Swords From the West (29 page)

"What seek ye?"

Advancing to the lamp, Nial looked curiously at the motionless figure.

"I come to Gutchluk Khan. Where is he?"

"He hath gone from this place."

"Whither?"

The servant was not the blind man. His green eyes had the uneasy stare of a beast's.

"Who am Ito know? He changes his shape and goes whither he will. As a vulture he circles the valley, untiring; as a snake he spies out the secrets of the earth."

"Nay." Nial laughed. "I think he is a man. But what is this?"

"Do not touch it! Hast thou no fear? That is his body, to which he returns when he would take human shape."

More than ever the servant's eyes reminded Nial of a leopard's; and as he stared into them he felt a physical weariness. A band seemed to be drawn about his forehead, and he shook his head instinctively. Then he was aware of the servant rising slowly from the floor, coming closer to him. Twin points of light glowed in the green eyes, growing larger as he looked.

With an effort Nial turned his head away and strode toward the seated figure on the pedestal, breaking the hypnotic spell that had drawn him close to stupor. Sharply he struck the black head with the flat of his sword. As he had expected, he heard a hollow impact with lacquered wood.

The figure in the crimson robe was lifeless, but so cleverly prepared that even the eyes of painted porcelain seemed human. He would have examined the amazing jewels in its hands, but the servant, drawing back, moved silently toward the curtain.

"Stay, thou!" The Scot faced him abruptly, the scimitar raised. "Thy name?"

"Toghrul."

"Tell me no more lies. Where is Gutchluk Khan?"

The man stared at him sullenly.

"Who can know? He leaves no tracks, and not even I have seen his face. But there is one sure sign by which he is known: Even the birds and wolves flee before him, for whatever he touches is blighted."

"What is he-a Kara Kalpak?"

"Would they obey one of their own clan? Nor is he a Tatar, nor a Cathayan.

"What, then?"

Toghrul blinked at the scimitar, his thin lips drawing back from his teeth. Yet he showed more hate than fear.

"Some say he was once a priest of Siva, who learned how to draw power from the dead. Perhaps he himself is a yaksho-one of the dead souls, dreaded by beasts."

Picking up the lamp, Nial cast a glance around the temple chamber. Toghrul was its only living inmate, and he could see no other door.

"Take me to thy prisoner," he ordered, "the Arab, Abu Harb."

"Come, then." The shaven man grinned evilly. "I will show you his tomb, his living tomb."

Warily Nial kept close to him as they entered the outer chamber, only noticing swiftly that a great deal of wealth lay piled haphazardly here. Bales of white camel skins were stacked beside blocks of jasper and clear rock crystal. A peacock fashioned of plated gold and lapis lazuli, sparkling with amethysts, stood by a jade urn. Valuable weapons lay rusting on the floor, while in one corner rested two gigantic horns tapering gradually to trumpet mouths. He wondered if such horns, turned down the valley, could send a blast that would be caught and carried on by the echoes. Gutchluk seemed to know the vagaries of the echoes.

"Here is what thou seekest!"

Toghrul lifted the bar from a gate of marble fretwork and drew it toward him so that he stood between the wall and the gate. Within the opening was darkness.

"Go in! Thou wilt see where he is buried."

But Nial heard a movement within the cell, and quickly set down the lamp upon the pavement. The next instant he was fighting for his life, wielding the scimitar with a desperation he had never felt in conflict with human foes. Without a sound, except the scraping of claws upon the marble, three large dogs had rushed at him.

They were part mastiff and part wolf, the breed that in some mountain regions of Asia is kept to devour human bodies. They whirled to spring at him from the side, while Nial stepped back, slashing the first across the head and leaping clear of the others. He struck one upon the ribs without effect, but a second blow cut a foreleg from the brute.

The third mastiff hung back, snarling. Nial had an instant's respite, to see that Toghrul had vanished. Then, struck by something unseen, the lamp shattered and the light went out.

Nial turned and ran to where he had seen the outer passage. Against beasts and a man like Toghrul he was helpless in the dark. His shoulder struck the side of the passage, and in a moment he stumbled upon the steps.

"Oho!" A strident voice laughed behind. "Gutchluk Khan comes! Who will await him, at his feet? Oho-ho!"

