El Borak and Other Desert Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  He went down the broad, silent hall and descended a wide marble stair into swallowing gloom, like an oriental demon carrying a corpse to hell; groped through a tapestried door and down a short, black corridor to a blank marble wall.

  When he thrust against this with his foot, a section swung inward, working on a pivot, and he entered a circular, domed chamber with a marble floor and walls hung with heavy gilt-worked tapestries, between which showed broad golden frieze-work. A bronze lamp cast a soft light, making the dome seem lofty and full of shadows, while the tapestries were clinging squares of velvet darkness.

  This had been the treasure vault of Shaibar Khan, and why it was empty now, only Kirby O’Donnell could tell.

  Lowering the black body with a gasp of relief, for the burden had taxed even his wiry thews to the utmost, he deposited it exactly on the great disk that formed the center of the marble floor. Then he crossed the chamber, seized a gold bar that seemed merely part of the ornamentation, and jerked it strongly. Instantly the great central disk revolved silently, revealing a glimpse of a black opening, into which the corpse tumbled. The sound of rushing water welled up from the darkness, and then the slab, swinging on its pivot, completed its revolution and the floor showed again a smooth unbroken surface.

  But O’Donnell wheeled suddenly. The lamp burned low, filling the chamber with a lurid unreal light. In that light he saw the door open silently and a slim dark figure glide in.

  It was a slender man with long nervous hands and an ivory oval of a face, pointed with a short black beard. His eyes were long and oblique, his garments dark, even his turban. In his hand a blue, snub-nosed revolver glinted dully.

  “Suleiman Pasha!” muttered O’Donnell tensely.

  He had never been able to decide whether this man was the Oriental he seemed, or a European in masquerade. Had the man penetrated his own disguise? The emissary’s first words assured him that such was not the case.

  “Ali el Ghazi,” said Suleiman, “you have lost me a valuable servant, but you have told me a secret. None other knows the secret of that revolving slab. I did not, until I followed you, after you killed Baber, and watched you through the door, though I have suspected that this chamber was the treasure vault.

  “I have suspected you — now I am certain. I know why the treasure has never been found. You disposed of it as you have disposed of Baber. You are cup-companion to Prince Orkhan Bahadur. But if I told him you cast away the treasure forever, do you suppose his friendship would prevail over his wrath?

  “Keep back!” he warned. “I did not say that I would tell Orkhan. Why you threw away the treasure I cannot guess, unless it was because of fanatical loyalty to Shaibar Kahn.”

  He looked him over closely. “Face like a hawk, body of coiled steel springs,” he murmured. “I can use you, my Kurdish swaggerer.”

  “How use me?” demanded O’Donnell.

  “You can help me in the game I play with Orkhan Bahadur. The treasure is gone, but I can still use him, I and the Feringis who employ me. I will make him amir of Afghanistan and, after that, sultan of India.”

  “And the puppet of the Feringis,” grunted O’Donnell.

  “What is that to thee?” Suleiman laughed. “Thine is not to think. I will do the thinking; see thou to the enacting of my commands.”

  “I have not said that I would serve you,” growled O’Donnell doggedly.

  “You have no other choice,” answered Suleiman calmly. “If you refuse, I will reveal to Orkhan that which I learned tonight, and he will have you flayed alive.”

  O’Donnell bent his head moodily. He was caught in a vise of circumstances. It had not been loyalty to Shaibar Khan, as Suleiman thought, which had caused him to dump an emperor’s ransom in gold and jewels into the subterranean river. He knew Suleiman plotted the overthrow of British rule in India and the massacre of the helpless millions. He knew that Orkhan Bahadur, a ruthless adventurer despite his friendship for the false Kurd, was a pliant tool in the emissary’s hands. The treasure had been too potent a weapon to leave within their reach.

  Suleiman was either a Russian or the Oriental tool of the Russians. Perhaps he, too, had secret ambitions. The Khuwarezm treasure had been a pawn in his game but, even without it, a tool of the emissary’s sitting on the throne of Shahrazar, was a living menace to the peace of India. So O’Donnell had remained in the city, seeking in every way to thwart Suleiman’s efforts to dominate Orkhan Bahadur. And now he himself was trapped.

