Chapter XXII: The Astara Defile

The dusty white road slipped away behind us, four steady miles to the hour. Somewhere about the third mile I heard shouting behind me, and my men swung to one side as Stephnos came up and passed us with some one hundred and fifty mounted men. He checked to speak to me a moment, and I saw Forsyth riding with him.

“Well, Harry, we’ve struck it this time. You’ve got a nice-looking crowd there, and Stephnos tells me you’ll want them all soon.”

“What are you doing along with Stephnos? You ought to be waiting to patch up the wounded behind.”

“Think I’m going to sit behind while you and John have all the fun, and be the only one of us three that hasn’t seen a battle-fight in Sakaeland? Not much. You two have had all the luck so far, but it’s my shift to-day. I’m going to forget I’m a doctor, and go and see the beano close in for once instead of sitting down to be shelled without being able to hit back. However, this is a gentlemanly country, and they have no guns.”

“Where’s John?” I asked, as Stephnos’s troops shook out into reconnoitring formation.

“Way behind with Kyrlos. Wanted to come up and join you, but Kyrlos said he wasn’t going to have all his three guests out of his sight at once, so John is more or less tied to the old man’s saddle, cursing like a trooper because they’re so slow getting under way. Well, there goes Stephnos; I’m off. See you later, Harry.”

And the next moment he was cantering up the road after the tail of Stephnos’s column.

We were in sight of the hills and the defile that I wanted to reach before we came on the first sign of the enemy, who had evidently not been so fast as we expected. We marched through a little hamlet, and in the middle of it were some dead men--Brown Sakae, Philos said--and two wounded horsemen of Stephnos’s troop sitting on the roadside talking to the villagers. Both sides had reached the place simultaneously, and the scuffle which followed had ended in the enemy bolting back.

We reached the defile, and I breathed a sigh of relief at this unexpected good fortune. Halting my column, I rode up with Philos to the top of the hill on the right, and there in front of me was the enemy force--not an inspiriting sight in view of our numbers. They were about two miles away, long low dust columns, and behind them the smoke of burning ricks and thatch. Closer to us were parties of mounted men, and perhaps a mile ahead in three parties Stephnos’s little force. Looking through my glasses, I saw one of his troops chasing back an enemy party. As Wrexham had said, Master Stephnos was a thruster all right.

We had won by a short neck, and the next thing was to get into position as quickly as possible.

Just at this point the Astara, quite unfordable, closes in on to the road from the left as you look toward the Shaman country. At the point where we were it was not more than three hundred yards from the road, and behind us it swerved out in a wide curve southeastward. About half a mile in front it was joined by a sluggish stream running in a marshy depression, which curved round our right flank toward the hills. Between the marshy stream and the main road was the hillock we were standing on, perhaps two hundred yards long and one hundred and fifty feet high, while on the opposite side, between the road and the river, was a lower, smaller hill.

It was an ideal position for a small force to delay an enemy, since our left flank was absolutely secure, so long as we held the lesser height, while the approach across the stream and marshland on our right was anything but easy. All around the bigger hill, about halfway up, ran a thick thorn hedge enclosing an orchard. The smaller hill had on the forward slope two or three mud buildings and a small stone wall, which would give some cover to the defenders.

“We stand here,” I said to Philos. “One company on the small hill, two companies on this one, with our right extending down toward the marsh. The fourth company and the mounted men will be behind us as the reserve under you. I shall be up here. It will be a fight in which we must make the most of our shooting and try to prevent them closing, since once they close their extra numbers will tell.”

The company commanders had followed us up, and I explained what I wanted. The small hill I gave to a young cousin of Philos, who seemed a steady, determined youth. The mounted archers had been drawn in, so I sent for two of the Greek-speaking N.C.O.’s, and kept them by me as messengers and interpreters.

Within ten minutes the men were in their places, and I did a hurried walk round. They were all very quiet and resolute-looking: big bows strung and quivers forward, while many of them had arrows stuck upright in the ground in front of them or laid on top of the wall. I said a few words to the officers, emphasizing the importance of holding on and making the most of our position and our bows.

