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Mladenov crossed himself. By the gesture, he set himself apart once more from the Estonians, who were mostly Lutheran. Somehow, it did not matter now. P?ts said, "Let's start pla
Talli
Accordingly, none of the young men who went out to stand watch carried guns-they were too vulnerable to being picked off by Tatar raiders, and the folk of the valley did not own enough firearms to risk them thus. The youngsters went forth proudly all the same. The Russians and Estonians who had rifles slung them on their backs as they went about their chores, ready to fight at a moment's notice.
But hour followed hour, and nothing happened. Cat's Eye joined Byers' Star in the sky, making the valley as light and bright as it ever became. Byers' Star slowly sank, leaving Cat's Eye alone in the sky for more than forty hours. Then Byers' Star returned and Cat's Eye sank. Finally, a hundred thirty hours after Byers' Star first rose, both it and Cat's Eye were gone from the sky-full night was back for another twenty-two hours.
That stretch worried Anton P?ts-who could guess what deviltry the Tatars might try when no one could see what they were up to? At his urging, Mladenov doubled the number of patroling sentries. The Russian wanted to light watchfires through the darkness, but P?ts talked him out of it: "They'll let Bektashi's men see where we are but they won't do us a bit of good, looking out onto the steppe."
For all the farmers' precautions, Nikita Tukachevsky's relief could not find him when he came out to take his place. The word needed a while to filter back into Talli
Armed searchers went out at once, but found no sign of the luckless Tukachevsky until Cat's Eye returned to the sky. P?ts was part of that search party. He carried his rifle at the ready, his hands tight on it in the nervous grip of a man who knows war only from stories.
"Over here," someone called, and P?ts, a couple of hundred meters away, trotted through mixed grass and native Haven shrubbery to here. He heard how much noise he made as he ran, and knew he needed to do better-he sounded like a herd of drunken muskylopes with the mating frenzy upon them.
Tukachevsky lay sprawled and dead. His trousers were around his ankles, and he had been mutilated. P?ts sucked in a sick breath. A word was carved in sinuous Arabic script on the young Russian's forehead. Something bloody had been stuffed into his mouth. P?ts reached down to pull it out. He found he was holding Tukachevsky's severed penis. With a groan, he dropped it by the corpse. His stomach heaved; he fought against being sick.
More searchers, Estonians and Russians both, came up and formed a circle around the sentry's maltreated body. Some looked frightened, some looked fierce. Most seemed both at the same time. Several Russians made the sign of the cross.
P?ts said, "This is a warning to us. The Tatars think to make us afraid with it." He remembered the feel of what he had just touched. He was afraid, all right. But he did not let that show in his voice: "The truth is, it warns us what we can expect if we give in to them-and not just we men, but our wives and daughters, too. You and you and you, take this poor lad back to Talli
The men nodded, one by one. The fear had gone from most of their faces, and some of the ferocity as well. They just looked grim, as men will do when they face a dangerous job from which they ca
The nomads gave the folk of Talli
Bektashi's men did nothing to conceal their presence. On the contrary-fires flared as they threw torches into the fields. P?ts swore again, horribly. Even if the nomads were beaten, Talli
The forward assembly point for the farmers was a couple of kilometers north of Talli
"What happened?" P?ts asked.
Sergei Izvekov said, "The radio let out a squawk. One of the sentries-I think it was your Eugen"-he pronounced it Evgen, trying to make it into the Russian Yevgeny-"said 'Help! They're-' and then that cha
"Form a firing line," Iosef Mladenov shouted. "Take cover where you can, and make every shot count. Think of your mother, think of your wife-"
"If that doesn't do it, think of your neighbor's wife," somebody broke in. Mladenov tried to glare every which way at once to find out who had interrupted his martial address. He had no luck. The tension-breaking laughter that rose from the amateur warriors said the gibe had done some good.
P?ts found a place behind a boulder too big to have been cleared out of the field. Methodical as always, he checked to make sure his weapon had a round in the chamber and that the safety was off. Then he peered round the rock to see how close the Tatars were.
A kilometer of ground still separated horsemen from defenders. Bektashi's men were not advancing all out; they paused every so often to light more fires or simply to ride this way and that through the fields, trampling down long swathes of grain.
From five meters or so off to P?ts' left, Sergei Izvekov called, "You see, Anton Avgustovich, they are no more soldiers than we. Bandits, yes, acting the hooligan for the sport of it, but not really soldiers."
At the far right end of the farmers' line, someone started shooting at the nomads. At that range, he couldn't have hit a farmhouse, let alone a rapidly moving man on horseback. Mladenov's bull roar called down curses on the nervous rifleman's head.
Bektashi's men whooped and came on, spreading out into a skirmish line as they drew close enough for a gunshot to have some chance of striking home. P?ts thought there might have been fifty of them, about as many as the men they attacked. The nomads began firing too, some of them blazing away with weapons on full automatic. That meant baa shooting, but it also meant a lot of lead in the air. Through the noise of the gunfire came wounded men's screams and the shouts of the Tatars: "Allah! Allah! Allah!"
P?ts peeked out from behind his boulder, fired at the nearest leather-clad horseman. He missed. Two bullets spa