Grim Lands

by Robert E. Howard

“Come! We have arms, horses, supplies. If we linger we shall be crushed with the rest of the army between the British on the coast and the Arabs the Englishman Lawrence is bringing up from the south. On to El Awad! The sword for the men – captivity for the women!”

  His voice cracked like a whip as he snapped the orders that set the lines in motion. In perfect order they moved off through the lightening dawn toward the range of saw-edged hills in the distance. Behind them the air still vibrated with the distant rumble of the British artillery. Over them waved a banner that bore the head of a white wolf – the battle-standard of most ancient Turan.

  II

  MASSACRE

  When Fraulein Olga von Bruckmann, known as a famous German secret agent, arrived at the tiny Arab hill-village of El Awad, it was in a drizzling rain that made the dusk a blinding curtain over the muddy town.

  With her companion, an Arab named Ahmed, she rode into the muddy street, and the villagers crept from their hovels to stare in awe at the first white woman most of them had ever seen.

  A few words from Ahmed and the shaykh salaamed and showed her to the best mud hut in the village. The horses were led away to feed and shelter, and Ahmed paused long enough to whisper to his companion:

  “El Awad is friendly to the Turks. Have no fear. I shall be near, in any event.”

  “Try and get fresh horses,” she urged. “I must push on as soon as possible.”

  “The shaykh swears there isn’t a horse in the village in fit condition to be ridden. He may be lying. But at any rate our own horses will be rested enough to go on by dawn. Even with fresh horses it would be useless to try to go any farther tonight. We’d lose our way among the hills, and in this region there’s always the risk of running into Lawrence’s Bedouin raiders.”

  Olga knew that Ahmed knew she carried important secret documents from Baghdad to Damascus, and she knew from experience that she could trust his loyalty. Removing only her dripping cloak and riding boots, she stretched herself on the dingy blankets that served as a bed. She was worn out from the strain of the journey.

  She was the first white woman ever to attempt to ride from Baghdad to Damascus. Only the protection accorded a trusted secret agent by the long arm of the German-Turkish government, and her guide’s zeal and craft, had brought her thus far in safety.

  She fell asleep, thinking of the long weary miles still to be traveled, and even greater dangers, now that she had come into the region where the Arabs were fighting their Turkish masters. The Turks still held the country, that summer of 1917, but lightning-like raids flashed across the desert, blowing up trains, cutting tracks and butchering the inhabitants of isolated posts. Lawrence was leading the tribes northward, and with him was the mysterious American, El Borak, whose name was one to hush children.

  She never knew how long she slept, but she awoke suddenly and sat up, in fright and bewilderment. The rain still beat on the roof, but there mingled with it shrieks of pain or fear, yells and the staccato crackling of rifles. She sprang up, lighted a candle and was just pulling on her boots when the door was hurled open violently.

  Ahmed reeled in, his dark face livid, blood oozing through the fingers that clutched his breast.

  “The village is attacked!” he cried chokingly. “Men in Turkish uniform! There must be some mistake! They know El Awad is friendly! I tried to tell their officer that we are friends, but he shot me! We must get away, quick!”

  A shot cracked in the open door behind him and a jet of fire spurted from the blackness. Ahmed groaned and crumpled. Olga cried out in horror, staring wide-eyed at the figure who stood before her. A tall, wiry man in Turkish uniform blocked the door. He was handsome in a dark, hawk-like way, and he eyed her in a manner that brought the blood to her cheeks.

  “Why did you kill that man?” she demanded. “He was a trusted servant of your country.”

  “I have no country,” he answered, moving toward her. Outside the firing was dying away and women’s voices were lifted piteously. “I go to build one, as my ancestor Osman did.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she retorted. “But unless you provide me with an escort to the nearest post, I shall report you to your superiors, and –”

  He laughed wildly at her. “I have no superiors, you little fool! I am an empire builder, I tell you! I have a hundred armed men at my disposal. I’ll build a new race in these hills.” His eyes blazed as he spoke.

  “You’re mad!” she exclaimed.

