“That will make it easier,” laughed Konaszevski, then slipped into Russian which the Persian did not seem to understand. “Gordon, you were mad to come here. You should have known that you would meet someone who knew you as you really are — not as these fools think you are.”
“You were the joker in the deck,” admitted Gordon. “I didn’t know the natives called you Bagheela. That was what trapped me. But I knew some European power must be behind this masquerade. Your masters have dreams of an Asiatic empire, do they not? So they sent you to combine forces with a fanatic; help build him a city, and make a tool out of him. They supplied the money, and European wits and weapons. What do they hope to do? Supplant each Asiatic ruler now friendly to England with a puppet to obey their orders? Intimidate hostile sultans and pashas with the fear of assassination, to secure favorable treaties and concessions?”
“In part,” admitted Konaszevski calmly. “This is but one strand in a far-flung web of imperial ambition. I will not bother to remind you that you might have a part in the coming empire if you were wise. I know your stubbornness in refusing to do anything against the interests of British rule in India, though I can not understand why. You are an American. And you are not even English by descent. Even before your ancestors crossed the Atlantic they had fought the English for centuries.”
Gordon smiled bleakly.
“I care nothing for England as a nation. But India is better off under her rule than it would be under men who employ such tools as yourself. By the way, who are your masters just now? The agents of the Czar — or somebody else?”
“That will make little difference to you, shortly!” Konaszevski showed his white teeth beneath the wiry black mustache in a light laugh. Othman and his men were shifting uneasily, irked at being unable to follow the conversation. The Cossack shifted to Arabic. “Your end will be interesting to watch. They say you are as stoical as the red Indians of your country. I am curious to test that reputation. Bind him, men —”
His gesture as he reached for the automatic at his hip was leisurely. He knew Gordon was dangerous, but he had never seen the black-haired Westerner in action; he could not realize the savage quickness that lurked in El Borak’s hard thews. Before the Cossack could draw his pistol Gordon sprang and struck as a panther slashes. The impact of his clenched fist was like that of a trip-hammer and Konaszevski went down, blood spurting from his jaw, the pistol slipping from its holster.
Before Gordon could snatch the weapon, Khuruk Khan was upon him. Only the Pathan realized Gordon’s deadly quickness and ferocity of attack, and even he had not been swift enough to save the Cossack. But he kept Gordon from securing the pistol, for El Borak had to whirl and grapple as the three-foot Khyber knife rose above him. Gordon caught the knife-wrist as it fell, checking the stroke in mid-air, the iron sinews springing out on his own wrist in the effort. His right hand ripped a dagger from the Pathan’s girdle and sank it to the hilt under his ribs almost with the same motion. Khuruk Khan groaned and sank down dying, and Gordon wrenched away the long knife as he crumpled.
All this had happened in a stunning explosion of speed, embracing a mere tick of time. Konaszevski was down and Khuruk Khan was dying before the others could get into action, and when they did they were met by the yard-long knife in the hand of the most terrible knife-fighter North of the Khyber.
Even as he whirled to meet the rush, the long blade licked out and a Kurd went down, choking out his life through a severed jugular. An Arab shrieked, disembowelled. A Druse overreached with a ferocious dagger-lunge, and reeled away, clutching the crimson-gushing stump of a wrist.
Gordon did not put his back to the wall; he sprang into the thick of his foes, wielding his dripping knife murderously. They swirled and milled about him; he was the center of a whirlwind of blades that flickered and lunged and slashed, and yet somehow missed their mark again and again as he shifted his position constantly and so swiftly that he baffled the eye which sought to follow him. Their numbers hindered them; they cut thin air or gashed one another, confused by his speed and demoralized by the wolfish ferocity of his onslaught.
At such deadly close quarters the long knife was more effective than the scimitars and tulwars. In the hands of a man who knows how to wield it there is no more murderous weapon in the universe. And Gordon had long ago mastered its every use, whether the terrible downward swing that splits a skull, or the savage upward rip that spills out a man’s entrails.
