Complete El Borak

chapter 6

Again it was the spiteful cracking of rifles which awakened Willoughby. He sat up, momentarily confused and unable to remember where he was or how he came there. Then he recalled the events of the night; he was in the stronghold of an outlaw chief, and those detonations must mean the siege Gordon had predicted. He was alone in the great cavern, except for the horses munching fodder beyond the bars at the other end. Among them he recognized the big white stallion that had belonged to Baber Ali.

The fire had died to a heap of coals and the daylight that stole through a couple or arches, which were the openings of tunnels connecting with the outer air, was augmented by half a dozen antique-looking bronze lamps.

A pot of mutton stew simmered over the coals and a dish full of chupatties stood near it. Willoughby was aware of a ravenous hunger and he set to without delay. Having eaten his fill and drunk deeply from a huge gourd which hung nearby, full of sweet, cool water, he rose and started toward the tunnel through which he had first entered the Castle.

Near the mouth he almost stumbled over an incongruous object--a large telescope mounted on a tripod, and obviously modern and expensive. A glance out on the ledge showed him only half a dozen warriors sitting against the rampart, their rifles across their knees. He glanced at the ribbon of stone that spanned the deep gorge and shivered as he remembered how he had crossed it in the darkness. It looked scarcely a foot wide in places. He turned back, crossed the cavern and traversed the other tunnel.

He halted in the outer mouth. The wall that rimmed the ledge was lined with Afridis, kneeling or lying at the loopholes. They were not firing. Gordon leaned idly against the bronze door, his head in plain sight of anyone who might be in the valley below. He nodded a greeting as Willoughby advanced and joined him at the door. Again the Englishman found himself a member of a besieged force, but this time the advantage was all with the defenders.

Down in the valley, out of effectual rifle range, a long skirmish line of men was advancing very slowly on foot, firing as they came, and taking advantage of every bit of cover. Farther back, small in the distance, a large herd of horses grazed, watched by men who sat cross-legged in the shade of the cliff. The position of the sun indicated that the day was well along toward the middle of the afternoon.

“I’ve slept longer than I thought,” Willoughby remarked. “How long has this firing been going on?”

“Ever since noon. They’re wasting Russian cartridges scandalously. But you slept like a dead man. Baber Ali didn’t get here as quickly as I thought he would. He evidently stopped to round up more men. There are at least a hundred down there.”

To Willoughby the attack seemed glaringly futile. The men on the ledge were too well protected to suffer from the long-range firing. And before the attackers could get near enough to pick out the loopholes, the bullets of the Afridis would be knocking them over like tenpins. He glimpsed men crawling among the boulders on the cliffs, but they were at the same disadvantage as the men in the valley below--Gordon’s rifle-men had a vantage point above them.

“What can Baber Ali hope for?” he asked.

“He’s desperate. He knows you’re up here with me and he’s taking a thousand-to-one chance. But he’s wasting his time. I have enough ammunition and food to stand a six-month siege; there’s a spring in the cavern.”

“Why hasn’t Afdal Khan kept you hemmed up here with part of his men while he stormed Kurram with the rest of his force?”

“Because it would take his whole force to storm Kurram; its defenses are almost as strong as these. Then he has a dread of having me at his back. Too big a risk that his men couldn’t keep me cooped up. He’s got to reduce Akbar’s Castle before he can strike at Kurram.”

“The devil!” said Willoughby irritably, brought back to his own situation. “I came to arbitrate this feud and now I find myself a prisoner. I’ve got to get out of here--got to get back to Ghazrael.”

“I’m as anxious to get you out as you are to go,” answered Gordon. “If you’re killed I’m sure to be blamed for it. I don’t mind being outlawed for the things I have done, but I don’t care to shoulder something I didn’t do.”

“Couldn’t I slip out of here tonight? By way of the bridge--”

“There are men on the other side of the gorge, watching for just such a move. Baber Ali means to close your mouth if human means can do it.”

“If Afdal Khan knew what’s going on he’d come and drag the old ruffian off my neck,” growled Willoughby. “Afdal knows he can’t afford to let his clan kill an Englishman. But Baber will take good care Afdal doesn’t know, of course. If I could get a letter to him--but of course that’s impossible.”

