Adventure Magazine Cover — page 10: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

4 he chuckled. ‘‘With saddles and sabers for relish, if the fare likes you not. You take the snow road this night.” “You lie, dog-face!”’ snarled one of the nearest. Plucking a half-burned barrel-stave from the fire, he advanced threateningly on th soldier. iy “Satan would not stir out of hell this night. I’ll singe your beard, you hyena——”’ The essaul, the sergeant, loomed up, stripped to the waist. Under his white skin his heavy biceps swelled, and the unlucky orderly paled visibly. “Nay, tis an order, good Togrukh.”’ “Whose order? Our sotwiks are dead, and our ataman, our colonel, is up the river. Who gives an order to the Don regiment?” Togrukh reached out and gripped the orderly’s beard, swinging the smouldering board with his free hand to keep the flames going. His white teeth gleamed through the tangle of a black mustache. “So, good sir,’ he growled, ‘‘the noble elders would like to give an order to the men from the Don, eh? ‘They sent you, shrinking rose-vine, and you came, lovely little flower!” “The rose-bud came, the lovely little flower,’ chanted the warriors gleefully. Togrukh was about to apply his brand when the giant figure in a wolf skin svtiza entered behind the orderly, stooping as he did so to clear the lintel. ‘“‘Are your saddles oiled?” He glanced up at the pegs on which a hundred saddles perched, each one different from the rest, but each ornamented in some way, worked with silver, or gold coins, cov- ered with flowered silk. All were in good order. “Your sabers cleaned? Have you boots, a pair to each man? Are they whole?” To every question the moody Togrukh nodded, puffing at an empty pipe, his handling of the messenger suspended for the moment. “All is as it should be, Colonel Ayub,” he muttered. ‘The forehead to you, colonel. We did not know you were here.” “That is evident,” grinned Ayub. - He had a good-natured, muscular fa¢e. His black eyes, set far apart, scanned the _ assembly without anger. The warriors sur- veyed him with equal interest, dwelling upon the mighty barrel of his chest, and the two-foot handle of the broadsword strapped Adventure to his back. This weapon was unique in the Siech, for Ayub had taken it from a German man-at-arms and had used no other weapon since. He alone of the free Cossacks could cut a cross in the air with the fifty-pound blade held in one hand. Moreover the ataman Ayub was a kunak, a good fellow. They called him colonel although he had never commanded a regi- ment; instead he had been in more scrapes than an eel out of water. Togrukh and his mates knew that Ayub’s ribs had been burned black over the brazier of a Turkish torturer, and a pound or so of his three hundred-weight consisted of grape-shot in the chest and thighs from a Polish culverin. Because of his reputation for nosing out trouble as a hound scents a hare, he never lacked for followers among the Cossacks. “Ayub,” said the stolid Togrukh, ‘‘we know that you are the comrade of the falcon, our colonel. As God lives, you are a very brother to him, and that is good. But what is this about an order? We have no officers in the camp. If you had not come we would have pricked this swollen blad- der—” he spat at the orderly—“‘for bidding us to our sabers this night. Doubtless the Scribe wants the life let out of the prisoners in the pen, and it is always the Don regiment that is summoned when a dog’s work is to be done.”’ “Tt the falcon, your colonel, gave an order would the Donskot obey?” An angry mutter went up from the lis- teners, who plainly considered themselves affronted by this remark. “Aye,” responded Togrukh, who was the only surviving non-com, “if we obeyed not—there would be terror.” ‘Then,’ Ayub assured him, “there will be terror if you do not obey now. Demid, your chief, is here in the camp. He rode in at vespers and is at talk with the gray- heads in the church. He gave the order.” “Allah!” Togrukh shot one threatening glance at the orderly who had failed to men- tion this all-important fact, and reached up to jerk down his fur-lined great-coat. “On your feet, dog-brothers!”’ he barked over his shoulder at his mates who were scram- bling into coats, boots and belts. “Thirty of you, only!” commanded Ayub. “Two tens with lances, one ten to go to the supply shed, to be issued fire-locks with powder-horns, matches and bullet sacks. The rest to the stables, to rub down the oO COMG HOO <S CO