The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume One: Crimson Shadows

by Robert E. Howard

  “But how safe will it be for Afdal Khan when he comes for me?”

  “You can tell Afdal Khan he won’t be harmed if he plays fair,” Gordon answered. “But you’d better make some arrangements so you can see him and know he’s there before you trust yourself outside this cave. And there’s the pinch, because Afdal won’t dare show himself for fear I’d shoot him. He’s broken so many pacts himself he can’t believe anybody would keep one. Not where his hide is concerned. He trusted me to keep my word in regard to Baber and your escort, but would he trust himself to my promise?”

  Willoughby scowled, cramming the bowl of his pipe. “Wait!” he said suddenly. “I saw a big telescope in the cavern, mounted on a tripod–is it in working order?”

  “I should say it is. I imported that from Germany by the way of Turkey and Persia. That’s one reason Akbar’s Castle has never been surprised. It carries for miles.”

  “Does Afdal Khan know of it?”

  “I’m sure he does.”

  “Good!”

  Seating himself on the ledge, Willoughby drew forth pencil and notebook, propped the latter against his knee, and wrote in his clear concise hand:

  AFDAL KHAN: I am at Akbar’s Castle, now being besieged by your uncle, Baber Ali. Baber was so unreasonably incensed at my failure to effect a truce that he allowed my servant Suleiman to be murdered, and now intends murdering me, to stop my mouth.

  I don’t have to remind you how fatal it would be to the interests of your party for this to occur. I want you to come to Akbar’s Castle and get me out of this. Gordon assures me you will not be molested if you play fair, but here is a way by which you need not feel you are taking any chances: Gordon has a large telescope through which I can identify you while you are still out of rifle range. In the Gorge of Mekram, and southwest of the Castle, there is a mass of boulders split off from the right wall and well out of rifle range from the Castle. If you were to come and stand on those boulders, I could identify you easily.

  Naturally, I will not leave the Castle until I know you are present to protect me from your uncle. As soon as I have identified you, I will come down the gorge alone. You can watch me all the way and assure yourself that no treachery is intended. No one but myself will leave the Castle. On your part I do not wish any of your men to advance beyond the boulders and I will not answer for their safety if they should, as I intend to safeguard Gordon in this matter as well as yourself.

  GEOFFREY WILLOUGHBY.

  He handed the letter over for Gordon to read.

  The American nodded. “That may bring him. I don’t know. He’s kept out of my sight ever since the feud started.”

  Then ensued a period of waiting, in which the sun seemed sluggishly to crawl toward the western peaks. Down in the valley and on the cliffs the Orakzai kept up their fruitless firing with a persistency that convinced Willoughby of the truth of Gordon’s assertion that ammunition was being supplied them by some European power.

  The Afridis were not perturbed. They lounged at ease by the wall, laughed, joked, chewed jerked mutton and fired through the slanting loopholes when the Orakzai crept too close. Three still white-clad forms in the valley and one on the cliffs testified to their accuracy. Willoughby realized that Gordon was right when he said the clan which held Akbar’s Castle was certain to win the war eventually. Only a desperate old savage like Baber Ali would waste time and men trying to take it. Yet the Orakzai had originally held it. How Gordon had gained possession of it Willoughby could not imagine.

  The sun dipped at last; the Himalayan twilight deepened into black-velvet, star-veined dusk. Gordon rose, a vague figure in the starlight.

  “Time for me to be going.”

  He had laid aside his rifle and buckled a tulwar to his hip. Willoughby followed him into the great cavern, now dim and shadowy in the light of the bronze lamps, and through the narrow tunnel and the bronze door.

  Yar Ali Khan, Khoda Khan, and half a dozen others followed them. The light from the cavern stole through the tunnel, vaguely etching the moving figures of the men. Then the bronze door was closed softly and Willoughby’s companions were shapeless blurs in the thick soft darkness around him. The gorge below was a floating river of blackness. The bridge was a dark streak that ran into the unknown and vanished. Not even the keenest eyes of the hills, watching from beyond the gorge, could have even discerned the jut of the ledge under the black bulk of the Castle, much less the movements of the men upon it.