“Never fear,” said Philos’s cousin. “We hold here as long as there is a man to draw bow. Our homes are but a few miles behind, and our women, and we and they know the Shamans. They will pass this only over our bodies.”

I climbed back to my post on the higher hill, and told off Payindah to mark the little bridge some eight hundred yards away, where the road crossed the smaller stream. Some rapid fire on that would check the enemy’s first efforts to cross, and time was everything. I intended to lend him a hand myself in the opening moves.

Our preparations were only just completed when we saw Stephnos’s mounted men coming back, pursued by considerably greater numbers. I thought at first they would come straight back on to us, but instead of that they swung out to our right on the farther side of the stream, and the fight followed them beyond the marshes. There was a narrow strip of firm ground there about a mile from us, and when Stephnos had got the leading enemy bogged, his men took to their bows and dealt with them. For his age the lad was a cool-headed leader.

Then the enemy advanced on us--a body of mounted men in front--and as the first of them reached the bridge Payindah and I opened fire. The range was longish, but we knocked over several as they checked in a mass at the crossing. Our men cheered and shouted at seeing the foe struck down at such an undreamt-of range, and the enemy were evidently disconcerted. But at that distance with only two rifles the effect was but momentary, and before long they were streaming over the bridge and moving up toward us. I told Payindah to spend his time picking off any one that looked like a leader, and then I stood up as the first formed mass of the enemy approached. We let them come to well within the hundred yards before our bowmen let drive, and the first attack just melted away in swathes of stricken men, very few getting within twenty yards, while such as reached us--all men with good mail--were dealt with, while they tried to call on their fellows or tore at the hedge in their efforts to get through. They had not supported their attack with arrows, and as a result we had hardly any casualties at all.

As the survivors drew off discomfited, parties of my men rushed out to gather up arrows, and I fear upon occasion to finish off some of the wounded. We had a little difficulty in getting them back again, and I went round again to impress once more on the officers the importance of not letting their men get out of hand.

Then the enemy came on again, and this time, profiting by experience, supported their attack with showers of arrows from bowmen on the flanks, and we began to lose men, though the shooting was not too good, and our people had fair cover. We beat them back a second time, but there were many gaps in our ranks now, and the orchard was sprinkled with dead and wounded men; while in one place a wild Shaman rush secured a momentary lodgment inside our defences, and was only killed out by a quick rush of the reserve. While we were filling up our ranks and getting ready for their next onslaught, I blessed Philos’s forethought that had brought along the spare sheaves of arrows. We should want them all soon.

So far the enemy’s main attention had been directed to us, though there was some brisk work on the lower hill. But the next time they left us alone, massing heavily against the little hill, sweeping up in wave after wave of shouting men. They carried the wall and pushed on to the building, and for some minutes there was close hand-to-hand fighting. Then the enemy swayed back again as the company reserve rushed in, and they were slowly pushed backward down the hill, till the last of them turned and fled down to the bottom again.

I seized the moment’s respite to run across and see how things were. Over half that company were out of action, and Philos’s cousin, bleeding from a knife gash in the left arm, was closing his men back to a smaller circle around the huts, some of which he had hurriedly loopholed for his bowmen.

“They pressed us hard that time,” he panted, as he tied up the cut on his arm. “I thought they would drive us down. I doubt our standing another charge like that. See, many of my men are dead, and more are badly hurt.”

“You must hold on somehow. I will send you thirty men from Philos’s company, which is all I can spare.”

As I returned to my position I could see the enemy massing anew in still greater strength, as the main body pressed up the road toward the bridge. I told Philos to send thirty of his men over to his cousin, and they got there just as the enemy advanced once more.

This time they attacked us both, broke through into our orchard, and once again swept right over the defences of the lower hill. We took heavy toll of them as they came up the steep slope, but they did not lack courage, and the gaps in the lines filled as fast as they were made, while their arrows slowly but steadily wore down our weak force. Twice we drove them back out of the orchard, and twice they pushed their way in again. The third time they drove us back to the very crest, and only the reserve under Philos saved us being cleared right off the hilltop. The green hillside was strewn with bodies, and every now and then a wild rush of shouting men would surge in, with scurry of steel, and the low dull sound of blows, shouts of slayers, and cry of wounded, though for the most part the Blue Sakae fought in silence, fighting like trapped wolves.

