Hell's Legionnaire (5 page)

A bump struck their right wing. Harvey fought the stick and
righted the plane. A heat area came under them and bounced them fifty feet
before Harvey could once more nose down.

It was an atmospheric whirlpool, that spot. Harvey eyed the nearing sheer walls and saw them close in over the top of his head.

They rocketed for a cliff side. He banked and slammed
the Caudron closer to earth. A boulder reached greedily at the right wheel and
then whipped past.

The landing gear crunched. They rolled to a shuddering
stop.

Rubio let go of the gunner's pit
turtleback
and climbed
out.

“Now what do we do?” he asked.

“Walk toward their camp, catch one of them and take him
back with us.”

“Yes, yes,” said Rubio. “We'll get it out of them. . .
.” He made a movement with his hands, pantomiming the throttling of a throat.

Harvey stepped to the wing and
then to the ground. He lashed the heavy automatic down to his thigh, turning up
his ear flaps to keep his neck cool, and walked toward the end of the ravine.
Small geysers of dust came up from his boot heels.

When they could sight another canyon, Harvey stopped.

“They might be looking for us,” he remarked.

“Those?” said Rubio. “The dirty beasts haven't got sense
enough to get out of sight, much less look for us. Remember what happened down
there at . . .”

Harvey nodded, taking a long drag
at the smoke.

“For France,” he said.

“For France!” echoed Rubio.

Harvey strode on toward the
mouth of the second ravine. His eyes were alert for swirls of gray behind
rocks, though he knew that their first warning of ambush would be the sharp
whine of a maimed bullet turning over and over as it ricocheted from stone.

He loosened the automatic in its holster and laid back
the flap. If they could just collar one of them and drag him back to the ship,
everything would be set. But Berbers rarely travel alone and they rarely let
you get within five hundred yards of them.

And five hundred yards across these ridges and canyons
might as well be a thousand miles. Well, thought Harvey, it was a good idea
anyway. After all, if Kirzigh got loose in the Legion outposts, a good many men
would die.

Rubio was trotting along behind him, panting in the
heat, his swarthy face greased with shining sweat.

Harvey stopped and looked at a
wall two hundred yards away. Narrowing his eyes against the glare and
shimmering heat waves, he stared intently. Yes, he was right. Someone had
skipped from one boulder to another.

He went on toward the rock face as though he had seen
nothing. Rubio, unknowing, followed hard on his heels.

Directly under the spot he had seen the movement, Harvey dived for the edge of the ravine. A bullet hit a rock with the spiteful sound of a
broken banjo string.

Harvey scrambled up the steep
slope toward a puff of dark smoke drifting languidly against the metal blue
sky. A second bullet rapped shrilly and then a third.

The Berber was not only shooting at his enemy; he was
also signaling the time-honored call of three. Bullets were far too precious to
these Berbers. They even located spent French slugs after hours of search and
remolded them.

Abruptly the down-slanting barrel of a Snider was above Harvey's head. He grabbed at the warm barrel and with a tendon-spraining wrench, brought
it toward him, brought the Berber with it.

For one fast-moving second he thought he had succeeded,
that this was a lone sentry who could be delivered for questioning.

And then swirls of dirty white sprouted from the barren
slopes of the ravine. Harvey, with his hands full of rifle and native, sent one
hasty glance down at Rubio. And saw that Rubio was lost in a sea of whirling
cloth.

Across Jack Harvey's vision there flashed the image of
that head. That severed head with the eyeballs hanging by strings from the
sockets. The head which had once rested on the stolid shoulders of Grauer.

Berbers came up the slope like an avalanche in reverse.
Their scaly hands reached out as though already clutching the body of the
Franzawi.
Sniders, Mannlichers, flintlocks glittered in the hard sunlight.
A howl came up from some hundred throats.

Harvey pulled his Berber down to
him and threw the man headlong into the first wave. A small cluster of gray
went spinning, skidding down the ravine, sending up a cloud of strangling dust.

The second wave drew back and dropped into the
protection of boulders. After that only the black muzzles of rifles and the
red-shot whites of eyes were visible.

Harvey took the automatic out of
its holster and dropped it in the dust. They came up to him then, and took hold
of his arms, leading him into the bottom of the canyon.

Rubio was swearing in a monotonous, high-pitched voice, trying
to dash the blood out of his eyes so that he could see.

“Steady,” said Harvey.

They were marched by a twisting route to the village. As
Harvey listened and watched his triumphant foes, he was reminded of a parade
through the streets of Rome, where the captives were lashed to chariot wheels,
made to walk before the multitudes, led ignominiously, like beasts.

The tallest, broadest, whitest house in the village
seemed to be their destination. Standing there on the heat-cracked earth was
Caid Kirzigh.

He was bland, not at all fierce and scowling. His smooth
cheeks were no darker than an Italian's; his beard was well combed. And his
eyes were a light blue, suggesting Western ancestry. His
burnoose
was whiter
than the rest and his hands were clean and soft. He was almost as tall as Jack
Harvey though much older and therefore a little expansive about the belt line.

Harvey was thrust to the front,
face to face with Kirzigh.

