But Willoughby felt that he was just as effectually being killed by overexertion. He had never realized that human beings could traverse such a path–or rather such a pathless track–as he was being dragged over. When the moon sank the going was even harder, but he was grateful, for the abysses they seemed to be continually skirting were but floating gulfs of blackness beneath them, which did not induce the sick giddiness resulting from yawning chasms disclosed by the merciless moonlight.
His respect for Gordon’s physical abilities increased to a kind of frantic awe, for he knew the American was known to be superior in stamina and endurance even to these long-legged, barrel-chested, iron-muscled mountaineers who seemed built of some substance that was tireless. Willoughby wished they would tire. They hauled him along with a man at each arm, and one to pull, and another to push when necessary, but even so the exertion was killing him. Sweat bathed him, drenching his garments. His thighs trembled and the calves of his legs were tied into agonizing knots.
He reflected in dizzy fragments that Gordon deserved whatever domination he had achieved over these iron-jawed barbarians. But mostly he did not think at all. His faculties were all occupied in keeping his feet and gulping air. The veins in his temples were nearly bursting and things were swimming in a bloody haze about him when he realized his escort, or captors–or torturers–had slowed to a walk. He voiced an incoherent croak of gratitude and shaking the sweat out of his dilated eyes, he saw that they were treading a path that ran over a natural rock bridge which spanned a deep gorge. Ahead of him, looming above a cluster of broken peaks, he saw a great black bulk heaving up against the stars like a misshapen castle.
The sharp challenge of a rifleman rang staccato from the other end of the span and was answered by Khoda Khan’s bull-like bellow. The path led upon a jutting ledge and half a dozen ragged, bearded specters with rifles in their hands rose from behind a rampart of heaped-up boulders.
Willoughby was in a state of collapse, able only to realize that the killing grind was over. The Afridis half carried, half dragged him within the semicircular rampart and he saw a bronze door standing open and a doorway cut in solid rock that glowed luridly. It required an effort to realize that the glow came from a fire burning somewhere in the cavern into which the doorway led.
This, then, was Akbar’s Castle. With each arm across a pair of brawny shoulders Willoughby tottered through the cleft and down a short narrow tunnel, to emerge into a broad natural chamber lighted by smoky torches and a small fire over which tea was brewing and meat cooking. Half a dozen men sat about the fire, and some forty more slept on the stone floor, wrapped in their sheepskin coats. Doorways opened from the huge main chamber, openings of other tunnels or cell-like niches, and at the other end there were stalls occupied by horses, a surprising number of them. Saddles, blanket rolls, bridles and other equipage, with stands of rifles and stacks of ammunition cases, littered the floor near the walls.
The men about the fire rose to their feet looking inquiringly at the Englishman and his escort, and the men on the floor awoke and sat up blinking like ghouls surprised by daylight. A tall broad-shouldered swashbuckler came striding out of the widest doorway opening into the cavern. He paused before the group, towering half a head taller than any other man there, hooked his thumbs in his girdle and glared balefully.
“Who is this Feringhi?” he snarled suspiciously. “Where is El Borak?”
Three of the escort backed away apprehensively, but Khoda Khan held his ground and answered: “This is the sahib Willoughby, whom El Borak met at the Minaret of Shaitan, Yar Ali Khan. We rescued him from Baber Ali, who would have slain him. We were at bay in the cave where Yar Muhammad shot the gray wolf three summers ago. We stole out by a cleft, but the rope fell and left El Borak on a ledge fifty feet above us, and–”
“Allah!” It was a blood-curdling yell from Yar Ali Khan who seemed transformed into a maniac. “Dogs! You left him to die! Accursed ones! Forgotten of God! I’ll–”
“He commanded us to bring this Englishman to Akbar’s Castle,” maintained Khoda Khan doggedly. “We tore our beards and wept, but we obeyed!”
“Allah!” Yar Ali Khan became a whirlwind of energy. He snatched up rifle, bandoleer and bridle. “Bring out the horses and saddle them!” he roared and a score of men scurried. “Hasten! Forty men with me to rescue El Borak! The rest hold the Castle. I leave Khoda Khan in command.”