  The voices of the men working at the rim of the ledge were low and murmurous as the whispering of the night breezes. Willoughby sensed rather than saw that they were lowering the rope ladder–a hundred and fifty feet of it–into the gorge. Gordon’s face was a light blur in the darkness. Willoughby groped for his hand and found him already swinging over the rampart onto the ladder, one end of which was made fast to a great iron ring set in the stone of the ledge.

  “Gordon, I feel like a bounder, letting you take this risk for me. Suppose some of those devils are down there in the gorge?”

  “Not much chance. They don’t know we have this way of coming and going. If I can steal a horse, I’ll be back in the Castle before dawn. If I can’t, and have to make the whole trip there and back on foot, I may have to hide out in the hills tomorrow and get back into the Castle the next night. Don’t worry about me. They’ll never see me. Yar Ali Khan, watch for a rush before the moon rises.”

  “Aye, sahib.” The bearded giant’s undisturbed manner reassured Willoughby.

  The next instant Gordon began to melt into the gloom below. Before he had climbed down five rungs the men crouching on the rampart could no longer see him. He made no sound in his descent. Khoda Khan knelt with a hand on the ropes, and as soon as he felt them go slack, he began to haul the ladder up. Willoughby leaned over the edge, straining his ears to catch some sound from below–scruff of leather, rattle of shale–he heard nothing.

  Yar Ali Khan muttered, his beard brushing Willoughby’s ear: “Nay, sahib, if such ears as yours could hear him, every Orakzai on this side of the mountain would know a man stole down the gorge! You will not hear him–nor will they. There are Lifters of the Khyber who can steal rifles out of the tents of the British soldiers, but they are blundering cattle compared to El Borak. Before dawn a wolf will howl in the gorge, and we will know El Borak has returned and will let down the ladder for him.”

  But like the others, the huge Afridi leaned over the rampart listening intently for some fifteen minutes after the ladder had been drawn up. Then with a gesture to the others he turned and opened the bronze door a crack. They stole through hurriedly. Somewhere in the blackness across the gorge a rifle cracked flatly and lead spanged a foot or so above the lintel. In spite of the rampart some quick eye among the crags had caught the glow of the opened door. But it was blind shooting. The sentries left on the ledge did not reply.

  Back on the ledge that overlooked the valley, Willoughby noted an air of expectancy among the warriors at the loopholes. They were momentarily expecting the attack of which Gordon had warned them.

  “How did Gordon take Akbar’s Castle?” Willoughby asked Khoda Khan, who seemed more ready to answer questions than any of the other taciturn warriors.

  The Afridi squatted beside him near the open bronze gate, rifle in hand, the butt resting on the ledge. Over them was the blue-black bowl of the Himalayan night, flecked with clusters of frosty silver.

  “He sent Yar Ali Khan with forty horsemen to make a feint at Baber Ali’s sangar,” answered Khodan Khan promptly. “Thinking to trap us, Afdal drew all his men out of Akbar’s Castle except three. Afdal believed three men could hold it against an army, and so they could–against an army. Not against El Borak. While Baber Ali and Afdal were striving to pin Yar Ali Khan and us forty riders between them, and were leading the dogs a merry chase over the hills, El Borak rode alone down this valley. He came disguised as a Persian trader, with his turban awry and his rich garments dusty and rent. He fled down the valley shouting that t
hieves had looted his caravan and were pursuing him to take from him his purse of gold and his pouch of jewels.

  “The accursed ones left to guard the Castle were greedy, and they saw only a rich and helpless merchant, to be looted. So they bade him take refuge in the cavern and opened the gate to him. He rode into Akbar’s Castle crying praise to Allah–with empty hands, but a knife and pistol under his khalat. Then the accursed ones mocked him and set on him to strip him of his riches–by Allah, they found they had caught a tiger in the guise of a lamb! One he slew with the knife, the other two he shot. Alone he took the stronghold against which armies have thundered in vain! When we forty-one horsemen evaded the Orakzai and doubled back, as it had been planned, lo! the bronze gate was open to us and we were lords of Akbar’s Castle! Ha! The forgotten of God charge the stair!”

