El Borak and Other Desert Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  O’Donnell glanced at the men Fate had made his allies — the thieves who had stolen his treasure-map and would gladly have killed him fifteen minutes before: Hawklin, grim and hard-eyed in his Afghan guise, Jehungir Khan, dapper even after leagues of riding, and three hairy Yusufzai swashbucklers, addressed variously as Akbar, Suliman and Yusuf. These bared their teeth at him. This was an alliance of wolves, which would last only so long as the common menace lasted.

  The men behind the wall began sniping at white-clad figures flitting among the rocks and bushes near the mouth of the gorge. The Jowakis had dismounted and were crawling into the bowl, taking advantage of every bit of cover. Their rifles cracked from behind every boulder and stunted tamarisk.

  “They must have been following us,” snarled Hawklin, squinting along his rifle barrel. “O’Donnell, you lied! There can’t be a hundred men out there.”

  “Enough to cut our throats, anyway,” retorted O’Donnell, pressing his trigger. A man darting toward a rock yelped and crumpled, and a yell of rage went up from the lurking warriors. “Anyway, there’s nothing to keep Yakub Khan from sending for reinforcements. His village isn’t many hours’ ride from here.”

  Their conversation was punctuated by the steady cracking of the rifles. The Jowakis, well hidden, were suffering little from the exchange.

  “We’ve a sporting chance behind this wall,” growled Hawklin. “No telling how many centuries it’s stood here. I believe it was built by the same race that built the Red God’s temple. You’ll find ruins like this all through these hills. Damn!” He yelled at his men: “Hold your fire! Our ammunition’s getting low. They’re working in close for a rush. Save your cartridges for it. We’ll mow ’em down when they get into the open.” An instant later he shouted: “Here they come!”

  The Jowakis were advancing on foot, flitting from rock to rock, from bush to stunted bush, firing as they came. The defenders grimly held their fire, crouching low and peering through the shallow crenelations. Lead flattened against the stone, knocking off chips and dust. Suliman swore luridly as a slug ripped into his shoulder. Back in the gorge-mouth O’Donnell glimpsed Yakub Khan’s red beard, but the chief took cover before he could draw a bead. Wary as a fox, Yakub was not leading the charge in person.

  But his clansmen fought with untamed ferocity. Perhaps the silence of the defenders fooled them into thinking their ammunition was exhausted. Perhaps the blood-lust that burned in their veins overcame their cunning. At any rate they broke cover suddenly, thirty-five or forty of them, and rushed up the slope with the rising ululation of a wolf-pack. Point-blank they fired their rifles and then lunged at the barrier with three-foot knives in their hands.

  “Now!” screamed Hawklin, and a close-range volley raked the oncoming horde. In an instant the slope was littered with writhing figures. The men behind that wall were veteran fighters, to a man, who could not miss at that range. The toll taken by their sweeping hail of lead was appalling, but the survivors came on, eyes glaring, foam on their beards, blades glittering in hairy fists.

  “Bullets won’t stop ’em!” yelled Hawklin, livid, as he fired his last rifle cartridge. “Hold the wall or we’re all dead men!”

  The defenders emptied their guns into the thick of the mass and then rose up behind the wall, drawing steel or clubbing rifles. Hawklin’s strategy had failed, and now it was hand-to-hand, touch and go, and the devil take the unlucky.

  Men stumbled and went down beneath the slash of the last bullets, but over their writhing bodies the horde rolled against the wall and locked there. All up and down the barrier sounded the smash of bone-splintering blows, the rasp and slither of steel meeting steel, the gasping oaths of dying men. The handful of defenders still had the advantage of position, and dead men lay thick at the foot of the wall before the Jowakis got a foothold on the barricade. A wild-eyed tribesman jammed the muzzle of an ancient musket full in Akbar’s face, and the discharge all but blew off the Yusufzai’s head. Into the gap left by the falling body the howling Jowaki lunged, hurling himself up and over the wall before O’Donnell could reach the spot. The American had stepped back, fumbling to reload his rifle, only to find his belt empty. Just then he saw the raving Jowaki come over the wall. He ran at the man, clubbing his rifle, just as the Pathan dropped his empty musket and drew a long knife. Even as it cleared the scabbard O’Donnell’s rifle butt crushed his skull.

