El Borak and Other Desert Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  The Shaykh sprang up, babbling incoherently. His eyes were almost starting from his head as he glared at the grim, blood-stained white man and the smoking gun in his hand.

  “You are not real!” he shrieked, throwing out his hand as if to ward off a dreadful apparition. “You are a dream of the hashish! No, no! There is blood on the floor! You were dead — they told me you had been given to the ape! But you have come back to slay me! You are a fiend! A devil, as men say! Help! Help! Guard! To me! The devil El Borak has returned to slay and destroy!”

  Screaming like a mad thing Othman plunged from the dais and ran toward the door. Gordon waited until the Persian’s fingers were clawing at the bolts; then coldly, remorselessly he ripped a bullet through the man’s body. The Shaykh staggered, whirled to face his enemy and fell back against the door, shrieking his fear, until his voice was silenced forever by a bullet that crashed through his mouth and blasted his brains.

  VIII

  WOLVES AT BAY

  Gordon looked down at his victim with eyes as relentless as black iron. Beyond the door the clamor was growing, and out in the garden the Kurds were bawling to know if he were safe, and vociferously demanding permission to follow him into the palace. He shouted for them to be patient and hurriedly freed the girl, snatching up a piece of silk from a divan to wrap about her. She sobbed hysterically, clasping his neck in a frenzy mingled of fright and overpowering relief.

  “Oh, sahib, I knew you would come! I knew you would not let them torture me! They told me you were dead, but I knew they could not kill you —”

  Carrying her in his arms he strode through the balcony and handed her down through the window to the Kurds. She screamed when she saw their fierce bearded faces, but a word from Gordon soothed her, as he swung down beside her.

  “And now, effendi?” the warriors demanded, eager to be at more desperate work, now that they were fully fired to the game at hand. Most of this zeal resulted from a growing admiration for their leader; such men as Gordon have led hopeless armies chanting to snatch impossible victories out of the jaws of defeat.

  “Back the way we came, to the tunnel where Yusuf waits.”

  They started at a run across the garden, Gordon carrying the girl as if she had been a child. They had not gone forty feet when ahead of them a clang of steel vied with the din in the palace behind them. Lusty curses mingled with the clangor, a door slammed like a clap of thunder, and a figure came headlong through the shrubbery. It was the Kurd they had left on guard at the gilded door. He was swearing like a pirate and wringing blood drops from a slashed forearm.

  “A score of Arab dogs are at the door!” he yelled. “Someone saw us kill the Sudanese, and ran for Muhammad ibn Ahmed! I sworded one in the belly and slammed the door in their accursed faces, but they’ll have it down in a few minutes!”

  “Is there a way out of this garden that does not lead through the palace, Azizun?” asked Gordon.

  “This way!” He set her down and she seized his hand and scurried toward the north wall, all but hidden in masses of foliage. Across the garden they could hear the gilded door splintering under the onslaught of the desert men, and Azizun started convulsively at each blow as if it had impacted on her tender flesh. Panting with fright and excitement she tore at the fronds, pulling and pushing them aside until she disclosed a cunningly masked door set in the wall. Gordon had two cartridges left in the big pistol. He used one in blowing the antique lock apart. They burst through into another, smaller garden, lit with hanging lanterns, just as the gilded door gave way and a stream of wild figures with waving blades flooded into the Garden of the Houris.

  In the midst of the garden into which the fugitives had come stood the slim minaret-like tower Gordon had noticed when he first entered the palace.

  “That tower!” he snapped, slamming the door behind them and wedging it with a dagger — that might hold it for a few seconds at least. “If we can get in there —”

  “The Shaykh often sat in the upper chamber, watching the mountains with a telescope,” panted a Kurd. “He allowed none other but Bagheela in that upper chamber, but men say rifles are stored there. Arab guards sleep in the lower chamber —”

  But there was nothing else for it. The Arabs had almost reached the door behind them, and from the racket that was being kicked up in every other direction, it would only be a matter of minutes before men would be swarming into the Garden of the Tower from every gate that opened into it. Gordon led his men in a run straight toward the tower, the door of which opened as five bewildered guards came out seeking the cause for the unwonted disturbance. They yelped in astonishment as they saw a knot of men racing toward them, teeth bared, eyes blazing in the light of the hanging lanterns, blades flashing. The guards, shaking the cobwebs of sleep from their brains, went into action just a second too late.