  From the shadows below there welled up the sudden, swift drum of hoofs and Willoughby glimpsed movement in the darkness of the valley. The blurred masses resolved themselves into dim figures racing up the looping trail. At the same time a rattle of rifle fire burst out behind the Castle, from beyond the Gorge of Mekram. The Afridis displayed no excitement. Khoda Khan did not even close the bronze gate. They held their fire until the hoofs of the foremost horses were ringing on the lower steps of the stair. Then a burst of flame crowned the wall, and in its flash Willoughby saw wild bearded faces, horses tossing heads and manes.

  In the darkness following the volley there rose screams of agony from men and beasts, mingled with the thrashing and kicking of wounded horses and the grating of shod hoofs on stone as some of the beasts slid backward down the stair. Dead and dying piled in a heaving, agonized mass, and the stairs became a shambles as again and yet again the rippling volleys crashed.

  Willoughby wiped a damp brow with a shaking hand, grateful that the hoofbeats were receding down the valley. The gasps and moans and cries which welled up from the ghastly heap at the foot of the stairs sickened him.

  “They are fools,” said Khoda Khan, levering fresh cartridges into his rifle. “Thrice in past attacks have they charged the stair by darkness, and thrice have we broken them. Baber Ali is a bull rushing blindly to his destruction.”

  Rifles began to flash and crack down in the valley as the baffled besiegers vented their wrath in blind discharges. Bullets smacked along the wall of the cliff, and Khoda Khan closed the bronze gate.

  “Why don’t they attack by way of the bridge?” Willoughby wondered.

  “Doubtless they did. Did you not hear the shots? But the path is narrow and one man behind the rampart could keep it clear. And there are six men there, all skilled marksmen.”

  Willoughby nodded, remembering the narrow ribbon of rock flanked on either hand by echoing depths.

  “Look, sahib, the moon rises.”

  Over the eastern peaks a glow began which grew to a soft golden fire against which the peaks stood blackly outlined. Then the moon rose, not the mellow gold globe promised by the forerunning luster, but a gaunt, red, savage moon, the moon of the high Himalayas.

  Khoda Khan opened the bronze gate and peered down the stair, grunting softly in gratification. Willoughby, looking over his shoulder, shuddered. The heap at the foot of the stairs was no longer a merciful blur, for the moon outlined it in pitiless detail. Dead horses and dead men lay in a tangled gory mound with rifles and sword blades thrust out of the pile like weeds growing out of a scrap heap. There must have been at least a dozen horses, and almost as many men in that shambles.

  “A shame to waste good horses thus,” muttered Khoda Khan. “Baber Ali is a fool.” He closed the gate.

  Willoughby leaned back against the wall, drawing a heavy sheepskin coat about him. He felt sick and futile. The men down in the valley must feel the same way, for the firing was falling off, becoming spasmodic. Even Baber Ali must realize the futility of the siege by this time. Willoughby smiled bitterly to himself. He had come to arbitrate a hill feud–and down there men lay dead in heaps. But the game was not yet played out. The thought of Gordon stealing through those black mountains out there somewhere discouraged sleep. Yet he did slumber at last, despite himself.

  It was Khoda Khan who shook him awake. Willoughby looked up blinking. Dawn was just whitening the peaks. Only a dozen men squatted at the loopholes. From the cavern stole the reek of coffee and frying meat.

  “Your letter has been safely delivered, sahib.”

  “Eh? What’s that? Gordon’s returned?”

  Willoughby rose stiffly, relieved that Gordon had not suffered on his account. He glanced over the wall. Down the valley the camp of the raiders was veiled by the morning mists, but several strands of smoke oozed toward the sky. He did not look down the stair; he did not wish to see the cold faces of the dead in the white dawn light.

  He followed Khoda Khan into the great chamber where some of the warriors were sleeping and some preparing breakfast. The Afridi gestured toward a cell-like niche where a man lay. He had his back to the door, but the black, close-cropped hair and dusty khakis were unmistakable.

  “He is weary,” said Khoda Khan. “He sleeps.”

  Willoughby nodded. He had begun to wonder if Gordon ever found it necessary to rest and sleep like ordinary men.