  O’Donnell sprang over the falling corpse to meet the men swarming on to the wall. Swinging his rifle like a flail, he had no time to see how the fight was going on either side of him. Hawklin was swearing in English, Hassan in Persian, and somebody was screaming in mortal agony. He heard the sound of blows, gasps, curses, but he could not spare a glance to right or left. Three blood-mad tribesmen were fighting like wildcats for a foothold on the wall. He beat at them until his rifle stock was a splintered fragment, and two of them were down with broken heads, but the other, straddling the wall, grabbed the American with gorilla-like hands and dragged him into quarters too close to use his bludgeon. Half throttled by those hairy fingers on his throat, O’Donnell dragged out his kindhjal and stabbed blindly, again and again, until blood gushed over his hand, and with a moaning cry the Jowaki released him and toppled moaning from the wall.

  Gasping for air, O’Donnell looked about him, realizing the pressure had slackened. No longer the barrier was massed with wild faces. The Jowakis were staggering down the slope — the few left to flee. Their losses had been terrible, and not a man of those who retreated but streamed blood from some wound.

  But the victory had been costly. Suliman lay limply across the wall, his head smashed like an egg. Akbar was dead. Yusuf was dying, with a stab-wound in the belly, and his screams were terrible. As O’Donnell looked he saw Hawklin ruthlessly end his agony with a pistol bullet through the head. Then the American saw Jehungir Khan, sitting with his back against the wall, his hands pressed to his body, while blood seeped steadily between his fingers. The prince’s lips were blue, but he achieved a ghastly smile.

  “Born in a palace,” he whispered. “And I’m dying behind a rock wall! No matter — it is Kismet. There is a curse on heathen treasure — men have always died when they rode the trail of the Blood-Stained God —” And he died even as he spoke.

  Hawklin, O’Donnell and Hassan glanced silently at each other. They were the only survivors — three grim figures, blackened with powder-smoke, splashed with blood, their garments tattered. The fleeing Jowakis had vanished in the gorge, leaving the canyon-bowl empty except for the dead men on the slope.

  “Yakub got away!” Hawklin snarled. “I saw him sneaking off when they broke. He’ll make for his village — get the whole tribe on our trail! Come on! We can find the temple. Let’s make a race of it — take the chance of getting the idol and then making our way out of the mountains somehow, before he catches us. We’re in this jam together. We might as well forget what’s passed and join forces for good. There’s enough treasure for the three of us.”

  “There’s truth in what you say,” growled O’Donnell. “But you hand over that map before we start.”

  Hawklin still held a smoking pistol in his hand, but before he could lift it, Hassan covered him with a revolver.

  “I saved a few cartridges for this,” said the Persian, and Hawklin saw the blue noses of the bullets in the chambers. “Give me that gun. Now give the map to O’Donnell.”

  Hawklin shrugged his shoulders and produced the crumpled parchment. “Damn you, I cut a third of that treasure, if we get it!” he snarled.

  O’Donnell glanced at it and thrust it into his girdle.

  “All right. I don’t hold grudges. You’re a swine, but if you play square with us, we’ll treat you as an equal partner, eh, Hassan?”

  The Persian nodded, thrusting both guns into his girdle. “This is no time to quibble. It will take the best efforts of all three of us if we get out of this alive. Hawklin, if the Jowakis catch up with us I’ll give you your pistol. If they don’t you won�
��t need it.”

  IV

  TOLL OF THE GOD

  There were horses tied in the narrow pass behind the wall. The three men mounted the best beasts, turned the others loose and rode up the canyon that wound away and away beyond the pass. Night fell as they travelled, but through the darkness they pushed recklessly on. Somewhere behind them, how far or how near they could not know, rode the tribesmen of Yakub Khan, and if the chief caught them his vengeance would be ghastly. So through the blackness of the nighted Himalayas they rode, three desperate men on a mad quest, with death on their trail, unknown perils ahead of them, and suspicion of each other edging their nerves.

