The Sebakar Sword - Soldiers In a Troubled Land

To the right of the oncoming train, the land of Cteldun lay in a tawny haze. They rose abruptly out of the dunes of the Serari Basin and looked as if they had been thrust up from the bowels of the earth, which it had long ago, its tall peaks lost in the morning mists. Cteldun's green and wooded superstructure was rimmed by huge boulders, some the size of a nobleman's estate. Occasionally there were knife-like rock formations jutting up from the dunes and kicking up dust clouds in the stiff winds before the beige dunes could flatten out and form firm grounds. Occasionally, too, there were placid blue oases that invited a man to abandon all previous pursuits and stay for all time by their sweet waters and feathery trees. A lotus-eater's land. Farther north along the western flank of the country, however, the pine forests grew rankly down to the desert's edge.

The Cteldun Oblast, about 20 miles long and almost twelve miles at its midsection, lay roughly parallel to the border with Afghanistan, separated only by a tributary of the Oxus River. It was only forty miles southeast of Sebakar. The town of Cteldun was close to the northern tip of the country, looking westward across the desert to the southern mountains of Turania.

Dimitri and his battalion arrived in Cteldun shortly after first light. The train pulled slowly up to the big station jutting into the desert. Inside half an hour the troops were disembarked and lined up on the platform. Scouts were sent into the quiet and empty-looking town, followed by the two companies with their Mosin-Nagants loaded and bayonets fixed.

They marched in a long column of twos, past the deserted trading companies along the main street, past the ghettos, through a short block of bazaars and down a long street leading to the plaza and a marketplace. Not a human face showed itself during the ten-minute march to the plaza, which was also deserted. The men fell out and squatted in the dust of the open square while Dimitri and his company commanders tried to decide what to do. Dimitri wanted to establish himself as quietly as possible in Cteldun. An unexpected military occupation constituted a sufficient shock without exaggerating it with a clatter of guns and boots, he thought. According to the information available at HQ in Sebakar, the townspeople here were peaceful souls with little real sympathy for their feistier brethren in the mountains. Cteldun had been a brisk commercial city, shipping out frankincense and hardwoods, until the Sultan lost his grip and was forced to abandon his outposts in the territory. Serari bandits and slavers were usually bought off but now, apparently, the townspeople were too poor to ransom themselves.

Dimitri sent out a patrol to find Chloe and Milorad Elmpt, and before the squad returned some of the locals began venturing out of their locked and shuttered homes and tentatively approach the troops resting in the square. Someone climbed to the tower of the abandoned and desecrated church established by the early Russian missionaries and rang its great bronze bell. Soon hundreds of townspeople were ranging themselves with a friendly curiosity around the plaza.

The patrol returned within a quarter of an hour, and Lieutenant Blum of Karnaukhov's company, who led the patrol, presented Dimitri with a note written in Milorad Elmpt's impatient scrawl: "A thousand times welcome to Cteldun. The Serari have left so put up your guns. Chloe and I are unharmed. Come over as soon as your duties permit. The old royal barracks are two squares west of the plaza---will disinfect them for your soldiers. Regards----Milorad."

Before noon that day, Dimitri felt hardly established in Cteldun. The battalion was billeted in the old adobe barracks, with separate quarters for Dimitri, his two captains, and their six lieutenants. Supplies were unloaded from the train cars and hauled in befegaru carts to the cantonments; the train was officially released for the return to Sebakar, the conductor bearing a dispatch from Dimitri to HQ reporting that the situation was calm for the present but requesting a quick buildup in supplies and ammunition in the event that a column had to be sent to the interior.

Then, with the two companies lined up on the parade ground, the Russian colors were raised, and Cteldun became, for the time being, a remote fragment of Russia. And Dimitri became the governor pro temp of the four to five thousand people living in the mountainous interior, defiant of all authority save that of the Khan and the mullahs. Captain Karnaukhov, having been a lawyer in civilian life, was ordered to supervise the workings of whatever local government had survived. A professional scribe who spoke excellent Russian was engaged to act as an intermediary between the army and the populace.