  “It were well to go upon the ledge and watch for Afdal Khan,” said Khoda Khan. “We have mounted the telescope there, sahib. One shall bring your breakfast to you there. We have no way of knowing when Afdal will come.”

  Out on the ledge the telescope stood on its tripod, projecting like a cannon over the rampart. He trained it on the mass of boulders down the ravine. The Gorge of Mekram ran from the north to the southwest. The boulders, called the Rocks, were more than a mile to the southwest of the Castle. Just beyond them the gorge bent sharply. A man could reach the Rocks from the southwest without being spied from the Castle, but he could not approach beyond them without being seen. Nor could any one leave the Castle from that side and approach the Rocks without being seen by any one hiding there.

  The Rocks were simply a litter of huge boulders which had broken off from the canyon wall. Just now, as Willoughby looked, the mist floated about them, making them hazy and indistinct. Yet as he watched them they became more sharply outlined, growing out of the thinning mist. And on the tallest rock there stood a motionless figure. The telescope brought it out in vivid clarity. There was no mistaking that tall, powerful figure. It was Afdal Khan who stood there, watching the Castle with a pair of binoculars.

  “He must have got the letter early in the night, or ridden hard to get here this early,” muttered Willoughby. “Maybe he was at some spot nearer than Khoruk. Did Gordon say?”

  “No, sahib.”

  “Well, no matter. We won’t wake Gordon. No, I won’t wait for breakfast. Tell El Borak that I’m grateful for all the trouble he’s taken in my behalf and I’ll do what I can for him when I get back to Ghazrael. But he’d better decide to let this thing be arbitrated. I’ll see that Afdal doesn’t try any treachery.”

  “Yes, sahib.”

  They tossed the rope ladder into the gorge and it unwound swiftly as it tumbled down and dangled within a foot of the canyon floor. The Afridis showed their heads above the ramparts without hesitation, but when Willoughby mounted the rampart and stood in plain sight, he felt a peculiar crawling between his shoulders.

  But no rifle spoke from the crags beyond the gorge. Of course, the sight of Afdal Khan was sufficient guarantee of his safety. Willoughby set a foot in the ladder and went down, refusing to look below him. The ladder tended to swing and spin after he had progressed a few yards and from time to time he had to steady himself with a hand against the cliff wall. But altogether it was not so bad, and presently he heaved a sigh of relief as he felt the rocky floor under his feet. He waved his arms, but the rope was already being drawn up swiftly. He glanced about him. If any bodies had fallen from the bridge in the night battle, they had been removed. He turned and walked down the gorge, toward the appointed rendezvous.

  Dawn grew about hi
m, the white mists changing to rosy pink, and swiftly dissipating. He could make out the outlines of the Rocks plainly now, without artificial aid, but he no longer saw Afdal Khan. Doubtless the suspicious chief was watching his approach from some hiding place. He kept listening for distant shots that would indicate Baber Ali was renewing the siege, but he heard none. Doubtless Baber Ali had already received orders from Afdal Khan, and he visualized Afdal’s amazement and rage when he learned of his uncle’s indiscretions.

  He reached the Rocks–a great heap of rugged, irregular stones and broken boulders, towering thirty feet in the air in places.

  He halted and called: “Afdal Khan!”

  “This way, sahib,” a voice answered. “Among the Rocks.”

  Willoughby advanced between a couple of jagged boulders and came into a sort of natural theater, made by the space inclosed between the overhanging cliff and the mass of detached rocks. Fifty men could have stood there without being crowded, but only one man was in sight–a tall, lusty man in early middle life, in turban and silken khalat. He stood with his head thrown back in unconscious arrogance, a broad tulwar in his hand.

  The faint crawling between his shoulders that had accompanied Willoughby all the way down the gorge, in spite of himself, left him at the sight. When he spoke his voice was casual.

  “I’m glad to see you, Afdal Khan.”

  “And I am glad to see you, sahib!” the Orakzai answered with a chill smile. He thumbed the razor-edge of his tulwar. “You have failed in the mission for which I brought you into these hills–but your death will serve me almost as well.”