Adventure Magazine Cover — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

THE WOLF MASTER 63 efforts to string the powerful bow with quiet amusement. Then they mounted and the night was full of sound. A fitful wind had sprung up in the last hours, whipping through the tall grass, and muffling the thudding hoofs of unseen horses, the creaking of leather, the rattle of arrows in quivers. Masses of riders moved past Al-Tabir, and the Persian tried to keep his teeth from chattering as he rode after the Cossack. He followed Kirdy back at last to the cattle herd—that had been picked up on the last day’s march, and hurried in by Tatars who sought refuge from the sul- tan’s pillagers. There were more than a thousand of the beasts. And Al-Tabir rubbed his eyes. Behind the restless herd he could make out dozens of new camp-fires, and beyond them a solid mass of warriors drawn up around the ox- tail standard of Tevakel Khan. He had left such a mass, out on the left of the herd, and from riders that came and went past the fires, he judged that there was another third on the right. Only the front of the herd was cleared of horsemen. Here was the black mass of the slope that hid the Turkoman camp from view. “What is that?” Al-Tabir started and gripped his javelin, bow and reins all at once. His gray pony pricked up its ears. “The Turkomans are loosing off their matchlocks,”’ Kirdy grunted. “It is the end of the sword-dance.”’ But Al-Tabir was staring, fascinated, at the herd. Scores of gnome-like Tatars were at work there, and he heard a strange clat- tering and stamping that grew louder. Warriors ran up with bundles of reeds and brush and others fashioned torches at the fires behind the mass of cattle. Then the torches began to flicker in and out of the herd. ‘‘Ai-ee!l” he cried. beasts are burning!” It did not occur to him that the Tatars had been binding brush on the horns of a great part of the steers. He saw several of the Tatars trampled underfoot, and the blaze caught from one beast to another in the close packed, milling mass. Then, to Al-T&abir’s thinking, all the devils of the night swooped down. ‘The herd started to run away from the camp- fires, and the Tatars around Kirdy howled and roared at it on their wing, so that the “The horns of the leaders plunged down the wind, over the knoll and toward the Turkoman camp. The bellowing of the beasts, the snorting of the frantic horses, the whining of the wind —all this swept Al-T&bir along, close at Kirdy’s stirrup. In the depression between the camps, the steers spread out, but ceased not their maddened rush as hot embers fell on them. Rushing to the summit of their slope, the Turkomans beheld the herd with its blazing horns. ‘Their patrols tried to turn it, but that herd could not be turned. Then the Turkomans ran for their horses. Thundering across the depression and up the slight slope, the cattle burst past the watch-fires and scattered among the tents, the carts, the piles of plunder of the raiders. Firelocks barked at them, and arrows began to flicker into them, but the mass of them surged over the tents—crashed head-on into wagons, rubbed blazing horns against flimsy felt. And in another moment flames fanned by the rushing wind began to spring up all over the encampment. To the best of Al-Tabir’s belief madness had given way to chaos, and he wondered into which of the seven hells of Moslem pur- gatory he had been plunged. The ‘‘Ghar—ghar —ghar!”’ of the eager Ta- tars mingled with the “Allah-hat!’’ of the rallying Turkomans. Al-Tabir was still between Kirdy and Arslan, galloping through lines of tents and dodging frantic steers. He saw two warriors on shaggy ponies— two men with gleaming swords and bare, shaven heads. Prudently he pulled in his horse, and watched the Cossack spur for- ward, parrying a slash of a Turkoman sim- itar and slipping his blade into the throat of the shouting warrior as he passed. Arslan rose in his short stirrups, swinging the long battle-ax. The Turkoman who opposed him threw up his sword to guard his head. But the heavy ax smote through the guard and split open the man’s forehead. “Nent-en!’’ Kirdy cried. “Forward!” They turned aside, bending low in the sad- dle to keep under the whistling shafts that flew from the shadows where men gathered. Their ponies leaped a tangle of bodies and flew up a clear slope toward the green stand- ard of the sultan. Here the wind howled at them and eddies of smoke twined around them, as if to draw them onward. A firelock roared and flashed, and Arslan’s pony sank, head down, at the crest of the COmiclboooks.c© 5}