening a messenger from Henga had reported increased signs of enemy activity, and a mounted patrol pushing across the border had been driven back by enemy horsemen only two miles from the fort, while a spy--believed trustworthy--had reported that the main enemy force were within easy march of the border. So I thought there would possibly be news. Philos, standing near the guard tent checking sheafs of arrows, bales of forage, and other gear, seeing me, came over.

My archers shouted, and the horseman pulled up as he reached us, his pony, with legs well out and hanging head, breathing heavily through wide-stretched nostrils. The morning was cold, with a nip of frost in the air, but the animal was lathered with sweat and his legs were caked with mud, while there was blood oozing from a long gash across his quarters. Philos questioned the man, who was pulling out a folded paper from inside his jerkin. Then he turned to me.

“A letter from Henga. The enemy’s main army marched before daybreak, and the dawn saw them close on his fort. This man and another were sent with news at once, and even as they left, the enemy were closing in on the fort. He says that their horsemen were well into our country, and that his comrade was killed as they broke through, while he himself had his horse wounded. A big force, and from the hills after he crossed the Astara he saw them sweeping on past the fort, with villages ablaze already. We had better get under arms, for Kyrlos will surely move at once. Shall I sound a call?”

“Yes, Philos. Turn the men out, and get everything ready for moving in an hour’s time. I will take this letter to Kyrlos myself.”

I had torn open the letter while he was questioning the man; but although in Greek characters it was evidently in Sakae, for I could make neither head nor tail of it.

“Give the messenger food and have his horse seen to. I will be back at once,” I said as I gathered up my reins, and, with my archers behind me--now all suppressed excitement and with no eyes left for the scared girls who edged off the road as we came tearing along--went back full speed to the city.

As we clattered through the big gates one of my orderlies shouted something to the sentry, and looking back I saw the guard tumbling out of their quarters. A minute later a thin wisp of smoke went up from the guard-house above the gate, a wisp which before long thickened to a dense black pillar, signal to the countryside that the enemy were moving. We came up the main street at a hard gallop, the pedestrians scuttling to either side at the scurry of hoofs and the shouts of my men, swung to the left up to the keep, and pulled up before the main entrance. I flung my reins to one of the men, and ran up the steps to find Kyrlos talking to Torka and Andros in the main hall. As he read the letter, I hurriedly explained the situation to Andros.

“We must march at once,” said Kyrlos. “But they have many hours’ start of us, unfortunately. They can be eight or nine miles into our country before we can hope to meet them. Henga estimates them at not less than six thousand to seven thousand, and there will be more behind if this is their main force. How soon can we move, Andros?”

“I gave orders yesterday for the troops to be ready to move at three hours’ notice, sir. Did you warn the camp, Harilek?” He turned to me.

“Yes; Philos sounded a horn as I came away, and the men were turning out. I told my people to be ready in an hour.”

“Then we can be away within the three hours, sir. Milos’s mounted troops under Stephnos must go first, and find out in which direction the enemy are heading, and then get news back to meet us along the main road. He may meet them anywhere after the sixth mile out.”

By this time the alarm was sounding all round, and outside the courtyard was filling with horses as mounted man after mounted man came clattering in seeking orders from Andros. I have never seen such good methodical staff work outside a modern force. I could almost forgive Andros his plume of mauve-bound eagle feathers as I listened to his quick, incisive orders given in a cool, level tone, and watched messenger after messenger race down the steps, swing into the saddle, and away out of the gates. The man was not only a born soldier--he was that far rarer being, a born staff officer.

I went up to our quarters, and calling Payindah told him to come with me, leaving my kit to follow with a couple of my men. Wrexham and Forsyth were nowhere to be seen. The latter had gone off with Stephnos, who had a job in which his heart delighted--to wit, the command of Milos’s own mounted troops. Firoz said that Wrexham had ridden off early with one of Kyrlos’s officers who ran the engineers. John took a keen interest in their weird contraptions, portable catapults, and endless mediæval contrivances for siege-work, more particularly in the quaint battering-ram, a huge iron-shod tree--the trunk of a full-grown pine, I think, it was--that took twenty men to swing it. Despite his early training and his civil avocation, Wrexham is at heart a soldier, and nothing pleased him more than pottering round and comparing notes with the old scarred man who filled the post of what one might call “Master of the Ordnance” to Kyrlos’s army.

When I got back to the hall, Payindah with the rifles following, Andros hailed me.

“You say you told your people to be ready to move in an hour, Harilek?”

“I did, Andros. Do you want us to go ahead?”

“You muster nearly four hundred, do you not?” He was a wonder at remembering figures.

“Yes.”

“Well, that’s too weak to do much by yourselves, but, if you get off in an hour, Stephnos will be through you half an hour later--say, two miles out--and then following him you will be something for him to come back on if he’s driven in. Do you know that little hill by the eighth mile that commands the road?--the one we looked at yesterday.”

“Yes,” said I. We had ridden out there the previous day, and remarked on its possibilities for defence.

“Well, make for that as fast as you can go. If you can get there before the enemy, you will be able to hold them awhile--perhaps until we can get up to you. In any case you will delay them. I know all Paulos’s men are good bowmen, for he is always making his people practise. We come as fast as we can.”

“Right. I shall be away in little over half an hour.”

Kyrlos was listening to it all, nodding gravely from time to time. As I turned to go, he called to me, and walked across the hall to the door.

“Andros has given you a post of honour, my friend. You will meet the Shamans’ main onslaught, and you will have to fight as hard as you have ever fought in your life, I think. But it is the only place they can pass just there, and if you hold them till we come, it will be so many the more of our villages and our people saved. It seems unfair to put a guest in the post of danger, but, since you ride at the head of Paulos’s men and by so doing become one of us, I am glad that Andros has suggested you for such a very honourable task. If you come through, you will have even more honour among our people than you have already. God guard you, Harilek.”

He smiled very gravely at me as I touched my cap to him and went down the steps.

Payindah was already mounted alongside of my other two men, and a quarter of an hour later we were riding hard up to our camp. Paulos had had his men well trained for all that they were mostly only levies. The mounted troop were standing by their horses, and the infantry falling in as we reached them. A small party had been detailed to clear up camp and come on with our pack-animals behind the main body.

I explained our mission to Philos and the other officers, and they said a few words to the men. Fifteen minutes later, with our mounted men ahead and on either flank, we marched down the road to the southwest.

“Where go we?” asked Payindah, pushing his horse up beside me. “Is it another raid?”

“Not this time. The whole enemy’s army comes--several thousand--and we go out as advance guard to hold them until the rest can come up. You will have all the fighting you want before the day is out.”

“They choose well,” said he coolly, “to send you and me and this regiment, which carries your mark. I shall have something to tell Firoz to-night.”

I wondered for a moment if he would tell Firoz anything at all that night or any other night. Unless we got to the defile in time, the enemy’s mounted men would be round us long before our main body could ever hope to get up, and then sheer weight of numbers would do the rest. Anyway, Paulos’s banner would get all the honour he desired for it and I should not have to worry any more about Aryenis and fairy princes or dragons. But I hoped that she and I would meet again some day, whatever happened--somewhere where people’s thoughts didn’t get tangled up and things ran smoothly. And then, as ever, she walked in, and took possession of the mind that used to be mine, and it was a moment or two before I could dislodge her and return to military commonplaces with Philos.