It was butcher’s work, but El Borak made no false motion; he was never in doubt or confused. There was no uncertainty or hesitation in his attack. He waded through that melee of straining bodies and lashing blades like a typhoon, and he left a red wake behind him.
The sense of time is lost in the daze of battle. In reality the melee lasted only a matter of moments, then the survivors gave back, stunned and appalled by the havoc wrought among them. El Borak wheeled, located the Shaykh who had retreated to the further wall, flanked by the stolid Sudanese — then even as Gordon’s leg-muscles tensed for a leap, a shout brought him half-way around.
A group of Arab guardsmen appeared at the door opening into the corridor, levelling their rifles at him, while those in the room scurried out of the line of fire. Gordon’s hesitation endured only for the fleetest tick of time, while the guns were coming to a level. In that flash of consciousness he weighed his chances of reaching the Shaykh and killing him before he himself died — knew that he would be struck in mid-air by at least half a dozen bullets, but did not hesitate to match his ferocious vitality against death itself.
And then — everything seemed to be happening at once — before Gordon could leap or the Arabs could loose their volley, a door to the right crashed inward and a blast of lead raked the ranks of the riflemen. Lal Singh! With the first crack of the big blue pistol in the Sikh’s hand Gordon altered his plans from death to life. He charged the Arabs in the doorway instead of the Shaykh.
Thrown into confusion by the unexpected blast which mowed down three men and set others to staggering and crying out, the Arabs fell into demoralized confusion. Some fired wildly at the Sikh, some at Gordon as he charged them, and all missed, as is inevitable when men’s attention is divided. And as they fired futilely Gordon was among them with a rush and a gigantic bound. His dripping blade spattered blood and left a wake of writhing, dripping figures behind him — then he was through the milling mob and racing down the corridor, shouting for Lal Singh as he headed to pass the corridor door of the adjoining chamber from which the Sikh had fired.
Lal Singh, the instant he saw Gordon plunge through the band of guards, slammed the bronze door between the rooms, grinning as he heard bullets flatten on the metal, then turned and rushed toward the door that opened into the corridor. But even as he reached the threshold, answering Gordon’s shout, a hand came out from behind the tapestry, clutching a bludgeon. The Sikh did not see it, and his convulsive movement, as Gordon yelled warning, was too late. The cudgel crashed on his unprotected head and he reeled backward and toppled down through an aperture which opened suddenly in the floor and then closed above his falling body.
With a snarl Gordon leaped at the tapestry but his slashing blade only ripped velvet and rang on stone. Whoever had lurked there had already withdrawn into some secret niche.
The Sikh had been precipitated — whether dead or alive — through a concealed trap door, and Gordon could not help him now. The trap was closed, and men were pouring into the corridor, firing wildly. The echoes of their shots slapped deafeningly up and down along the walls of the corridor.
Gun butts hammered on the bronze door the Sikh had slammed. Gordon slammed the door to the corridor, ran around the room, skirting the wall so as to avoid the trap in the middle of the floor, and threw open a door opposite the bronze door. He came into a narrow corridor that ran off at right angles from the main hallway. At the other end was a gold-barred window. A Kurd sprang up from an alcove, lifting a rifle. Gordon came at him like a mountain storm. Daunted by the
sight of the savage, blood-stained white man, the Kurd fired without aiming, missed, and jammed the lock of his rifle. He shrieked, tore desperately at the bolt, then threw up his hands and screamed as Gordon, maddened by the fate of the Sikh, struck with murderous fury. The Kurd’s head jumped from his shoulders on a spurt of crimson and thudded to the floor.
Gordon lunged at the window, hacked once at the bars with his knife, then gripped them with both hands and braced his legs. A heaving surge of iron strength, a savage wrench, and the bars came away in his hands with a splintering crash. He plunged through into a latticed balcony overlooking a garden. Behind him men were storming down the narrow corridor. Rifles cracked spitefully and lead spattered about him. He dived at the lattice-work headfirst, the knife extended before him — smashed through the flimsy material without checking his flight and hit catlike on his feet in the garden below.
