IMAR'S TALE--WAR
"That which I have always admired in your nation, and that which has
made you what you are, under the guidance of the Lord, is your natural
gift of self-command. The race to which I belong has always been very
scant of that great quality; and this fault has been from age to age the
cause of misery and conflict. Not that we are by any means so turbulent
and vindictive as other tribes around us; for we almost alone are
guided, when in our proper state of mind, by any sense of Christianity;
most of the others who call themselves of that creed, such as the
Ossets, Imeritians, and barbarous Suans, have made a strange jumble of
the true faith with Mohammedanism, paganism, and even stark idolatry.
But the Lesghians, with whom we have most to do, and who claim us as of
their affinity, still are of Islam, and mainly of that bigoted and
aggressive form of it which is known as Muridism. Even so, they are
nobler, braver, more patriotic, and loyal to their chiefs, as well as of
finer presence, and greater activity and industry than most of their
neighbours on the west and south, who suppose themselves to be
Christians.
"My father, Sûr Dadian, as hereditary Chief of the Kheusurs--a tribe now
dwindled from its former strength--commanded for many years their
division in the army of the gallant Shamyl. Our people did not share of
course that fury of Islam, and blaze of the crescent, which scorched the
Russians by the thousand out of the dark ravines of Daghestan.
Nevertheless we stood up for ourselves, with the muzzle of a gun at
every elbow of the rocks; and if all the sons of Islam had been as
faithful to their great Imaum, as the Cross was, the Russian flag would
never have waved over Guinib, in Shamyl's lifetime.
"The Russian plan was to press us hard, throughout the summer and
autumnal months, with ten men perhaps to every one of ours; to encourage
us most benevolently to sow our land and tend it, and then to rejoice
and renew their strength with the pithy marrow of our corn, and the
juicy fibre of our flocks and herds. A man loves his country on the very
same principle on which he loves his mother; but if he can never taste
what she is like, he might just as well have a step-mother. Neither was
this the only loss of satisfaction year by year. Our men, as I have
heard them tell, when I was old enough to join them, felt even worse
than their own privations the rich gain of the enemy. To sit on a rock,
just out of shot--as many a dauntless Avar told me--with glacier water
for his drink, and nothing but mast on his tattered lap, and to see a
hundred fat round fellows, who had come into his land quite lean,
laughing and joking at his own door, with the milk of his best cow at
their lips, and the kids of his flock coming up to them in sniffs from
the fires where they were roasting, this he assured me--and I could
quite believe him--turned his empty digestion into bile, and the love of
his native land into a hollow ache. And this very feeling, in a higher
form, cost my dear father his valiant life, and left me and my sister
orphans.
"You may have heard of the defeat and slaughter of an entire Russian
column, under the great Prince Dorougoff, which our gallant mountain
forces, with my father second in command, accomplished most effectually.
Everybody knows what glory and renown accrued to the stout Imaum through
this; but all of our men who were present declared that my father
deserved the main credit. The Emperor of Russia had grown impatient, and
sent impetuous orders that his army should advance at once into the
heart of the defiles, and crush the rebellion--as he dared to call it,
though we never had been his subjects--at one mighty blow, and for ever.
The Commander replied that he would march His Majesty's army in, but
never would march it out again. And according to that answer, so it
was. Our men became tired of slaughter, although they had many a long
year of suffering to avenge.
"As might have been expected, the mountaineers grew careless after this
great victory, and left many of their passes open; for the stubborn foe
had recoiled, and appeared unable to do anything more until the
following season. My father went home to see to his affairs, and to
secure a new supply of rifles, for he had brought from Koorbashi a score
of those skilled workmen of Genoese descent, who for accuracy and finish
can hold their own with the best gunmakers in the world. All Shamyl's
best troops were armed with weapons procured from these admirable
artisans, and the clumsy muskets of the Russian force were quite unfit
to cope with them. Stepan has one of those Koorbashi rifles, which you
would find it hard to match in London, either for beauty of design or
for excellence in shooting. But alas they were all muzzle-loaders, or
the Caucasus might have been Caucasian still.