“We can try it, though,” returned Gordon. “You write the note. Afdal knows your handwriting, doesn’t he? Good! Tonight I’ll sneak out and take it to his nearest outpost. He keeps a line of patrols among the hills a few miles beyond Jehungir’s Well.”

“But if I can’t slip out, how can you--”

“I can do it all right, alone. No offense, but you Englishmen sound like a herd of longhorn steers at your stealthiest. The Orakzai are among the crags on the other side of the Gorge of Mekram. I won’t cross the bridge. My men will let me down a rope ladder into the gorge tonight before moonrise. I’ll slip up to the camp of the nearest outpost, wrap the note around a pebble and throw it among them. Being Afdal’s men and not Baber’s, they’ll take it to him. I’ll come back the way I went, after moonset. It’ll be safe enough.”

“But how safe will it be for Afdal Khan when he comes for me?”

“You can tell Afdal Khan he won’t be harmed if he plays fair,” Gordon answered. “But you’d better make some arrangements so you can see him and know he’s there before you trust yourself outside this cave. And there’s the pinch, because Afdal won’t dare show himself for fear I’d shoot him. He’s broken so many pacts himself he can’t believe anybody would keep one. Not where his hide is concerned. He trusted me to keep my word in regard to Baber and your escort, but would he trust himself to my promise?”

Willoughby scowled, cramming the bowl of his pipe. “Wait!” he said suddenly. “I saw a big telescope in the cavern, mounted on a tripod--is it in working order?”

“I should say it is. I imported that from Germany, by the way of Turkey and Persia. That’s one reason Akbar’s Castle has never been surprised. It carries for miles.”

“Does Afdal Khan know of it?”

“I’m sure he does.”

“Good!”

Seating himself on the ledge, Willoughby drew forth pencil and notebook, propped the latter against his knee, and wrote in his clear concise hand:

AFDAL KHAN: I am at Akbar’s Castle, now being besieged by your uncle, Baber Ali. Baber was so unreasonably incensed at my failure to effect a truce that he allowed my servant Suleiman to be murdered, and now intends murdering me, to stop my mouth.

I don’t have to remind you how fatal it would be to the interests of your party for this to occur. I want you to come to Akbar’s Castle and get me out of this. Gordon assures me you will not be molested if you play fair, but here is a way by which you need not feel you are taking any chances: Gordon has a large telescope through which I can identify you while you are still out of rifle range. In the Gorge of Mekram, and southwest of the Castle, there is a mass of boulders split off from the right wall and well out of rifle range from the Castle. If you were to come and stand on those boulders, I could identify you easily.

Naturally, I will not leave the Castle until I know you are present to protect me from your uncle. As soon as I have identified you, I will come down the gorge alone. You can watch me all the way and assure yourself that no treachery is intended. No one but myself will leave the Castle. On your part I do not wish any of your men to advance beyond the boulders and I will not answer for their safety if they should, as I intend to safeguard Gordon in this matter as well as yourself.

GEOFFREY WILLOUGHBY



He handed the letter over for Gordon to read. The American nodded. “That may bring him. I don’t know. He’s kept out of my sight ever since the feud started.”

Then ensued a period of waiting, in which the sun seemed sluggishly to crawl toward the western peaks. Down in the valley and on the cliffs the Orakzai kept up their fruitless firing with a persistency that convinced Willoughby of the truth of Gordon’s assertion that ammunition was being supplied them by some European power.

The Afridis were not perturbed. They lounged at ease by the wall, laughed, joked, chewed jerked mutton and fired through the slanting loopholes when the Orakzai crept too close. Three still white-clad forms in the valley and one on the cliffs testified to their accuracy. Willoughby realized that Gordon was right when he said the clan which held Akbar’s Castle was certain to win the war eventually. Only a desperate old savage like Baber Ali would waste time and men trying to take it. Yet the Orakzai had originally held it. How Gordon had gained possession of it Willoughby could not imagine.

