El Borak and Other Desert Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  “Wait, you idiot! Do you want to run into a trap? Let them go!”

  Yar Ali Khan subsided to a wolfish wariness that was no less deadly than his berserk fury, and together they glided cautiously after the vague figures which disappeared in the mouth of the eastern ravine. There the pursuers halted, peering warily into the black depths. Somewhere, far down it, a dislodged pebble rattled on the stone, and both men tensed involuntarily, reacting like suspicious panthers.

  “The dogs did not halt,” muttered Yar Ali Khan. “They flee still. Shall we follow them?”

  He did not speak with conviction, and Gordon merely shook his head. Not even they dared plunge into that well of blackness, where ambushes might make every step a march of death. They fell back to the camp and the frightened horses, which were frantic with the stench of fresh-spilt blood.

  “When the moon rises high enough to flood the canyon with light,” quoth Yar Ali Khan, “they will shoot us from the ravine.”

  “That’s a chance we must take,” grunted Gordon. “Maybe they’re not good shots.”

  With the tiny beam of his pocket flashlight Gordon investigated the four dead men left behind by the attackers. The thin pencil of light moved from face to bearded face, and Yar Ali Khan grunted and swore: “Devil worshippers, by the beard of Allah! Yezidees! Sons of Melek Taus!”

  “No wonder they could creep like cats through the dark,” muttered Gordon, who well knew the uncanny stealth possessed by the people of that ancient and abominable cult which worship the Brazen Peacock on Mount Lalesh the Accursed.

  Yar Ali Khan made a sign calculated to exorcise devils which might be expected to be lurking near the place where their votaries had died.

  “Come away, sahib. It is not fitting that you should touch this carrion. No wonder they stole and slew like the djinn of silence. They are children of night and darkness, and they partake of the attributes of the elements which gave them birth.”

  “But what are they doing here?” mused Gordon. “Their homeland is in Syria — about Mount Lalesh. It’s the last stronghold of their race, to which they were driven by Christian and Moslem alike. A Mongol from the Gobi, and devil-worshippers from Syria. What’s the connection?”

  He grasped the coarse woolen khalat of the nearest corpse, and swore down Yar Ali Khan’s instant objections.

  “That flesh is accursed,” sulked the Afridi, looking like a scandalized ghoul, with the dripping knife in his hand, and blood trickling down his beard from a broken tooth. “It is not fit for a sahib such as thou to handle. If it must be done, let me —”

  “Oh, shut up! Ha! Just as I thought!”

  The tiny beam rested on the linen jerkin which covered the thick chest of the mountaineer. There gleamed, like a splash of fresh blood, the emblem of a hand gripping a three-bladed dagger.

  “Wallah!” Discarding his scruples, Yar Ali Khan ripped the khalats from the other three corpses. Each displayed the fist and dagger.

  “Are Mongols Muhammadans, sahib?” he asked presently.

  “Some are. But that man in Baber Khan’s hut wasn’t. His canine teeth were filed to sharp points. He was a priest of Erlik, the Yellow God of Death. Cannibalism is part of their rituals.”

  “The man who sought the life of the Turkish Sultan was a Kurd,” mused Yar Ali Khan. “Some of them worship Melek Taus, too, secretly. But it was an Arab who slew the Shah of Persia, and a Delhi Moslem who fired at the Viceroy. What would true Muhammadans be doing in a society which includes Mongol pagans and Yezidee devil-worshippers?”

  “That’s what we’re here to find out,” answered Gordon, snapping off the electric torch.

  They squatted in the shadow of the cliffs, in silence, as the moonlight, weird and ghostly, grew in the canyon, and rock and ledge and wall took shape. No sound disturbed the brooding quiet.

  Yar Ali Khan rose at last and stood up etched in the witch-light glow, a fair target for anyone lurking in the ravine-mouth. But no shot followed.

  “What now?”

  Gordon pointed to dark splotches on the bare rock floor that the moonlight made visible and distinct.

  “They’ve left us a trail a child could follow.”