“Franzawi,”
said the
caid, smiling a little, “we are glad to make you welcome.”

Harvey looked at the blinded
Rubio. “Like you made Grauer?”

There was no hostility to his voice. His tone merely
suggested that it was rather hot to stand out here in the sunlight.

“Ah,” replied the caid, “that was his name. I wondered
if you had received my message.” He smiled with assurance. He knew that his
French was flawless. “Perhaps, when you flew overhead, if you had not taken it
upon yourself to slaughter some dozen of my men and horses, I might even now
greet you as a guest. However, your action and the attitude of my men will
scarcely permit that.”

“No, of course not,” agreed Harvey.

“They are a little hard to hold,
Capitaine.
Like
the men of your Legion at times,
hein
? The time the Legionnaires
attacked that peaceful village south of here and killed the old men and . . .
well, soldiers and women . . .”

“I don't recall,” said Jack Harvey.

“Of course not. You do all your killing from the air,
naturally. You do not know what happens here on the ground. You kill and fly
away,
hein
?”

“Yes,” Harvey replied. “Yes, of course.”

“Ah, I see you are a man of understanding,
Capitaine.
But come, let us get on with this. My men have waited long for one of your
sky birds to fall in their midst. Suppose we start with the sergeant,
hein
?”

“Torture?” said Harvey.

Caid Kirzigh turned and began to bawl orders in a
language which Berbers will tell you is Shilha. The men about Rubio snatched
heavy holds on his arms and lugged him, feet trailing in the dust, to a mud
post in the center of the village.

Rubio was once more swearing—words picked up in the
gutters of faraway towns. However, the Berbers did not understand.

Harvey looked on. He could do
nothing else. Rifles were hard against his spine. His turn would come next.

Rubio was lashed to the post, arms extended. Unable to
see, his imagination was gaining the upper hand over his sanity. He screamed an
incoherent gibberish of French, Spanish and Italian. He kicked out with his
legs until they fastened them down with leather thongs.

Caid Kirzigh looked at Harvey. “It may be a little
brutal, but these men of mine—they have long memories.”

A tall, withered man with a completely expressionless
leather-face drew out a rough knife and tested its edge with a thick thumb.
Evidently satisfied, he approached the writhing sergeant.

Harvey stiffened and the rifles
bored deeper into his spine.

The leathery one reached up and ripped away Rubio's
shirt, exposing the rippling muscles of the white back. With two quick slashes
he drew the sign of the cross. The blood came slowly from the wounds. Rubio
screamed louder.

Taking a handful of salt, the leathery one rubbed it
into the slashes. Then he reached back for a whip, his fingers as thin and
fleshless as so many stale bones.

The whip shrilled as it came down. It landed with a
report as loud as any pistol shot. Harvey winced as though the lash had struck
him. Rubio moaned with agony.

The whip came down again and then rose and fell so many
times that Harvey lost count. Not that he was counting. He tried to look away,
but each report brought his eyes swinging again to the bleeding pulp which was
Rubio's back. The marks of the knife cross had long since disappeared in the
presence of countless red-blue, oozing gashes.

Tired, the leathery one stopped and mopped the sweat
from his forehead. He dropped the whip from his numbed hand and rubbed his
tired muscles.

Rubio had sagged against the thongs. His head lolled
crazily, loosely. His glazed eyes stared up unseeing at the metal blue sky.

A tall, withered man with a completely expressionless
leather-face drew out a rough knife and tested its
edge with a thick thumb.

The crowd turned sullenly to Jack Harvey. The caid shook
his head at them and waved the guards toward the biggest, whitest square house.

The back of Harvey's shirt was blackened with sweat. He
stumbled twice, groggy with heat and reaction.

Caid Kirzigh motioned that the
capitaine
should
seat himself upon a mat in the dim interior. Harvey leaned back against the
wall, eyed the caid.

Harvey could see the sagging
body of Rubio through the doorless entrance.

“For France,” he said quietly.

Caid Kirzigh had not heard. Rubbing his hands together
he smiled. “
Capitaine,
I believe you left your plane nearby. Is that not
so?”

“Yes, that's true.”

“And hidden somewhere in that plane,” said the caid,
“you will have military maps of all Morocco, showing the railheads, the
outposts, the concentration centers. Is that not so?”

“Maybe.”

Kirzigh nodded brightly. “Then, perhaps if you were to
show me these maps and tell me some other small things, I might . . .” He
raised his hands in a vague gesture and leaned forward on his haunches. “I
might see fit to let you off with mere shooting.”

“You have large ambitions,” said Harvey.

“Not too large. After all,
Capitaine,
we had all Europe in our power at one time, you know.”

“Did you?”

“Ah, yes. The
Moors
, you see . . . Perhaps again . . .
One never knows these things until he sees the pages of the Great Book. We
built all the structures which Spain considers so beautiful. We introduced an
architecture that was new and still lasts. We invented the curved sword with
which we captured the world. We invented the system of counting, the
mathematics which you conquesting barbarians use to plot your artillery
trajectories. Is it so strange that I should like to know about these maps?”

“You want to see the maps, that's all?”

“That's all. Just the
maps. I should, of course, like to hear some other things, but . . .” He shrugged.