The sun dipped at last; the Himalayan twilight deepened into black-velvet, star-veined dusk. Gordon rose, a vague figure in the starlight.

“Time for me to be going.”

He had laid aside his rifle and buckled a tulwar to his hip. Willoughby followed him into the great cavern, now dim and shadowy in the light of the bronze lamps, and through the narrow tunnel and the bronze door.

Yar Ali Khan, Khoda Khan, and half a dozen others followed them. The light from the cavern stole through the tunnel, vaguely etching the moving figures of the men. Then the bronze door was closed softly and Willoughby’s companions were shapeless blurs in the thick soft darkness around him. The gorge below was a floating river of blackness. The bridge was a dark streak that ran into the unknown and vanished. Not even the keenest eyes of the hills, watching from beyond the gorge, could have even discerned the jut of the ledge under the black bulk of the Castle, much less the movements of the men upon it.

The voices of the men working at the rim of the ledge were lowering the rope ladder--a hundred and fifty feet of it--into the gorge. Gordon’s face was a light blur in the darkness. Willoughby groped for his hand and found him already swinging over the rampart onto the ladder, one end of which was made fast to a great iron ring set in the stone of the ledge.

“Gordon, I feel like a bounder, letting you take this risk for me. Suppose some of those devils are down there in the gorge?”

“Not much chance. They don’t know we have this way of coming and going. If I can steal a horse, I’ll be back in the Castle before dawn. If I can’t, and have to make the whole trip there and back on foot, I may have to hide out in the hills tomorrow and get back into the Castle the next night. Don’t worry about me. They’ll never see me. Yar Ali Khan, watch for a rush before the moon rises.”

“Aye, sahib.” The bearded giant’s undisturbed manner reassured Willoughby.

The next instant Gordon began to melt into the gloom below. Before he had climbed down five rungs the men crouching on the rampart could no longer see him. He made no sound in his descent. Khoda Khan knelt with a hand on the ropes, and as soon as he felt them go slack, he began to haul the ladder up. Willoughby leaned over the edge, straining his ears to catch some sound from below--scruff of leather, rattle of shale--he heard nothing.

Yar Ali Khan muttered, his beard brushing Willoughby’s ear: “Nay, sahib, if such ears as yours could hear him, every Orakzai on this side of the mountain would know a man stole down the gorge! You will not hear him--nor will they. There are Lifters of the Khyber who can steal rifles out of the tents of the British soldiers, but they are blundering cattle compared to El Borak. Before dawn a wolf will howl in the gorge, and we will know El Borak has returned and will let down the ladder for him.”

But like the others, the huge Afridi leaned over the rampart listening intently for some fifteen minutes after the ladder had been drawn up. Then with a gesture to the others he turned and opened the bronze door a crack. They stole through hurriedly. Somewhere in the blackness across the gorge a rifle cracked flatly and lead spanged a foot or so above the lintel. In spite of the rampart some quick eye among the crags had caught the glow of the opened door. But it was blind shooting. The sentries left on the ledge did not reply.

Back on the ledge that overlooked the valley, Willoughby noted an air of expectancy among the warriors at the loopholes. They were momentarily expecting the attack of which Gordon had warned them.

“How did Gordon ever take Akbar’s Castle?” Willoughby asked Khoda Khan, who seemed more ready to answer questions than any of the other taciturn warriors.

The Afridi squatted beside him near the open bronze gate, rifle in hand, the butt resting on the ledge. Over them was the blue-black bowl of the Himalayan night, flecked with clusters of frosty silver.

“He sent Yar Ali Khan with forty horsemen to make a feint at Baber Ali’s sangar,” answered Khoda Khan promptly. “Thinking to trap us, Afdal drew all his men out of Akbar’s Castle except three. Afdal believed three men could hold it against an army, and so they could--against an army. Not against El Borak. While Baber Ali and Afdal were striving to pin Yar Ali Khan and us forty riders between them, and we were leading the dogs a merry chase over the hills, El Borak rode alone down this valley. He came disguised as a Persian trader, with his turban awry and his rich garments dusty and rent. He fled down the valley shouting that thieves had looted his caravan and were pursuing him to take from him his purse of gold and his pouch of jewels.

