The English Assassin by Michael Moorcock Read Free Book Online

of the Zaporozhian Cossack, rode to where she stood. A Russian SKS carbine jostled on his back as he dismounted from his pony and wiped a large hand over his huge, hard face.
    His voice was deep, humorous and resonant. “I am Karinin, the Ataman of this Sech.” His oval eyes were equally admiring as he studied her, putting one foot in his pony’s stirrup, hooking his arm around his saddle pommel and lighting his curved, black pipe with a match which he struck on the sole of his boot. “You come from Auchinek, they tell me. You wish to make an alliance. Yet you know we are Christians, that we hate Jews worse than we hate Moslems and Muscovites.” He removed his floppy grey-and-black sheepskin shako to expose his shaven head, the gold rings in his ears, to wipe his dark brow and thick moustache. A calculated set of gestures, thought Una Persson, but well accomplished.
    “The alliance Auchinek suggests is an alliance of the Orient against the West.” She spoke precisely, as if unimpressed by his style, his strength, his good looks.
    “But you are—what?—a Russ? A Scandinavian, uh? A traitor? Or just a romantic like Cornelius?”
    “What are you but that?”
    He laughed. “All right.”
    The wind began to bluster, carrying with it the overriding smell of horse manure. The sky seemed to decide its direction and streamed rapidly eastward.
    Karinin took his foot from the stirrup and slid the slim, scabbarded sabre around his waist until it rested on his left hip. He knocked out the pipe on his silver boot heel. “You had better come to my yurt,” he said, “to tell me the details. There’s no-one much left for us to fight in these parts.” He pointed into the centre of the sech, where the circles of yurts were tightest. His yurt was no larger than the others, for the Zaporozhians were touchily democratic, but a tall horsehair standard stood outside its flap.
    Una Persson began to see the farcical side of her situation. She grinned. Then she noticed the gibbet which had been erected near Karinin’s yurt. A group of old Kuban Cossacks were methodically putting a noose about the neck of a young European dressed in a yellow frock-coat, lilac cravat, yellow shirt and a blue, wide-brimmed hat. The European’s expression was amused as he let them tie his hands behind him.
    “What are they doing?” Una Persson asked.
    The ataman spoke almost regretfully. “They are hanging a dandy. There aren’t so many as there were.”
    “He seems brave.”
    “Surely courage is a characteristic of the dandy?”
    “And yet those old men plainly hate him. I thought Cossacks admired courage?”
    “They are also very prudish. And a little jealous.”
    The tightening rope knocked the blue hat from the fair hair; it covered the face for a moment before falling to the mud. The dandy gave his captors a chiding glance. The Kubans slapped at the rumps of the two horses on the other end of the rope. Slowly the dandy was raised into the air, his body twisting, his legs kicking, his face turning red, then blue, then black. Some noises came out of his distorted mouth.
    “
Sartor Resartus
.” Karinin guided Una Persson past the gallows and ducked to push back the flap of his yurt and allow her to precede him. The yurt was illuminated by a lamp on a chest—a bowl of fat with a wick burning in it. The little round room was tidily furnished with a wooden bed and a table, as well as the chest.
    Karinin came in and began to lace up the flap from the inside.
    Una Persson removed her coat and put it on the chest. She unbuckled her ammunition belt with its holstered Smith and Wesson .45 and placed it on top of the coat.
    Karinin’s slanting eyes were tender and passionate. He stepped forward and took her to him. His breath smelled of fresh milk.
    “We of the steppe have not lost the secret of affection,” he told her. They lay down in the narrow bed. He began to tug at his belt. “It comes between love and lust. We believe in moderation, you