The garden was empty but for half a dozen scantily-clad women who screamed and ran. He raced toward the opposite wall, quartering among the low trees to avoid the bullets that rained after him. Hot lead ripped through the branches, rattling among the leaves. A backward glance showed the broken lattice crowded with furious faces and arms brandishing weapons. Another shout warned him of peril ahead.
A man was running along the wall, swinging a tulwar.
The fellow, a fleshily-built Kurd, had accurately judged the point where the fugitive would reach the wall, but he himself reached that point a few seconds too late. The wall was not higher than a man’s head. Gordon caught the coping with one hand and swung himself up almost without checking his speed, and an instant later, on his feet on the parapet, ducked the sweep of the tulwar and drove his knife through the Kurd’s huge belly.
The man bellowed like an ox in pain, threw his arms about his slayer in a death-grip, and they went over the parapet together. Gordon had only time to glimpse the sheer-walled ravine which gaped below them. They struck on its narrow lip, rolled off and fell fifteen feet to crash sickeningly on the rocky floor of that ravine. As they rushed downward Gordon turned in mid-air so that the Kurd was under him when they hit, and the fat, limp body cushioned his fall. Even so it jolted the breath out of him and left him gasping and half-stunned. Above him a rifle was poked over the wall.
VI
THE HAUNTER OF THE GULCHES
Gordon staggered to his feet, empty handed, glaring in hypnotic fascination at the black ring that was the rifle muzzle trained full upon him. Behind it a bearded face froze in a yellow-fanged grin of murder.
Then a hand dragged aside the barrel as the wall was lined with turbaned heads. The man who had struck up the rifle barrel laughed and pointed down the ravine, and the man with the gun hesitated, and then grinned malevolently. Gordon scowled up at the row of bearded faces that looked down at him, all grinning as if at a grim jest. Some laughed derisively, and others shouted replies to questions hurled by some unseen party.
Gordon stood motionless, unable to comprehend the attitude of his enemies. When he rose to face that rifle he had expected nothing but an instant blast of lead; but the warriors had not fired, and seemingly had no intention of firing.
Another countenance appeared above him — a blood-stained face, adorned with a black mustache. Konaszevski was rather pale under his dark skin, and his expression was no less malignant.
“Out of the frying pan into the fire, as you damned Americans say,” he laughed viciously. “Well, I had other plans for you” — he dabbed with a bit of silk at the cut on his chin — “but this suits me well enough. I leave you to your meditations. You are no longer important enough to take up my time, and I certainly have no intention of allowing you to be put out of misery with a merciful rifle-shot. Farewell, dead man!”
And with a brusk word to his followers, he disappeared. The turbans vanished from the parapet like apples rolled off a wall, and Gordon stood alone except for the dead man sprawling near his feet.
Gordon frowned as he looked suspiciously about him. He knew that the southern end of the plateau was cut up into a network of ravines, and obviously he was in one which ran out of that network to the south of the palace. It was a straight gulch, like a giant knife-cut, thirty feet in width, which ran out of a maze of gullies straight toward the city, ceasing abruptly at a sheer cliff of solid stone below the garden wall from which he had fallen. This cliff was fifteen feet in height and too smooth to be wholly the work of nature.
Ten feet from the end-wall, the ravine deepened abruptly, the rocky floor falling away some five feet. He stood on a kind of natural shelf at the end of the ravine. The side-walls were sheer, showing evidences of having been smoothed by tools. Across the rim of the wall at the end, and for fifteen feet on each side, ran a strip of iron with short razor-edged blades slanting down. They had not cut him as he fell over them, but anyone trying to climb the wall, even if he reached the rim by some miracle, would be gored to pieces trying to swarm up over them. The strips on the side walls overreached the edge of the shelf below, and beyond that point the walls were more than twenty feet in height. Gordon was in a prison, partly natural, partly man-made.