  Without a word Yar Ali Khan sheathed his knife and secured his rifle from among the pack-rolls near the blankets. Gordon armed himself in like manner, and also fastened to his belt a coil of thin, strong rope with a short iron hook at one end of it. He had found such a rope invaluable time and again in mountain travel. The moon had risen higher, lighting the canyon, drawing a thin thread of silver along the middle of the ravine. That was enough light for men like Gordon and Yar Ali Khan.

  Through the moonlight they approached the ravine-mouth, rifles in hand, limned clearly for any marksmen who, after all, might be skulking there, but ready to take the chances of luck, or fate, or fortune, or whatever it is that decides the destiny of men on blind trails. No shot cracked, no furtive figures flitted among the shadows. The blood drops sprinkled thickly the rocky floor. Obviously the Yezidees had carried some grim wounds away with them.

  Gordon thought of Ahmed Shah, lying dead back there in the canyon without a cairn to cover his body. But the Yusufzai was past hurting, and Lal Singh was a prisoner in the hands of men to whom mercy was unknown. Later the dead could be taken care of; just now the task at hand was to rescue the living — if, indeed, the Yezidees had not already killed their prisoner.

  They pushed up the ravine without hesitation, rifles cocked. They went afoot, for they believed their enemies were on foot, unless horses were hidden somewhere up the ravine. The gulch was so narrow and rugged that a horseman would be at a fatal disadvantage in any kind of a fight.

  At each bend of the ravine they expected and were prepared for an ambush, but the trail of blood-drops led on, and no figures barred their way. The blood spots were not so thick now, but they were still sufficient to mark the way.

  Gordon quickened his pace, hopeful of overtaking the Yezidees, whom now were undoubtedly in flight. They had a long start but if, as he believed, they were carrying one or more wounded men, and were also burdened with a prisoner who would not make things any easier for them than he could help, that lead might be rapidly cut down. He believed the Sikh was alive, since they had not found his body, and if the Yezidees had killed him, they would have had no reason for hiding the corpse.

  The ravine pitched steeply upward, narrowing, then widened as it descended and abruptly made a crook and came out into another canyon running roughly east and west, and only a few hundred feet wide. The blood-spattered trail ran straight across to the sheer south wall — and ceased.

  Yar Ali Khan grunted. “The Ghilzai dogs spoke truth. The trail stops at a cliff that only a bird could fly over.”

  Gordon halted at the foot of the cliff, puzzled. They had lost the trace of the ancient road in the Gorge of Ghosts, but this was the way the Yezidees had come, without a doubt. Blood spattered a trail to the foot of the cliffs — then ceased as if those who bled had simply dissolved into thin air.

  He ran his eyes up the sheer pitch of the wall which rose straight up for hundreds of feet. Directly above him, at a height of some fifteen feet, a narrow ledge jutted, a mere outcropping some ten or fifteen feet in length and only a few feet wide. It seemed to offer no solution to the mystery. But halfway up to the ledge he saw a dull reddish smear on the rock of the wall.

  Uncoiling his rope, Gordon whirled the weighted end about his head and sent it curving upward. The hook bit into the rim of the ledge and held, and Gordon went up it, climbing the thin, smooth strand as swiftly and easily as most men would manipulate a rope-ladder. Skill acquired in the riggings of sailing ships in all the Seven Seas came to his aid here.

  As he passed the smear on the stone he confirmed his belief that it was dried blood. A wounded man being hauled up to the ledge, or climbing as he was climbing, might have left such a smear.

  Yar Ali Khan, below him, fidgeted with his rifle, trying to get a better view of the ledge, which his
pessimistic imagination peopled with assassins lying prone and unseen. But the shelf lay bare when Gordon pulled himself over the edge.

  The first thing he saw was a heavy iron ring set deep in the stone above the ledge, out of sight of anyone below. The metal was worn bright as if by the friction of much usage. More blood was smeared thickly at the place where a man would come up over the rim, if he climbed a rope fastened to the ring, or was hoisted.

  Yet more blood drops spattered the ledge, leading diagonally across it toward the sheer wall, which showed a great deal of weathering at that point. And Gordon saw something else — the blurred but unmistakable print of bloody fingers on the rock of the wall. He studied the cracks in the rocks for a few minutes, then laid his hand on the wall over the bloody finger-prints, and shoved. Instantly, smoothly, a section of the wall swung inward, and he was staring into the door of a narrow tunnel, dimly lit by the moon somewhere behind it.