  Gordon shot one and brained another with his gun butt an instant after the Arab had drilled one of the Kurds through the heart. The other Kurds swarmed over the three remaining Arabs, glutting ancient tribal hates in a wild burst of blood-letting, slashing and hacking and stabbing until the gay-clad figures lay still in a puddle of crimson.

  Vengeful yells reached a crescendo behind them and the dagger-wedged door splintered inward, and the aperture was crowded with wild faces and waving arms as Muhammad’s men jammed there in their frantic eagerness to reach their prey. Gordon caught up a rifle an Arab had dropped and poured a stream of lead into that close-packed mass. At a hundred yards it was slaughter. One instant the gate was crowded with furious straining bodies, the next it was a shambles of gory, writhing, shrieking figures from which the living gave back aghast.

  The Kurds howled deliriously and stormed into the tower — wheeled about to meet a charge of maddened Druses who had stolen unnoticed into the garden through another gate and rushed into the doorway before the door could be closed. For a few seconds the open doorway was a hell of whickering steel and spurting blood, in which Gordon did his part with a rifle butt, and then the Druses staggered dazedly away, leaving three of their number lying in their blood before the door, while another hitched himself away on his elbow, blood spurting from severed arteries.

  Gordon slammed the bronze door, and shot home a bolt that would have held against the charge of an elephant.

  “Up the stairs! Quick! Get the guns!”

  They rushed up, eyes and teeth gleaming, all but one who collapsed halfway up from loss of blood. Gordon half-dragged, half-carried him the rest of the way, laid him on the floor and ordered Azizun to bandage the ghastly gash made by a Druse saber, before he turned to take stock of their surroundings. They were in the upper chamber of the tower, which had no windows; but the walls were pierced with loop-holes of varying sizes and at every conceivable angle, some slanting downward, and all furnished with sliding iron covers. The Kurds chanted gleefully as they snatched the modern rifles which lined the walls in racks from which hung bandoliers of cartridges. Othman had prepared his aerie for defense as well as observation.

  Every man was wounded more or less badly, but they all swarmed to the loop-holes and began firing gleefully down into the mob which surged about the door. These had come from every direction, while the besieged party was climbing the stair. Muhammad ibn Ahmed was not visible, but a hundred or so of his Arabs were, and a welter of men of a dozen other races. They swarmed the garden, yelling like fiends. The lanterns, swinging wildly under the impact of stumbling bodies against the slender trees, illuminated a mass of contorted faces, white eyeballs rolling madly upward. Blades flickered lightning-like all over the garden and rifles were discharged blindly. Bushes and shrubs were shredded underfoot as the mob milled and eddied. They had obtained a beam from somewhere and were using it as a ram against the door.

  Gordon was surprized at the celerity with which he and his party had been pursued and trapped, until he heard Ivan Konaszevski’s voice lifted like the slash of a saber above the clamor. The Cossack must have learned of Othman’s death within a matter of m
inutes after it had occurred, and taken instant charge. His instant understanding of the situation, coupled with the chance that had caused Muhammad ibn Ahmed to block their escape, had undone the fugitives.

  But if they were trapped they were not helpless. Yelping joyously the Kurds poured lead through the loop-holes. Even the sabered man, his bleeding stanched by a crude bandage, crawled to a loop-hole, propped himself on a divan and began firing wastefully down on his former associates. There was no missing at that range, and the leaden blasts tore lanes through the close-packed mob. Not even Ismailians could endure such slaughter. The throng broke in all directions, scattering for cover, and the Kurds whooped with frantic glee and dropped the fugitives as they ran.

  In a few moments the garden was empty except for the dead and dying, and a storm of lead came whistling back from the walls and the windows of the palace which overlooked the Garden of the Tower, and from the roofs of houses that stood near the wall, outside in the square.