That afternoon, more pressing matters having been attended to or delegated to his subordinates, Dimitri strolled over to the Elmpts' house near the hospital and school they had established, on the other side of the plaza. Sergeant Zykov accompanied him; musket cradled in his left arm as usual. The sergeant couldn't be dissuaded from his bodyguard duty and had become as familiar to Dimitri as his shadow. The strength of Zykov's loyalty, unobtrusive and unstated though it was, was something Dimitri could not entirely understand. Was it just that Zykov was a lonely man and Dimitri, as a young lieutenant, had been the first human being to show the slightest concern over him? And what would happen to Zykov when the army had no further use for him?

Chloe and Milorad were waiting for him on the high porch of their small and sparsely furnished home, which consisted of a living room, kitchen, and two bedrooms.

There was the usual clamorous greeting from Elmpt, who was as disjointedly energetic as ever. But Chloe, Dimitri quickly noted, showed signs of strain. She had lost weight and some of the country-girl color in her cheeks had disappeared. Anxiety and overwork had given her face a delicacy and a fine-drawn quality that somehow made her more attractive. She wore a starched white shirtwaist that had not yet wilted in the midday heat, a dark blue skirt, and a green silken band to keep her dark red and unruly hair back from her forehead.

Chloe sat next to Dimitri on the settee while her brother paced the floor of their little living room and told how, three days before, a hundred or more Serari warriors had swept down on the town from the mountains, killed eleven men, and wounded a number of others who had tried to defend their homes, looted the shops and carried off a dozen women and girls. Eighteen or twenty men also had been forced to accompany them and would probably be sold into slavery in Afghanistan.

"The Seraris didn't bother either of you?" Dimitri asked.

"Didn't come near us at all," Elmpt replied.

"Do you think they can be persuaded to give up the people they've dragged off?"

"I understand you're acquainted with a mighty poobah named Fenuldhun?" Dimitri nodded. "Well, he's the man you'll have to deal with."

"I gather he's carried out his threat to come back to Cteldun and liberate his people."

"In style. He's now a satrap in the mountains. Calls himself the Sultan of Cteldun. He has a Western education and an Eastern fondness for despotism. Think he'll listen to reason?"

"No, but I've been instructed to use diplomacy in trying to get these people back and employ force only as a last resort."

"I'd be very patient with these people, Dimitri," Elmpt said. "No matter what you might think of Fenuldhun---and on the face of his conduct I must agree that he's a nasty customer---you've got to play a waiting game. Time is on our side. I'll tell you why. In time we can provide these Cteldunis with the health and training in self-government that they need to be strong and self-sufficient. Once they can defend themselves and their property against the Serari marauders, they'll be able to keep the peace here. The warriors have been living off them for years because they never learned to organize against the bastards; that was the job of the Sultan's army, and what a bad job he made of it. When the mountain tribesmen can no longer raid the lowlands, they'll have to go to work themselves and scratch out potato patches on the mountainsides or starve. Their fighting spirit will die on the vine. And all it takes is time, time, and patience, Proconsul Karamazov."

"The question is, how much time and patience? Sooner or later the people back west will start objecting to maintaining garrisons half a continent away."

"A year, two years, maybe five years. We came here to do a job, and, by God, we'd better go through with it. These people are worth saving---and that goes for the Seraris, too, once they are convinced that the plow is mightier than the ithril. You'd be amazed at the headway we've made with the precious little we have to offer: a ramshackle hospital with eight beds and a one-room school with a stack of primers. Why, damn it, Dimitri, a schoolteacher is worth more than a regiment out here! If the Czar gave me half of what it costs to outfit and supply your battalion, I'd have smallpox, cholera, the yaws, leprosy, beriberi and every other foul disease in this land wiped out within a few years."

"But what would you do in a world free of disease, Milo?" Dimitri said. "There'd be nothing left for you. You'd have worked yourself out of a job."

"There are new diseases springing up all the time. We doctors can always invent a few new ones... I can't sit here jawing with you all day. I've got to drop in at the hospital and then look over your barracks. Rats, lice, flies, and all other vermin will be vigorously pursued and annihilated, I assure you. The Sultan's medical ministry was somewhat lax about sanitation. All that will be corrected. The Czar is really going to get his money out of Milorad V. Elmpt, M.D......Meanwhile, Chloe, why don't you take Dimitri out to see the sights?"

Chloe guided him through the cobblestone streets of Cteldun until Dimitri tired of viewing row on row of squalid houses with pigs, goats, and children rooting around them in the torpid hours of the afternoon. Most of the town was a typical desert slum, and the filth, disease, and hopelessness were almost physically oppressive. Dimitri wondered whether a hundred Chloes and Milorads could make any difference in such surroundings.

