Descendants of the Scythians - Страница 82

The explorers ran toward the cliffs. A group of priests and soldiers rushed after them in hot pursuit, probably with express orders to capture them again or simply kill them to get rid of them for good. The main body of the enemy forces was still engaged in bitter fighting with the slaves under the leadership of Ronis, but the group detached to capture the strangers was big enough to do the job without any difficulty. It was a grave situation in which the explorers stood no chances if they tried to resist.

Then something made Artem look back. Varkan and a dozen young soldiers appeared on the priests’ right flank! The valorous Scythian had not forgotten about his blood brother and his friends, even in the heat of battle! When he saw them, he immediately realized that they were in danger. So he had fought his way through, and now he was running with some of his men, toward them to help.

“Varkan’ll be here in a minute!” Artem cried out cheerfully. “We don’t have to worry now!”

They stopped to wait for Varkan and his men. Holding his blood-stained sword in one hand, the Scythian gesticulated with the other, pointing to the cliffs; as he spoke he had to stop a couple of times to gasp for air because he was still short of breath after the break-neck run:

“We must get there quickly! And wait until the enemy is broken from the rear! They are trying to resist. That’s why they’ve pulled together all their forces and are moving this way. But they still have no chance of winning.”

As soon as these words were translated, Ivan Semenovich, Lida and Dmitro Borisovich started running toward the cliffs. Varkan, his men, and Artem covered their retreat. Artem was now in full control of himself: his dear friends had been saved; Varkan had joined them, everything was all right. Every few steps Artem stopped, as some of the Scyithians in Varkan’s party did, and taking a good aim, shot an arrow at the enemy; he had picked up both the bow and the quiver full of arrows running through the battlefield some time earlier. His shots, no doubt, were not as effective as the archery of the Scythians, but the young man was eager to do something to help slow down the advance of the enemy.

Isn’t it a piece of bad luck! he thought as he released his arrows. To find ourselves right in the path of retreat of these damned priests and Hartak’s soldiers… All right, they don’t have any other way to retreat… that’s why they are pursuing us… ah, good, here’s the grove at last! I’ll make my stand here, shoot a few more arrows and then dash into the trees!

Artem again saw the scarlet cloak of Dorbatay among the priests; he also saw the pathetic figure of Hartak. He would have given a great deal to be able to hit any one of them with his arrow! But, alas, the distance was too great. Artem’s arms, despite his intensive training, were not as strong as those of the Scythian warriors; neither was his aim too sure.

“All right, just you wait, I’ll try all the same… maybe this time…” Artem whispered to himself as he stood behind a tree, taking aim. But no, it was too far! And the more experienced enemy soldiers had a much better chance of hitting Artem than Artem did of hitting his target!

“Don’t lag behind, Artem!” he heard Ivan Semenovich calling to him in a loud and peremptory voice. There was nothing to be done but obey the order. He turned, and running among the trees in zigzags, soon joined the rest.

Varkan was speaking to his men in an evident fit of bad temper, gesticulating and pointing toward the grave from which the mass of enemy soldiers were moving toward the grove. They were retreating, that much was clear, but retreating in the same general direction as the advance party dispatched by Dorbatay to capture the strangers. To oppose this formidable force was only a dozen of Varkan’s soldiers and the outlanders, on whose combat strength Varkan could not rely very much. The fierce attack of the slaves caused the priests and Hartak’s soldiers to flee from the grave toward the grove, thus creating an immediate and grave threat to the outlanders and Varkan’s dozen, and forcing them to retreat. But the question was: where to?

Ivan Semenovich explained the situation to Artem: “Varkan’s men, the main body, that is, of his men, got too involved in fighting and allowed the priests to cut them off from their leader, Varkan. But then they should have attacked the retreating priests, which they apparently did not do, and now the situation is somewhat complicated.” That was evidently what Varkan was so annoyed about. He turned to the outlanders, making an eloquent gesture with his hand toward the cliffs, as if to say: that’s the place we must get to, and quick! He did not have to insist as the situation was only too clear to everyone. Soon they were climbing the rocks to the flat ledge where they would be able to defend themselves, protected by the jagged rocks along its edge.