“The accursed ones left to guard the Castle were greedy, and they saw only a rich and helpless merchant, to be looted. So they bade him take refuge in the cavern and opened the gate to him. He rode into Akbar’s Castle crying praise to Allah--with empty hands, but a knife and pistols under his khalat. Then the accursed ones mocked him and set on him to strip him of his riches--by Allah they found they caught a tiger in the guise of a lamb! One he slew with the knife, the other two he shot. Alone he took the stronghold against which armies have thundered in vain! When we forty-one horsemen evaded the Orakzai and doubled back, as it had been planned, lo! the bronze gate was open to us and we were lords of Akbar’s Castle! Ha! The forgotten of God charge the stair!”

From the shadows below there welled up the sudden, swift drum of hoofs and Willoughby glimpsed movement in the darkness of the valley. The blurred masses resolved themselves into dim figures racing up the looping trail: At the same time a rattle of rifle fire burst out behind the Castle, from beyond the Gorge of Mekram. The Afridis displayed no excitement. Khoda Khan did not even close the bronze gate. They held their fire until the hoofs of the foremost horses were ringing on the lower steps of the stair. Then a burst of flame crowned the wall, and in its flash Willoughby saw wild bearded faces, horses tossing heads and manes.

In the darkness following the volley there rose screams of agony from men and beasts, mingled with the thrashing and kicking of wounded horses and the grating of shod hoofs on stone as some of the beasts slid backward down the stair. Dead and dying piled in a heaving, agonized mass, and the stairs became a shambles as again and yet again the rippling volleys crashed.

Willoughby wiped a damp brow with a shaking hand, grateful that the hoofbeats were receding down the valley. The gasps and moans and cries which welled up from the ghastly heap at the foot of the stairs sickened him.

“They are fools,” said Khoda Khan, levering fresh cartridges into his rifle. “Thrice in past attacks have they charged the stair by darkness, and thrice have we broken them. Baber Ali is a bull rushing blindly to his destruction.”

Rifles began to flash and crack down in the valley as the baffled besiegers vented their wrath in blind discharges. Bullets smacked along the wall of the cliff, and Khoda Khan closed the bronze gate.

“Why don’t they attack by way of the bridge?” Willoughby wondered.

“Doubtless they did. Did you not hear the shots? But the path is narrow and one man behind the rampart could keep it clear. And there are six men there, all skilled marksmen.”

Willoughby nodded, remembering the narrow ribbon of rock flanked on either hand by echoing depths.

“Look, sahib, the moon rises.”

Over the eastern peaks a glow began which grew to a soft golden fire against which the peaks stood blackly outlined. Then the moon rose, not the mellow gold globe promised by the forerunning luster, but a gaunt, red, savage moon, of the high Himalayas.

Khoda Khan opened the bronze gate and peered down the stair, grunting softly in gratification. Willoughby, looking over his shoulder, shuddered. The heap at the foot of the stairs was no longer a merciful blur, for the moon outlined it in pitiless detail. Dead horses and dead men lay in a tangled gory mound with rifles and sword blades thrust out of the pile like weeds growing out of a scrap heap. There must have been at least a dozen horses and almost as many men in that shambles.

“A shame to waste good horses thus,” muttered Khoda Khan. “Baber Ali is a fool.” He closed the gate.

Willoughby leaned back against the wall, drawing a heavy sheepskin coat about him. He felt sick and futile. The men down in the valley must feel the same way, for the firing was falling off, becoming spasmodic. Even Baber Ali must realize the futility of the siege by this time. Willoughby smiled bitterly to himself. He had come to arbitrate a hill feud--and down there men lay dead in heaps. But the game was not yet played out. The thought of Gordon stealing through those black mountains out there somewhere discouraged sleep. Yet he did slumber at last, despite himself.

It was Khoda Khan who shook him awake. Willoughby looked up blinking. Dawn was just whitening the peaks. Only a dozen men squatted at the loopholes. From the cavern stole the reek of coffee and frying meat.