"Karthlos Tower, where our family had dwelled for many generations,
takes its name from that same descendant of Noah who founded Mischel;
and standing on a mountain plateau, with chasms abrupt and vertical
cleaving the land to immeasurable depths, it is safe against all adverse
powers, except treachery and famine. Among the labyrinth of ravines no
stranger could ever find his road; and if chance at last brought him to
the winding access, discretion would hurry him shuddering away. For many
a black muzzle would look down upon him, and if he escaped all those, a
score of yellow ones would confront him at the final crest, and of
tenfold size,--brass artillery from Koorbashi.
"It was growing dark in those cloven depths, though the sun was still
hovering upon the upper world, when my father rode round the last sharp
jag at the foot of the ascent to Karthlos. The survivors of his
war-dwindled force were only a few yards behind him, lounging on their
tired horses, and scarcely caring to keep up the burden of their
homeward song. Then when their leader was round the point, they heard
the roar of a heavy gun, swinging like a wing-flap from wall to wall,
and departing in the distance, like an echo climbing stairs. They
spurred to know what it could mean, and they found Sûr Dadian dead on
the neck of his horse.
"I had not seen my father more than half a dozen times, so far as
childish memory goes; but he was always kind and loving, and very gentle
with us. We had lost our mother before we knew her; and Marva and
myself, twin children, had been sent from home, we could not tell when,
to be educated at Tiflis. There our father had some old friends, and
being so seldom at home, by reason of this perpetual war, he had done
the best he could for us. I was placed in the German town on the left
bank of the Kur, and under the care of a learned man, famous even in the
"City of many tongues" for his knowledge of all useful languages. He had
several English pupils, and admiring Shakespeare as the Germans do, he
made us almost as familiar with English as if we were born to it. But
Marva, my sister, had her education in the school of a French convent on
the other side of the river. Twins as we were, and pining long at this
unnatural severance, the force of events, and the power of education,
drove us further and further apart, until the early divergencies of
tastes and dispositions became so hardened and widened that our mutual
love was vanishing.
"The murder of my father--for it could be nothing else--occurred in the
autumn of 1852; but it was not known in Tiflis until three months later,
for the city had long been in Russian hands, and Shamyl's victorious
troops allowed very little communication. Even when known, it was kept
from me, for some time longer, as I have reason to believe, by order of
the College authorities. At last I knew it by a letter from Shamyl
himself, or written by his orders--for he dispensed very largely with
literature--which it took me a long time to make out, for I had almost
forgotten the Avar tongue. How he smuggled it to me, I know not; but at
last I understood it to this effect.
"'Young Imar, the son of Dadian. The Russians have slain thy father in
cold blood. Thou art now the Chief of the Kheusurs. Thou art not of
Islam; but if thou hast any blood in thy body, come without delay, and
have thy just revenge upon the accursed heathen. Shamyl, the Imaum.'
"What youth of spirit and health and strength could hesitate for an
hour? I had many Russian friends at Tiflis, and all of the higher rank
made light of the barbarian tumult, as they called it, among the distant
mountains. They begged me at least to wait until the truth of the
Muridist outlaw's words could be properly established; for they said
that he could outlie a Greek, or even an Armenian. But I broke from them
all, bade farewell to Marva, and in shorter time than space required,
presented myself to Shamyl.
"That Hannibal of the East was now at the acme of his fame and power.
Though not of great stature, or winning aspect, or even exemplary
cleanliness, he possessed and exercised that gift of forcing the wills
of others into the channel of his own, which makes a man's course
historical. He had piercing eyes, deeply set and overhung, and a swarthy
complexion, and strong harsh features, enlivened sometimes with a smile
conveying a boyish and rudimental sense of humour. But let any one rouse
his temper, and the Demon of the Mountains, who haunts the crags of
Kazbek, could not rave more furiously. It was this, and not cold
inhumanity--as strangers to our race imagined--which drove him into
those brutal acts which disgraced the name of Avar. Whether he believed
in his Divine Mission to restore the glory of Islam, and extirpate the
infidel, or whether he laughed in his sleeve at that most useful
delusion, I never could decide. As a Christian, and a well educated
youth, I thoroughly disdained such stuff; but while contemning the
Muridist and the Imaum, I fell more than behoved me perhaps under the
influence of the patriot. For I was but eighteen years of age, and as
yet quite a child among men of action, though foremost of the students
in philology at Tiflis, and even in bodily strength and activity equal
to the best of them.