"It looks to me," he said, "as if a good brisk fire is the only solution to the issues of this eyesore hamlet."

"It's not as bad as it looks," Chloe said. "Not much worse, really, than some of the aboriginal camps up north in Siberia. Don't go looking down your soldiery nose at it."

"My God, Chloe, you sound like a town booster."

"I may well spend my life here."

"Bury yourself in Cteldun? You must be mad!"

"I feel at home here---just why I don't quite know. Maybe I lived there in a previous life."

"Not with that red hair."

"And besides I feel needed here. Back west, everyone took me for granted, everyone was so sure they knew just what

Chloe Elmpt was like what she wanted out of life. People here look at me with new eyes. I feel they understand me better than the people I was raised among. And they may be backward in some ways---Stone Age barbarians, as Milorad says when he gets mad---but they are really eager to learn. The children almost break the door down to get into the schoolroom and start learning. Many of the grownups have caught the fever, too, and I’ve had to start adult classes in reading and writing three evenings a week. I wonder whether you have any idea what a blessing it is to a teacher to have pupils sitting before her, row on row of upturned faces, and absorbing to the best of their ability everything she has to say.”

“All the same you’re working yourself into a frazzle, Chloe. You look thin and tired, and I doubt whether you realize how much energy is sapped simply by the effort of living in this climate. You’ve got to take care of yourself.”

“I’m young and healthy, and I love every minute of it.”

“Maybe my brother’s wife and one or two other women can help you with school when they come here from Sebakar.”

“Good God, Dimitri, do you think any female can start teaching school if you give her a piece of chalk, and a First Reader?”

They started walking towards the train station, in the direction of the village, which Chloe described as the “cleanest and loveliest part of the town.” By that time a breeze had been stirring off the desert, naptime was over, and people were moving around the streets. Many of them greeted Chloe with shy respect as if she were some aged and much-honored matriarch.

“You know, if you really want to help,” she said, “you could have your troops build another room, or better yet, two rooms, on the schoolhouse.”

“I suppose that could be arranged. Provided we don’t take the field. One of the men in my Archangelsk company was a schoolmaster in civilian life. I might be able to release him to teach some of your classes if his qualifications impress you."

"Now you're being sarcastic, and it's undignified for a man of your standing. Sarcasm is for small, petty men."

"Forgive me, I was only being playful. I guess that's unbecoming of a man who wears the uniform of Imperial Russia as well. It takes practice."

The village extended all along the left side of the railroad tracks. The ear-piercing whistle of a twenty-car train pulling into the station assaulted the village's peace and quiet as the sun began to set behind the mountains of Sebakar across the prairie. The villagers led an idyllic life with all the fruits of the outside world made accessible to them by the mighty steam locomotive. It was cleaner here, the hinterland winds blowing away the filth and debris that accompany human habitation anywhere, and the air was cooler and brisker. The people were livelier and walked more erectly, with an air of confidence the townspeople did not possess. Some of the girls, Dimitri noted, were beautiful creatures, their brown and supple bodies moving with a natural and unfettered grace rarely seen in Europe's most populous cities.

Dimitri and Chloe sat on a pine log on a little hill above the village and watched the sun go down in glory. Chloe's face was softly luminous, almost beautiful in the reflected light. Dimitri slipped his arm around her and said:

"I've thought about you often these past few months. I was worried sick when we got the news that the Serari had raided Cteldun. I've never been quite able to forget how you kissed me on the riverboat when you left Korosumska."

"That was a goodbye kiss. I didn't ever expect to see you again. Otherwise, I might have been less---fervent."

"That's a kind of puzzling attitude, isn't it, especially since you said---also quite fervently---that you hoped we'd meet again."

"I haven't had much experience in saying goodbye to people, and maybe I was a little carried away by emotion. You see, I was very grateful for the way you took up with Milorad and me. Especially me, I suppose because Milorad was so busy making preparations for our departure. It was truly a privilege to have a glimpse of the grandness of your military society."

"Grandness?" Dimitri said in genuine surprise. "Surely you understand that it's the grandness of captured palaces. And very temporary, too. Inside a year or two most of us will be back west, serving out our years in run-down forts, in quarters no self-respecting schoolteacher would stay in overnight."