“Your letter has been safely delivered, sahib.”

“Eh? What’s that? Gordon’s returned?”

Willoughby rose stiffly, relieved that Gordon had not suffered on his account. He glanced over the wall. Down the valley the camp of the raiders was veiled by the morning mists, but several strands of smoke oozed toward the sky. He did not look down the stair; he did not wish to see the cold faces of the dead in the white dawn light.

He followed Khoda Khan into the great chamber where some of the warriors were sleeping and some preparing breakfast. The Afridi gestured toward a cell-like niche where a man lay. He had his back to the door, but the black, close-cropped hair and dusty khakis were unmistakable.

“He is weary,” said Khoda Khan. “He sleeps.”

Willoughby nodded. He had begun to wonder if Gordon ever found it necessary to rest and sleep like ordinary men.

“It were well to go upon the ledge and watch for Afdal Khan,” said Khoda Khan. “We have mounted the telescope there, sahib. One shall bring your breakfast to you there. We have no way of knowing when Afdal will come.”

Out on the ledge the telescope stood on its tripod, projecting like a cannon over the rampart. He trained it on the mass of boulders down the ravine. The Gorge of Mekram ran from the north to the southwest. The boulders, called the Rocks, were more than a mile of the southwest of the Castle. Just beyond them the gorge bent sharply. A man could reach the Rocks from the southwest without being spied from the Castle, but he could not approach beyond them without being seen. Nor could anyone leave the Castle from that side and approach the Rocks without being seen by anyone hiding there.

The Rocks were simply a litter of huge boulders which had broken off from the canyon wall. Just now, as Willoughby looked, the mist floated about them, making them hazy and indistinct. Yet as he watched them they became more sharply outlined, growing out of the thinning mist. And on the tallest rock there stood a motionless figure. The telescope brought it out in vivid clarity. There was no mistaking that tall, powerful figure. It was Afdal Khan who stood there, watching the Castle with a pair of binoculars.

“He must have got the letter early in the night, or ridden hard to get here this early,” muttered Willoughby. “Maybe he was at some spot nearer than Khoruk. Did Gordon say?”

“No, sahib.”

“Well, no matter. We won’t wake Gordon. No, I won’t wait for breakfast. Tell El Borak that I’m grateful for all the trouble he’s taken in my behalf and I’ll do what I can for him when I get back to Ghazrael. But he’d better decide to let this thing be arbitrated. I’ll see that Afdal doesn’t try any treachery.”

“Yes, sahib.”

They tossed the rope ladder into the gorge and it unwound swiftly as it tumbled down and dangled within a foot of the canyon floor. The Afridis showed their heads above the ramparts without hesitation, but when Willoughby mounted the rampart and stood in plain sight, he felt a peculiar crawling between his shoulders.

But no rifle spoke from the crags beyond the gorge. Of course, the sight of Afdal Khan was sufficient guarantee of his safety. Willoughby set a foot in the ladder and went down, refusing to look below him. The ladder tended to swing and spin after he had progressed a few yards and from time to time he had to steady himself with a hand against the cliff wall. But altogether it was not so bad, and presently he heaved a sigh of relief as he felt the rocky floor under his feet. He waved his arms, but the rope was already being drawn up swiftly. He glanced about him. If any bodies had fallen from the bridge in the night battle, they had been removed. He turned and walked down the gorge, toward the appointed rendezvous.

Dawn grew about him, the white mists changing to rosy pink, and swiftly dissipating. He could make out the outlines of the Rocks plainly now, without artificial aid, but he no longer saw Afdal Khan. Doubtless the suspicious chief was watching his approach from some hiding place. He kept listening for distant shots that would indicate Baber Ali was renewing the siege, but he heard none. Doubtless Baber Ali had already received orders from Afdal Khan, and he visualized Afdal’s amazement and rage when he learned of his uncle’s indiscretions.

He reached the Rocks--a great heap of rugged, irregular stones and broken boulders, towering thirty feet in the air in places.

He halted and called: “Afdal Khan!”

