Volodimir Vladko - Descendants of the Scythians

There were many Scythians — their number had grown considerably in the last few hours — sitting under the thick trees at the edge of the glade a short distance away from Artem and Dmitro Borisovich. Varkan’s friends kept joining him here in the forest, all of them united by their strong opposition to Dorbatay; all of them had reason to fear his vengefulness. The Scythians were fondling their horses’ harness, singing a gentle song. They were waiting for Varkan who had gone somewhere. Diana was lying at Artem’s feet, occasionally raising her sad eyes as though trying to be sympathetic with his gloomy thoughts and mood. It was very quiet in the forest; only the fire crackled, and carefree birds chirped in the trees.

Artem stared silently into the flames, his fingers breaking a twig he had absentmindedly picked up from the ground. I wish , he thought, that I had here as many reliable friends as the numberof little pieces this twig could be broken into!

He raised his head suddenly, listening: the muffled clatter of hooves came from the distance. The Scythians who had been peacefully resting under the trees sprang to their feet. The clatter of hooves, muffled by the soft, spongy ground of the forest floor, was approaching fast. In a few seconds, Varkan, riding a big black stallion that was breathing hard, appeared in the glade. Several young Scythian warriors, armed with bows, swords and spears followed him. In tow were a dozen horses, laden with weapons.

Even before Varkan had time to dismount, Artem shouted from joy:

“Our bags! He’s brought our bags, Dmitro Borisovich!”

In fact, there were two knapsacks on his shoulders. The Scythian had done what he had been asked to do: he had managed to retrieve the bags and brought them to his friends.

“Wasn’t Varkan fast in finding the bags?” Artem said, collecting the precious knapsacks from Varkan. “Isn’t it great! Well done, Varkan! Dmitro Borisovich, ask him, please, how he managed to do it so quickly?”

“Oh, it was very simple,” he said in reply to the archeologist’s question. “As they had been left in the kibitka of the deceased Skolot, I thought nobody would touch them and, in fact, nobody did. I asked some of my boys to look. They did, found the bags and stealthily brought them back to me. But they did not feel like staying in the camp as their relations with Dorbatay were not very good. He knew they were my friends and was not likely to forget it. So, I invited them to join us here. They did. They are skilled warriors and will be of great use to us. And on our way here, we picked out several horses from Dorbatay’s herd, just in case, you know. They are fine horses and we will surely put them to good use. And we also brought a few weapons. They will surely be of good use as well.”

“Great, it’s just great,” Artem murmured to himself, going through the contents of the knapsacks. “Now, there’s the lamp, oh — cans of food… we don’t need these, that’s for sure, there’s food galore. Good, and what’s this? Aha, that’s the primers and safety fuse. Excellent! But where are the dynamite charges? They were in the bags… I remember putting them there very well… at least into mine, for sure… So why aren’t they here in the bag where they’re supposed to be?”

Then he stopped rummaging through the knapsacks, hitting himself with the flat of his hand on the forehead. “Of course! Damn it! Damn it! What the hell did I do that for? Damn it all!”

“What’s the matter, Artem? Have you discovered something terrible?” the archeologist said.

“Ah, no,” Artem said, very much annoyed. “You might say I haven’t ‘discovered’ what I very much hoped I would — the dynamite charges. One of the bags is Lida’s, and there were no charges in it. The other is mine, and the charges were in it, but…”

“But they’re not there now, are they?”

“No, they aren’t. The fact of the matter is that I took them out myself! Just before we went to confront Dorbatay at that pile of faggots, the altar, remember? I took a couple of primers, removed the charges from my bag, and put them into Ivan Semenovich’s, as he told me to do, for reasons of safety, I believe… So, all the charges are now in his knapsack.”

“That’s too bad.”

Artem shook his head.

“Oh yes, too bad. It was our bad luck when Varkan picked these two bags instead of the other two… Incidentally, could you ask him, please, what happened to the other two bags?”

Varkan shrugged his shoulders: Varkan’s friends had discovered only two bags in Skolot’s kibitka, so it was not a matter of choosing; they picked up the two bags and brought them to Varkan; he did not have the slightest idea where the other two could be.

“Isn’t that unfortunate?” Artem said gloomily. “I was pinning so much hope on these charges… they were our only weapons, since we’re not too handy with all those battle axes, swords, and spears, are we? We’ve never been trained to use them, have we? And I don’t know where we can start looking for the other two bags.”

He then put all the things he had taken out of the bags back into place, pocketing only the primers and fuse.

“Things turned out differently from what I wanted. Nothing’s to be done now but to try and teach ourselves to handle Scythian weapons, Dmitro Borisovich. It’s the only thing we can do at the moment. For example, do you like this thing here?”

Artem pulled out a sword from the pile of weapons which had been brought by Varkan and his men and dumped in the center of the glade. Tossing it from hand to hand, he said:

“It’s a little too heavy and will take a long time to get used to. And what about this one here?…”

Now he picked up a battle axe with a curved edge.

“Aha, this thing seems to be easier to handle, Dmitro Borisovich. Go ahead and choose something for yourself. We’ve found ourselves in a situation when we need to be able to use these weapons.”

Varkan and his friends, who watched Artem choose a weapon with some interest, could not help laughing when Dmitro Borisovich began doing the same. The younger outlander was not too dexterous in handling the weapons, but his movements were sure enough and his grip on the handles was firm. But the older man was a sight to behold!…

He dealt with the new task like serious work that required determined effort. He tried a sword, a spear and a battle axe, leaving bows and arrows alone. The latter, he judged, quite rightly, were beyond the scope of his martial abilities. At last, Dmitro Borisovich settled on a battle axe. His eyeglasses flashed menacingly as he brandished the axe, taking aim at an imaginary enemy, hacking at the air right and left, making terrible grunting sounds, putting the weapon down, spitting on his palms to get a firmer grip, picking up the axe again, hitting something in front of him, then quickly turning and parrying a sudden treacherous thrust from an imaginary enemy coming from behind… It was a spectacle worth seeing!

“That’s good, that’s right,” Artem said approvingly, stifling his laughter and wiping away the smile that appeared on his face against his will. “Yes, that’s the way to do it! I wouldn’t say that you had a very bellicose look up till now, Dmitro Borisovich, but with this axe in your hands you look a veritable warrior! You could frighten the most stalwart enemy!”

“Oh, the enemy will take fright all right! I’ll teach myself to handle this axe and become a soldier, I will,” the archeologist replied in earnest, never stopping his martial exercise. “You were right, Artem, it’s high time for me… to take part… in military operations… we’ll have to fight… to free Lida and… Ivan Semenovich, right?”