“The dogs wrangle with one another,” he said. “It is always thus; only the hand of Afzal Khan kept them together. Now men who followed him will refuse to follow one of their own number. They fear the Khurukzai. We also have reason to beware of them. They will be waiting in the hills beyond the Pass of Akbar.”
O’Donnell realized the truth of this statement. He believed a handful of Pathans yet held the tower in the pass, but there was no reason to suppose they would not desert their post now that Afzal Khan was dead. Men trooping down out of the hills told him that the footpaths were no longer guarded. At any time Khurukzai scouts might venture back, learn what was going on, and launch an attack in force.
The day wore on, hot, and full of suffering for the wounded in the in closure. Only a desultory firing came from the rocks, where continual squabbling seemed to be going on. No further attack was made, and presently Yar Muhammad grunted with gratification.
From the movement among the rocks and beyond them, it was evident that the leaderless outlaw band was breaking up. Men slunk away up the valley, singly or in small bands. Others fought over horses, and one group turned and fired a volley at their former companions before they disappeared among the spurs at the head of the valley. Without a chieftain they trusted, demoralized by losses, short of water and food and ammunition, and in fear of reprisals, the outlaw band melted away, and within an hour from the time the first bolted, the valley of Khuruk was empty except for O’Donnell’s men.
To make sure the retreat was real, O’Donnell secured his horse from the pen and, with Yar Muhammad, rode cautiously to the valley head. The spurs were empty. From the tracks the American believed that the bandits had headed southward, preferring to make their way through the pathless hills rather than fight their way through the vengeful Khurukzai who in all probability still lurked among the crags beyond the Pass of Akbar.
He had to consider these men himself, and he grinned wryly at the twist of fate which had made enemies of the very men he had sought in friendship. But life ran that way in the hills.
“Go back to the Turkomans,” he requested Yar Muhammad. “Bid them saddle their horses. Tie the wounded into the saddles, and load the spare horses with food and skins of water. We have plenty of spare horses now, because of the men who were slain. It is dusk now, and time we were on our way.
“We shall take our chance on the trails in the dark, for now that the hill paths are unguarded, assuredly the Khurukzai will be stealing back, and I expect an attack on the valley by moonrise, at the latest. Let them find it empty. Perhaps we can make our way through the Pass and be gone while they are stealing through the hills to the attack. At least we will make the attempt and leave the rest to Allah.”
Yar Muhammad grinned widely — the prospect of any sort of action seemed to gratify him immensely — and reined his horse down the valley, evidencing all the pride that becomes a man who rides a blooded Turkish steed. O’Donnell knew he could leave the preparations for the journey with him and the Turkomans.
The American dismounted, tied his horse and strode through the rocky spurs to the point where the trail wound out of them and along a boulder-littered narrow level between two slopes. Dusk was gathering, but he could see any body of men that tried to come along that trail.
But he was not expecting attack by that route. Not knowing just what had taken place in the valley, the Khurukzai, even if the men in the tower had deserted it, would be too suspicious to follow the obvious road. And it was not attack of any sort that was worrying him.
He took the packet of papers from his girdle and stared at it. He was torn by indecision. There were documents that needed desperately to get to the British outposts. It was almost sheer suicide for one man to start through the hills, but two men, with food and water, might make it.
He could take Yar Muhammad, load an extra horse or two with provisions, and slip away southward. Then let Suleiman Pasha do his worst with Orkhan Bahadur. Long before the emissary could learn of his flight, he and the Waziri would be far out of the vengeful Turkoman’s reach. But, then, what of the warriors back there in the sangar, making ready for their homeward flight, with implicit trust in Ali el Ghazi?
They had followed him blindly, obeyed his every order, demonstrated their courage and faithfulness beyond question. If he deserted them now, they were doomed. They could never make their way back through the hills without him. Such as were not lost to die of starvation would be slaughtered by the vengeful Khurukzai who would not forget their defeat by these dark-skinned riders.
Sweat started out on O’Donnell’s skin in the agony of his mental struggle. Not even for the peace of all India could he desert these men who trusted him. He was their leader. His first duty was to them.