“This way, sahib,” a voice answered. “Among the Rocks.”

Willoughby advanced between a couple of jagged boulders and came into a sort of natural theater, made by the space inclosed between the overhanging cliff and the mass of detached rocks. Fifty men could have stood there without being crowded, but only one man was in sight--a tall, lusty man in early middle life, in turban and silken khalat. He stood with his head thrown back in unconscious arrogance, a broad tulwar in his hand.

The faint crawling between his shoulders that had accompanied Willoughby all the way down the gorge, in spite of himself, left him at the sight. When he spoke his voice was casual.

“I’m glad to see you, Afdal Khan.”

“And I am glad to see you, sahib!” the Orakzai answered with a chill smile. He thumbed the razor-edge of his tulwar. “You have failed in the mission for which I brought you into these hills--but your death will serve me almost as well.”

Had the Rocks burst into a roar about him the surprise would have been no more shocking. Willoughby literally staggered with the impact of the stunning revelation.

“What? My death? Afdal, are you mad?”

“What will the English do to Baber Ali?” demanded the chief.

“They’ll demand that he be tried for the murder of Suleiman,” answered Willoughby.

“And the Amir would hang him, to placate the British!” Afdal Khan laughed mirthlessly. “But if you were dead, none would ever know! Bah! Do you think I would let my uncle be hanged for slaying that Punjabi dog? Baber was a fool to let his men take the Indian’s life. I would have prevented it, had I known. But now it is done and I mean to protect him. El Borak is not so wise as I thought or he would have known that I would never let Baber be punished.”

“It means ruin for you if you murder me,” reminded Willoughby--through dry lips, for he read the murderous gleam in the Orakzai’s eyes.

“Where are the witnesses to accuse me? There is none this side of the Castle save you and I. I have removed my men from the crags near the bridge. I sent them all into the valley--partly because I feared lest one might fire a hasty shot and spoil my plan, partly because I do not trust my own men any farther than I have to. Sometimes a man can be bribed or persuaded to betray even his chief.

“Before dawn I sent men to comb the gorge and these Rocks to make sure no trap had been set for me. Then I came here and sent them away and remained here alone. They do not know why I came. They shall never know. Tonight, when the moon rises, your head will be found in a sack at the foot of the stair that leads down from Akbar’s Castle and there will be a hundred men to swear it was thrown down by El Borak.

“And because they will believe it themselves, none can prove them liars. I want them to believe it themselves, because I know how shrewd you English are in discovering lies. I will send your head to Fort Ali Masjid, with fifty men to swear El Borak murdered you. The British will force the Amir to send an army up here, with field pieces, and shell El Borak out of my Castle. Who will believe him if he has the opportunity to say he did not slay you?”

“Gordon was right!” muttered Willoughby helplessly. “You are a treacherous dog. Would you mind telling me just why you forced this feud on him?”

“Not at all, since you will be dead in a few moments, I want control of the wells that dominate the caravan routes. The Russians will pay me a great deal of gold to help them smuggle rifles and ammunition down from Persia and Turkestan, into Afghanistan and Kashmir and India. I will help them, and they will help me. Some day they will make me Amir of Afghanistan.”

“Gordon was right,” was all Willoughby could say. “The man was right! And this truce you wanted--I suppose it was another trick?”

“Of course! I wanted to get El Borak out of my Castle.”

“What a fool I’ve been,” muttered Willoughby.

“Best make your peace with God than berate yourself, sahib,” said Afdal Khan, beginning to swing the heavy tulwar to and fro, turning the blade so the edge gleamed in the early light. “There are only you and I and Allah to see--and Allah hates infidels! Steel is silent and sure--one stroke, swift and deadly, and your head will be mine to use as I wish--”

He advanced with the noiseless stride of the hillman. Willoughby set his teeth and clenched his hands until the nails bit into the palms. He knew it was useless to run; the Orakzai would overtake him within half a dozen strides. It was equally futile to leap and grapple with his bare hands, but it was all he could do; death would smite him in mid-leap and there would be a rush of darkness and an end of planning and working and all things hoped for--

“Wait a minute, Afdal Khan!”