A sound of rushing wings drowned the snarling of the dogs, and Nial took the stair in long bounds, running out of the tower into the cooler air of the night. The moon had vanished, but a half-light filled the sky, and he made his way grimly through the ruins, forcing himself to remember familiar turnings until he came within sight of the entrance gate. No one followed him.

But the whole height was astir around him. A white vulture flapped drowsily away, and scaly feet scurried into deeper darkness. A man in rags hastened down an intersecting lane, a long staff tapping the ground before him, and blind eyes fixed on nothing.

Nial shivered, feeling his body cold with sweat that did not come from fear, but from loathing-the ageless loathing of creeping, shapeless things that chills the blood of men. He knew now why Alai had said a sword could not prevail against Gutchluk's power.

Then he came out into the open space by the entrance and drew a deep breath of relief. He leaped over the tumbled stones and saw Alai.

She was lying in front of the gate, her head on her outstretched arm. The turban had fallen off and the dark mass of her hair spread over the ground. It was strange that she should fall asleep on the cold earth in the pathway.

"Alai!" He knelt beside her, his hand on her shoulder. "We will go now, to your people."

Swiftly he drew her other arm from her breast. She had pressed the turban cloth against her side, and the whole cloth was dark with blood. Nial caught his breath, and his fingers quivered. He felt for some movement of her heart or lungs. Alai no longer breathed, and her eyes, half closed, did not seek his.

Silently he pressed the eyelids shut, setting his teeth as the girl's long lashes brushed his fingertips.

A low laugh, mocking and maudlin, came from the murk of the wall.

It was the voice of Mir Farash, and it stirred cold fury in the Scot. He was on his feet when two Kara Kalpaks rushed out at him. His scimitar slashed down the first blade to strike at him, and he leaped among the struggling figures of the tribesmen as a wolf leaps into a dog pack, or as an Arab rushes, to strike and whirl away.

Because he reeked not at all of caution, because the long curved blade driven by the force of a steel-like body slashed through shields and sheepskin coats, because their own number hampered them in that dim light, the Kara Kalpaks were struck by fear.

"Shaitan!" one cried. "A devil."

At the cry they fled-some of them staggering-leaving two of their band moaning on the ground. And Nial saw before him, shrinking back from him, the white turban and broad face of Mir Farash. The Persian, still somnolent from his opium, had not realized that the farangi could scatter the half-dozen swordsmen of his bodyguard. Before he could turn to flee, the scimitar whipped around his yataghan and drove into his vitals beneath the heart.

Screaming, Mir Farash bent forward, falling as the scimitar was drawn clear.

"A dog's blood is on it!"

Nial threw the scimitar down upon the body of its owner. Then, because he must have a weapon, he searched the ground with his eyes, stooped to pick up a familiar sword.

It was his own, dropped from the hand of one of the Kara Kalpaks. Nial gripped its hilt and thrust it through a fold of his waistcloth.

"Faith," he muttered, "I'll not be needing a sheath for awhile."

Wiping the sweat from his eyes, he looked around, seeing nothing moving in the heavy murk of the getting moon. Gently he picked up the dead girl and sought the wall where she had tethered the horses. Why had she not slipped away from Mir Farash and his men? Surely she must have seen them coming. Had she tried to enter the citadel to warn him-had she sought to save the horses? He could not know.

The horses were where he had left them, and he chose the better beast. Carefully he mounted the restive horse and, bearing Alai on his arm, rode into the darkness at a footpace.

Circling the mass of Paldorak, and avoiding the huddled camps in the fields, he made his way to the shore of the lake. He searched patiently until he came upon a poplar grove with an outcropping of sandstone within it. Then he dismounted to wait for daylight when he could see to dig a grave.

Behind him, at the dark entrance of the citadel, a lean form prowled over the ground, examining the three corpses. Toghrul made no sound as he went about his investigation, his eyes seeming to penetrate the night like an animal's.

When he came to Mir Farash he turned the dead Persian over contemptuously with his foot. As he did so the scimitar clattered on the stones, and Toghrul picked it up. He felt it curiously and knew it to be the one the tall farangi had carried earlier. Puzzled, he weighed it in his hand-his bent head ever turning from side to side, for he felt danger near him.