But, then, what of that damning letter? It supplied the key to Suleiman Pasha’s plot. It told of hell brewing in the Khyber Hills, of revolt seething on the Hindu plains, of a plot which might be nipped in the bud were the British officials to learn of it in time. But if he returned to Shahrazar with the Turkomans, he must give the letter to Suleiman Pasha or be denounced to Orkhan — and that meant torture and death. He was in the fangs of the vise; he must either sacrifice himself, his men, or the helpless people of India.
“Ohai, Ali el Ghazi!” It was a soft hiss behind him, from the shadow of a jutting rock. Even as he started about, a pistol muzzle was pressed against his back.
“Nay, do not move. I do not trust you yet.”
Twisting his head about, O’Donnell stared into the dark features of Suleiman Pasha.
“You! How in Shaitan’s name —”
“No matter. Give me the papers which you hold in your hand. Give them to me, or, by Allah, I will send you to hell, Kurd!”
With the pistol boring into his back, there was nothing else O’Donnell could do, his heart almost bursting with rage.
Suleiman Pasha stepped back and tucked the papers into his girdle. He allowed O’Donnell to turn and face him, but still kept him covered with the pistol.
“After you had departed,” he said, “secret word came to me from the North that the papers for which I sent you were more important then I had dreamed. I dared not wait in Shahrazar for your return, lest something go awry. I rode for Khuruk with some Ghilzais who knew the road. Beyond the Pass of Akbar we were ambushed by the very people we sought. They slew my men, but they spared me, for I was known to one of their headmen. They told me they had been driven forth by Afzal Khan, and I guessed what else had occurred. They said there had been fighting beyond the Pass, for they had heard the sound of firing, but they did not know its nature. There are no men in the tower in the Pass, but the Khurukzai fear a trap. They do not know the outlaws have fled from the valley.
“I wished to get word with you as soon as possible, so I volunteered to go spying for them alone, so they showed me the footpaths. I reached the valley head in time to see the last of the Pathans depart, and I have been hiding here awaiting a chance to catch you alone. Listen! The Turkomans are doomed. The Khurukzai mean to kill them all. But I can save you. We shall dress you in the clothing of a dead Pathan, and I shall say you are a servant of mine who has escaped from the Turkomans.
“I shall not return to Shahrazar. I have business in the Khyber region. I can use a man like you. We shall return to the Khurukzai and show them how to attack and destroy the Turkomans. Then they will lend us an escort southward. Will you come with me and serve me, Kurd?”
“No, you damned swine!” In the stress of the moment O’Donnell spat his fury in English. Suleiman Pasha’s jaw dropped, in the staggering unexpectedness of English words from a man he thought to be a Kurd. And in the instant his wits were disrupted by the discovery, O’Donnell, nerved to desperate quickness, was at his throat like a striking cobra.
The pistol exploded once and then was wrenched from the numbed fingers. Suleiman Pasha was fighting in frenzied silence, and he was all steel strings and catlike thews. But O’Donnell’s kindhjal was out and ripping murderously into
him again and again. They went to the earth together in the shadow of the big rock, O’Donnell stabbing in a berserk frenzy; and then he realized that he was driving his blade into a dead man.
He shook himself free and rose, staggering like a drunken man with the red maze of his murder lust. The oilskin packet was in his left hand, torn from his enemy’s garments during the struggle. Dusk had given way to blue, star-flecked darkness. To O’Donnell’s ears came the clink of hoofs on stone, the creak of leather. His warriors were approaching, still hidden by the towering ledges. He heard a low laugh that identified Yar Muhammad.
O’Donnell breathed deeply in vast content. Now he could guide his men back through the passes to Shahrazar without fear of Orkhan Bahadur, who would never know his secret. He could persuade the Turkoman chief that it would be to his advantage to send this letter on to the British border. He, as Ali el Ghazi, could remain in Shahrazar safely, to oppose subtly what other conspirators came plotting to the forbidden city.
