El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (20 page)

“Listen!”

Somewhere a bare foot scruffed on the rock floor. Gordon rose, peering into the gloom. Men were moving out there in the darkness. Shadows detached themselves from the black background and slunk forward. Gordon drew the
scimitar he had buckled on at Khor, thrusting his pistol back into its scabbard. Lal Singh was a captive out there, probably in the line of fire. Yar Ali Khan crouched beside him, gripping his Khyber knife, silent now, and deadly as a wolf at bay, convinced that they were facing ghoulish fiends of the dark mountains, but ready to fight men or devils, if Gordon so willed it.

The dim-seen line moved in slowly, widening as it came, and Gordon and the Afridi fell back a few paces to have the rock wall at their back, and prevent themselves from being surrounded by those phantom-like figures.

The rush came suddenly, impetuously, bare feet slapping softly over the rocky floor, steel glinting dully in the dim starlight. Gordon could see like a cat in the dark, and Yar Ali Khan’s eyes were such as can be possessed only by a man bred in the abysmal blackness of the Hills. Even so they could make out few details of their assailants — only the bulks of them, and the shimmer of steel. They struck and parried by instinct and feel as much as by sight.

Gordon killed the first man to come within sword-reach, and Yar Ali Khan, galvanized by the realization that their foes were human after all, sounded a deep yell and exploded in a berserk burst of wolfish ferocity. Towering above the squat figures, his three-foot knife overreached the blades that hacked at him, and its edge bit deep. Standing side by side, with the wall at their backs, the two companions were safe from attack from the rear or flank. Steel rang sharply on steel and blue sparks flew, momentarily lighting wild bearded faces. There rose the ugly butcher-shop sound of keen blades cleaving flesh and bone, and men screamed or gasped death-gurgles from severed jugulars. For a few moments a huddled knot writhed and contorted near the rock wall. The work was too swift and desperate and blind to allow much consecutive thought or plan. But the advantage was with the men at bay. They could see as well as their attackers; man for man, they were stronger and more agile; and they knew when they struck their steel would flesh itself only in enemies. The others were handicapped by their numbers and the darkness, and the knowledge that they might kill a companion with a blind stroke must surely have tempered their frenzy.

Gordon, ducking a sword before he realized he had seen it swinging at him, found time for an instant of surprize. Thrice his blade had grated against something yielding but impenetrable. These men were wearing shirts of mail! He slashed where he knew unprotected thighs and heads and necks would be, and men spurted their blood on him as they died.

Then the rush ebbed as suddenly as it had flooded. The attackers gave way and melted like phantoms into the darkness. That darkness had become not quite so absolute. The eastern rims of the canyon were lined with a silvery fire that marked the rising of the moon.

Yar Ali Khan gave tongue like a wolf and charged after the dim, retreating
figures, foam of aroused blood-lust flecking his beard. He stumbled over a corpse, stabbed savagely downward before he realized it was a dead man, and then Gordon grabbed his arm and jerked him to a halt. He almost dragged the powerful American off his feet, as he plunged like a lassoed bull, breathing gustily.

“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 fear-maddened 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, looking over his shoulder, grunted and swore: “Devil worshippers, by the beard of Allah! Yezidees! Sons of Melek Taus!”

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

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

“Come away,
sahib
. It is not fitting that you should touch this carrion. No wonder they slew and stole 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 devotee of Erlik, the Yellow God of Death. Probably a priest. Cannibalism is an element of some of their rituals.”

“The man who killed the Sultan of Turkey 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 fired at the Viceroy. What would true Muhammadans be doing in a society which includes Mongol 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 rang out.

“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 likewise armed himself 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, fully 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, clearly limned 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 the rocky floor thickly. Obviously the Yezidees had carried away some grim wounds.

Gordon thought of Ahmed Shah, lying dead back there in the canyon, without a cairn to cover his body. But time could not be spared now for the dead. The Yusufzai was past hurting; but Lal Singh was a prisoner in the hands of men to whom mercy was unknown. Later Ahmed Shah’s body could be taken care of; just now the task at hand was to track down the Yezidees and get the Sikh away from them before they killed him — if, indeed, they had not done that already.

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 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 drops were not so thick now, but they were still sufficient to mark the way.

Gordon quickened his pace, hopeful of overtaking the Yezidees, who now seemed undoubtedly in flight. They had a long start, but if, as he believed, they were carrying one or more wounded men, and were likewise burdened with a prisoner who would not make things any more convenient for them than he could help, that lead might be rapidly cut down. He believed that 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.

Following this lead blindly, Gordon uncoiled his rope, 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. He had not sailed the Seven Seas without profiting by the experience of climbing ropes, in all sorts of weather.

As he passed the smear on the stone he confirmed his belief that it was 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, and alternately criticizing his companion’s action, and adjuring him to caution. His pessimistic imagination peopled the ledge 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.

And yet more blood drops spattered the ledge, leading diagonally across it toward the sheer wall, which showed considerable weathering at that point. And Gordon saw something else — the blurred but unmistakable print of bloody fingers on the rock of the wall. He stood motionless for a few moments, heedless of Yar Ali Khan’s importunities, while he studied the cracks in the rock. Presently he laid his hand on the wall over the bloody finger-prints, and shoved. Instantly, smoothly, a section of wall swung inward, and he was staring into 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 investigations.

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 irregular-shaped slab of rock, hung on heavy, well-oiled iron hinges. It fit perfectly into its aperture, and its irregular shape made the cracks appear to be merely seams in the cliffs, 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
?”