  He lifted his head and stared murderously at the slim Oriental. “What do you wish me to do?” he muttered.

  “I have a task for you,” answered Suleiman. “An hour ago word came to me, by one of my secret agents, that the tribesmen of Khuruk have found an Englishman dying in the hills, with valuable papers upon him. I must have those papers. I sent the man on to Orkhan, while I dealt with you.

  “But I have changed my plans in regard to you; you are more valuable to me alive than dead, since there is no danger of your opposing me in the future. Orkhan will desire those papers that the Englishman carried, for the man was undoubtedly a secret-service agent, and I will persuade the prince to send you with a troop of horsemen to secure them. And remember you are taking your real orders from me, not from Orkhan.”

  He stepped aside and motioned O’Donnell to precede him.

  They traversed the short corridor, an electric torch in Suleiman’s left hand playing its beam on his sullen, watchful companion, climbed the stair and went through the wide hall, thence along a winding corridor and into a chamber where Orkhan Bahadur stood near a gold-barred window which opened onto an arcaded court, which was just being whitened by dawn. The prince of Shahrazar was resplendent in satin and pearl-sewn velvet which did not mask the hard lines of his lean body.

  His thin dark features lighted at the sight of his cup-companion, but O’Donnell reflected on the wolf that lurked ever below the surface of this barbaric chieftain, and how suddenly it could be unmasked, snarling and flame-eyed.

  “Welcome, friends!” said the Turkoman, pacing the chamber restlessly. “I have heard a tale! Three days’ ride to the southwest are the villages of Ahmed Shah, in the valley of Khuruk. Four days ago his men came upon a man dying in the mountains. He wore the garments of an Afghan, but in his delirium he revealed himself as an Englishman. When he was dead they searched him for loot and found certain papers which none of the dogs could read.

  “But in his ravings he spoke of having been to Bokhara. It is in my mind that this Feringi was an English spy, returning to India with papers valuable to the sirkar. Perhaps the British would pay well for these papers, if they knew of them. It is my wish to possess them. Yet I dare not ride forth myself, nor send many men. Suppose the treasure was found in my absence? My own men would bar the gates against me.”

  “This is a matter for diplomacy rather than force,” put in Suleiman Pasha smoothly. “Ali el Ghazi is crafty as well as bold. Send him with fifty men.”

  “Can thou do it, brother?” demanded Orkhan eagerly.

  Suleiman’s gaze burned into O’Donnell’s soul. There was but one answer, if he wished to escape flaying steel and searing fire.

  “Only in Allah is power,” he muttered. “Yet I can attempt the thing.”

  “Mashallah!” exclaimed Orkhan. “Be ready to start within the hour. There is a Khurukzai in the suk, one Dost Shah, who is of Ahmed’s clan, and will guide you. There is friendship between me and the men of Khuruk. Approach Ahmed Shah in peace and offer him gold for the papers, but not too much, lest his cupidity be roused. But I leave it to your own judgment. With fifty men there is no fear of the smaller clans between Shahrazar and Khuruk. I go now to choose the men to ride with you.”

  As soon as Orkhan left the chamber, Suleiman bent close to O’Donnell and whispered: “Secure the papers, but do not bring them to Orkhan! Pretend that you have lost them in the hills — anything — but bring them to me.”

  “Orkhan will be angry and suspicious,” objected O’Donne
ll.

  “Not half as angry as he would be if he knew what became of the Khuwarezm treasure,” retorted Suleiman. “Your only chance is to obey me. If your men return without you, saying you have fled away, be sure a hundred men will quickly be upon your trail — nor can you hope to win alone through these hostile, devil-haunted hills, anyway. Do not dare to return without the papers, if you do not wish to be denounced to Orkhan. Your life depends on your playing my game, Kurd!”

  II

  Playing Suleiman’s “game” seemed to be the only thing to do, even three days later as O’Donnell, in his guise of the Kurdish swashbuckler, Ali el Ghazi, was riding along a trail that followed a ledgelike fold of rock ribbing a mile-wide cliff.

