Some days later Niaz went on an expedition again, "on the Czar's service
for the protection of the frontier," and took more than half his
able-bodied Tartars on the journey with him. Olga had never felt so
lonely before, surrounded now by doubt and mystery in that awful
solitary stronghold. The broken watch weighed gloomily upon her
frightened spirits.
Niaz was gone for three days, as often happened, and on the fourth
night, after she had retired to her lonely bedroom, she felt sure she
heard his voice speaking low somewhere in the courtyard.
At the sound she sprang from her bed and went to the window. Yes, there,
down in the far corner of the yard, without lights or noise, and
treading cautiously, she saw Niaz and his men filing quietly in through
the dim gloom, and bringing with them a number of boxes.
Her heart beat fast. Could it be some kind of smuggling? They lay so
near the passes into Turkestan and China, and she knew that the merchant
track from Yarkand to Semi-palatinsk crossed the frontier not far from
Niaz's village.
Huddling on her dress hastily, she issued out alone and terrified, into
the dark courtyard, and sought over the whole place in the black night
for sight of Niaz. She could find him nowhere.
At last she mounted the staircase to the mouldering rampart. Generally
the Tartar guards kept watch there constantly, but to-night the whole
place seemed somehow utterly deserted. She groped her way along till she
reached the far corner by a patch of ground which Niaz had told her was
the Tartar burial-place.
There she came suddenly upon a great crowd of men below on the plain,
running about and shouting wildly, with links and torches. Niaz stood in
the midst, erect and military, with his Russian uniform gleaming
fitfully in the flickering torchlight. In front of him six Turcoman
merchants, with their hands bound behind their backs, knelt upon the
ground, and beside him two Tartars held by either arm a man in European
dress, whom Olga recognized at once as the English traveller from India
by way of the Himalayas. Her heart stood still within her with terror,
and she hung there, mute and unseen, upon the rampart above, wondering
what in Heaven's name this extraordinary scene was going to end in. What
could it mean? What could Niaz be doing in it? Great God, it was too
horrible!
A Tartar came forward quietly from the crowd with a curved sword. At a
word from Niaz he raised the sword aloft in the air. One second it
glanced bright in the torchlight; the next second a Turcoman's head lay
rolling in the dust, and a little torrent of blood spurted suddenly from
the still kneeling corpse. Olga opened her mouth to scream at the horrid
sight, but happily her voice at once forsook her as in a dream, and she
stood fixed to the spot in a perfect fascination of awe and terror.
Then the Tartar moved on, obedient to a word and a nod from Niaz, and
raised his sword again above the second Turcoman. In a moment, the
second head too rolled down quietly beside the other. Without a
minute's delay, as though it formed part of his everyday business, the
practised headsman went on quietly to the next in order, and did not
stop till all six heads lay grim and ghastly scattered about unheeded in
the dust together. Olga shut her eyes, sickening, but still could not
scream for very horror.
Next, Niaz turned to the English traveller, and said something to him in
his politest manner. Olga couldn't catch the words themselves because of
the distance, but she saw from his gestures that he was apologizing to
the Englishman for his rough treatment. The Englishman in reply drew out
and handed to Niaz a small canvas bag, a purse, and a watch. Niaz took
them, bowing politely. "Hands off," he cried to the Tartars in Russian,
and they loosed their prisoner. Then he made a sign, and the Englishman
knelt. In a minute more his head lay rolling in the dust below, and
Niaz, with a placid smile upon his handsome face, turned to give orders
to the surrounding Tartars.
Olga could stand it no more. She dared not scream or let herself be
seen; but she turned round, sick at heart, and groped her way, half
paralyzed by fear, along the mouldering rampart, and then turned in at
last to her own bedroom, where she flung herself upon the bed in her
clothes, and lay, tearless but terrified, the whole night through in
blinding misery.
She did not need to have it all explained to her. Niaz was nothing more,
after all, than a savage Buriat robber chieftain.