  Lead flattened against the walls with a vicious spat! like a hornet smashing itself against a window in full flight. The tower was of stone, braced with bronze and iron. Bullets from outside seldom found an open loop-hole. Gordon did not believe it could be taken by storm, as long as their ammunition held out, and there were thousands of rounds in the upper chamber. But they had neither food nor water. The man who had been slashed with the saber was tortured by thirst, particularly, but, with the stoicism of his race, he made no complaint but lay silently chewing a bullet.

  Gordon took stock of their position, looking through the loop-holes. The palace, as he knew, stood surrounded by gardens, except in the front where there was a wide courtyard. All was enclosed by an outer wall, and lower, inner walls separated the gardens, somewhat like the spokes of a wheel, with the higher outer wall taking the place of the rim. The garden in which they were at bay lay on the north-west side of the palace, next to the courtyard, which was separated from it by a wall; another wall lay between it and the next garden to the west; both this garden and the Garden of the Tower lay outside the Garden of the Houris, which was half-enclosed by the walls of the palace itself. The courtyard wall connected with the wall of the Garden of the Houris, so that the Garden of the Tower was completely enclosed.

  The north wall was the barrier which surrounded the whole of the palace grounds, and beyond it he looked down on the lighted roofs of the city. The nearest house was not over a hundred feet from the wall. Lights had been extinguished in it and in the other houses nearby, and men were crouching behind the parapets, sniping at the tower in the blind hope of hitting something besides stone. Lights blazed in all the palace windows, but the court and most of the adjoining gardens were dark.

  Only in the besieged garden did the lighted lanterns still hang. It seemed strange and unreal, that lighted garden with the tower in the midst, deserted except for the sprawling bodies of the dead, while on all sides lurked unseen but vengeful multitudes.

  The volleys ripping from all sides reflected a touch of panic, and the Kurds cursed venomously because they saw nothing to shoot back at. But suddenly there came a lull in the bombardment, and the men inside the tower likewise ceased firing, without orders. In the tense silence that followed Ivan Konaszevski’s voice was raised from behind the courtyard wall.

  “Are you ready to surrender, Gordon?”

  Gordon laughed at him.

  “Come and get us!”

  “That’s just what I intend to do — at dawn!” the Cossack assured him. “You are as good as a dead man now!”

  “That’s what you said when you left me in the ravine of the djinn,” Gordon retorted. “But I’m still alive — and the djinn is dead!”

  He had spoken in Arabic, and a shout of anger and unbelief rose from all quarters. The Kurds, who had not asked Gordon a single question about his escape from the labyrinth of the ape, slapped their rifle stocks and nodded at each other as much as to say that slaying djinni was no more than was to be expected from El Borak.

  “Do the Assassins know that the Shaykh is dead, Ivan?” called Gordon satirically.

  “They know that Ivan Konaszevski is the real ruler of Shalizahr, as he has always been!” was the wrathful reply. “I don’t know how you killed the ape, or how you got those Kurdish dogs out of their cell, but I do know that I’ll have all your skins hanging on this wall before the sun is an hour high!”

  “Kurdish dogs!” murmured the mountain warriors, caressing their rifles vengefully. “Ha! Wallah!”

  But Gordon smiled, for he knew that if Yusuf ibn Suleiman had been captured, Ivan would have taunted them with the news. Gordon did not believe that any extended investigations of the dungeons had been, or would be made. All the attention of the Assassins was concentrated on the tower, and there was no point in their exploring the cells at the present. Gordon felt that he was justified in believing that Yusuf was still safe in the tunnel below the palace, waiting to let in Lal Singh and the Ghilzais.

  Presently a banging and hammering sounded somewhere on the other side of the courtyard, which was not visible from the tower, and Konaszevski yelled vengefully: “Do you hear that, you American swine? Did you ever hear of a storming belfroi? Well, that’s what my men are building — a mantlet on wheels that will stop bullets and protect fifty men behind it. As soon as it’s daylight we’re going to push it up to the tower and batter down the door. That will be your finish, you dog!”