  O’Donnell watched Hassan like a hawk. Search of the bodies at the wall had failed to reveal a single unfired cartridge, so Hassan’s pistols were the only firearms left in the party. That gave the Persian an advantage O’Donnell did not relish. If the time came when Hassan no longer needed the aid of his companions, O’Donnell believed the Persian would not scruple to shoot them both down in cold blood. But he would not turn on them as long as he needed their assistance, and when it came to a fight — O’Donnell grimly fingered his blades. More than once he had matched them against hot lead, and lived.

  As they groped their way by the starlight, guided by the map which indicated landmarks unmistakable, even by night, O’Donnell found himself wondering again what it was that the maker of that map had tried to tell him, just before he died. Death had come to Pembroke quicker than he had expected. In the very midst of a description of the temple, blood had gushed to his lips and he had sunk back, desperately fighting to gasp a few more words even as he died. It sounded like a warning — but of what?

  Dawn was breaking as they came out of a narrow gorge into a deep, high-walled valley. The defile through which they entered, a narrow alley between towering cliffs, was the only entrance; without the map they would never have found it. It came out upon a ledge which ran along the valley wall, a jutting shelf a hundred feet wide with the cliff rising three hundred feet above it on one hand, and falling away to a thousand foot drop on the other. There seemed no way down into the mist-veiled depths of the valley, far below. But they wasted few glances on what lay below them, for what they saw ahead of them drove hunger and fatigue from their minds. There on the ledge stood the temple, gleaming in the rising sun. It was carved out of the sheer rock of the cliff, its great portico facing them. The ledge was like a pathway to its dully-glinting door.

  What race, what culture it represented, O’Donnell did not try to guess. A thousand unknown conquerors had swept over these hills before the grey dawn of history. Nameless civilizations had risen and crumbled before the peaks shook to the trumpets of Alexander.

  “How will we open the door?” O’Donnell wondered. The great bronze portal looked as though it were built to withstand artillery. He unfolded the map and glanced again at the notes scrawled on the margins. But Hassan slipped from his saddle and ran ahead of them, crying out in his greed. A strange frenzy akin to madness had seized the Persian at the sight of the temple, and the thought of the fabulous wealth that lay within.

  “He’s a fool!” grunted Hawklin, swinging down from his horse. “Pembroke left a warning scribbled on the margin of that map — ‘The temple can be entered, but be careful, for the god will take his toll.’”

  Hassan was tugging and pulling at various ornaments and projections on the portal. They heard him cry out exultantly as it moved under his hands — then his cry changed to a scream of terror as the door, a ton of carved bronze, swayed outward and fell crashing. The Persian had no time to avoid it. It crushed him like an ant. He was completely hidden under the great metal slab from beneath which oozed streams of crimson.

  Hawklin shrugged his shoulders.

  “I said he was a fool. The ancients knew how to guard their treasure. I wonder how Pembroke escaped being smashed.”

  “He evidently stumbled on some way to swing the door open without releasing it from its hinges,” answered O’Donnell. “That’s what happened when Hassan jerked on those knobs. That must have been what Pembroke was trying to tell me when he died — which knobs to pull and which to let alone.”

  “Well, the god has his toll, and the way’s clear for us,” grunted Hawklin, callously striding past the encrimsoned door. O’Donnell was close on his heels. Both men paused on the broad threshold, peering into the shadowy interior much as they might have peered into the lair of a serpent. But no sudden doom descended on them, no shape of menace rose before them. They entered cautiously. Silence held the ancient temple, broken only by the soft scruff of their boots.

  They blinked in the semi-gloom; out of it a blaze of crimson like a lurid glow of sunset smote their eyes. They saw the Blood-Stained God, a thing of brass, crusted with flaming gems. It was in the shape of a dwarfish man, and it stood upright on its great splay feet on a block of basalt, facing the door. To the left of it, a few feet from the base of the pedestal, the floor of the temple was cleft from wall to wall by a chasm some fifteen feet wide. At some time or other an earthquake had split the rock, and there was no telling how far it descended into echoing depths. Into that black abyss, ages ago, doubtless screaming victims had been hurled by hideous priests as human sacrifices to the Crimson God. The walls of the temple were lofty and fantastically carved, the roof dim and shadowy above them.

  But the attention of the men was fixed avidly on the idol. It was brutish, repellent, a leprous monstrosity, whose red jewels gave it a repellently blood-splashed appearance. But it represented a wealth that made their brains swim.

