Swords From the West by Harold Lamb Page B

the raiders raced toward the caravan track. They numbered several score, perhaps a hundred, and they carried lances with tufts of horsehair beneath the points. They bestrode shaggy ponies and were so wrapped in dark skins and leather that they seemed to be animated beasts, tearing in for the kill.
    In the caravan the Armenians huddled together like sheep, while the servants shrieked in terror. Only the Tatars, who had been half asleep until then, acted in silence. Their squad came together at a single command. The riders drew bows from their hip cases, strung them and sent shaft after shaft whirring into the raiders.
    Separating to escape the deadly arrows, the nomads drove at the ends of the caravan. Some Armenians, kneeling in helpless terror, were ridden down, lanced or clubbed, to writhe on the ground.
    Tron, pale but calm enough, had urged his horse toward the Persian prince, while the envoy's escort snatched out their weapons, crying upon Allah. Nial had got his great shield on his arm and had drawn his sword, wishing heartily for a good charger between his knees instead of the hired pony.
    "What devils are these?" he asked the Genoese.
    "Tribesmen. Nogais raiding after the winter-ha!"
    The raiders plunged in among the Persian horsemen, stabbing with their light lances and hacking with their short, curved swords. Horses wheeled and reared, as iron crashed upon leather shields and a man screamed.
    Nial drove his pony into the mass of them. His shield was proof against the lance points, and his long sword slashed over the shorter sabers of the nomads. He turned slowly in a half circle, upon his shield side, checking the jumps of his startled pony and beating off the tribesmen who rushed him. They drew back before the steady lashing of his sword, and the Persian swordsmen formed around him.
    "char-ghar-ghar!"
    The Nogais clamored like gulls, swooping about their prey. But their round leather shields broke under the weapons of the warriors of the caravan, and they had no heart for a hand-to-hand fight. When saddles began to empty they hung back, and the Tatar guards, who had cleared their end of the skirmish, sent a volley of arrows among them that tore through furs and leather like paper. The Nogais turned away, snarling.
    Nial had watched them with steady eyes. He had marked a tall bay horse with a fine head. As they drew away he urged his pony forward, parried the slash of a saber, and came knee to knee with the rider of the bay horse. The man tried to shorten his lance, then reached instead for a knife.
    They were too close together for a sword thrust, but Nial smashed the tribesman between the eyes with the pommel of his sword before the knife could touch him. The man reeled from the saddle. Nial caught the reins he let fall and turned swiftly to rejoin his friends of the caravan.
    "Kai!" cried a Tatar who had watched him. "The boy bath taken a horse from his enemy. That was done like a man."
    By the time Nial had mounted his new charger, the raiders had withdrawn beyond reach of the Tatar arrows. They hovered before the rocks, shouting and whipping up their courage for a fresh charge, when Yashim's kafila hastened up, attracted by the sound of fighting.
    The Turkoman warriors raced their ponies forward to snatch spoil from whichever side might have had the worst of it. They turned upon the Nogais, who fled like wild dogs before a wolf pack. The men of the caravan sheathed their weapons and went to examine the wounded and claim the spoil upon the ground. Many came to look at Nial's prize, saying that it was a Kabarda, a racing breed.
    "Eh," said Paolo Tron, "you have skill with a sword, Messer Nial. We can get forty byzants for the horse in Sarai."
    "Here-" Nial laughed-"'tis better to have a horse than forty byzants."
    Flushed with excitement, he examined the saddle, which had worn silver work upon the horn and the short shovel-stirrups. He did not heed Yashim's camels that paced past him with creaking loads, until a