He smiled as he wiped the blood from his kindhjal and sheathed it. There still remained the Khurukzai, waiting with murderous patience beyond the Pass of Akbar, but his soul was at rest, and the prospect of fighting his way back through the mountains troubled him not at all. He was as confident of the outcome as if he already sat in the palace at Shahrazar.
The Trail of the Blood-Stained God
I
IN THE ALLEY OF SATAN
It was dark as the Pit in that evil-smelling Afghan alley down which Kirby O’Donnell, in his disguise of a swashbuckling Kurd, was groping, on a quest as blind as the darkness which surrounded him. It was a sharp, pain-edged cry smiting his ears that changed the whole course of events for him. Cries of agony were no uncommon sound in the twisting alleys of Medina el Harami, the City of Thieves, and no cautious or timid man would think of interfering in an affair which was none of his business. But O’Donnell was neither cautious nor timid, and something in his wayward Irish soul would not let him pass by a cry for help.
Obeying his instincts, he turned toward a beam of light that lanced the darkness close at hand, and an instant later was peering through a crack in the close-drawn shutters of a window in a thick stone wall. What he saw drove a red throb of rage through his brain, though years of adventuring in the raw lands of the world should have calloused him by this time. But O’Donnell could never grow callous to inhuman torture.
He was looking into a broad room, hung with velvet tapestries and littered with costly rugs and couches. About one of these couches a group of men clustered — seven brawny Yusufzai bravos, and two more who eluded identification. On that couch another man was stretched out, a Waziri tribesman, naked to the waist. He was a powerful man, but a ruffian as big and muscular as himself gripped each wrist and ankle. Between the four of them they had him spread-eagled on the couch, unable to move, though the muscles stood out in quivering knots on his limbs and shoulders. His eyes gleamed redly, and his broad breast glistened with sweat. There was a good reason. As O’Donnell looked, a supple man in a red silk turban lifted a glowing coal from a smoking brazier with a pair of silver tongs, and poised it over the quivering breast, already scarred from similar torture.
Another man, taller than the one with the red turban, snarled a question O’Donnell could not understand. The Waziri shook his head violently and spat savagely at the questioner. An instant later the red-hot coal dropped full on the hairy breast, wrenching an inhuman bellow from the sufferer. And, in that instant O’Donnell launched his full weight against the shutters.
The Irish-American was not a big man, but he was all steel and whalebone. The shutters splintered inward with a crash, and he hit the floor inside feet-first, scimitar in one hand and kindhjal in the other. The torturers whirled and yelped in astonishment.
They saw him as a masked, mysterious figure, for he was clad in the garments of a Kurd, with a fold of his flowing kafiyeh drawn about his face. Over his mask his eyes blazed like hot coals, paralyzing them. But only for an instant the scene held, frozen, and then melted into ferocious action.
The man in the red turban snapped a quick word and a hairy giant lunged to meet the oncoming intruder. The Yusufzai held a three-foot Khyber knife low, and as he charged he ripped murderously upward. But the downward-lashing scimitar met the upward plunging wrist. The hand, still gripping the knife, flew from that wrist in a shower of blood, and the long, narrow blade in O’Donnell’s left hand sliced through the knifeman’s bull throat, choking the grunt of agony.
Over the crumpling corpse the American leaped at Red Turban and his tall companion. He did not fear the use of firearms. Shots ringing out by night in this Alley of Shaitan were sure to be investigated, and none of the inhabitants of the Alley desired official investigation.
He was right. Red Turban drew a knife, the tall man a sabre.
“Cut him down, Jallad!” snarled Red Turban, retreating before the American’s impetuous onslaught. “Achmet, help here!”
The man called Jallad, which means Executioner, parried O’Donnell’s slash and cut back. O’Donnell avoided the swipe with a shift that would have shamed the leap of a starving panther, and the same movement brought him within reach of Red Turban who was sneaking in with his knife. Red Turban yelped and leaped back, so narrowly avoiding O’Donnell’s kindhjal that the lean blade slit his silken vest and the skin beneath. He tripped over a stool and fell sprawling, but before O’Donnell could follow up his advantage, Jallad was towering over him, raining blows with his sabre. There was power as well as skill in the tall man’s arm, and for an instant O’Donnell was on the defensive.