  Just ahead of him on a bony crow-bait rode the Khurukzai guide, a hairy savage with a dirty white turban, and behind him strung out in single file fifty of Orkhan Bahadur’s picked warriors. O’Donnell felt the pride of a good leader of fighting men as he glanced back at them. These were no stunted peasants, but tall, sinewy men with the pride and temper of hawks; nomads and sons of nomads, born to the saddle. They rode horses that were distinctive in that land of horsemen, and their rifles were modern repeaters.

  “Listen!” It was the Khurukzai who halted suddenly, lifting a hand in warning.

  O’Donnell leaned forward, rising in the wide silver stirrups, turning his head slightly sidewise. A gust of wind whipped along the ledge, bearing with it the echoes of a series of sputtering reports.

  The men behind O’Donnell heard it, too, and there was a creaking of saddles as they instinctively unslung rifles and hitched yataghan hilts forward.

  “Rifles!” exclaimed Dost Shah. “Men are fighting in the hills.”

  “How far are we from Khuruk?” asked O’Donnell.

  “An hour’s ride,” answered the Khurukzai, glancing at the mid-afternoon sun. “Beyond the corner of the cliff we can see the Pass of Akbar, which is the boundary of Ahmed Shah’s territory. Khuruk is some miles beyond.”

  “Push on, then,” said O’Donnell.

  They moved on around the crag which jutted out like the prow of a ship, shutting off all view to the south. The path narrowed and sloped there, so the men dismounted and edged their way, leading the animals which grew half frantic with fear.

  Ahead of them the trail broadened and sloped up to a fan-shaped plateau, flanked by rugged ridges. This plateau narrowed to a pass in a solid wall of rock hundreds of feet high; the pass was a triangular gash, and a stone tower in its mouth commanded the approach. There were men in the tower, and they were firing at other men who lay out on the plateau in a wide ragged crescent, concealed behind boulders and rocky ledges. But these were not all firing at the tower, as it presently became apparent.

  Off to the left of the pass, skirting the foot of the cliffs, a ravine meandered. Men were hiding in this ravine, and O’Donnell quickly saw that they were trapped there. The men out on the plateau had cast a cordon around it and were working their way closer, shooting as they came. The men in the ravine fired back, and a few corpses were strewn among the rocks. But from the sound of the firing, there were only a few men in the gully, and the men in the tower could not come to their aid. It would have been suicide to try to cross that bullet-swept open space between the ravine and the pass mouth.

  O’Donnell had halted his men at an angle of the cliff where the trail wound up toward the plateau, and had advanced with the Khurukzai guide part way up the incline.

  “What does this mean?” he asked.

  Dost Shah shook his head like one puzzled. “That is the Pass of Akbar,” he said. “That tower is Ahmed Shah’s. Sometimes the tribes come to fight us, and we shoot them from the tower. It can only be Ahmed’s riflemen in the tower and in the ravine. But —”

  He shook his head again, and having tied his horse to a straggling tamarisk, he went up the slope, craning his neck and hugging his rifle, while he muttered in his beard as if in uncertainty.

  O’Donnell followed him to the crest where the trail bent over the rim of the plateau, but with more caution than the Khurukzai was showing. They were now within rifle range of the combatants, and bullets were whistling like hornets across the plateau.

  O’Donnell could plainly make out the forms of the besiegers lying among the rocks that littered the narrow plain. Evidently they had not noticed him and the guide, and he did not believe they saw his men where he had stationed them in the shade of an overhanging crag. All their attention was fixed on the ravine, and they yelled with fierce exultation as a turban thrust above its rim fell back splashed with crimson. The men in the tower yelled with helpless fury.

  “Keep your head down, you fool!” O’Donnell swore at Dost Shah, who was carelessly craning his long neck above a cluster of rocks.

  “The men in the tower must be Ahmed’s men,” muttered Dost Shah uneasily. “Yes; it could not be otherwise, yet — Allah!” The last was an explosive yelp, and he sprang up like a madman, as if forgetting all caution in some other overwhelming emotion.

  O’Donnell cursed and grabbed at him to pull him down, but he stood brandishing his rifle, his tattered garments whipping in the wind like a demon of the hills.

  “What devil’s work is this?” he yelled. “That is not — those are not —”

  His voice changed to a gasp as a bullet drilled him through the temple. He tumbled back to the ground and lay without motion.