"Oh, but you have a certain outlook that takes captured palaces for granted. You live in a different world, Dimitri. Someday you'll be a general and walk with the Czar himself, in a manner of speaking. I live in a workaday world, a more useful world, I think, without the pomp and glory of fine uniforms. Still and all, I'm silly and feminine enough to goggle like a serf at such goings-on, and it gave me a certain undeniable pleasure to walk into a ballroom on the arm of a gentleman and an officer. Or is it the other way around? It's the kind of thing a lady remembers for a long time."

"You think we're all mindless fops stuffing ourselves into gorgeous tunics and mincing around for each other's admiration, is that it?"

"Why, Dimitri, I do believe you're angry!"

"Angry? I'm absolutely outraged! Did it ever occur to you that there's more to soldiering than formal balls and grand reviews?" Dimitri was all the angrier as he suddenly realized that Chloe was teasing him. "Did you ever see a field hospital just after the casualties start coming in from the battlefields?"

"No, and I don't believe I care to."

"Sometimes you can be just as irritating as Milo. There are times when I don't know whether I like you because you're Milo's sister or despite it."

"There's another alternative---perhaps you don't like me at all, just that there's a shortage of white women out here in the Orient."

"I wouldn't put that high a premium on a white skin if I were you. I understand that a number of our men already are taking their discharges in Turania and settling down with local girls. But all that's beside the point. The point is, I like a lot of things about you, Chloe. I like your pride, your independence. I like the way you look, under a candelabrum or in the sunlight or beneath a streetlamp. I like the way you kissed me when you left Turania---no matter what your reason was."

Dimitri pulled the girl around rather roughly and kissed her soundly on the mouth. She squirmed in his arms for a moment but then surrendered herself. Finally, she wrenched away from him, flushed and breathless.

He reached for her again, but she twisted away from him and rose to her feet. "Please," she said, "this isn't a very good idea. I didn't come to Turania to find a man or play the flirt. I don't want to be confused, Dimitri, I have my work to do just as you have yours."

"You look mighty pretty confused," he said. "This is women's work, too, isn't it?"

"There are plenty of other women for that kind of work, but not so many for my kind."

"I don't mind seeing a dedicated woman if she's old and ugly. It's a damn shame when someone like you has to forswear womanhood in favor of one cause or another."

"I foreswear nothing, sir----I just don't want to be distracted when time is so important. If you knew more about Cteldun and how its people live, if you knew how much they deserve a better life, I think you'd understand what you call my 'dedication.' I hope you believe me when I saw that I'm not trying to be coy."

"Then you admit there's a powerful attraction between us----otherwise a few moments in my company couldn't distract you."

"I don't really know about that. We've always met under extraordinary circumstances. Who can say how we would feel if we met on a street corner in Novgorod?"

"I doubt whether a few sand dunes make any difference. Anyway, I could feel you tremble when we were kissing a few minutes ago, and I think your high resolves have an occasional tendency to weaken. I intend to promote that process when possible. Fair warning?"

"Please walk me home now---or chase one of those local girls down the way if you must!"

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In the succeeding days, they saw little of each other, and then only in her brother's company when Dimitri dropped in at their house after dinner. Dimitri's time was occupied by a multitude of details growing out of the occupation of Cteldun; the responsibility of restoring the town to its former usefulness rested solely on him. Its commerce must be revived, and frankincense and hardwoods must start flowing out of the train station again. First, however, there was the problem of making sure----either by force or negotiation----that the Serari of the interior would not interfere with such peaceful processes.

The first phase of that problem was somehow getting in touch with Fenuldhun, self-styled Khan of Cteldun; there was no communication, except possibly secret exchanges between him and his sympathizers in the town, from Cteldun to Fenuldhun's headquarters in the mountains. The dilemma was solved by Fenuldhun himself less than a week after the battalion occupied Cteldun. A Serari running came down from the mountains with the following message to Dimitri, who was addressed as "My Esteemed Friend.":

"As hereditary ruler of this so-called 'oblast,' I extend royal greetings. A more formal welcome might have been arranged if I had been advised of your coming. However, I have kept myself informed of your activities, to some of which I must enter a formal objection as they were undertaken without consultation with the khanate. But we will let that pass for now.