“Leave the devil in command of hell,” quoth Khoda Khan profanely. “I ride with you to rescue El Borak–or I empty my rifle into your belly.”
His three comrades expressed similar intentions at the top of their voices–after fighting and running all night, they were wild as starving wolves to plunge back into hazard in behalf of their chief.
“Go or stay, I care not!” howled Yar Ali Khan, tearing out a fistful of his beard in his passion. “If El Borak is slain I will requite thee, by the prophet’s beard and my feet! Allah rot me if I ram not a rifle stock down thy accursed gullets–dogs, jackals, noseless abominations, hasten with the horses!”
“Yar Ali Khan!” It was a yell from beyond the arch whence the tall Afridi had first emerged. “One comes riding hard up the valley!”
Yar Ali Khan yelled bloodthirstily and rushed into the tunnel, brandishing his rifle, with everybody pelting after him except the men detailed to saddle the horses.
Willoughby had been forgotten by the Pathans in the madhouse brewed by Gordon’s lieutenant. He limped after them, remembering tales told of this gaunt giant and his berserk rages. The tunnel down which the ragged horde was streaming ran for less than a hundred feet when it widened to a mouth through which the gray light of dawn was stealing. Through this the Afridis were pouring, and Willoughby, following them, came out upon a broad ledge a hundred feet wide and fifty deep, like a gallery before a house.
Around its semicircular rim ran a massive man-made wall, shoulder-high, pierced with loopholes slanting down. There was an arched opening in the wall, closed by a heavy bronze door, and from that door, which now stood open, a row of broad shallow steps niched in solid stone led down to a trail which in turn looped down a three-hundred-foot slope to the floor of a broad valley.
The cliffs in which the cave set closed the western end of the valley, which opened to the east. Mists hung in the valley and out of them a horseman came flying, growing ghostlike out of the dimness of the dawn–a man on a great white horse, riding like the wind.
Yar Ali Khan glared wildly for an instant, then started forward with a convulsive leap of his whole body, flinging his rifle high above his head.
“El Borak!” he roared.
Electrified by his yell, the men surged to the wall and those saddling the mounts inside abandoned their task and rushed out onto the ledge. In an instant the wall was lined with tense figures, gripping their rifles and glaring into the white mists rolling beyond the fleeing rider, from which they momentarily expected pursuers to appear.
Willoughby, standing to one side like a spectator of a drama, felt a tingle in his veins at the sight and sound of the wild rejoicing with which these wild men greeted the man who had won their allegiance. Gordon was no bluffing adventurer; he was a real chief of men; and that, Willoughby realized, was going to make his own job that much harder.
No pursuers materialized out of the thinning mists. Gordon urged his mount up the trail, up the broad steps, and as he rode through the gate, bending his head under the arch, the roar of acclaim that went up would have stirred the blood of a king. The Pathans swarmed around him, catching at his hands, his garments, shouting praise to Allah that he was alive and whole. He grinned down at them, swung off and threw his reins to the nearest man, from whom Yar Ali Khan instantly snatched them jealously, with a ferocious glare at the offending warrior.
Willoughby stepped forward. He knew he looked like a scarecrow in his stained and torn garments, but Gordon looked like a butcher, with blood dried on his shirt and smeared on his breeches where he had wiped his hands. But he d
id not seem to be wounded. He smiled at Willoughby for the first time.
“Tough trip, eh?”
“We’ve been here only a matter of minutes,” Willoughby acknowledged.
“You took a short cut. I came the long way, but I made good time on Baber Ali’s horse,” said Gordon.
“You mentioned possible ambushes in the valleys–”
“Yes. But on horseback I could take that risk. I was shot at once, but they missed me. It’s hard to aim straight in the early-morning mists.”
“How did you get away?”
“Waited until the moon went down, then made a break for it. Had to kill a man in the gully before the cave. We were all twisted together when I let him have the knife and that’s where this blood came from. I stole Baber’s horse while the Orakzai were storming the empty cave. Stampeded the herd down a canyon. Had to shoot the fellow guarding it. Baber’ll guess where I went, of course. He’ll be after me as quickly as he and his men can catch their horses. I suspect they’ll lay siege to the Castle, but they’ll only waste their time.”