"My presence at first was of service to the cause, only as securing the
assistance of my tribe, who had no share in Islam, and would have
deserted very promptly without my presence among them. But before long I
proved myself a valuable recruit, and was advanced to a command among
the scouts; upon whom in that war of surprises and sudden encounters
much depended. Although I hated and scorned the religion of our Chief,
I shared his patriotism, and admired his valour and genius, while often
wondering at the forbearance he showed to an 'unbeliever.' This I owed
to his sense of honour, as I learned long afterwards, inasmuch as he had
promised my father, his old companion in arms, that he would never make
any attempt to convert me, if I were allowed to join him. Then suddenly
he fell in my esteem, for I found out that he had lied to me.
"So zealous had I been in military matters, and so eager to qualify
myself for command, that for two years I never went home to Karthlos
Tower, the proper abode of our race. I never cared for form and fuss,
and the earthly division of God's children into two creations--the
high-born and the low-born half--for perhaps there are more who knew
their Father in humility, than in proud estate.
"In my youth I never thought of such things, to which convention drives
us, but simply divided the men around me into hearties who would fight,
and poltroons who ran away; and of the latter there were but few. The
Steward at the Tower had supplied me with all that I wanted in those
rugged times; and in the hot vein of my patriotism, a crust and an
icicle seemed enough for a soldier to subsist upon. But now I was
compelled to return to Karthlos by a strange thing which had come to
pass, while I was intent upon war alone.
"Marva, twin-sister of mine, and in childhood dearer than my little self
to me, had defied all authority; and when that did not avail, had
outwitted it, and vanished from the Convent-school at Tiflis. And my
first news of it was a strong demand for her portion of the patrimony,
from the man who had run away with her. This was the Chief of an Osset
tribe, who had never joined in the war, but waited for the final issue;
in which even we who kept it up could have little confidence, unless the
great Powers in the West, now at enmity with Russia, would send us
speedy and effectual help. And I knew that this Osset Chief had been a
hereditary foe to my father.
"His name was Rakhan, which is, I believe, of Tartar origin; and he
showed signs in character and in features too of kinship to that
widespread race. But his father had been of pure Ossetian blood, and now
he was acknowledged Chief of a certain wild, and semi-Christian tribe.
We had never had much to do with them, although their villages lay near
us on the West; for the Russians kept a fortified post between us, where
their main road crosses the mountain-chain, and we scarcely regarded
them as brother Christians, though that did not prevent us from having
plenty of private feuds with them. And now this man of an inferior race,
and a poor one too--for they throve principally upon goats--had dared to
make up to my twin-sister, and marry her, and demand her heritage!
"And this was not the worst of it, for as soon as I entered Karthlos, my
good Steward, Kobaduk, a very faithful servant, told me that beyond any
doubt Rakhan, the Osset, had compassed and probably with his own hand
committed the murder of my father, Sûr Dadian. I replied that the Imaum
himself had assured me that the Russians were guilty of that crime, and
this had impelled me to quit all friends and hurry without going home to
Bodlith. But he spat on the ground, as our peasants do, when they hear
of a black deception, and soon proved to me that the Czar's troops were
guiltless; and not only so, but that Shamyl the Tartar--as he was
frequently called in contempt--knew as well as Kobaduk did, that there
was not a Russian within miles of Karthlos, when that cowardly shot was
fired. Moreover, the foremost of my father's men who had spurred along
the defile, made oath that he saw a white globe whirl away where the
crags broke apart in the distance, and he put his jaded horse to the
utmost speed, all in vain among darkness and precipices. Now every one
knows that no Russian soldier, and the Ossets alone in our part of the
range can be found with that hideous head-gear flapping, a sheep-skin
puffed out into a ball at the top, like a great white onion at the end
of a stick. And there was other evidence as well as this.