We beat them out once more, and Payindah’s rifle was hot and the woodwork oily, and his beloved bayonet red to the haft. As they drew off I looked around. On the lower hill the fight raged round the huts, and the whole hill was massed with the enemy. On our side we had no longer men to hold the orchard hedge, and had to draw back to positions nearer the crest. To the right the enemy had found ways through the marshland, and driven up our men below, while my thirty mounted men had come up the hill, picketed their ponies behind, and were standing just under the crest waiting for orders.

Still farther out to the right, Stephnos was heavily out-numbered, and I could see him withdrawing toward us, disputing every inch of cover where his men dismounted and fought awhile with the bow, galloping off once more as the enemy closed, to dismount again and renew the fight at the next point that offered cover.

“It is finished,” said Philos, pointing to the lower hill. “See, the enemy have swept right over it.”

“Yes, but the huts still hold,” said I, looking through my glasses. “I can see the enemy still being shot down with arrows. Your cousin has drawn the rest of his men into the buildings and still holds out. But the road is open behind us now, and we shall be surrounded in a little while. Send a reliable man to tell Stephnos how we stand. If he is going to join us, he must do so now. Otherwise it will be too late.”

“They come!” shouted Payindah, pointing back down the Aornos road.

The men around did not understand him, but they caught his meaning, as looking back we saw, about two miles away, the low long dust-cloud that shows marching troops, and a low cheer went up.

“Half an hour more, Philos,” said I. “We shall be hard put to it to hold that time.”

“And my messenger is killed. See, the enemy is thick between us and Stephnos. He will have to draw off to the rearward. We fight this out alone. The enemy on the lower hill have seen the dust. Hark, how they shout and call to those behind. They will attack us now with all their strength to get the hills ere Kyrlos comes, so that the rest of their people may cross the river. Lo, they come now!”

His orders rang out, and our worn lines stiffened again as the enemy advanced up the hill once more, dense masses of closely packed men, and their arrows rained on us anew. My second orderly, standing behind me, gave a choked sob as an arrow tore into his throat, and he reeled backward, the light breaking in his eyes.

But Paulos’s men held steady, and there was neither shouting nor cheering, only the harsh cries of the N.C.O.’s bidding them shoot steady and all together. For a space we held the attackers off, but ever the pressure increased as they drove upon us again and again, till finally they forced us from our last cover out on to the open hilltop, where my little reserve of mounted men were already busy loosing arrows against the enemy now massing behind us.

We flung back our flanks to complete a circle, and then they swarmed upon us from all sides, and we fought in a close-packed ring as with a last endeavour they sought to dislodge us before our main army, now clear to view, gleam of spear-point and glint of mail in the dust, could reach the hills.

They broke into our ring, and we beat them out once, fighting hard in silence. There was no more chance for the long bows, and men fought with sword or knife or heavy axe, and here and there, in stark primeval fashion, with tooth and clutching hand. Then a last rush broke into our centre, and the fight swayed and split as my little troop was carried right over the hilltop in a stabbing, spitting rush of savage men in Shaman mail, and Brown Sakae wadded felt or sheepskin. My standard-bearer, most of my mounted men, Payindah, Philos, and a handful of his own company--we checked them once again, and found our feet; and, looking backward, I saw our leading troops very near, and below us enemy pouring past to try and check their onslaught while those above finished us. In they came again, while beyond us--close-packed--some forty of my men fought in a little ring of trees, while Shamans and Brown Sakae surged about them like a pack around a bayed boar.

Philos--just in front of me--sent his sword home in the throat of a mail-clad Shaman, and as he did so was beaten down by an axe-blow over the head. My last pistol bullet settled the axeman as I sprang in over Philos, Paulos’s blade in my hand. I thanked my stars then for my early-fostered taste for swordsmanship, for there was no time to reload.