Looking down the ravine he saw that it widened and broke into a tangle of smaller gulches, separated by ridges of solid stone, beyond and above which he saw the gaunt bulk of the mountain looming up. The other end of the ravine was not blocked in any way, but he knew that his captors would not use so much care in safeguarding one end of his prison while allowing some avenue of escape at the other. But it was not his nature to resign himself to whatever fate they had planned for him. Obviously they thought they had him safely trapped; but other men had thought that before.
He pulled the knife out of the Kurd’s carcass, wiped off the blood and went down the ravine.
A hundred yards from the city-end, he came to the mouths of the smaller ravines, selected one at random, and immediately found himself in a nightmarish labyrinth. Channels hollowed in the almost solid rock meandered bafflingly though a crumbling waste of stone. Mostly they ran roughly north and south, but they merged with one another, split apart, and looped in crisscross chaos. Most of them seemed to begin without reason and to go nowhere. He was forever coming to the ends of blind alleys which, if he surmounted them, it was only to descend into another equally confusing branch of the insane network.
Sliding down a gaunt ridge his heel crunched something that broke with a dry crack. He had stepped upon the dried rib-bones of a headless skeleton. A few yards away lay the skull, crushed and splintered. He began to stumble upon similar grisly relics with appalling frequency. Each skeleton showed broken bones and a smashed skull. The action of the elements could not have had that destructive an effect. He went more warily, narrowly eyeing every spur of rock or shadowed recess. But he saw no tracks in the few sandy places where a track would have shown that would indicate the presence of any of the large carnivora. In one such place he did indeed come upon a partially effaced track, but it was not the spoor of a leopard, bear or tiger. It looked more like the print of a bare, misshapen human foot. And the bones had not been gnawed as they would have been in the case of a man-eater. They showed no tooth-marks; they seemed simply to have been crushed and broken, as an incredibly powerful man might have broken them. But once he came upon a rough out-jut of rock to which clung strands of coarse grey hair that might have been rubbed off against the stone, and here and there an unpleasant rank odor which he could not define hung in the cave-like recesses beneath the ridges where a beast — or man, or demon! — might conceivably curl up and sleep.
Baffled and balked in his efforts to steer a straight course through the stony maze, he scrambled up a weathered ridge which looked to be higher than most, and crouching on its sharp angle, stared out over the nightmarish waste. His view was limited except to the north, but the glimpses he had of sheer cliffs rising above the spurs and ridges to east, west and south, made him believe that they formed parts of a continuous wall which enclosed the tangle of gullies. To the north this wall was split by the
ravine which ran to the outer palace garden.
Presently the nature of the labyrinth became evident. At one time or another a section of that part of the plateau which lay between the site of the present city and the mountain had sunk, leaving a great bowl-like depression, and the surface of the depression had been cut up into gullies by the action of the elements over an immense period of time. There was no use wasting time wandering about in the midst of the gulches. His problem was to make his way to the cliffs that hemmed in the corrugated bowl, and skirt them, to find if there was any way to surmount them. Looking southward he believed he could trace the route of a ravine which was more continuous than the others, and which ran in a more or less direct route to the base of the mountain whose sheer wall hung over the bowl. He also saw that to reach this ravine he would save time by returning to the gulch below the city wall and following another one of the ravines which debouched into it, instead of scrambling over a score or so of knife-edged ridges which lay between him and the gully he wished to reach.
With this purpose in mind he climbed down the ridge and retraced his steps. The sun was swinging low as he re-entered the mouth of the outer ravine, and started toward the gulch he believed would lead him to his objective. He glanced idly toward the cliff at the other end of the wider ravine — and stopped dead in his tracks. The body still lay on the shelf — but it was not lying in the same position in which he had left it — it did not seem so bulky, and the garments looked different. An instant later he was racing along the ravine, springing up on the shelf, bending over the motionless figure. The Kurd he had killed was gone; the man who lay there was Lal Singh!
El Borak and Other Desert Adventures Page 20