"My twin-sister, my only near of kin, for my father had no other
children--was I likely, although she had acted thus, to rob her of a
single copek? Nay, rather would not every one of mine be at her service?
At the same time, could any son endure that his good father should be
robbed not only of life but also of a third part of his property by a
scoundrel of inferior race, who had stolen his daughter for that very
end. Thereupon I was compelled to believe--for charity is by St. Paul
described as the greatest of Christian virtues, but he does not appear
(though a native of Cilicia) to have travelled in the Caucasus, as Peter
did, otherwise never could he have retained enough of that virtue to
describe it--young as I was, the conviction grew upon me that Prince
Rakhan, the Osset, had murdered my father, Sûr Dadian, because he had
refused him his daughter Marva. Instead of answering the letter
therefore in which he demanded his portion, I set forth with a few
troopers well armed to pay him a visit in his stronghold at Zacca, near
the fountains of the Ardon river.
"Some parts of our own land are desolate enough, but this country where
the Ossets lived had scarcely a tree to make the world look living; and
having had no war in their neglected places to civilize them with the
passage of guns, they seemed to be quite outside all knowledge. Yet to
my surprise, they looked down upon our race, which we for generations
had been wont to do to them; and with better reason, as all others will
admit. We rode very fine Khabarda steeds, which are the best of all the
Caucasus, but we were obliged to leave them in the bed of a little
snow-river at last, and appear at the entrance on foot, as if we
expected to be shot at.
"Nobody shot at us, chiefly perhaps because few of them had learned the
way to shoot; but there was not one of them who required any lessons in
the art of staring. And to think that such people looked down upon us!
All their houses had hideous towers, as if their lives were spent in
looking out from the tops; and my heart went low, as I thought of my
lively and lovely sister Marva, who had been brought up like a French
girl almost, extinguished and deadened among such clods. And I had not
even the chance of learning how she liked the lot she had cast for
herself. Perhaps she may have seen me from some tower--for they have
narrow loops instead of windows--but she never showed her face to me,
nor sent me any message.
"We shouted, and made noise enough to fling all the rocky echoes into a
Babel of dispute with one another, and if we could have found the butt
end of a tree, we would have made a rush for it and rammed the heavy
gate. At last a surly fellow put his head out at a loophole, and rubbed
his eyes as if we had broken his repose. I did not understand their
language then, though I came to know it afterwards; but some of my men
made out this delivery--'Sons of the Evil One, ye shall not rob us. The
noble Prince Rakhan is far off; but we will fight until he returns. Ye
will be slain by thundering guns, unless ye cease this uproar.'
"We could not believe that Osset robber; for the people of the village
had told us that the Chief and his bride were both at home; but I tore a
leaf out of my order-book, and wrote a letter upon it, and handed it up
on the point of a lance. It contained no insolence, though that was
rumoured afterwards, but only these words which a man of honesty would
have met according to their intention. 'Sûr Imar to Prince Rakhan. If
you will come to Karthlos, bringing with you the relics of St. Anthony,
and upon them swear that you have had no hand in the death of my dear
father, I will deliver to you all the portion of my sister Marva, and
add thereto my own present to her, and acknowledge you as a brother.'
"This I signed with some hope of better feeling; for I knew that they
had in this savage place no small piece of St. Anthony, and having three
men who could make a cross, I secured all three as witnesses; and then
we marched away from this inhospitable desert. But the worst of the
business was not over yet, for when we returned to the spot where we had
tethered our horses very carefully, not one of them was there except my
own, and he was loose, but ran to me. Him alone those Ossets had not
stolen, because he could bite as well as kick, and would let none but
his master handle him. We ran back to the village, but there was not a
soul there, except a few children yelling. All these we put into one hut
far apart, and then set fire to all the rest. But being of stone they
burned very unkindly, and having no time to make a good job of it, we
shook the Ossetian dust from our feet, and made off in hope as well as
fear of having all the mad savages after us.