  “Mad? It’s you who are mad not to recognize the possibilities as I have! This war is bleeding the life out of Europe. When it’s over, no matter who wins, the nations will lie prostrate. Then it will be Asia’s turn!

  “If Lawrence can build up an Arab army to fight for him, then certainly I, an Ottoman, can build up a kingdom among my own peoples! Thousands of Turkish soldiers have deserted to the British. They and more will desert again to me, when they hear that a Turk is building anew the empire of ancient Turan.”

  “Do what you like,” she answered, believing he had been seized by the madness that often grips men in time of war when the world seems crumbling and any wild dream looks possible. “But at least don’t interfere with my mission. If you won’t give me an escort, I’ll go on alone.”

  “You’ll go with me!” he retorted, looking down at her with hot admiration.

  Olga was a handsome girl, tall, slender but supple, with a wealth of unruly golden hair. She was so completely feminine that no disguise would make her look like a man, not even the voluminous robes of an Arab, so she had attempted none. She trusted instead to Ahmed’s skill to bring her safely through the desert.

  “Do you hear those screams? My men are supplying themselves with wives to bear soldiers for the new empire. Yours shall be the signal honor of being the first to go into Sultan Osman’s seraglio!”

  “You do not dare!” She snatched a pistol from her blouse.

  Before she could level it he wrenched it from her with brutal strength.

  “Dare!” He laughed at her vain struggles. “What do I not dare? I tell you a new empire is being born tonight! Come with me! There’s no time for love-making now. Before dawn we must be on the march for Sulayman’s Walls. The star of the White Wolf rises!”

  III

  THE CALL OF BLOOD

  The sun was not long risen over the saw-edged mountains to the east, but already the heat was glazing the cloudless sky to the hue of white-hot steel. Along the dim road that split the immensity of the desert a single shape moved. The shape grew out of the heat-hazes of the south and resolved itself into a man on a camel.

  The man was no Arab. His boots and khakis, as well as the rifle-butt jutting from beneath his knee, spoke of the West. But with his dark face and hard frame he did not look out of place, even in that fierce land. He was Francis Xavier Gordon, El Borak, whom men loved, feared or hated, according to their political complexion, from the Golden Horn to the headwaters of the Ganges.

  He had ridden most of the night, but his iron frame had not yet approached the fringes of weariness. Another mile, and he sighted a yet dimmer trail straggling down from a range of hills to the east. Something was coming along this trail – a crawling something that left a broad dark smear on the hot flints.

  Gordon swung his camel into the trail and a moment later bent over the man who lay there gasping stertorously. It was a young Arab, and the breast of his abba was soaked in blood.

  “Yusef!” Gordon drew back the wet abba, glanced at the bared breast, then covered it again. Blood oozed steadily from a blue-rimmed bullet-hole. There was nothing he could do. Already the Arab’s eyes were glazing. Gordon stared up the trail, seeing neither horse nor camel anywhere. But the dark smear stained the stones as far as he could see.

  “My God, man, how far have you crawled in this condition?”

  “An hour – many hours – I do not know!” panted Yusef. “I fainted and fell from the saddle. When I came to I was lying in the trail and my horse was gone.
But I knew you would be coming up from the south, so I crawled – crawled! Allah, how hard are thy stones!”

  Gordon set a canteen to his lips and Yusef drank noisily, then clutched Gordon’s sleeve with clawing fingers.

  “El Borak, I am dying and that is no great matter, but there is the matter of vengeance – not for me, ya sidi, but for innocent ones. You know I was on furlough to my village, El Awad. I am the only man of El Awad who fights for Arabia. The elders are friendly to the Turks. But last night the Turks burned El Awad! They marched in before midnight and the people welcomed them – while I hid in a shed.

  “Then without warning they began slaying! The men of El Awad were unarmed and helpless. I slew one soldier myself. Then they shot me and I dragged myself away – found my horse and rode to tell the tale before I died. Ah, Allah, I have tasted of perdition this night!”

  “Did you recognize their officer?” asked Gordon.

