El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (85 page)

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 investigation.

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

“Probably men are coming and going constantly. Men outside might need to get through this door mighty bad, without having to yell for somebody to come and let them in. There wasn’t a chance in a thousand of it’s ever being discovered. I wouldn’t have found it if it hadn’t been for the blood-marks. At that I was just playing a hunch when I pushed on the rock.”

Yar Ali Khan was for plunging instantly into the cleft, but Gordon had become wary. He had not seen or heard anything that would indicate the presence of a sentry, but he did not believe that a people who showed so much ingenuity in concealing the entrance to their country would leave it unguarded, however slight might be the chance of discovery.

He hauled up the rawhide ladder, coiled it back on the shelf and closed the door, cutting off the circulation of the moonlight and plunging that end of the tunnel into darkness, in which he commanded Yar Ali Khan to wait for him. The Afridi cursed under his breath, but Gordon believed that one man could reconnoiter beyond that cryptic bend better than two. Yar Ali Khan squatted in the darkness by the door, hugging his rifle and muttering anathema, while Gordon went down the tunnel and into the cleft.

This was simply a narrow split in the great solid mass of the cliffs, and an irregular knife-edge of star-lit sky was visible, hundreds of feet overhead. Enough moonlight found its way into the crevice to make it light enough for Gordon’s catlike eyes.

He had not reached the bend when a scruffing of feet beyond it reached him. He had scarcely concealed himself behind a broken outcropping of rock that was split away from the side-wall, when the sentry came. He came leisurely, and in the manner of one who performs a routine task perfunctorily, secure in his conviction of the inaccessibility of his retreat. He was a squat Mongol, with a face like a copper mask, and altogether his appearance was not unlike those of the devils of Hill-country legends as he swung along with the wide roll of a horseman, trailing a rifle.

He was passing Gordon’s hiding place when some obscure instinct brought him about in a flash, teeth bared in a startled snarl, rifle jumping for a shot from the hip. But even as he turned Gordon was on his feet with the instant
uncoiling of steel spring muscles, and as the rifle muzzle leaped to a level, the scimitar lashed down. The Mongol dropped like an ox, his round skull split like a ripe melon.

Gordon froze into statuesque immobility, glaring along the passage. As he heard no sound to indicate the presence of any other guard, he risked a low whistle which brought Yar Ali Khan headlong into the cleft, eyes blazing.

He grunted expressively at the sight of the dead man.

“Yes — another son of Erlik. No telling how many more may be in this defile. We’ll drag him behind these rocks where I hid. Good! Come on, now. If there were any more close by they’d have heard the sound of the blow.”

Gordon was correct. Beyond the bend the long, deep defile ran empty to the next kink. As they advanced without opposition belief that the Mongol had been the only sentry posted in the cleft became certainty. The moonlight in the narrow gash above them was paling when they emerged into the open at last. Here the defile broke into a chaos of shattered rock, and the single gorge became half a dozen, threading between isolated crags and split-off rocks like the many mouths of a river that splits into separate streams at the delta. Crumbling pinnacles and turrets of black stone stood up like gaunt ghosts in the grey light which betrayed the coming of dawn.

Threading their way between these grim sentinels, they presently looked out upon a level, rock-strewn floor that stretched for three hundred yards to the foot of an abrupt cliff. The trail they had been following, grooved by many feet in the weathered stone, crossed the level and twisted a tortuous way up the cliff on ramps cut in the rock. But what lay on top of the cliffs they could not guess. To right and left the solid wall veered away, flanked by the broken pinnacles.

“What now,
sahib?”
In the grey light the Afridi looked like a mountain goblin surprized out of his crag-cave by dawn.

“I think we must be close to — listen!”

Over the cliffs rolled the blaring reverberation they had heard the night before, but now much nearer — the strident roar of the giant trumpet.

“How we been seen?” wondered Yar Ali Khan, working his rifle-bolt.

“That’s on the lap of Allah. But we must see, and we can’t climb that cliff without first knowing what lies above it. Here! This will serve our purpose.”

It was a weathered crag which rose like a tower among its lesser fellows. Any Hill-bred child could have scaled it. The comrades went up it almost as swiftly as if it had been a stairway, being careful to keep its bulk between them and the opposite cliffs, until they reached the summit, which was higher than the cliffs. Then they lay behind a spur of rock, staring through the rosy haze of the rising dawn.

“Allah!” swore Yar Ali Khan, reaching for the rifle slung on his back.

Seen from their vantage point the opposite cliffs assumed their real nature as one side of a gigantic mesa-like block which reminded Gordon of the formations of his native Southwest. It rose sheer from the surrounding level, four to five hundred feet in height, and its perpendicular sides seemed unscalable except at the point where the trail had been laboriously cut into the stone. East, north and west it was girdled by crumbling crags, separated from the plateau by the level canyon floor which varied in width from three hundred yards to half a mile. On the south the plateau abutted on a gigantic, bare mountain whose gaunt peaks dominated the surrounding pinacles.

But the watchers devoted only a glance to the geographical formation, mechanically analyzing and appreciating it. It was a stupefying phenomenon of another nature which gripped their whole attention.

Gordon had not been sure just what he expected to find at the end of the bloody trail. He had anticipated a rendezvous of some sort, certainly: a cluster of horse-hide tents, a cavern, perhaps even a village of mud and stone nestling on a hill-side. But they were looking at a city whose domes and towers glistened in the rosy dawn, like a magic city of sorcerers stolen from some fabled land and set down in this desert spot!

“The city of the
djinn!”
ejaculated Yar Ali Khan, jolted back into his original conception of their enemies. “Allah is my protection against
Shaitan
the Damned!” He snapped his fingers in a gesture older than Muhammad.