"It is my understanding that you wish to discuss the matter of several persons who departed from the town of Cteldun voluntarily with a group of my subjects who visited there and were fired upon by hostile elements of the population.

"I am quite willing to discuss this matter and others which concern the khanate, such as the legal right to collect taxes from the town of Cteldun, collect customs at the train station, administer the laws and courts, and other prerogatives.

"I assure you that it is my intention to see that your stay in Cteldun is made interesting and educational. Please assure your brother, the redoubtable Captain Alexei Karamazov, that I have not forgotten him.

"I will be pleased to grant you an audience, if you will come to the village of Thadikar, at the foot of the mountain called Ishtan-Biz, on the morning following the receipt of this letter. You will come alone and without arms; this will establish an atmosphere of confidence between us. You will be guided from there to my palace."

As soon as they could be summoned to battalion HQ, Alexei and Captain Kharnaukov were shown Fenuldhun's message.

"How do you think I should proceed in this matter?" Dimitri asked them. "I don't believe in councils of war, but this is an extraordinary matter. It must be decided today, without guidance from HQ in Sebakar. Frankly, Fenuldhun has me by the short hairs, and I have a feeling he knows it."

"The little bastard," Alexei growled. "You should have let me finish him off when I had him under my thumbs in Ikaphoghar."

"It might have been a hell of a lot better if you'd kept your thumbs off."

Captain Kharnaukov, his fingers placed tip to tip in a meditative pose, studied the ceiling with his bright blue eyes.

"Are you waiting for your retainer, Captain," Dimitri asked tartly, "or would you care to give me your cerebrations?"

"Oh....uh....beg pardon, Major. The potentate up in the hills has you in a definite bind. You can hardly refuse to parley with him. Yet if you do you will be granting him recognition as the Khan of Cteldun."

"Negotiations be damned," Alexei said, slamming his fist on Dimitri's desk. "I'm in favor of sending a punitive expedition into the interior. Either we do it now when we've got the excuse of getting those captives back, or we wait until later and have to answer a lot of awkward questions. The longer we temporize, the stronger that little son of a bitch will get, and then it will be a brigade-sized job."

"As for going up there alone and unarmed, it would be madness to do so, Dimitri. Fenuldhun would simply take you prisoner and hold you for ransom. God knows whether we'd ever get you back. What a trophy you'd make for these caveman czars to show their people."

"I don't think he'd do that," Dimitri said. "Besides, purely as a technicality, these people aren't cavemen. Fenuldhun himself is an educated man. He believes there are advantages to be wrung from the situation without fighting---for the moment---so it just wouldn't suit his purpose to take me captive."

Captain Kharnaukov said: "I gather from his letter that Fenuldhun is ready to propose a deal. He'll give up slaving and looting in return for the right to collect taxes and customs duties. In other words, he'll accept a perpetual bribe in exchange for keeping the peace. Beyond all that, it's evident that he intends to rule Cteldun to the same extent that the Karashah Sultan---whom we recently deposed----held power. To rub more salt on the wound, he's demanding a treaty with us to assure a never-ending grip on that power."

"Fenuldhun is a pipsqueak, a late-bloomer, compared to the old Karashah Sultan!" Alexei said. "We can't dignify his pretensions by making a treaty with him, in effect, or every bandit and brigand in these lands will be setting himself up as khan. We've got to slam the door on them, or there'll be a czar under every tree and dune."

"Good," remarked Kharnaukov. "Then they'd cancel each other out."

"Furthermore," he added, "I've heard a tale from our interpreter about how Fenuldhun ascended the throne of Cteldun. It seems he actually was the son of the previous strongman in Cteldun. Trouble was, he was the youngest son and his mother was the number-two wife. He didn't have a chance of succeeding the old man, except, fortunately for him, his mother is a murderous old bitch. While Fenuldhun was away being educated she laid in a supply of poison and went to work with a will. First, she poisoned the number-one wife, then all the strongman's sons by her, and finally the old boy himself. And that's how Fenuldhun, her one, and only son, succeeded in power. Instead of simply being the faki, or family headman, he promoted himself to the Khan."

"Very interesting," Dimitri said, "but unhelpful. It doesn't matter much what Fenuldhun calls himself or how many relatives' bodies he climbed over to reach his present eminence. What matters is the fact that he has seven or eight hundred, maybe more, fighting men pledging allegiance to him.