  “God!” breathed O’Donnell. “Those gems are real! They’re worth a fortune!”

  “Millions!” panted Hawklin. “Too much to share with a damned Yankee!”

  It was those words, breathed unconsciously between the Englishman’s clenched teeth, which saved O’Donnell’s life, dazzled as he was by the blaze of that unholy idol. He wheeled, caught the glint of Hawklin’s saber, and ducked just in time. The whistling blade sliced a fold from his head-dress. Cursing his carelessness — for he might have expected treachery — he leaped back, whipping out his scimitar.

  The tall Englishman came in a rush, and O’Donnell met him, close-pent rage loosing itself in a gust of passion. Back and forth they fought, up and down before the leering idol, feet scruffing swiftly on the rock, blades rasping, slithering and ringing, blue sparks showering as they moved through patches of shadow.

  Hawklin was taller than O’Donnell, longer of arm, but O’Donnell was equally strong, and a blinding shade quicker on his feet. Hawklin feared the naked kindhjal in his left hand more than he did the scimitar, and he endeavored to keep the fighting at long range, where his superior reach would count heavily. He gripped a dagger in his own left hand, but he knew he could not compete with O’Donnell in knife-play.

  But he was full of deadly tricks with the longer steel. Again and again O’Donnell dodged death by the thickness of a hair, and so far his own skill and speed had not availed to break through the Englishman’s superb guard.

  O’Donnell sought in vain to work into close quarters. Once Hawklin tried to rush him over the lip of the chasm, but nearly impaled himself on the American’s scimitar and abandoned the attempt.

  Then suddenly, unexpectedly, the end came. O’Donnell’s foot slipped slightly on the smooth floor, and his blade wavered for an instant. Hawklin threw all his strength and speed behind a lunging thrust that would have driven his saber clear through O’Donnell’s body had it reached its mark. But the American was not as much off-balance as Hawklin thought. A twist of his supple body, and the long lean blade passed beneath his right arm-pit, ploughing through the loose khalat as it grazed his ribs. For an instant the blade was caught in the folds of the loose cloth, and Hawklin yelled wildly and stabbed with his dagger. It sank deep in O’Donnell’s right arm as he lifted it, and simultaneously the kindhjal in O’Donnell’s left hand plunged between Hawklin’s ribs.

  The Englishman’s scream broke in a g
hastly gurgle. He reeled back, and as O’Donnell tore out the blade, blood spurted and Hawklin fell limply, dead before he hit the floor.

  O’Donnell dropped his weapon and knelt, ripping a strip of cloth from his khalat for a bandage. His wounded arm was bleeding freely, but a quick investigation assured him that the dagger had not severed any important muscle or vein.

  As he bound it up, tying knots with his fingers and teeth, he glanced at the Blood-Stained God which leered down on him and the man he had just slain. It had taken full toll, and it seemed to gloat, with its carven, gargoyle face. He shivered. Surely it must be accursed. Could wealth gained from such a source, and at such a price as the dead man at his feet, ever bring luck? He put the thought from him. The Red God was his, bought by sweat and blood and sword-strokes. He must pack it on a horse and begone before the vengeance of Yakub Khan overtook him. He could not go back the way he had come. The Jowakis barred that way. He must strike out blind, through unfamiliar mountains, trusting to luck to make his way to safety.

  “Put up your hands!” It was a triumphant shout that rang to the roof.

  In one motion he was on his feet, facing the door — then he froze.

  Two men stood before him, and one covered him with a cocked rifle. The man was tall, lean and red-bearded.

  “Yakub Khan!” ejaculated O’Donnell.

  The other man was a powerful fellow who seemed vaguely familiar.

  “Drop your weapons!” The chief laughed harshly. “You thought I had run away to my village, did you not? Fool! I sent all my men but one, who was the only one not wounded, to rouse the tribe, while with this man I followed you. I have hung on your trail all night, and I stole in here while you fought with that one on the floor there. Your time has come, you Kurdish dog! Back! Back! Back!”

  Under the threat of the rifle O’Donnell moved slowly backward until he stood close to the black chasm. Yakub followed him at a distance of a few feet, the rifle muzzle never wavering.