Swords From the West by Harold Lamb

circle up against the sky. His keen eyes saw it rise and head to the south and west. Then he yawned and bethought him of sleep. Four days later the great caravan from Tana to Sarai was on the road. They had halted for the night in the serai at the beginning of the desert that stretched as far as the rivers of Sarai.
    Tron, Nial, and the two followers had quartered their ponies in a corner of the enclosure. They bought hay for the beasts and brush and dried dung for a fire. The merchant, who knew the cold of the snow plain, had secured for Nial and himself two chabans-long sheepskin coats, with hoods that could be drawn over their heads and sleeves that hung down to their knees. Wolfskin caps and boots of soft greased leather kept them warm.
    The walls sheltered them from the north wind. A score of fires like their own illumined the dark masses of camels kneeling by their loads, the lines of ponies crowded together, and the throngs of men: helmeted Tatar guards who watched, like the indifferent sentinels of purgatory, over the mingled cattle drivers, merchants, and princely envoys seeking the road to Cathay; blue-cloaked Iranis with towering turbans, shivering in the northern air; sallow Armenians gabbling in a tongue of their own; and the strutting bulk of pockmarked Yashim, the Bokharian slave dealer, who wore three coats and gave commands to a hundred wild Turkoman weapon men who served as guards for his women freight, and who had elbowed a Khotenese jade dealer out of the best place in the serai. Through this encampment moved Mardi Dobro in his red robe, alert as a dog.
    After supper, while the Turkomans were noisily making the night prayer and the fires had died down to embers, Tron went over to talk with the Armenians, leaving Nial to watch the packs.
    A half moon lighted the serai, and the swordsman retired to the angle of the wall, taking a sheepskin and the jewel sack with him. Here he could stretch out in the darkness and see all who passed in the haze of moonlight.
    The Greek servant was snoring among the packs, wrapped up in a rug, and the guide had gone to gossip with friends. For a time Nial watched the bearded faces gathered about the dying fires. A figure would rise, now and then, and cough and come to the well near Nial to drink. Drawing the sheepskin over his legs, he turned over on his back, picking out among the stars the Flying Geese, with the Bear.
    How long the figure had been bending over the packs he did not know. Raising himself on an elbow, he watched the prowler examining Tron's chests, and he heard the clink of metal thrust into a lock. The figure wore a hooded chaban like his own.
    Taking his sheathed sword in one hand, Nial got to his knees and leaped forward silently. The figure in the white chaban started back, but Nial's free hand closed on the visitor's arm.
    "Hai, thief!" he grunted.
    A knife flickered under his eyes, and he bent his body aside swiftly as the blade ripped into the folds of his heavy coat. He did not loose his hold of the intruder and, before the knife could strike again, he swept the heavy hilt of his sword down on the other's wrist. With a sharp moan of pain his antagonist let the dagger fall.
    Taking the other's wrists in his right hand-for the slender strength of the thief was no match for his own-Nial thrust the hood of the chaban back. He looked down upon a woman's heavy hair, bound by a silver band, and a young face, tensed in pain. Tears trickled from the closed eyes.
    "Yah bint," he cried softly. "0 girl, what is this?"
    From half-closed lids her eyes searched his face. Nial was aware of the scent of jessamine oil. He had not seen her before, upon the road or in the serai, and certainly he had seen none so fair as she.
    Instinctively he relaxed his grasp, knowing that he must be hurting her, although her heavy sleeve had broken the force of his blow. He wondered what she might be and whether she understood Arabic.
    "Who art thou," he asked again, "to steal in a