At that the murmur of the mob changed, and they halted in uncertainty.
“A lie!” screamed Abdullah, fired to recklessness by avarice and hate. “Bardylis is bewitched! El Borak is a wizard! How else could he speak your tongue?”
The crowd recoiled abruptly, and some made furtive signs to avert conjury. The Attalans were as superstitious as their ancestors. Bardylis had drawn his sword, and his friends rallied about him, clean-cut, rangy youngsters, quivering like hunted dogs in their eagerness.
“Wizard or man!” roared Bardylis, “he is my brother, and no man touches him save at peril of his head!”
“He is a wizard!” screamed Abdullah, foam dabbling his beard. “I know him of old! Beware of him! He will bring madness and ruin upon Attalus! On his body he bears a scroll with magic inscriptions, wherein lies his necromantic power! Give that scroll to me, and I will take it afar from Attalus and destroy it where it can do no harm. Let me prove I do not lie! Hold him while I search him, and I will show you.”
“Let no man dare touch El Borak!” challenged Bardylis. Then from his throne rose Ptolemy, a great menacing image of bronze, somber and awe-inspiring. He strode down the steps, and men shrank back from his bleak eyes. Bardylis stood his ground, as if ready to defy even his terrible king, but Gordon drew the lad aside. El Borak was not one to stand quietly by while someone else defended him.
“It is true,” he said without heat, “that I have a packet of papers in my garments. But it is also true that it has nothing to do with witchcraft, and that I will kill the man who tries to take it from me.”
At that Ptolemy’s brooding impassiveness vanished in a flame of passion.
“Will you defy even me?” he roared, his eyes blazing, his great hands working convulsively. “Do you deem yourself already king of Attalus? You black-haired dog, I will kill you with my naked hands! Back, and give us space!”
His sweeping arms hurled men right and left, and roaring like a bull, he hurled himself on Gordon. So swift and violent was his attack that Gordon was unable to avoid it. They met breast to breast, and the smaller man was hurled backward, and to his knee. Ptolemy plunged over him, unable to check his velocity, and then, locked in a death-grapple they ripped and tore, while the people surged yelling about them.
Not often did El Borak find himself opposed by a man stronger than himself. But the king of Attalus was a mass of whalebone and iron, and nerved to blinding quickness. Neither had a weapon. It was man to man, fighting as the primitive progenitors of the race fought. There was no science about Ptolemy’s onslaught. He fought like a tiger or a lion, with all the appalling frenzy of the primordial. Again and again Gordon battered his way out of a grapple that threatened to snap his spine like a rotten branch. His blinding blows ripped and smashed in a riot of destruction. The tall king of Attalus swayed and trembled before them like a tree in a storm, but always came surging back like a typhoon, lashing out with great strokes that drove Gordon staggering before him, rending and tearing with mighty fingers.
Only his desperate speed and the savage skill of boxing and wrestling that was his had saved Gordon so long. Naked to the waist, battered and bruised, his tortured body quivered with the punishment he was enduring. But Ptolemy’s great chest was heaving. His face was a mask of raw beef, and his torso showed the effects of a beating that would have killed a lesser man.
Gasping a cry that was half curse, half sob, he threw himself bodily on the American, bearing him down by sheer weight. As they fell he drove a knee savagely at Gordon’s groin, and tried to fall with his full weight on the smaller man’s breast. A twist of his body sent the knee sliding harmlessly along his thigh, and Gordon writhed from under the heavier body as they fell.
The impact broke their holds, and they staggered up simultaneously. Through the blood and sweat that streamed into his eyes, Gordon saw the king towering above him, reeling, arms spread, blood pouring down his mighty breast. His belly went in as he drew a great laboring breath. And into the relaxed pit of his stomach Gordon, crouching, drove his left with all the strength of his rigid arm, iron shoulders and knotted calves behind it. His clenched fist sank to the wrist in Ptolemy’s solar plexus. The king’s breath went out of him in an explosive grunt. His hands dropped and he swayed like a tall tree under the axe. Gordon’s right, hooking up in a terrible arc, met his jaw with a sound like a cooper’s mallet, and Ptolemy pitched headlong and lay still.