"How, among a people thus divided, could there be any chance of solid
resistance to a mighty nation like Russia, acting in unity, and able to
replace every man killed with a dozen just as good? There was not a
tribe among us that would join its neighbour, for any other purpose than
the plunder of a third; and when this was carried off, the victorious
pair were sure to have another fight about the booty, before they were
half-way home again. A quarrel was now set up between my people and
those of Prince Rakhan, which would probably last for generations; not
so much about my father's murder--for that was a matter of suspicion
only, and chiefly concerned his next of kin--but about the theft of
those well-bred horses, and the firing of that worthless village. And
when I received a letter of insult in the Georgian language, from the
man who had so injured me, the only thing that surprised me was his
ability to write it. For though he spent much of his time at Tiflis,
whenever he could scrape up coin enough, it was not for the purpose of
improving his mind, even if he had any to embellish. That problem
however was speedily solved; for the writing was my sister's.
"'Imar, son of Dadian. Twice hast thou wronged me, thy brother in the
Lord. Thou hast robbed me of my portion of thy father's goods, and thou
hast set fire to my wealthiest village, destroying men, women, and
children. Though thou art now a great man of battle, and strong among
the strongest, so that thy name is as that of Minghi Tau, yet shall that
mighty head be fetched down, and those strong hands shall feed the dogs
of Kektris. The only hope left thee of escaping this destruction is if
thou sendest to the glacier of Gumaran, before the snows fill up the
valley again, gold and cattle, and household goods, according to the
number herein set down, which is far less than thou owest me, and will
not make peace between us for the village thou hast destroyed. But this
if thou doest, I will pray for thy repentance, and thy sister whom thou
hast robbed will permit thee to look upon her face again. Rakhan, Prince
of the noble Ossets.'
"There was also another signature, broken and crooked, as if the hand
had been seized in another, and compelled to shape the name of _Marva_.
Then I hoped that my sister had not turned against me in her heart,
though constrained by her fierce and wicked husband; and I ordered the
messenger to wait, and fed him with dainties that he knew not how to
handle, while I preserved my temper even against the insult of that
address. For now I was entitled to be addressed as _Sûr_, of which we
think more than the common word _Prince_; for it is a designation of
warlike rank, imported from the furthest Orient, and ascribed to none
but a Chief who has led his tribe into battle with a foreign foe.
Scorning to show anger, I wrote thus--
"'Accursed murderer of my father, and serpent robber of my sister. Thou
hast piled up a mountain of lies, so vast, and of such deadly blackness,
that the snow of thy guile cannot cover them. A man of lower rank than
mine may descend into the filth where thou grovellest, and strive to vie
with thee in vermin. But I will leave thee to the Lord, who heedeth the
smallest thing that He hath deigned to make. Yet that my sister be not a
widow, one thing I will say to thee. Let not the right bank of the Terek
be tainted by thine evil-smelling body. Lest, for the sake of those whom
the Heaven valueth, it be plunged into the bottomless bog. For verily
there are foul reeks of Satan, sent by his malice to corrupt the air.'
"Now this was not intended as an offering of peace--though many people
took it altogether in that light, not from the moderation of the
language only, but because I sent not the wonted double dagger with
it--but simply as an overture of justice, in language not too mealy, and
an opening for reconciliation. For Marva, my sister, I felt many pangs,
a hankering which I endeavoured to repress, a tenderness of the younger
days, when neither could have the skin broken without a burst of tears
from the other's eyes. But we have to get harder as we go on, and the
hold of soft love on our little thumbs grows slacker; and even sweet
twins (who have tumbled into one another's arms, and rolled over with
rollicking, till no one could tell which was which of them) must begin
to close palm, and even shut fist, to the kisses of each other. And with
all this affection heavy on my mind, and a good guard left upon the
steeps of Karthlos, I returned for the summer to Shamyl."