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.