* * *
V. — THE DEATH OF HUNYADI
IN the stupefied silence that followed the fall of the king, while all eyes, dilated with surprise, were fixed on the prostrate giant and the groggy figure that weaved above him, a gasping voice shouted from outside the palace. It grew louder, mingled with a clatter of hoofs which stopped at the outer steps. All wheeled toward the door as a wild figure staggered in, spattering blood.
“A guard from the pass!” cried Bardylis.
“The Moslems!” cried the man, blood spurting through his fingers which he pressed to his shoulder. “Three hundred Afghans! They have stormed the pass! They are led by a feringhi and four turki who have rifles that fire many times without reloading! These men shot us down from afar off as we strove to defend the pass. The Afghans have entered the valley.” He swayed and fell, blood trickling from his lips. A blue bullet hole showed in his shoulder, near the base of his neck.
No clamor of terror greeted this appalling news. In the utter silence that followed, all eyes turned toward Gordon, leaning dizzily against the wall, gasping for breath.
“You have conquered Ptolemy,” said Bardylis. “He is dead or senseless. While he is helpless, you are king. That is the law. Tell us what to do.”
Gordon gathered his dazed wits and accepted the situation without demur or question. If the Afghans were in the valley, there was no time to waste. He thought he could hear the distant popping of firearms already. “How many men are able to bear arms?” he panted.
“Three hundred and fifty,” answered one of the chiefs.
“Then let them take their weapons and follow me,” he said. “The walls of the city are rotten. If we try to defend them, with Hunyadi directing the siege, we will be trapped like rats. We must win with one stroke, if at all.”
Someone brought him a sheathed and belted scimitar and he buckled it about his waist. His head was still swimming and his body numb, but from some obscure reservoir he drew a fund of reserve power, and the prospect of a final showdown with Hunyadi fired his blood. At his directions men lifted Ptolemy and placed him on a couch. The king had not moved since he dropped, and Gordon thought it probable that he had a concussion of the brain. That poleax smash that had felled him would have split the skull of a lesser man.
Then Gordon remembered Abdullah, and looked about for him, but the Tajik had vanished.
At the head of the warriors of Attalus, Gordon strode down the street and through the ponderous gate. All were armed with long curved swords; some had unwieldy matchlocks, ancient weapons captured from the hill tribes. He knew the Afghans would be no better armed, but the rifles of Hunyadi and his Turks would count heavily.
He could see the horde swarming up the valley, still some distance away. They were on foot. Lucky for the Attalans that one of the pass-guards had kept a horse near him. Otherwise the Afghans would have been at the very walls of the town before the word came of their invasion.
The invaders were drunk with exultation, halting to fire outlying huts and growing stuff, and to shoot cattle, in sheer wanton destructiveness. Behind Gordon rose a deep rumble of rage, and looking back at the blazing blue eyes, and tall, tense figures, the American knew he was leading no weaklings to battle.
He led them to a long straggling heap of stones which ran waveringly clear across the valley, marking an ancient fortification, long abandoned and crumbling down. It would afford some cover. When they reached it the invaders were still out of rifle fire. The Afghans had ceased their plundering and came on at an increased gait, howling like wolves.
&n
bsp; Gordon ordered his men to lie down behind the stones, and called to him the warriors with the matchlocks.some thirty in all.
“Pay no heed to the Afghans,” he instructed them. “Shoot at the men with the rifles. Do not shoot at random, but wait until I give the word, then all fire together.”
The ragged horde were spreading out somewhat as they approached, loosing their matchlocks before they were in range of the grim band waiting silently along the crumbled wall. The Attalans quivered with eagerness, but Gordon gave no sign. He saw the tall, supple figure of Hunyadi, and the bulkier shapes of his turbaned Turks, in the center of the ragged crescent. The men came straight on, apparently secure in the knowledge that the Attalans had no modern weapons, and that Gordon had lost his rifle. They had seen him climbing down the cliff without it. Gordon cursed Abdullah, whose treachery had lost him his pistol.
