El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (34 page)

And then Gordon saw Ivan Konaszevski. The Cossack was stripped to the waist, his cord-like muscles quivering and knotting to the lightning play of the saber in his hand. His dark eyes blazed and his thin lips wore a reckless smile. Three dead Ghilzais lay at his feet and his saber kept half a dozen blades in play at once. Right and left of him corseleted Arabs and squat Mongols in lacquered leather smote and wrestled breast to breast with wild Ghilzai swordsmen. And into this carnage Gordon’s Waziris hurled themselves howling like wolves.

Gordon saw Yar Ali Khan for the first time, looming above the mob as he glutted his berserk fury in stupendous blows. And he saw Baber Khan — reeling out of the melee, covered with blood. Gordon began beating his way through to Konaszevski.

Ivan laughed, with a wild gleam in his dark eyes, as he saw the American coming toward him. Blood streamed down Gordon’s muscular breast, coursed in tiny rivulets down his corded brown arms. The butt of his clubbed rifle was clotted with blood and brains.

“Come and die, El Borak!” laughed Ivan, and Gordon crouched for a charge, swinging the rifle butt above his head.

“Nay,
sahib
, take this!” And Lal Singh thrust into his hand the hilt of his dripping saber. El Borak straightened, shook his head to clear it, and came in as a Cossack would come, in a blazing whirl of action. Ivan sprang to meet him, and they fought as Cossacks fight, both attacking simultaneously, stroke raining on stroke too swiftly for the eye to follow them. Time might have turned back three hundred years to a duel between Zaporoghian swordsmen on the shores of the Dneiper.

And in a circle about them the panting, blood-stained warriors ceased their own work of slaughter to stare at the sight of two Western warriors settling the destiny of the East between them!

“Aie!” It
was a cry from a hundred throats as Gordon stumbled, lost contact with the Cossack blade.

Ivan cried out ringingly, whirled up his sword — and felt Gordon’s saber in his heart before he realized the American had tricked him. He fell heavily, wrenching the hilt from Gordon’s hand. He was dead before he struck the ground, his thin lips twisted in a smile of bitter self-mockery.

Gordon was stooping to regain his sword when a shot cracked back among the trees; he stooped even lower as if to kneel to the dead man — and pitched suddenly across the corpse, blood oozing from his head. He did not hear the maddened yell that rose up to the hot blue skies, nor see the headlong rush of
the frothing Afghans as they stormed past him and hurled themselves at the throats of their enemies.

Gordon’s first sensation of returning consciousness was a lack of sensation — a numbness that held him helpless. He seemed to lie in soft darkness. Then he heard voices, mumbling and incoherent at first, growing more distinct as life grew stronger in him. He began to distinguish the voices, and to recognize them. One was Yar Ali Khan’s, and he was startled to realize that the giant was weeping — blubbering vociferously and without shame.

“Aie! Ahai! Ohee!
He is dead! His brains are pouring out of that hole in his head! Oh, my brother! Oh, prince of slayers! Oh, king among men! Oh, El Borak! Dead, for a mob of ragged hill-bastards! He whose smallest finger nail was worth more than all the Ghilzai horse-thieves in the Himalayas!”

“He is not dead, Allah curse you! And how are the Ghilzais to blame? My warriors lie dead by scores!” That was Baber Khan.

“Ohai!
Would they had all died, and thou with them, aye, and I too, if so El Borak could have been saved alive.”

“Oh, hush that ox-bellowing and hand me that bandage!” That was Lal Singh. “I tell you, his wound is not mortal. The bullet but grazed his skull, knocking him senseless, curse the cowardly
Batini
who fired it.”

“I split the dog’s skull,” blubbered Yar Ali Khan. “But that can not restore life to our
sahib
. Here is the bandage. Sikhs have no hearts. They are a breed without bowels of compassion. Your friend and brother lies there dying, and you shed no tear! Nay, you mock me for my woe! By Allah, were it not that grief unmans me, I’d give you something to weep about!”

Gordon’s awakening senses were then aware of a throbbing in his head, which was eased somewhat under the manipulation of strong, gentle, skillful fingers that applied something wet and cool. The darkness cleared from his brain and eyes, and he looked up into the anxious faces of his friends.