A long-haired, long-moustached man, with a face like a bird of prey, leapt in at me with others on either hand, while behind them more dim figures surged up. His long knife came sweeping up from below, but I caught it in time with the low parry my old _maître d’armes_ used to rub into me when I was a lad in France, and the instinctive riposte drove in below the man’s belt, and he swayed over sideways, nearly wrenching my sword from my hand. A spear rang home on my chest, knocking me sideways as I freed my blade, and then I realized Payindah’s presence as his rifle spoke almost in my ear, and the owner of the spear went down in a huddled mass.

The enemy checked a second then, and I saw that Philos moved and tried to raise himself, and the absence of any heavy flow of blood about his head made me think he was only stunned. Then in they surged anew, and for a breathless instant I fought for my life with a mail-shirted, clean-shaven Shaman, with an expressionless face and the mouth of a fiend, and eyes that seemed made of yellow jade. Once he nearly got home with a thrust that I parried only just in time, and the riposte was too slow, for he jumped out and in again like a wild-cat. But, as he came on the second time, I caught him in the throat with the long, straight-armed _coup d’arrêt_, and my point stood out a clear three inches behind his neck muscles as his expressionless eyes rolled upward, and he sank a dead weight on my sword. Then a tearing hot pain in my right thigh brought me to the ground as my leg was swept from under me by a spear with a greasy sheep-skin-coated ruffian at the other end.

My jade-eyed man and I came down in a heap over Philos, who was trying to get to his feet again, and there was another sickening wrench as the greasy man dragged his spear-point clear for a final thrust. Luckily in Sakaeland they favour the thin, small, leaf-shaped spear with razor edges.

He shortened spear as I struggled on the ground, and then Payindah leapt across me--a shadow against the blue sky and the ring of men around--and his bayonet went home under the man’s ribs. Hardly was it in when he pulled it free again to drive the rifle-butt with all his force into the jaw of a knifeman who sprang upon him. The man reeled backward--his jawbone smashed--and then with a rush and a whirl the first wave of our people from behind swept over us in a storm of steel; and a mixed mob of Shaman, Brown Sakae, and our own Blue Sakae troops went swirling on down the hill, and the little hilltop was silent a moment ere a new rush of our people pressed over it.

Philos had got to his feet and stood unsteadily, looking round over the stricken remnants of our companies. Then a new throng of Kyrlos’s folk passed over us, Andros sword in hand, his eagle plumes gay in his steel cap ahead of them. Seeing us, he waved on his men and stopped.

“Sore hurt, Harilek?” he queried, as I lay on the ground, while Payindah and my standard-bearer tied up my leg, which was bleeding freely.

“I think not gravely, but enough to keep me quiet a bit,” said I, feeling, indeed, very limp.

“You have suffered here, I see. But Paulos’s banner will be sung of in all Sakaeland, and with it will be remembered your name so long as the story is told. Harilek, I envy you your fortune. We hold them, and in another half-hour we will drive them over the river, and presently across the border. They fall back already. And ’tis you we have to thank.”

He considered me thoughtfully. “You ought to have been born among us Sakae, Harilek. Such a fight has not been fought since the old, old days. First you save Aryenis, and now you fight to a finish in a battle to help a people whom you hardly know, sword to sword in our own fashion, too, it seems, and not with your noise weapons. You are to be envied, I think.”

“And to be thanked also, Harilek,” said Philos. “I am dazed still, but it seems that I owe you my life. We are all your debtors.”

“The fight had nothing much to do with me, Andros. It was fought by Paulos’s folk. I am to be envied in that I had the fortune to be with such men, that only. And as for your matter, Philos, in such a close fight every man owes something to every one else. I in turn owe my life to my man here. But how many of our people are left?”

“I go and see now. Not over-many, I fear. I think my cousin is dead also, and he was to have been married next month.” He went off, still walking rather shakily. Luckily the axe had glanced from his cap, and, barring a very sore and aching head, he was none the worse next day.

“I must go on, Harilek, since you are all right,” said Andros. “I see your friends coming up, so you will be looked after. I am sorry you will not see the enemy really punished, for I fear you will lie abed some time. Nevertheless, although you are laid by the heels, I envy you.”

He smiled a farewell, and went off after his troops.