"As I see it, I have no choice but to meet Fenuldhun. I was ordered to negotiate before applying force. Obviously, I can't offer him anything in the name of the Czar. I'll just have to play for time and wait for further orders for Sebakar. If anything should go wrong, I'll depend on you to explain the situation to Colonel Spravtsev. In my absence, Alex, having seniority, will command the battalion."

At midmorning the next day Dimitri climbed the lower slope of Ishtan-Biz and was approaching the village of Thadikar. He had set out on foot the previous afternoon, spent the night in a resthouse along the way, and continued on his journey shortly after dawn. He carried a rifle for protection against the vipers, bears, feral hogs, and other brutes abounding in the grasslands and forests which matted the countryside on the approaches to the mountains; not to mention the occasional stray highwayman who might be using the darkness of the forest canopy for an ambush. l

Dimitri couldn't help but remember the soldier's poem as he tramped along the trails:

Oh, many a man's been slain in Turania,

In Cteldun, in Korosumska,

Oh, many a man's been slain in Turania

Who's sleeping in a lonely grave.

He kept sketching maps of the country and terrain on his way, knowing they would be useful in the event it was necessary to move in force against Fenuldhun and his followers. It was while pausing to make a sketch, in fact, that he happened to turn around and found that Sergeant Zykyov was trailing him. That happened the previous afternoon, several miles outside Cteldun. Dimitri had ordered him to return to the post, despite Zykov's argument that he would leave the trail and stalk Dimitri and his guide from the woods so that Seraris would never know Dimitri was being followed. The sergeant almost cried when Dimitri ordered him back.

Now, several thousand feet above him in the clear blue sky, Ishtan-Biz loomed sharp and menacing as a wolf's tooth against the horizon. On its lower reaches, the mountain was deeply scored by valleys and ridges so that it had a corrugated look; higher on its flanks there were dense forests of hardwood, pine, oak, and green shrubs; but around its peak, there was no vegetation at all.

Dimitri hid his rifle in the fork of a tree outside the Serari village, then went on to meet, wordlessly, the retainer sent down the mountain by Fenuldhun to guide him on the final stage of the journey.

Shortly before noon, they reached the village where Fenuldhun paused for a moment, pretending to catch his breath, but actually scanning and memorizing the features of Fenuldhun's mountain stronghold. The "palace" stood above the hovels of his followers, and several hundred feet above that, on a kind of shelf of the mountain just before the fields of evergreen shrubs and diverse grass, was Fenuldhun's fortress, strongly fashioned from thick wood, boulders, and earth barricades. The khashi, as the Seraris called it, looked as if it could withstand any siege in which artillery was not heavily employed; here was the ultimate center of Fenuldhun's power, and it deserved respect.

Fenuldhun's ancestral home was a low wooden building, rambling over a large amount of space and sturdily constructed. It was almost hidden by a high stone wall with a heavy wrought-iron gate presumably taken from the Sultan's army.

Dimitri crossed the courtyard and was ushered into the spacious chamber in which Fenuldhun had promoted himself to Khan of Cteldun.

At the far side of the room was a raised section on which Fenuldhun and his mother were squatting, each on a small platform, Fenuldhun's slightly higher than the Khanum's. Fenuldhun was a gorgeous figure in a yellow turban, a jacket of turkey red, and green silk sepoy trousers. He wore a huge ring with an onyx stone set in the middle, and a damascened balarat filigreed with gold rested upon his lap.

Fenuldhun signaled for Dimitri to approach with a regal and condescending gesture. Dimitri approached to within ten feet of Fenuldhun, halting when a guard bearing a two-handed sword raised his cheeghar as a warning to come no closer. All around the platform where Fenuldhun held court were his guards and advisers, almost as brilliantly clad as their Khan. In a chamber to the rear court musicians were playing their cymbals, flutes and drums in a muted fashion, their soft insistent clangor providing a disquieting and almost unnerving background. It was almost somewhat disconcerting to recall that the Seraris went into battle to the clashing of war drums, a frenzied clamor that was said to inspire them to the heights of bloodlust. Dimitri thought it was the most sinister music he had ever heard.

"Good morning, Major," Fenuldhun said. "How good of you to make this long journey. This is my mother...."