In the second watch of the following night Mara Nor, in command of the advance of the Tatar column from Khodjent, made his rounds with his usual care. He was a veteran of many campaigns, whose pride was his clothes. But pride in his personal appearance did not prevent him from covering his body mail with dark grease to prevent its reflecting the moonlight.

On short, calloused fingers Mara Nor checked off the points of his inspection. His first pickets were awake, in pairs, on either side of the stream that bisected the narrow valley. They had whistling arrows to give warning and bronze basins to beat in case of an attack. He himself had colored lanterns ready at hand which, if lighted, would signal his needs back to the commander of the regiment, camped a short ride behind him.

That afternoon he had investigated the pine growth on both slopes of the valley, finding traces of many haphazard encampments, but no lurking tribesmen. Now he had sentries in pairs within the screen of the pines. His fires were out of sight, in a gully. The horses of the detachment were saddled and amply guarded. Everything was as it should be, in case a gurkhan came down to inspect his command.

But Mara Nor did not feel contented. Within bowshot of where he sat, the ravine with its trail debouched into the grass of the wide, sunken valley, and that afternoon he had scrutinized with keen eyes the distant red stone height of Paldorak.

On that height a koldrun-or wizard-dwelt. Unfortunately the Tatar column had been sent to destroy this wizard with all his warriors, coming in from the northern valley, while a smaller detachment of the Samarkand region diverted the attention of the defenders by attacking the western pass. A good plan when dealing with ordinary men, but useless, to Mara Nor's thinking, when facing a wizard, who would know just where they were advancing and who could easily read their thoughts.

Had not vultures circled over them that afternoon, and had not unseen trumpets challenged them at sunset?

Were not the conditions-a mountain height, by running water-most favorable to a wizard?

"Ay-a tak." The stocky Tatar nodded.

Reflectively he chewed a strip of fat that had once been a sheep's tail. As he did so he touched the demoniac figures embroidered on either shoulder of his khalat, the angels of good and evil. Mara Nor believed in obeying both.

A silvery wail rose from the darkness ahead of him, then dwindled to sound clearly again as the warning arrow descended to earth near the watcher who had shot it. Stuffing the remainders of food into his mouth, Mara Nor mounted the pony grazing near him and rode forward.

Out in the moonlight he saw his men confronting a tall horseman in a ragged felt chaban, whose eyes smoldered from a gaunt face.

"A gur-khan am I," the stranger said, "of the Sarai ordu. Lead me to thy lord commander."

Mara Nor scrutinized him with interest. Touching his hand to his shoulder he muttered-

"Khuru, khuru!"

"Be silent!" The stranger slapped his saddlehorn. "I am no spirit, but I will send a thunder devil to follow beneath your horse's tail if you do not take me to the orkhon."

"At once!"

Mara Nor could not leave his post, but he sent two men from the herd guard to escort this man, who was like no other, to the tent of the Tatar commander.

"It is one named Nial, from the West," they explained to the servant at the entrance.

Basankor, the gur-khan in command, was a red-haired Mongol of the Gobi region, powerful as a bear and as obstinate. He had wrapped himself in a purple silk gown for the night. Two Chagatai Turks, his lieutenants, were with him-craggy, bearded men, much cleverer than Basankor, but less able to lead men through a tight place. The three stared at Nial curiously.

In response he detached the gur-khan tablet from the inner side of his belt and offered it to the Mongol.

"I see. What words have you to say, Nial Khan?"

"First give me kumiss."

At a sign from Basankor, the servant brought forward a bowl of fermented milk from the leather sack at the entrance. This Nial drained thirstily-he had had little drink and less food for a day and a night-and tossed aside.

"I come from Paldorak," he said bluntly, "and I want nothing but to see Gutchluk Khan trampled to death and his power ended. I can show you the way to accomplish it."

Basankor grunted. A man of few words, he found the brevity of the stranger admirable. Yet, he sniffed a trap.

"What is the way?"

"How many are your warriors? How many hazaras?"

"Two regiments-Chagatais of Issyk Kul, and Mongols of the Kerulon. A few scouts, worthless."

Nial shook his head. Two thousand riders of the Horde, to be matched against the teeming clans of Paldorak. The Kara Kalpaks were formidable in their own hills, and the odds would be almost five to one.