  Wary as a stalking panther he stepped into it, and immediately heard a startled yelp from Yar Ali Khan, to whose inadequate view it had seemed that he had simply melted into the solid rock. Gordon emerged head and shoulders to objurgate his astounded follower to silence, and then continued his investigation.

  The tunnel was short, and moonlight poured into it from the other end where it opened into a cleft. The moonlight slanted down from above into this cleft, which ran straight for a hundred feet and then made an abrupt bend, blocking further view. It was like a knife-cut through a block of solid rock.

  The door through which he had entered was an irregularly-shaped slab of rock, hung on heavy, oiled iron hinges. It fit perfectly into its aperture, and its irregular shape made the cracks appear to be merely seams in the cliff, produced by time and erosion.

  A rope ladder made of heavy rawhide was coiled on a small rock shelf just inside the tunnel mouth, and with this Gordon returned to the ledge outside. He drew up his rope and coiled it, then made fast the ladder and let it down, and Yar Ali Khan swarmed up it in a frenzy of impatience to be at his friend’s side again.

  He swore softly as he comprehended the mystery of the vanishing trail.

  “But why was not the door bolted on the inside, sahib?”

  “Probably men are coming and going constantly. Men outside might need to get through this door mighty bad, without having to yell for somebody to come and let them in. There wasn’t a chance in a thousand of it’s ever being discovered. I wouldn’t have found it if it hadn’t been for the blood-marks. At that I was just playing a hunch when I pushed on the rock.”

  Yar Ali Khan was for plunging instantly into the cleft, but Gordon had become wary. He had not seen or heard anything that would indicate the presence of a sentry, but he did not believe that a people who showed so much ingenuity in concealing the entrance to their country would leave it unguarded, however slight might be the chance of discovery.

  He hauled up the rawhide ladder, coiled it back on the shelf and closed the door, cutting off the circulation of the moonlight and plunging that end of the tunnel into darkness, in which he commanded Yar Ali Khan to wait for him. The Afridi cursed under his breath, but Gordon believed that one man could reconnoiter beyond that cryptic bend better than two. Yar Ali Khan squatted in the darkness by the door, hugging his rifle and muttering anathema, while Gordon went down the tunnel and into the cleft.

  This was simply a narrow split in the great solid mass of the cliffs, and an irregular knife-edge of star-lit sky was visible, hundreds of feet overhead. Enough moonlight found its way into the crevice to make it light enough for Gordon’s catlike eyes.

  He had not reached the bend when a scruffing of feet beyond it reached him. He had scarcely concealed himself behind a broken outcropping of rock that was split away from the side-wall, when the sentry came. He came leisurely, and in the manner of one who performs a routine task perfunctorily, secure in his conviction of the inaccessibility of his retreat. He was a squat Mongol, with a face like a copper mask, and altogether his appearance was not unlike those of the devils of Hill-country legends as he swung along with the wide roll of a horseman, trailing a rifle.

  He was passing Gordon’s hiding place when some obscure instinct brought him about in a flash, teeth bared in a startled snarl, rifle jumping for a shot from the hip. But even as he turned Gordon was on his feet with the instant uncoiling of steel spring muscles, and as the rifle muzzle leaped to a level, the scimitar lashed down. The Mongol dropped like an ox, his round skull split like a ripe melon.

  Gordon froze into statuesque immobility, glaring along the passage. As he heard no sound to indicate the presence of any other guard, he risked a low whistle which brought Yar Ali Khan headlong into the cleft, eyes blazing.

  He grunted expressively at the sight of the dead man.

  “Yes — another son of Erlik. No telling how many more may be in this defile. We’ll drag him behind these rocks where I hid. Good! Come on, now. If there were any more close by they’d have heard the sound of the blow.”

