Free Swords From the East by Harold Lamb Page A

will be at the pass. He has ten times the numbers of the riders that are here. Soon we will have as many as he perhaps, but then it will be too late. And he has powder and cannon and muskets."
    She pointed at the glow in the sky that was Kob.
    "See, yonder the mirzas of Galdan Khan are building new walls. They are putting their cannon on the walls. Our horses cannot ride over stone ramparts.
    "Do you tell us what we must do, my lord," she sighed. "And I will bear the counsel to Aruk, who is sitting in the kurultai."
    "My faith!" thought the Frenchman. "I would not care to go myself. They smell too rank of horse and mutton."
    He glanced at the nearby campfires, noting the anxious men who stood weapons in hand beside their sleeping women. Again he heard the plaint of the sick child and the murmur of its mother.
    A blind man sat patiently, the nose-rope of a solitary cow in his hand. More distant from the fire, herders slept on their horses; fishers and skinclad peasants armed only with sticks stood staring numbly at the crimson spot in the sky.
    "What an army!" he thought. "What animals, that Paul should waste his life among them! Pfagh!"
    Touching Yulga on the shoulder, he said: "You have wit. How many Kalmucks and Turks are in Kob?"
    "Aruk says four times a thousand. There were more, but many died in the battle."
    "Well, tell Aruk this. Say that your horsemen are useless except as horsemen, skirmishers, and archers. Still, you can win back Kob. Spread a circle of riders about the place. Cut off all food. If the Kalmucks sally out, draw them off to the hills, or the marshes by the lake. Tire out their horses, then attack them if you will. It does not matter, so food is kept from their hands. They have but little."
    "Aye, my lord. But Galdan Khan will be at Koh in three days."
    With his hand Hugo turned the head of the girl toward the black mass of the Altai Mountains.
    "There is the barrier that will keep out Galdan Khan. Through one gate only can he come. You have heard the tale of the army that passed through a gate in the sea. Well, it is easier to close a mountain than to open it. Your khans cannot spare many men, for a space until others come in from the north. But two hundred can hold the Urkhogaitu Pass, among the rocks. Let them hold it then until your allies are here."
    Yulga sped back with her tidings, and whispered long into the attentive ear of Aruk, while the assembled khans talked and stared into the fire. When the hunter rose to speak he was listened to, for as the keeper of the pass he was well known.
    When he had finished repeating the advice of Hugo, the khans gazed at each other grimly.
    "Who will hold the pass?" One voiced the thought of all. "There is no man who does not fear Galdan Khan, who fights with the Devil at his back."
    "I will try, good sirs," spoke up Aruk.
    "A pigmy to match blows with a hero?" The Buriat spat. "You are bold enough, but the warriors will not take you as leader."
    "What leader," countered another, "could hold the bare rocks of the Urkhogaitu against fifty thousand with artillery and-Galdan Khan?"
    They were silent, uneasy, while the khan of the Buriats, who had ridden far that day, traced figures in the sand by the fire with his gnarled finger.
    "It is a good plan," he ruminated, "a wise plan, that of the hunter. For we could cut communication between Galdan Khan and his wolves in Koh."
    "But if the mirzas who hold Koh sallied back to the pass-"
    "Fool, they will not do that. They have orders to roost where they are. They will expect Galdan Khan to appear every day. When he does not come, they will be suspicious-likewise hungry. Then will they sally out, not before. Yet then our allies will be here; aye, we will be stronger than they, if Galdan Khan is held at the pass."
    At this, silence fell again. The chiefs who squatted, looking into the fire, were leaders of tribes but not of nations. There was no one to give commands in the place of Cheke Noyon.
    They were not afraid. They