  “And yours,” retorted Gordon. “You can’t storm this tower without exposing yourself at least a little; and a little is all I’ll need, you Russian wolfhound!”

  The Cossack’s answer was a shout of derisive laughter that was not convincing because it shook with fury, and thereafter there was no more parleying. Men still fired from the garden walls and the roofs outside, not hoping to hit anything, but evidently intending to discourage any attempt to escape from the tower. Gordon did consider such a break; they could shoot out the lanterns which lighted the garden and make the try in the darkness — but he abandoned the idea. Men clustered thickly behind every wall that hemmed the garden in. Such an attempt would be suicide. The fortress had become a prison.

  Gordon frankly admitted to himself that this was one jamb out of which he could not get himself by his own efforts. If the Ghilzais did not show up on schedule, he and his party were finished; and it gave him a twinge to think of Yusuf ibn Suleiman waiting for days, perhaps, in the corridors under the palace, until hunger drove him into the hands of his enemies, or down the ravine to escape. Then Gordon remembered that he had not told the Kurd how to reach the exit at the other end of the labyrinth.

  The hammering and pounding went on in the unseen section of the court. Even if the Ghilzais came at sunrise they might be too late. He reflected that the Ismailians would have to break down a long section of the wall to get such a machine as Ivan had described into the garden. But that would not take long.

  The Kurds did not share their leader’s apprehensions. They had already wrought a glorious slaughter; they had a strong position; a leader they already worshipped as men used to worship kings; good rifles and plenty of ammunition. What more could a mountain warrior desire? They hugged their rifles and boasted vain-gloriously to each other and fired at everything that moved, letting the future take care of itself. So through the long hours the strange fight went on, the cracking of the rifles punctuated by the din of the hammers in the torch-lit court.

  The Kurd with the sword-cut died just as dawn was paling the lanterns in the garden below. Gordon covered the dead man with a rug and stared haggardly at his pitiful band. The three Kurds knelt at the loop-holes, looking like blood-stained ghouls in the ghostly grey light. Azizun was sleeping in utter exhaustion on the floor, her cheek pillowed on a childishly soft round arm.

  The hammering had ceased and in the stillness he heard a creaking of massive wheels. He knew that the juggernaut the Ismailians had built during the night was being rolled across the courtyard, but he could not yet see it. He could make out the
black forms of men huddled on the roofs of the houses beyond the outer wall. He looked further, over the roofs and clustering trees, toward the northern edge of the plateau. He saw no sign of life, in the growing light, among the boulders that lined the rim of the cliffs. Evidently the guards, undeterred by the fate of Yusuf and the other original sentries, had deserted their post to join the fighting at the palace. No Oriental ruler was ever able to command absolute obedience from all his men. But as he watched Gordon saw a group of a dozen or so men trudging along the road that led to the Stair. Konaszevski would not long leave that point unguarded, and Gordon could guess what would be the fate of the men who had deserted it.

  He turned back toward his three Kurds who were looking at him silently, bearded faces turned toward him. He looked like the wildest barbarian that ever trod a battlefield, naked to the waist, his boots and breeches smeared with blood, his bronzed breast and shoulders scratched, and stained with powder smoke.

  “The Ghilzais have not come,” he said abruptly. “Presently Konaszevski will send his slayers against us under cover of a great shield built on wheels. They will break down the door with a ram. We will slay some of them as they come up the stair. Then we will die.”

  “Allah il allah!” they answered by way of agreement and acceptance of their Kismet. “We shall slay many before we die!” And they grinned like hungry wolves in the dawn and thumbed the bolts of their rifles.

  Outside, from every wall and window guns began to crack and bullets spattered thick about the loop-holes. The men in the tower could see the storming-machine now, rumbling ponderously across the courtyard. It was a massive affair of beams and brass and iron, on ox-wagon wheels, with an iron-headed ram projecting from an aperture in the center. At least fifty men could huddle behind and beneath it, safe from rifle-fire.