The voice was moderately pitched, but if it had been a sudden scream the effect could have been no more startling. Afdal Khan started violently and whirled about. He froze in his tracks and the tulwar slipped from his fingers. His face went ashen and slowly his hands rose above his shoulders. Gordon stood in a cleft of the cleft, and a heavy pistol, held hip-high, menaced the chief’s waistline. Gordon’s expression was one of faint amusement, but a hot flame leaped and smoldered in his black eyes.

“El Borak!” stammered Afdal Khan dazedly. “El Borak!” Suddenly he cried out like a madman. “You are a ghost--a devil! The Rocks were empty--my men searched them--”

“I was hiding on a ledge on the cliff above their heads,” Gordon answered. “I entered the Rocks after they left. Keep your hands away from your girdle, Afdal Khan. I could have shot you any time within the last hour, but I wanted Willoughby to know you for the rogue you are.”

“But I saw you in the cave,” gasped Willoughby, “asleep in the cave--”

“You saw an Afridi, Ali Shah, in some of my clothes, pretending to be sleeping,” answered Gordon, never taking his eyes off Afdal Khan. “I was afraid if you knew I wasn’t in the Castle, you’d refuse to meet Afdal, thinking I was up to something. So after I tossed your note into the Orakzai camp, I came back to the Castle while you were asleep, gave my men their orders and hid down the gorge.

“You see I knew Afdal wouldn’t let Baber be punished for killing Suleiman. He couldn’t if he wanted to. Baber has too many followers in the Khoruk clan. And the only way of keeping the Amir’s favor without handing Baber over for trial, would be to shut your mouth. He could always lay it onto me, then. I knew that note would bring him to meet you--and I knew he’d come prepared to kill you.”

“He might have killed me,” muttered Willoughby.

“I’ve had a gun trained on him ever since you came within range. If he’d brought men with him, I’d have shot him before you left the Castle. When I saw he meant to wait here alone, I waited for you to find out for yourself what kind of a dog he is. You’ve been in no danger.”

“I thought he arrived early, to have come from Khoruk.”

“I knew he wasn’t at Khoruk when I left the Castle last night,” said Gordon. “I knew when Baber found us safe in the Castle he’d make a clean breast of everything to Afdal--and that Afdal would come to help him. Afdal was camped half a mile back in the hills--surrounded by a mob of fighting men, as usual, and under cover. If I could have got a shot at him then, I wouldn’t have bothered to deliver your note. But this is as good a time as any.”

Again the flames leaped up the black eyes and sweat beaded Afdal Khan’s swarthy skin.

“You’re not going to kill him in cold blood?” Willoughby protested.

“No. I’ll give him a better chance than he gave Yusef Khan.”

Gordon stepped to the silent Pathan, pressed his muzzle against his ribs and drew a knife and revolver from Afdal Khan’s girdle. He tossed the weapons up among the rocks and sheathed his own pistol. Then he drew his tulwar with a soft rasp of steel against leather. When he spoke his voice was calm, but Willoughby saw the veins knot and swell on his temples.

“Pick up your blade, Afdal Khan. There is no one here save the Englishman, you, I and Allah--and Allah hates swine!”

Afdal Khan snarled like a trapped panther; he bent his knees, reaching one hand toward the weapon--he crouched there motionless for an instant eyeing Gordon with a wide, blank glare--then all in one motion he snatched up the tulwar and came like a Himalayan hill gust.

Willoughby caught his breath at the blinding ferocity of that onslaught. It seemed to him that Afdal’s hand hardly touched the hilt before he was hacking at Gordon’s head. But Gordon’s head was not there. And Willoughby, expecting to see the American overwhelmed in the storm of steel that played about him began to recall tales he had heard of El Borak’s prowess with the heavy, curved Himalayan blade.

Afdal Khan was taller and heavier than Gordon, and he was as quick as a famished wolf. He rained blow on blow with all the strength of his corded arm, and so swiftly Willoughby could follow the strokes only by the incessant clangor of steel on steel. But that flashing tulwar did not connect; each murderous blow rang on Gordon’s blade or swished past his head as he shifted. Not that the American fought a running fight. Afdal Khan moved about much more than did Gordon. The Orakzai swayed and bent his body agilely to right and left, leaped in and out, and circled his antagonist, smiting incessantly.