But as he parried the lightning-like strokes, the American saw that the Yusufzai Red Turban had called Achmet was advancing, gripping an old Tower musket by the barrel. One smash of the heavy, brass-bound butt would crush a man’s head like an egg. Red Turban was scrambling to his feet, and in an instant O’Donnell would find himself hemmed in on three sides.
He did not wait to be surrounded. A flashing swipe of his scimitar, barely parried in time, drove Jallad back on his heels, and O’Donnell whirled like a startled cat and sprang at Achmet. The Yusufzai bellowed and lifted the musket, but the blinding swiftness of the attack had caught him off-guard. Before the blow could fall he was down, writhing in his own blood and entrails, his belly ripped wide open.
Jallad yelled savagely and rushed at O’Donnell, but the American did not await the attack.
There was no one between him and the Waziri on the couch. He leaped straight for the four men who still gripped the prisoner. They let go of the man, shouting with alarm, and drew their tulwars. One struck viciously at the Waziri, but the man rolled off the couch, evading the blow. The next instant O’Donnell was between him and them. They began hacking at the American, who retreated before them, snarling at the Waziri: “Get out! Ahead of me! Quick!”
“Dogs!” screamed Red Turban as he and Jallad rushed across the room. “Don’t let them escape!”
“Come and taste of death thyself, dog!” O’Donnell laughed wildly, above the clangor of steel. But even in the hot passion of battle he remembered to speak with a Kurdish accent.
The Waziri, weak and staggering from the torture he had undergone, slid back a bolt and threw open a door. It gave upon a small enclosed court.
“Go!” snapped O’Donnell. “Over the wall while I hold them back!”
He turned in the doorway, his blades twin tongues of death-edged steel. The Waziri ran stumblingly across the court and the men in the room flung themselves howling at O’Donnell. But in the narrow door their very numbers hindered them. He laughed and cursed them as he parried and thrust. Red Turban was dancing around behind the milling, swearing mob, calling down all the curses in his vocabulary on the thievish Kurd! Jallad was trying to get a clean swipe at O’Donnell, but his own men were in the way. Then O’Donnell’s scimitar licked out and under a flailing tulwar like the tongue of a cobra, and a Yusufzai, feeling chill steel in his vitals, shrieked and fell dying. Jallad, lu
nging with a full-arm reach, tripped over the writhing figure and fell. Instantly the door was jammed with squirming, cursing figures, and before they could untangle themselves, O’Donnell turned and ran swiftly across the yard toward the wall over which the Waziri had already disappeared.
O’Donnell leaped and caught the coping, swung himself up, and had one glimpse of a black, winding street outside. Then something smashed sickeningly against his head. It was a stool, snatched by Jallad and hurled with vindictive force and aim, as O’Donnell was momentarily outlined against the stars. But O’Donnell did not know what had hit him, for with the impact came oblivion. Limply and silently he toppled from the wall into the shadowy street below.
II
PATHS OF SUSPICION
It was the tiny glow of a flashlight in his face that roused O’Donnell from his unconsciousness. He sat up, blinking, and cursed, groping for his sword. Then the light was snapped off and in the ensuing darkness a voice spoke: “Be at ease, Ali el Ghazi. I am your friend.”
“Who the devil are you?” demanded O’Donnell. He had found his scimitar, lying on the ground near him, and now he stealthily gathered his legs under him for a sudden spring. He was in the street at the foot of the wall from which he had fallen, and the other man was but a dim bulk looming over him in the shadowy starlight.
“Your friend,” repeated the other. He spoke with a Persian accent. “One who knows the name you call yourself. Call me Hassan. It is as good a name as another.”
O’Donnell rose, scimitar in hand, and the Persian extended something toward him. O’Donnell caught the glint of steel in the starlight, but before he could strike as he intended, he saw that it was his own kindhjal Hassan had picked up from the ground and was offering him, hilt first.
“You are as suspicious as a starving wolf, Ali el Ghazi,” laughed Hassan. “But save your steel for your enemies.”
El Borak and Other Desert Adventures Page 56