As they spread out among the boulders, Artem remembered the geologist’s assessment of the situation, and said:

“All the same, the victory will be Ronis’s and Varkan’s! We’ll have a chance yet to celebrate their victory with them! Take my word for it!”

“Don’t be too rash with conclusions, Artem. It’s not yet clear whether we’ll be able to participate in any future celebrations…”

“And why is that?”

“Well, if the priests manage to capture us again… then, I don’t think they are likely to spare us… And there’s nowhere for us to escape from here, do you realize that?”

“But we can wait out here until Ronis comes to the rescue. Besides, there must be horses somewhere in the vicinity…”

“First, we must get to those horses, Artem.”

A moment later, as though in support of the geologist’s words, something began whizzing and buzzing and hissing menacingly in the air all around them. It was a wild cacophony of high-pitched sounds of various intensities, grating on the nerves and striking panic into everyone. Artem had never heard anything like it before. He saw Lida go pale and Ivan Semenovich grimace. The sudden eruption of these terrible sounds gave Dmitro Borisovich a bad start. But a moment later he managed to get a control of his fright; strange as it might seem, he was the first to do it, he of all people.

“Don’t get up! Keep behind the rocks!” he shouted in a peremptory voice. “Hug the rocks! It’s the famous whistling arrows of the Scythians!”

In a few seconds they crawled to the protection of the rocky crest that separated the flat ground from the slope at the foot of which the priests and Hartak’s soldiers were now positioned. Artem and the rest had now understood what gave them such a bad fright: a hail of arrows descended on their hiding place; the enemy had used unusual arrows equipped with whistling devices that produced terrible sounds. The arrows flew over the crest, but due to the angle at which they had been shot, they could harm no one so far…

Dmitro Borisovich, snuggling in safety behind a huge rock, said:

“Yes, the famous whistling arrows of the Scythians! They were used to strike panic into the enemy. Dorbatay must have thought these arrows would frighten us, too… and I admit he was not wrong, the old rogue! It was really frightening!”

“It was frightening because it came so unexpectedly,” Artem said trying to put on a bold face, and glancing at Lida whose face still retained the pallor of a bad fright. “You know, it was really sudden, this ghastly whizzing… It was like an attack on the nerves, really! But they are just arrows, nothing more. Besides, arrows shot from below will pass above us without doing any harm! And as they say, the devil is not so black as he is painted!”

“What you say is basically correct,” Ivan Semenovich said pensively. “But if they choose to shoot in a different manner…”

“How?” Artem asked.

“In artillery it’s called ‘plunging fire.’ If you shoot at a certain angle, the missiles go rather steeply up but then they go down and can fall right behind a barrier… Do you follow me?”

“And they can use barbed arrows too,” Dmitro Borisovich said as though thinking aloud. “I’m not sure whether the Scythians use them, but the possibility exists.”

“Barbed arrows? And what’s that?” Artem asked rather tensely, feeling Lida squeeze his arm in fresh alarm. Artem wanted to say something else, to reassure the girl who had been considerably ruffled by what she had gone through, but he did not have time to.

Several arrows clanked and thudded, falling on the stones very close to where the explorers sat. Two arrows stuck vertically, trembling. A muffled groan reached their ears. Someone must have been wounded!

Turning around, Artem saw Varkan grab his left shoulder with the right hand. There was blood coming from under the hand and between the fingers.

“Varkan’s been hit!”

Varkan, pale in the face, pulled at the arrow but it did not come out. He gave it a stronger tug, but again with no effect. The arrow stayed in the flesh, and only the bulging muscles showed that he was applying great effort in trying to extricate it. Glancing at Dmitro Borisovich, Artem saw great anxiety in his face.

“It must be a barbed arrowhead,” the archeologist said in a whisper. “If it is what I think… it cannot be pulled out like this… only if you cut the flesh around it… The arrowhead must be taken out, otherwise it’ll oxidize… And what if it’s poisoned?”

Varkan, biting his lips, gave one last pull and then abandoned his attempts. One of his men crawled up to him. He cut off the shaft and bandaged the wound tightly, using a belt to secure the bandage. Then he said something to Varkan who silently nodded his head, his eyes closed.