Gordon moved his head frequently to avoid blows, but he seldom shifted his feet except to keep his enemy always in front of him. His stance was as firm as that of a deep-rooted rock, and his blade was never beaten down. Beneath the heaviest blows the Pathan could deal, it opposed an unyielding guard.

The man’s wrist and forearm must be made of iron, thought Willoughby, staring in amazement. Afdal Khan beat on El Borak’s tulwar like a smith on an anvil, striving to beat the American to his knee by the sheer weight of his attack; cords of muscle stood out on Gordon’s wrist as he met the attack. He did not give back a foot. His guard never weakened.

Afdal Khan was panting and perspiration streamed down his dark face. His eyes held the glare of a wild beast. Gordon was not even breathing hard. He seemed utterly unaffected by the tempest beating upon him. And desperation flooded Afdal Khan’s face, as he felt his own strength waning beneath his maddened efforts to beat down that iron guard.

“Dog!” he gasped, spat in Gordon’s face and lunged in terrifically, staking all on one stroke, and throwing his sword arm far back before he swung his tulwar in an arc that might have felled an oak.

Then Gordon moved and the speed of his shift would have shamed a wounded catamount. Willoughby could not follow his motion--he only saw that Afdal Khan’s mighty swipe had cleft only empty air, and Gordon’s blade was a blinding flicker in the rising sun. There was a sound as of a cleaver sundering a joint of beef and Afdal Khan staggered. Gordon stepped back with a low laugh, merciless as the ring of flint, and a thread of crimson wandered down the broad blade in his hand.

Afdal Khan’s face was livid; he swayed drunkenly on his feet, his eyes dilated; his left hand was pressed to his side, and blood spouted between the fingers; his right arm fought to raise the tulwar that had become an imponderable weight.

“Allah!” he croaked. “Allah--” Suddenly his knees bent and he fell as a tree falls.

Willoughby bent over him in awe.

“Good heavens, he’s shorn half asunder! How could a man live even those few seconds, with a wound like that?”

“Hillmen are hard to kill,” Gordon answered, shaking the red drops from his blade. The crimson glare had gone out of his eyes; the fire that had for so long burned consumingly in his soul had been quenched at last, though it had been quenched in blood.

“You can go back to Kabul and tell the Amir the feud’s over,” he said. “The caravans from Persia will soon be passing over the road again.”

“What about Baber Ali?”

“He pulled out last night, after his attack on the Castle failed. I saw him riding out of the valley with most of his men. He was sick of the siege. Afdal’s men are still in the valley but they’ll leg it for Khoruk as soon as they hear what’s happened to Afdal. The Amir will make an outlaw out of Baber Ali as soon as you get back to Kabul. I’ve got no more to fear from the Khoruk clan; they’ll be glad to agree to peace.”

Willoughby glanced down at the dead man. The feud had ended as Gordon had sworn it would. Gordon had been in the right all along; but it was a new and not too pleasing experience to Willoughby to be used as a pawn in a game--as he himself had used so many men and women.

He laughed wryly. “Confound you, Gordon, you’ve bamboozled me all the way through! You let me believe that only Baber Ali was besieging us, and that Afdal Khan would protect me against his uncle! You set a trap to catch Afdal Khan, and you used me as bait! I’ve got an idea that if I hadn’t thought of that letter-and-telescope combination, you’d have suggested it yourself.”

“I’ll give you an escort to Ghazrael when the rest of the Orakzai clear out,” offered Gordon.

“Damn it, man, if you hadn’t saved my life so often in the past forty-eight hours, I’d be inclined to use bad language! But Afdal Khan was a rogue and deserved what he got. I can’t say that I relish your methods, but they’re effective! You ought to be in the secret service. A few years at this rate and you’ll be Amir of Afghanistan!”



Blood of the Gods

Robert E. Howard

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