Before they were in range of the matchlocks, Hunyadi fired, and the warrior at Gordon’s side slumped over, drilled through the head. A mutter of rage and impatience ran along the line, but Gordon quieted the warriors, ordering them to lie closer behind the rocks. Hunyadi tried again, and the Turks blazed away, but the bullets whined off the stones. The men moved nearer and behind them the Afghans howled with bloodthirsty impatience, rapidly getting out of hand.
Gordon had hoped to lure Hunyadi into reach of his matchlocks. But suddenly, with an earth-shaking yell, the Afghans stormed past the Hungarian in a wave, knives flaming like the sun on water. Hunyadi yelped explosively, unable to see or shoot at his enemies, for the backs of his reckless allies. Despite his curses, they came on with a roar.
Gordon, crouching among the stones, glared at the gaunt giants rushing toward him until he could make out the fanatical blaze of their eyes, then he roared: “Fire.”
A thunderous volley ripped out along the wall, ragged, but terrible at that range. A storm of lead blasted the oncoming line, and men went down in windrows. Lost to all caution, the Attalans leaped the wall and hewed into the staggering Afghans with naked steel. Cursing as Hunyadi had cursed, Gordon drew his scimitar and followed them.
No time for orders now, no formation, no strategy. Attalan and Afghan, they fought as men fought a thousand years ago, without order or plan, massed in a straining, grunting, hacking mob, where naked blades flickered like lightning. Yard-long Khyber knives clanged and ground against the curved swords of the Attalans. The rending of flesh and bone beneath the chopping blades was like the sound of butchers’ cleavers. The dying dragged down the living and the warriors stumbled among the mangled corpses. It was a shambles where no quarter was asked and none given, and the feuds and hates of a thousand years glutted in slaughter.
No shots were fired in that deadly crush, but about the edges of the battle circled Hunyadi and the Turks, shooting with deadly accuracy. Man to man, the stalwart Attalans were a match for the hairy hillmen, and they slightly outnumbered the invaders. But they had thrown away the advantage of their position, and the rifles of the Hungarian’s own party were dealing havoc in their disordered ranks. Two of the Turks were down, one hit by a matchlock ball in that first and only volley, and another disembowelled by a dying Attalan.
As Gordon hewed his way through the straining knots and flailing blades, he met one of the remaining Turks face to face. The man thrust a rifle muzzle in his face, but the hammer fell with a click on an empty shell, and the next instant Gordon’s scimitar ripped through his belly and stood out a foot behind his back. As the American twisted his blade free, the other Turk fired a pistol, missed, and hurled the empty weapon fruitlessly. He rushed in, slashing with a saber at Gordon’s head. El Borak parried the singing blade, and his scimitar cut the air like a blue beam, splitting the Turk’s skull to the chin.
Then he saw Hunyadi. The Hungarian was groping in his belt, and Gordon knew he was out of ammunition.
“We’ve tried hot lead, Gustav,” challenged Gordon, “and we both still live. Come and try cold steel!”
With a wild laugh the Hungarian ripped out his blade in a bright shimmer of steel that caught the morning sun. He was a tall man, Gustav Hunyadi, black sheep son of a noble Magyar house, supple and lithe as a catamount, with dancing, reckless eyes and lips that curved in a smile as cruel as a striking sword.
“I match my life against a little package of papers, El Borak!” the Hungarian laughed as the blades met.
On each side the fighting lulled and ceased, as the warriors drew back with heaving chests and dripping swords, to watch their leaders settle the score.
The curved blades sparkled in the sunlight, ground together, leaped apart, licked in and out like living things.
Well for El Borak then that his wrist was a solid mass of steel cords, that his eye was quicker and surer than a falcon’s, and his brain and thews bound together with a coordination keen as razor-edged steel. For into his play Hunyadi brought all the skill of a race of swordsmen, all the craft taught by masters of the blade of Europe and Asia, and all the savage cunning he had learned in wild battles on the edges of the world.
He was taller and had the longer reach. Again and again his blade whispered at Gordon’s throat. Once it touched his arm, and a trickle of crimson began. There was no sound except the rasp of feet on the sward, the rapid whisper of the blades, the deep panting of the men. Gordon was the harder pressed. That terrible fight with Ptolemy was taking its toll. His legs trembled, his sight kept blurring. As if through a mist he saw the triumphant smile growing on the thin lips of the Magyar.
