Swords From the East by Harold Lamb Page B

fleeing toward the trees. Three of the Kalmuck horde ran after her, on foot. The squat men of the Turks dragged her down as dogs pull down a hare.
    Only a black blotch showed on the grass of the clearing. Safe within the screen of the poplars, Aruk hesitated, fingering his bow.
    "Dogs and sons of dogs!"
    From his pony the hunter fitted shaft to string and discharged his arrows swiftly, heeding not whom he struck; for he knew the sheep-herder's child was as good as dead already.
    The unexpected flight of arrows from nowhere set the Kalmucks to yelling. Two fell writhing in the grass. Another began to run back toward the yurt. The girl lay quite still on the grass, a shaft through her body.
    A last arrow whistled from Aruk's bow, and the fleeing man dropped to his knees.
    "Yah allah-il'allah!"
    Aruk heard his groan. Others in steel helmets were running out to the sound of conflict. The hunter turned his pony and was off again, changing his course to strike for Koh, leaving the sounds of pursuit behind him.
    "I was a fool," he assured his pony's ears, "since the only knows where I will get more arrows. There is small store of weapons in Kob, and Galdan Khan has mustered the hordes from the Kalmuck steppe and the Moslem hills to his aid. A Moslem cried out back there. This is not at all like a joke."
    Indeed, the dawn disclosed a forest of spear-tips streaming out from the shadows of the foothills toward Kob. The black coats of the Kalmucks were mingled with the green and red of the Turks. Fur-clad archers from Sungaria rubbed stirrups with the fierce, mailed riders of the Thian Shan.
    Behind these, down the broad, grassy trail, sheepskin-clad footmen escorted the creaking carts of the Kalmucks. A camel-train appeared when the sun was high, dragging small cannon.
    Above the tramp of the horses, the squeaking of the wagons, the shouts of the drivers, rose the mutter of kettle-drums, the shrill clamor of the pipes, and the hoarse song of disciplined Moslem soldiery.
    Like pillars along the line of march ascended shafts of smoke into the transparent air of a mild June day.
    On each flank dust rose where the masses of cattle were driven in and turned over in a bedlam of bellowing and trampling, to the butchers who rode among the wagons. Here and there prisoners were dragged in by groups of horsemen, to be questioned briefly by the mirzas and beys of the horde, then to be slain and tossed into ditches.
    In this manner came the Kalmucks to the old mud walls of Kob and the moat that had been dry for an age. Before sunset the cannon were set in place, and a roaring, flashing tumult spread around the beleaguered side of the doomed city.
    Before darkness served to reveal the flashes of the guns, the walls of mud bricks were caved in here and there. Like disciplined bees, the spearmen and horse of the Kalmucks swarmed forward into the openings.
    A half-hour's dust and flashing of weapons where one-eyed Cheke Noyon struggled in fury with his groups of Tatar swordsmen, and the yelling mass pressed in among the houses.
    Surprised, ill-prepared for defense, beset by a trained army of relentless fighters, Kob changed masters in the dusk of the June day. The standards of Galdan Khan were carried, through the alleys, into the marketplace. Galdan Khan was preparing to write his name large upon the annals of inner Asia. Chief of the Kalmucks, ally of the Turkish Kirei and the "wolf" Kazaks of Lake Balkash, as well as the Moslem Sungars of the Thian Shan, the Celestial Mountains, he was reaching out from his homeland in the great Sungarian valley.
    This Sungaria lay between the Altai on the north and the Thian Shan on the south. Galdan Khan vowed that he would seize for himself the fertile grasslands of the Tatars in the north before turning his sword upon the richer temples and caravan routes of the south.
    "I will take to myself the lands of high grass. I will take in my hand the herds, the cattle, the sheep, the furs, and the weapons of the men of