The Khanum, a tiny woman hunched on her platform, gazed at him with the unblinking black eyes of a lizard. Dimitri could almost feel those malevolent eyes darting into him like needles. Her only visible motion was the steady chewing of tobacco, whose blackish-brown juice she occasionally spat into a silver bowl extended by a courier, who seemed to regard this service as a high honor.

"This is my wazir," Fenuldhun continued, gesturing toward a small and watchful figure standing closest to Fenuldhun's platform, "and this is Hadil, the Prophet." He indicated a bony fellow with menacing eyes. At the mention of his name, Hadil exploded into an impassioned speech, not a word of which Dimitri understood.

"The Prophet," Fenuldhun said when the speech was finally ended, "wishes it to be known that with the stamping of his foot the mightiest regiments of your army will fall like trees in a mighty thunderstorm." There was a glint of amusement in Fenuldlhun's deep-set eyes. "It is not necessary to believe in the Prophet literally. He comes from another village and might be a little mad. For the time being, he amuses me and inspires a kind of confidence in my people."

Fenuldhun suddenly clapped his hands and spoke sharply in his native tongue, apparently dismissing his courtiers, for all but his mother and her bowl-bearer departed from the chamber, bowing elaborately and backing towards the exits. The music, however, continued to play, with an occasional interlude of silvery bells.

Without preamble, Fenuldhun asked: "What did you think of my letter, Major?"

"I was glad that you are willing to consider releasing the people you took prisoner in Sebakar."

"That is not quite what I said. The prisoners, after all, are my subjects."

"No responsible ruler sells his subjects into slavery."

"We have different views in the East. But all this talk of prisoners is meaningless. I could not give them back to you and keep the respect of my warriors. Nor did I seriously expect that you would give me the right to collect taxes, et cetera, et cetera. There can be no negotiations between us, Major. The letter, and its ridiculous proposals, merely served as a pretext to bring you up here."

Dimitri wondered for a moment whether he was also being consigned to the slave markets of the Near East, but Fenuldhun continued:

"It is quite a different matter I wish to discuss with you. First, I want you to understand that I believe you Russians intend to stay here with your troops permanently and that I will someday drive you into the desert dunes. You are as bad as the British---the British always come to stay---and if it takes a thousand warriors to wipe out every vestige of your presence in Cteldun, then I assure you I have a thousand warriors to send against you. And, to add insult to injury, you Russians have brought your businessmen with you and they have found they can exploit the natural wealth of this land. 222Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡdk2SlQ9cOZ

"I have been informed that a company known as the Anglo-Russian Oriental Trading Company, Ltd., intends to establish itself in Cteldun and revive the trade in frankincense and timber. Oh, yes, Major, we are better informed than you may believe. I also know that your brother's father-in-law and Captain Hall---who is much mistrusted by the Seraris from his past dishonesty in dealing with us----are coming here for that purpose. They have obtained concessions from deposed princes who have tried engaging in the same trade. The concessions are worth nothing. A signature on a piece of paper does not give them the right to exploit us, to cut down our ancient trees, and ravage our mountainsides. There is not even the shadow of legality to such a transaction unless it is legal for one thief to license another thief."

Dimitri knew nothing of any such concessions and said so.

"I can see on your face that this was not known to you," Fenuldhun said. "I believe you are an honest man, an honorable man, but a soldier is often called upon to shield men without scruple or honor. I speak to you frankly, Major. We will fight you to the death if you permit the so-called concession to take effect. If your people are allowed to begin exploiting the land they will not stop until it has been scraped bare. I have seen this happen in other parts of the world, and I will take up the balarat before I permit it to happen here." Fenuldhun's warning was all the more effective for being delivered without inappropriate melodramatics, Dimitri thought, although he had seen Seraris, on much less important occasions, snarling, rolling their eyes, waving their arms, bickering over the price of a chicken in the market place.

Fenuldhun's mother spoke briefly to her son, keeping her eyes on Dimitri all the while.

Fenuldhun interpreted for her: "The Khanum wishes me to say that you are welcome to take food with us before you go back down the mountain."

Dimitri, remembering the story about her alleged leaning towards lethal condiments on occasion, declined with thanks.

A few minutes later he left the court of the Khan of Cteldun. Far down the mountain trail he could still hear the menacing resonance of the drums, which seemed to increase with every step he took as if echoing Fenuldhun's warning. Then, suddenly, the beat of the drums ceased.

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Soldiers In a Troubled Land

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