The plateau was roughly oval in shape, about a mile and a half in length from north to south, somewhat less than a mile in width from east to west. The city stood near the southern extremity, etched against the dark mountain behind it, its flat-topped stone houses and clustering trees dominated by a large edifice whose purple dome gleamed in the sharp dawn, shot and veined with gold.

“Enchantment and necromancy!” exclaimed Yar Ali Khan, completely upset.

Gordon did not reply, but the Celtic blood in his veins responded to the somber aspect of the scene, the contrast of the gloomy black crags with the masses of green and the sheens of color which were the city. But the city itself woke forebodings of evil. The gleam of its purple, gold-traced dome was sinister. The black, crumbling crags were a fit setting for it. It was like a city of ancient, demoniac mystery, rising amidst ruin and decay, even its splendor an evil glitter.

“This must be the stronghold of the Hidden Ones,” muttered Gordon. “I would have expected to find their headquarters concealed in the native district of some city like Delhi, or Bombay. But this is a logical point. From here they can strike at all the countries of Western Asia, and have a safe hide-out to retire to. But who’d have expected to find a city like that in a country so long supposed to be practically uninhabited?”

“Not even we can fight a whole city,” grunted Yar Ali Khan.

Gordon fell silent while he studied the distant view. The city did not show to be so large as it had appeared at first glance. It was compact, but unwalled. The houses, two or three stories in height, stood among clusters of trees and surprizing gardens — surprizing because the plateau seemed almost solid rock. Gordon reached a decision.

“Ali, go back to our camp in the Gorge of Ghosts. Take the horses and ride for Khor. Tell Baber Khan what’s happened and say to him that I need him and all his swords. Bring the Ghilzai through the cleft and halt them among these defiles until you get a signal from me, or know I’m dead. Here’s a chance to sever two necks with the same stroke. If Baber Khan wipes out this nest of vipers, the Amir will pardon him.”

“Shaitan
devour Baber Khan! What of thee?”

“I’m going into that city.”

“Wallah!”
swore the Afridi.

“I’ve got to. The Yezidees have gone there, and Lal Singh must be with them. They may kill him before the Ghilzai could get here. I’ve got to get him away before we can lay any plans about attacking the city. If you start now, you can get to Khor shortly after nightfall. If you start back from Khor immediately, you should arrive at this spot shortly after sun-up. If I’m alive and at liberty, I’ll meet you here. If I don’t, you and Baber Khan use your own judgment.”

Yar Ali Khan immediately found objections.

“Baber Khan has no love for me. If I go to him alone he will spit in my beard, and I will kill him and then his dogs will kill me.”

“He’ll do no such thing, and you know it.”

“He will not come!”

“He’d come through Hell if I sent for him.”

“His men will not follow him; they fear devils.”

“They’ll come fast enough when you tell them it’s men who haunt
Ghulistan.”

“But the horses will be gone. The devils will have stolen them.”

“I doubt it. Nobody’s left the city since we took the trail, and no one has come in behind us. Anyway, you can make it to Khor on foot, if necessary, though of course it’ll take longer.”

Then Yar Ali Khan tore his beard in wrath and voiced his real objection to leaving Gordon.

“The swine in that city will flay you alive!”

“Nay, I will match guile with guile. I’ll be a fugitive from the wrath of the Amir, an outlaw seeking sanctuary. The East is full of lies about me. They’ll aid me now.”

Yar Ali Khan abandoned the argument suddenly, realizing the uselessness of it. Grumbling in his beard, wagging his turbaned head direfully, the Afridi clambered down the crag and vanished in the defile without a backward look.

When he was out of sight Gordon also descended and went toward the cliffs.

Gordon expected, at each step, to be fired at from the cliffs, although he had seen no sentinels among the rocks at their crest when he looked from the crag. But he crossed the canyon, reached the foot of the cliff and began mounting the steep road — still flecked here and there with red drops — without having sighted any human being. The trail wound interminably up a succession of ramps, with low, heavy walls on the outer edge. He had time to admire the engineering ability which made that road possible. Obviously it was no work of Afghan hillmen; it looked ancient, strong as the mountain itself.

For the last thirty feet the ramps gave way to a flight of steep steps cut into the rock. Still no one challenged him, and he came out on the plateau among a cluster of boulders, from behind which seven men who had been squatting over a game, sprang to their feet and glared wildly at him. They were Kurds, lean, hard-bodied warriors with hawk-beak noses, their slim waists girdled with cartridge belts, and with rifles in their hands.

Those rifles were instantly levelled at him. Gordon displayed neither surprize nor perturbation. He set his rifle-butt on the ground and eyed the startled Kurds tranquilly.

These cut-throats were as uncertain as cornered wildcats, and therefore equally dangerous and unpredictable. His life hung on the crook of a nervous trigger-finger. But for the moment they merely glared, struck dumb by his unexpected materialization.

“El Borak!” muttered the taller of the Kurds, his eyes blazing with fear and suspicion and murder-lust. “What do you here?”

Gordon ran his eyes leisurely over them all before he replied, an easy, relaxed figure standing carelessly before those seven tense shapes.

“I seek your master,” he replied presently.

This did not seem to reassure them. They began to mutter among themselves, never relaxing the vigilance of eye or trigger-finger.

The taller Kurd’s voice rose irascibly, dominating the others: “You chatter like crows! This thing is plain: we were gambling and did not see him come. Our duty is to watch the Stair. We have failed in our duty. If it is known there will be punishment. Let us slay him and throw him over the cliff.”