Then came Forsyth and Wrexham, the former somewhat battle-worn, but cheerful, as befits a man who has dealt properly with a superior force of enemy all day and seen their backs at last.

“Heard you’d copped it, Harry,” said Forsyth as he knelt down to examine my leg. “Luckily I brought along a haversack of dressings and things on my pony. What is it? Arrow? Sword?” He pulled off Payindah’s crude bandage as he spoke.

“Spear, worse luck. It seems to have made a largish hole, doesn’t it?”

“Might be worse, and it’s clean-looking. No arteries touched, which is the chief thing. I’ll get a first dressing on, and then we’ll get you back to Aornos. Feeling limp?”

“Not too bad. Should like a meal more than anything.”

Wrexham, having discovered that I was not seriously hurt, had hurried on again to catch Kyrlos and join in the fight.

Some of my men had come up now with a rough stretcher, and when Forsyth had tied me up they carried me down the hill to the road, where such of our men as were left were collecting. We were a sorry sight when we finally took count. There were about sixty sound men; another sixty or so who, though wounded, could stand; seventy or so badly wounded, some of whom were not likely to see the day out. The rest were dead: Paulos’s contingent would take no further part in the war for some time. I was more than glad to see Philos’s cousin among the last to come in. He had collected the débris of his company in the huts at the last, and held out there with a score of men. After one or two efforts the enemy had left them, doubtless intending to smoke them out or burn them out at their leisure. He had been wounded again after I had first seen him, and his mail was hacked and scarred, and his leather under-jerkin stained with blood and ripped in places, but he was still in fighting form.

He wrung me by the hand as he came up.

“A good fight, Sir Harilek. We shall have much honour in the land. And there are very much fewer Shamans now than this morning. Over two hundred we slew on our hill, and you must have killed twice that number on your side. But we have suffered sorely. There will be many desolate homes round Aornos to-night.”

The bulk of Kyrlos’s army had passed us, and the fight had swayed back over the stream. The enemy were in full retreat, it seemed. Kyrlos had missed us, having gone straight on down the road, whereas Andros had come up over the hill, but he sent me a little note later in the afternoon, which I keep as a memory of that day on the Astara. The Sakae are a most straight-spoken people, either when pleased or displeased.

Our pack-animals came up presently, and we had some food, which was very welcome. Andros had given Philos orders that we were to go back to Aornos for the present, taking our wounded and leaving a guard over our dead, who would be fetched next morning for burial by their folk. The Sakae set great store on burying their dead in their own villages, whenever possible, rather than in a strange place. Rough stretchers were improvised for such of the wounded as could not walk, and with the assistance of the sound men some of us were carried and others packed into bullock-carts, which Andros had brought for us. It was dark before we reached our camp at Aornos, and I was glad to get to bed in the warm firelit room in Torka’s house, and, after more dressing by Forsyth, to eat a meal specially prepared for me, and brought up by Torka’s wife in person, a talkative but kindly lady, who fussed over me a lot. But the only person I wanted to fuss over me just then was the only one I couldn’t have, and I was glad when Forsyth produced some hot milk and aspirin, with an order to go to sleep if I could.

I got to sleep eventually, despite my leg, but the silence was broken now and then by women wailing over their dead, for some of the Aornos men had been the van of Kyrlos’s troops. The day had been distinctly hectic, which did not aid sleep. And, lastly, Aryenis came into my mind, and refused to go away at all, despite the insistent memory of Andros’s mauve-bound eagle feathers. It was a bad night altogether, and I was glad when, in the morning after he had dressed my leg again, Forsyth announced that Paulos had sent in demanding immediate delivery of my person at his house, since I was the leader of his men, and therefore his house was mine for as long as I wanted it.

“Would you rather stop here or go on? It’s only four miles, and he’s sent his own special litter for you.”

“I’ll go. I don’t want to stop here and be a nuisance to these people, whom I hardly know. They’ll have others along presently, and I feel at home with Paulos.”

So I went in Paulos’s litter, with the remnants of my companies behind me, and the yellow-haired standard-bearer, in his battle-stained mail, riding ahead with Paulos’s banner. The people cheered us through the streets, and I was glad, for Paulos’s men had more than earned it.