  “I never saw him before. They called this leader of theirs Osman Pasha. Their flag bore the head of a white wolf. I saw it by the light of the burning huts. My people cried out in vain that they were friends.

  “There was a German woman and a man of Hauran who came to El Awad from the east, just at nightfall. I think they were spies. The Turks shot him and took her captive. It was all blood and madness.”

  “Mad indeed!” muttered Gordon. Yusef lifted himself on an elbow and groped for him, a desperate urgency in his weakening voice.

  “El Borak, I fought well for the Emir Feisal, and for Lawrence effendi, and for you! I was at Yenbo, and Wejh, and Akaba. Never have I asked a reward! I ask now: justice and vengeance! Grant me this plea: Slay the Turkish dogs who butchered my people!”

  Gordon did not hesitate.

  “They shall die,” he answered.

  Yusef smiled fiercely, gasped: “Allaho akbar!” then sank back dead.

  Within the hour Gordon rode eastward. The vultures that had already gathered in the sky with their grisly foreknowledge of death then flapped sullenly away from the cairn of stones he had piled over the dead man, Yusef.

  Gordon’s business in the north could wait. One reason for his dominance over the Orientals was the fact that in some ways his nature closely resembled theirs. He not only understood the cry for vengeance, but he sympathized with it. And he always kept his promise.

  But he was puzzled. The destruction of a friendly village was not customary, even by the Turks, and certainly they would not ordinarily have mishandled their own spies. If they were deserters they were acting in an unusual manner, for most deserters made their way to Feisal. And that wolf’s head banner?

  Gordon knew that certain fanatics in the New Turks party were trying to erase all signs of Arab culture from their civilization. This was an impossible task, since that civilization itself was based on Arabic culture; but he had heard that in Stamboul the radicals even advocated abandoning Islam and reverting to the paganism of their ancestors. But he had never believed the tale.

  The sun was sinking over the mountains of Edom when Gordon came to ruined El Awad, in a fold of the bare hills. For hours before he had marked its location by black dots dropping in the blue. That they did not rise again told him that the village was deserted except for the dead.

  As he rode into the dusty street, several vultures flapped heavily away. The hot sun had dried the mud, curdled the red pools in the dust. He sat in his saddle a while, staring silently.

  He was no stranger to the handiwork of the Turk. He had seen much of it in the long fighting up from Jeddah on the Red Sea. But even so, he felt sick. The bodies lay in the street, headless, disemboweled, hewn asunder – bodies of children, old women and men. A red mist floated before his eyes, so that for a moment the landscape seemed to swim in blood. The slayers were gone, but they had left a plain road for him to follow.

  What the signs they had left did not show him, he guessed. The slayers had loaded their female captives on baggage camels, and had gone eastward, deeper into the hills. Why they were following that road he could not guess, but he knew where it led – to the long-abandoned Walls of Sulayman, by way of the Well of Achmet.

  Without hesitation he followed. He had not gone many miles before he passed more of their work – a baby, its brains oozing from its broken head. Some kidnaped woman had hidden her child in her robes until it had been wrenched from her and brained on the rocks, before her eyes.

  The country became wilder as he went. He did not halt to eat, but munched dried dates from his pouch as he rode. He did not waste time worrying over the recklessness of his action – one lone American dogging the crimson trail of a Turkish raiding party.

  He had no plan; his future actions would depend on the circumstances that arose. But he had taken the death-trail and he would not turn back while he lived. He was no more foolhardy than his grandfather who single-handed trailed an Apache war-party for days through the Guadalupes and returned to the settlement on the Pecos with scalps hanging from his belt.

  The sun had set and dusk was closing in when Gordon topped a ridge and looked down on the plain whereon stands the Well of Achmet with its straggling palm grove. To the right of that cluster stood the tents, horse lines and camel lines of a well-ordered force. To the left stood a hut used by travelers as a khan. The door was shut and a sentry stood before it. While he watched, a man came from the tents with a bowl of food which he handed in at the door.