Willoughby stared about him in the growing light of dawn, impressed by the strength of the stronghold. One rifleman could hold the entrance through which he had been brought. To try to advance along that narrow bridge that spanned the chasm behind the Castle would be suicide for an enemy. And no force on earth could march up the valley on this side and climb that stair in the teeth of Gordon’s rifles. The mountain which contained the cave rose up like a huge stone citadel above the surrounding heights. The cliffs which flanked the valley were lower than the fortified ledge; men crawling along them would be exposed to a raking fire from above. Attack could come from no other direction.
“This is really in Afdal Khan’s territory,” said Gordon. “It used to be a Mogul outpost, as the name implies. It was first fortified by Akbar himself. Afdal Khan held it before I took it. It’s my best safeguard for Kurram.
“After the outlying villages were burned on both sides, all my people took refuge in Kurram, just as Afdal’s did in Khoruk. To attack Kurram, Afdal would have to pass Akbar’s Castle and leave me in his rear. He doesn’t dare do that. That’s why he wanted a truce–to get me out of the Castle. With me ambushed and killed, or hemmed up in Kurram, he’d be free to strike at Kurram with all his force, without being afraid I’d burn Khoruk behind him or ambush him in my country.
“He’s too cautious of his own skin. I’ve repeatedly challenged him to fight me man to man, but he pays no attention. He hasn’t stirred out of Khoruk since the feud started, unless he had at least a hundred men with him–as many as I have in my entire force, counting these here and those guarding the women and children in Kurram.”
“You’ve done a terrible amount of damage with so small a band,” said Willoughby.
“Not difficult if you know the country, have men who trust you, and keep moving. Geronimo almost whipped an army with a handful of Apaches, and I was raised in his country. I’ve simply adopted his tactics. The possession of this Castle was all I needed to assure my ultimate victory. If Afdal had the guts to meet me, the feud would be over. He’s the chief; the others just follow him. As it is I may have to wipe out the entire Khoruk clan. But I’ll get him.”
The dark flame flickered in Gordon’s eyes as he spoke, and again Willoughby felt the impact of an inexorable determination, elemental in its foundations. And again he swore mentally that he would end the feud himself, in his own way, with Afdal Khan alive; though how, he had not the faintest idea at present.
Gordon glanced at him closely and advised: “Better get some sleep. If I know Baber Ali, he’ll come straight to the Castle after me. He knows he can’t take it, but he’ll try, anyway. He has at least a hundred men who follow him and take orders from nobody else–not even Afdal Khan. After the shooting starts there won’t be much chance for sleeping. You look a bit done up.”
Willoughby realized the truth of Gordon’s comment. Sight of the white streak of dawn stealing over the ash-hued peaks weighted his eyelids with an irresistible drowsiness. He was barely able to stumble into the cave, and the smell of frying mutton exercised no charm to keep him awake. Somebody steered him to a heap of blankets and he was asleep before he was actually stretched upon them.
Gordon stood looking down at the sleeping man enigmatically and Yar Ali Khan came up as noiselessly and calmly as a gaunt gray wolf; it would have been hard to believe he was the same hurricane of emotional upset which had stormed all over the cavern a short hour before.
“Is he a friend, sahib?”
“A better friend than he realizes,” was Gordon’s grim, cryptic reply. “I think Afdal Khan’s friends will come to curse the day Geoffrey Willoughby ever came into the hills.”
VI
Again it was the spiteful cracking of rifles which awakened Willoughby. He sat up, momentarily confused and unable to remember where he was or how he came there. Then he recalled the events of the night; he was in the stronghold of an outlaw chief, and those detonations must mean the siege Gordon had predicted. He was alone in the great cavern, except for the horses munching fodder beyond the bars at the other end. Among them he recognized the big white stallion that had belonged to Baber Ali.
The fire had died to a heap of coals and the daylight that stole through a couple of arches, which were the openings of tunnels connecting with the outer air, was augmented by half a dozen antique-looking bronze lamps.
A pot of mutton stew simmered over the coals and a dish full of chupatties stood near it. Willoughby was aware of a ravenous hunger and he set to without delay. Having eaten his fill and drunk deeply from a huge gourd which hung near by, full of sweet, cool water, he rose and started toward the tunnel through which he had first entered the Castle.