And a wild surge of desperation rose in Gordon’s soul, nerving him for a last rush. It came with the unexpected fury of a dying wolf, with a flaming fan of steel, a whirlwind of blades.and then Hunyadi was down, clutching at the earth with twitching hands, Gordon’s narrow curved blade through him.
The Hungarian rolled his glazing eyes up at his conqueror, and his lips distorted in a ghastly smile. “To the mistress of all true adventures!” he whispered, choking on his own blood. “To the Lady Death!”
He sank back and lay still, his pallid face turned to the sky, blood oozing from his lips.
The Afghans began slinking furtively away, their morale broken, like a pack of wolves whose leader is down. Suddenly, as if waking from a dream, the Attalans gave tongue and pelted after them. The invaders broke and fled, while the infuriated Attalans followed, stabbing and hacking at their backs, down the valley and out through the pass.
Gordon was aware that Bardylis, blood-stained but exultant, was beside him, supporting his trembling frame that seemed on the point of collapse. The American wiped the bloody sweat from his eyes, and touched the packet under his girdle. Many men had died for that. But many more would have died had it not been saved, including helpless women and children.
Bardylis muttered apprehensively, and Gordon looked up to see a gigantic figure approaching leisurely from the direction of the city, through whose gate the rejoicing women were already streaming. It was Ptolemy, his features grotesquely swollen and blackened from Gordon’s iron fists. He strode serenely through the heaps of corpses, and reached the spot where the companions stood.
Bardylis gripped his notched sword, and Ptolemy, seeing the gesture, grinned with his pulped lips. He was holding something behind him.
“I do not come in anger, El Borak,” he said calmly. “A man who can fight as you have fought is neither wizard, thief nor murderer. I am no child to hate a man who has bested me in fair fight.and then saved my kingdom while I lay senseless. Will you take my hand?”
Gordon grasped it with an honest surge of friendship toward this giant, whose only fault, after all, was his vanity.
“I did not recover my senses in time for the battle,” said Ptolemy. “I only saw the last of it. But if I did not reach the field in time to smite the Moslem dogs, I have at least rid the valley of one rat I found hiding in the palace.” He casually tossed something at Gordon’s feet. The severed head of Abdullah, the features frozen in a grin of horror, stared up at the American.
�
��Will you live in Attalus and be my brother, as well as the brother of Bardylis?” asked Ptolemy, with a glance down the valley, toward the pass through which the warriors were harrying the howling Afghans.
“I thank you, king,” said Gordon, “but I must go to my own people, and it is still a long road to travel. When I have rested for a few days, I must be gone. A little food, to carry with me on my journey is all I ask from the people of Attalus, who are men as brave and valiant as their royal ancestors.”
THE END
BLOOD OF THE GODS
I
It was the wolfish snarl on Hawkston’s thin lips, the red glare in his eyes, which first roused terrified suspicion in the Arab’s mind, there in the deserted hut on the outskirts of the little town of Azem. Suspicion became certainty as he stared at the three dark, lowering faces of the other white men, bent toward him, and all beastly with the same cruel greed that twisted their leader’s features.
The brandy glass slipped from the Arab’s hand and his swarthy skin went ashy.
“Lah!” he cried desperately. “No! You lied to me! You are not friends — you brought me here to murder me—”
He made a convulsive effort to rise, but Hawkston grasped the bosom of his gumbaz in an iron grip and forced him down into the camp chair again. The Arab cringed away from the dark, hawk-like visage bending close to his own.
“You won’t be hurt, Dirdar,” rasped the Englishman. “Not if you tell us what we want to know. You heard my question. Where is Al Wazir?”
The beady eyes of the Arab glared wildly up at his captor for an instant, then Dirdar moved with all the strength and speed of his wiry body. Bracing his feet against the floor, he heaved backward suddenly, toppling the chair over and throwing himself along with it. With a rending of worn cloth the bosom of the gumbaz came away in Hawkston’s hand, and Dirdar, regaining his feet like a bouncing rubber ball, dived straight at the only door, ducking beneath the pawing arm of the big Dutchman, Van Brock.
Delphi Works of Robert E. Howard (Illustrated) (Series Four) Page 299