The Property of a Lady - Elizabeth Adler [39]
She glanced back up the hill. The Tartar soldier in command of the machine gun had spotted them and was motioning her angrily to stay where she was. She sank behind the headstone again, sandwiching Azaylee between her body and the cool pink marble, whispering to Viktor to be still.
“Is this the new game, Missie?” Azaylee asked as the machine gun rat-tatted again from the trees, echoing around the hills and across the silken blue bay. Missie peered from the headstone, watching as the Tartar made his move. Now he had located exactly where the Bolshevik gunfire was coming from. He aimed his machine gun unhurriedly in that direction, feeding the ribbons of cartridges through with precise speed as he began to fire.
Missie clutched Azaylee’s face against her breast, but she couldn’t turn her own eyes away. She saw the Bolsheviks run from the trees, their hands held high in surrender. The Tartars showed no mercy. Their bullets sent the fleeing men spinning and twisting down the hillside, ripping them to bloody ribbons.
After sending one of his men to reconnoiter the woods to make sure all the enemy had been routed, the Tartar officer made his way toward her. He was tall and arrogant, and as well as a rifle he carried a huge old sword in an elaborate leather scabbard.
Missie flinched as his angry blue eyes inspected first her and then the child, wondering if this was the end. Then to her surprise Viktor stopped growling. Wagging his tail, he flopped at her feet and put his nose peacefully on his paws.
“Don’t you know it is dangerous to walk in the hills these days?” he shouted in heavily accented Russian. “You might have been killed!”
“So might you,” she retorted bitterly.
He grinned, showing a perfect set of dazzling white teeth. “That’s my job. And I don’t need any foreigners getting in the way.” Putting his head on one side, he stared at Azaylee. “Xenia?” he said, surprised.
She stared back at him doubtfully. “Remember me?” he asked. “I used to make you and your brother laugh when I did this.” Crouching beside her, he wiggled his mustache and pulled a funny face.
“Tariq!” She laughed delightedly as she flung her arms around his neck. “It’s Tariq!”
He glanced at Missie and said, grinning. “My name is Tariq Kazahn. My father was head gardener at the Ivanoff villa. Misha and I used to play together as children whenever the family was down here on holiday. Of course I have not seen him in a long time. The army posted me to the Baltic, and then, when the troubles came, back down here, to Sevastopol. And now we are reduced to skirmishing in the hills!” His vivid blue eyes looked tired as he flashed her that white grin. “But we are not beaten yet.” he added confidently. “This sword has been in my family since the time of Genghis Khan. It has killed many men in the name of freedom. We Tartars will fight to the end—and we shall win!”
Missie heaved a sigh of relief. He was a friend after all; maybe he could help them. She told him quickly what had happened.
Tears rolled down the Tartar’s strong face but he made no move to wipe them away. “The prince was my friend,” he said quietly. “I would willingly have died in his place.”
“Please help us,” she begged, “We need to get to Constantinople but it is dangerous. We have no papers and Princess Sofia might be recognized. The banks were taken over by the revolutionaries before we could get any money out, and now we have nothing, we are living on the charity of two old servants.” She fell silent, waiting for his answer.
His blue eyes met hers steadily. “Trust me,” Tariq Kazahn said softly. “It will be done.”
Tariq Kazahn was a true Tartar. His bloodline went back to the sixteenth century, before Ivan the Terrible reduced the race to homeless nomads, forever roaming the bleak Russian steppes. Some of his ancestors had returned to Turkey, but others had settled near the Black Sea, where domed Islamic Tartar temples dotted the southern hills alongside Russian Orthodox churches.
A network of Kazahn relatives had soon covered the region, many