Near the mouth he almost stumbled over an incongruous object–a large telescope mounted on a tripod, and obviously modern and expensive. A glance out on the ledge showed him only half a dozen warriors sitting against the rampart, their rifles across their knees. He glanced at the ribbon of stone that spanned the deep gorge and shivered as he remembered how he had crossed it in the darkness. It looked scarcely a foot wide in places. He turned back, crossed the cavern and traversed the other tunnel.
He halted in the outer mouth. The wall that rimmed the ledge was lined with Afridis, kneeling or lying at the loopholes. They were not firing. Gordon leaned idly against the bronze door, his head in plain sight of any one who might be in the valley below. He nodded a greeting as Willoughby advanced and joined him at the door. Again the Englishman found himself a member of a besieged force, but this time the advantage was all with the defenders.
Down in the valley, out of effectual rifle range, a long skirmish line of men was advancing very slowly on foot, firing as they came, and taking advantage of every bit of cover. Farther back, small in the distance, a large herd of horses grazed, watched by men who sat cross-legged in the shade of the cliff. The position of the sun indicated that the day was well along toward the middle of the afternoon.
“I’ve slept longer than I thought,” Willoughby remarked. “How long has this firing been going on?”
“Ever since noon. They’re wasting Russian cartridges scandalously. But you slept like a dead man. Baber Ali didn’t get here as quickly as I thought he would. He evidently stopped to round up more men. There are at least a hundred down there.”
To Willoughby the attack seemed glaringly futile. The men on the ledge were too well protected to suffer from the long-range firing. And before the attackers could get near enough to pick out the loopholes, the bullets of the Afridis would be knocking them over like tenpins. He glimpsed men crawling among the boulders on the cliffs, but they were at the same disadvantage as the men in the valley below–Gordon’s riflemen had a vantage point above them.
“What can Baber Ali hope for?” he asked.
“He’s desperate. He knows you’re up here with me and he’s taking a thousand-to-one chance. But he’s wasting his time. I have enough ammunition and
food to stand a six-month siege; there’s a spring in the cavern.”
“Why hasn’t Afdal Khan kept you hemmed up here with part of his men while he stormed Kurram with the rest of his force?”
“Because it would take his whole force to storm Kurram; its defenses are almost as strong as these. Then he has a dread of having me at his back. Too big a risk that his men couldn’t keep me cooped up. He’s got to reduce Akbar’s Castle before he can strike at Kurram.”
“The devil!” said Willoughby irritably, brought back to his own situation. “I came to arbitrate this feud and now I find myself a prisoner. I’ve got to get out of here–got to get back to Ghazrael.”
“I’m as anxious to get you out as you are to go,” answered Gordon. “If you’re killed I’m sure to be blamed for it. I don’t mind being outlawed for the things I have done, but I don’t care to shoulder something I didn’t do.”
“Couldn’t I slip out of here tonight? By way of the bridge–”
“There are men on the other side of the gorge, watching for just such a move. Baber Ali means to close your mouth if human means can do it.”
“If Afdal Khan knew what’s going on he’d come and drag the old ruffian off my neck,” growled Willoughby. “Afdal knows he can’t afford to let his clan kill an Englishman. But Baber will take good care Afdal doesn’t know, of course. If I could get a letter to him–but of course that’s impossible.”
“We can try it, though,” returned Gordon. “You write the note. Afdal knows your handwriting, doesn’t he? Good! Tonight I’ll sneak out and take it to his nearest outpost. He keeps a line of patrols among the hills a few miles beyond Jehungir’s Well.”
“But if I can’t slip out, how can you–”
“I can do it all right, alone. No offense, but you Englishmen sound like a herd of longhorn steers at your stealthiest. The Orakzai are among the crags on the other side of the Gorge of Mekram. I won’t cross the bridge. My men will let me down on a rope ladder into the gorge tonight before moonrise. I’ll slip up to the camp of the nearest outpost, wrap the note around a pebble and throw it among them. Being Afdal’s men and not Baber’s, they’ll take it to him. I’ll come back the way I went, after moonset. It’ll be safe enough.”
The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume One: Crimson Shadows Page 56