  Gordon was correct. Beyond the bend the long, deep defile ran empty to the next kink. As they advanced without opposition belief that the Mongol had been the only sentry posted in the cleft became certainty. The moonlight in the narrow gash above them was paling when they emerged into the open at last. Here the defile broke into a chaos of shattered rock, and the single gorge became half a dozen, threading between isolated crags and split-off rocks like the many mouths of a river that splits into separate streams at the delta. Crumbling pinnacles and turrets of black stone stood up like gaunt ghosts in the grey light which betrayed the coming of dawn.

  Threading their way between these grim sentinels, they presently looked out upon a level, rock-strewn floor that stretched for three hundred yards to the foot of an abrupt cliff. The trail they had been following, grooved by many feet in the weathered stone, crossed the level and twisted a tortuous way up the cliff on ramps cut in the rock. But what lay on top of the cliffs they could not guess. To right and left the solid wall veered away, flanked by the broken pinnacles.

  “What now, sahib?” In the grey light the Afridi looked like a mountain goblin surprized out of his crag-cave by dawn.

  “I think we must be close to — listen!”

  Over the cliffs rolled the blaring reverberation they had heard the night before, but now much nearer — the strident roar of the giant trumpet.

  “How we been seen?” wondered Yar Ali Khan, working his rifle-bolt.

  “That’s on the lap of Allah. But we must see, and we can’t climb that cliff without first knowing what lies above it. Here! This will serve our purpose.”

  It was a weathered crag which rose like a tower among its lesser fellows. Any Hill-bred child could have scaled it. The comrades went up it almost as swiftly as if it had been a stairway, being careful to keep its bulk between them and the opposite cliffs, until they reached the summit, which was higher than the cliffs. Then they lay behind a spur of rock, staring through the rosy haze of the rising dawn.

  “Allah!” swore Yar Ali Khan, reaching for the rifle slung on his back.

  Seen from their vantage point the opposite cliffs assumed their real nature as one side of a gigantic mesa-like block which reminded Gordon of the formations of his native Southwest. It rose sheer from the surrounding level, four to five hundred feet in height, and its perpendicular sides seemed unscalable except at the point where the trail had been laboriously cut into the stone. East, north and west it was girdled by crumbling crags, separated from the plateau by the level canyon floor which varied in width from three hundred yards to half a mile. On the south the plateau abutted on a gigantic, bare mountain whose gaunt peaks dominated the surrounding pinacles.

  But the watchers devoted only a glance to the geographical formation, mechanically analyzing and appreciating it. It was a stupefying phenomenon of another nature which gripped their whole attention.

  Gordon had not been sure just what he expected to find at the end of the bloody trail. He had anticipated a rendezvou
s of some sort, certainly: a cluster of horse-hide tents, a cavern, perhaps even a village of mud and stone nestling on a hill-side. But they were looking at a city whose domes and towers glistened in the rosy dawn, like a magic city of sorcerers stolen from some fabled land and set down in this desert spot!

  “The city of the djinn!” ejaculated Yar Ali Khan, jolted back into his original conception of their enemies. “Allah is my protection against Shaitan the Damned!” He snapped his fingers in a gesture older than Muhammad.

  The plateau was roughly oval in shape, about a mile and a half in length from north to south, somewhat less than a mile in width from east to west. The city stood near the southern extremity, etched against the dark mountain behind it, its flat-topped stone houses and clustering trees dominated by a large edifice whose purple dome gleamed in the sharp dawn, shot and veined with gold.

  “Enchantment and necromancy!” exclaimed Yar Ali Khan, completely upset.

  Gordon did not reply, but the Celtic blood in his veins responded to the somber aspect of the scene, the contrast of the gloomy black crags with the masses of green and the sheens of color which were the city. But the city itself woke forebodings of evil. The gleam of its purple, gold-traced dome was sinister. The black, crumbling crags were a fit setting for it. It was like a city of ancient, demoniac mystery, rising amidst ruin and decay, even its splendor an evil glitter.

  “This must be the stronghold of the Hidden Ones,” muttered Gordon. “I would have expected to find their headquarters concealed in the native district of some city like Delhi, or Bombay. But this is a logical point. From here they can strike at all the countries of Western Asia, and have a safe hide-out to retire to. But who’d have expected to find a city like that in a country so long supposed to be practically uninhabited?”