  Gordon could not see the occupant, but he believed it was the German girl of whom Yusef had spoken, though why they should imprison one of their own spies was one of the mysteries of this strange affair. He saw their flag, and could make out a splotch of white that must be the wolf’s head. He saw, too, the Arab women, thirty-five or forty of them herded into a pen improvised from bales and pack-saddles. They crouched together dumbly, dazed by their misfortunes.

  He had hidden his camel below the ridge, on the western slope, and he lay concealed behind a clump of stunted bushes until night had fallen. Then he slipped down the slope, circling wide to avoid the mounted patrol, which rode leisurely about the camp. He lay prone behind a boulder till it had passed, then rose and stole toward the hut. Fires twinkled in the darkness beneath the palms, and he heard the wailing of the captive women.

  The sentry before the door of the hut did not see the cat-footed shadow that glided up to the rear wall. As Gordon drew close he heard voices within. They spoke in Turkish.

  One window was in the back wall. Strips of wood had been fastened over it, to serve as both pane and bars. Peering between them, Gordon saw a slender girl in a travel-worn riding habit standing before a dark-faced man in a Turkish uniform. There was no insignia to show what his rank had been. The Turk played with a riding whip and his eyes gleamed with cruelty in the light of a candle on a camp table.

  “What do I care for the information you bring from Baghdad?” he was demanding. “Neither Turkey nor Germany means anything to me. But it seems you fail to realize your own position. It is mine to command, yours to obey! You are my prisoner, my captive, my slave! It’s time you learned what that means. And the best teacher I know is the whip!”

  He fairly spat the last word at her and she paled.

  “You dare not subject me to this indignity!” she whispered weakly.

  Gordon knew this man must be Osman Pasha. He drew his heavy automatic from its scabbard under his armpit and aimed at the Turk’s breast through the crack in the window. But even as his finger closed on the trigger he changed his mind. There was the sentry at the door, and a hundred other armed men, within hearing, whom the sound of a shot would bring on the run. He grasped the window bars and braced his legs.

  “I see I must dispel your illusions,” muttered Osman, moving toward the girl who cowered back until the wall stopped her. Her face was white. She had dealt with many dangerous men in her hazardous career, and she was not easily frightened. But she had never met a man like Osman. His face was a terrifying mask of cruelty; the ferocity that gloats over the agony of a weak
er thing shone in his eyes.

  Suddenly he had her by the hair, dragging her to him, laughing at her scream of pain. Just then Gordon ripped the strips off the window. The snapping of the wood sounded loud as a gun-shot and Osman wheeled, drawing his pistol, as Gordon came through the window.

  The American hit on his feet, leveled automatic checking Osman’s move. The Turk froze, his pistol lifted shoulder high, muzzle pointing at the roof. Outside the sentry called anxiously.

  “Answer him!” grated Gordon below his breath. “Tell him everything is all right. And drop that gun!”

  The pistol fell to the floor and the girl snatched it up.

  “Come here, Fraulein!”

  She ran to him, but in her haste she crossed the line of fire. In that fleeting moment when her body shielded his, Osman acted. He kicked the table and the candle toppled and went out, and simultaneously he dived for the floor. Gordon’s pistol roared deafeningly just as the hut was plunged into darkness. The next instant the door crashed inward and the sentry bulked against the starlight, to crumple as Gordon’s gun crashed again and yet again.

  With a sweep of his arm, Gordon found the girl and drew her toward the window. He lifted her through as if she had been a child, and climbed through after her. He did not know whether his blind slug had struck Osman or not. The man was crouching silently in the darkness, but there was no time to strike a match and see whether he was living or dead. But as they ran across the shadowy plain, they heard Osman’s voice lifted in passion.

  By the time they reached the crest of the ridge the girl was winded. Only Gordon’s arm about her waist, half dragging, half carrying her, enabled her to make the last few yards of the steep incline. The plain below them was alive with torches and shouting men. Osman was yelling for them to run down the fugitives, and his voice came faintly to them on the ridge.

  “Take them alive, curse you! Scatter and find them! It’s El Borak!” An instant later he was yelling, with an edge of panic in his voice: “Wait. Come back! Take cover and make ready to repel an attack! He may have a horde of Arabs with him!”