  “Now what was he going to say?” muttered O’Donnell, peering out over the rocks. “Was that a stray slug, or did somebody see him?”

  He could not tell whether the shot came from the boulders or the tower. It was typical of hill warfare, the yells and shooting keeping up an incessant devil’s din. One thing was certain: the cordon was gradually closing about the men trapped in the ravine. They were well hidden from the bullets, but the attackers were working so close that presently they could finish the job with a short swift rush and knife work at close quarters.

  O’Donnell fell back down the incline, and coming to the eager Turkomans, spoke hurriedly: “Dost Shah is dead, but he has brought us to the borders of Ahmed Shah’s territory. Those in the tower are Khurukzai, and these men attacking them have cut off some chief — probably Ahmed Shah himself — in that ravine. I judge that from the noise both sides are making. Then, they’d scarcely be taking such chances to slaughter a few common warriors. If we rescue him we shall have a claim on his friendship, and our task will be made easy, as Allah makes all things for brave men.

  “The men attacking seem to me not to number more than a hundred men — twice our number, true, but there are circumstances in our favor, surprise, and the fact that the men in the pass will undoubtedly sally out if we create a diversion in the enemy’s rear. At present the Khurukzai are bottled in the pass. They cannot emerge, any more than the raiders can enter in the teeth of their bullets.”

  “We await orders,” the men answered.

  Turkomans have no love for Kurds, but the horsemen knew that Ali el Ghazi was cup-companion to their prince.

  “Ten men to hold the horses!” he snapped. “The rest follow me.”

  A few minutes later they were crawling after him up the short slope. He lined them along the crest, seeing that each man was sheltered among the boulders.

  This took but a few minutes, but in that interim the men crawling toward the ravine sprang to their feet and tore madly across the intervening space, yelling like blood-crazed wolves, their curved blades glittering in the sun. Rifles spat from the gully and three of the attackers dropped, and the men in the tower sent up an awful howl and turned their guns desperately on the charging mob. But the range at that angle was too great.

  Then O’Donnell snapped an order, and a withering line of flame ran along the crest of the ridge. His men were picked marksmen and understood the value of volleys. Some thirty men were in the open, charging the ravine. A full half of them went down struck from behind, as if by some giant invisible fist. The others halted, realizing that something was wro
ng; they cringed dazedly, turning here and there, grasping their long knives, while the bullets of the Turkomans took further toll.

  Then, suddenly, realizing that they were being attacked from the rear, they dived screaming for cover. The men in the tower, sensing reinforcements, sent up a wild shout and redoubled their fire.

  The Turkomans, veterans of a hundred wild battles, hugged their boulders and kept aiming and firing without the slightest confusion. The men on the plateau were kicking up the devil’s own din. They were caught in the jaws of the vise, with bullets coming from both ways, and no way of knowing the exact numbers of their new assailants.

  The break came with hurricane suddenness, as is nearly always the case in hill fighting. The men on the plain broke and fled westward, a disorderly mob, scrambling over boulders and leaping gullies, their tattered garments flapping in the wind.

  The Turkomans sent a last volley into their backs, toppling over distant figures like tenpins, and the men in the tower gave tongue and began scrambling down into the pass.

  O’Donnell cast a practiced eye at the fleeing marauders, knew that the rout was final, and called for the ten men below him to bring up the horses swiftly. He had an eye for dramatics, and he knew the effect they would make filing over the ridge and out across the boulder-strewn plain on their Turkish steeds.

  A few minutes later he enjoyed that effect and the surprised yells of the men they had aided as they saw the Astrakhan kalpaks of the riders top the ridge. The pass was crowded with men in ragged garments, grasping rifles, and in evident doubt as to the status of the newcomers.

  O’Donnell headed straight for the ravine, which was nearer the ridge than it was to the pass, believing the Khurukzai chief was among those trapped there.

  His rifle was slung on his back, and his open right hand raised as a sign of peace; seeing which the men in the pass dubiously lowered their rifles and came streaming across the plateau toward him, instead of pursuing the vanquished, who were already disappearing among the distant crags and gullies.