“Sahib!”
cried Lal Singh joyously. “Look, Baber Khan, he opens his eyes! Ali, if you were not blinded by those idiotic tears, you would see that El Borak lives, and is conscious!”

“Sahib!”
yelled the great hairy cutthroat, and forthwith fell to weeping for joy. Gordon lifted his bandaged head, and set his teeth as the movement started it to throbbing agonizingly again. He was lying in a corner of the orchard wall, and a peach tree bent its branches over him, green leaves against blue sky, and blossoms raining petals about him in a soft shower as the breeze blew. But the air reeked of fresh-spilt blood; there was blood on the grass, and a dead man lying face down a few yards away.

The orchard was strangely quiet after the noise of battle, but he thought
he heard men screaming somewhere in the distance. He could not be sure, for the roaring inside his head.

“What happened?” he mumbled. “Is Ivan dead?”

“Dead as man can be with a saber through his heart,
sahib,”
answered Lal Singh. “The devil himself would have bitten at the trick you played on the Cossack. My own heart was in my mouth when you seemed to stumble. A
Batini
skulking among the trees shot you an instant later. But the heart was gone out of the Assassins, and our Afghans went stark mad when they saw you fall. They fell on the Ismailians with a fury that could not be withstood, and those sons of dogs gave way and fled in every direction — those who lived to flee. Even now the Ghilzais harry them up and down the street. Hearken!”

Gordon stared at Baber Khan.

“I feared you were slain.”

The chief grinned wryly. His beard was clotted with blood from a cut on the neck, and his leg was stuck out stiffly before him as he sat leaning against the wall.

“A bullet in the thigh. It is nothing. We feared you were dead.”

“Ha!” Yar Ali Khan smoothed his beard and stared scornfully at his friends. “Old women!
Sahib
, you should have heard them bellowing over you!
Wallah!
Did I not bid you cease your unmanly weeping? Did I not tell you that El Borak’s head was too hard for a bullet to break? Where are your manners? The
sahib
perhaps has orders!”

Gordon struggled up to a sitting position and stared out over the orchard. What he saw there shook even his iron nerves. It was a garden of corpses. The dead lay like fallen leaves in wind-blown heaps and mounds and straggling lines. In the bloody angle and in the road outside the bodies were piled three deep, among the ruins of the wall.

“God!” For a moment Gordon was speechless, his soul in revolt. “Baber Khan, send someone after your warriors. Ali will go. Tell them to stop the slaughter. Enough men have died. Tell them to spare all who will lay down their arms and surrender. And another thing — there are many captive women in Shalizahr who are not to be harmed. I intend to return them to their homes.”

Yar Ali Khan swaggered off importantly to carry the orders, just as another man approached. Yusuf ibn Suleiman came toward Gordon, holding a broken scimitar. He spoke with difficulty because he had been slashed across the mouth and the bubbling blood choked him.

“Effendi
, my sword broke with the last stroke, but it was enough. Muhammad ibn Ahmed lies yonder among the corpses of his corseleted dogs. He will never insult a mountain-Kurd again. Have I not kept faith, El Borak?”

“You have kept faith. But why ask me that question? I never expected anything but that you would keep faith.”

Yusuf sighed deeply and seated himself cross-legged beneath the tree, the broken sword across his knees.

A low moaning began to make itself manifest over the orchard — the wounded crying for water. Gordon grasped Lal Singh’s shoulder and rose stiffly.

“Baber Khan, we’ve got to get the wounded into the houses and do what we can for them. The women can help. I can stand alone, Lal Singh, and in a few minutes I’ll be able to walk without help. You and Yusuf go to the nearest canal and bring water.”

As the men set out, Gordon supported himself by grasping a peach limb; he had not yet fully recovered from the paralyzing shock of that bullet-wound. His legs still felt numb.

“I have been thinking while sitting here holding a broken leg, El Borak,” said Baber Khan. “This city is easier to defend than Khor; with Ghilzai warriors guarding the outer cleft and the Stair, not even the Amir’s field-pieces could take Shalizahr. I will send for the women and children and we will hold this plateau. Stay with us, El Borak, and rule beside me! We will build a kingdom here!”

“Are you touched with the madness that has led to the slaughter of hundreds this day?” retorted Gordon. “You see to what doom a like ambition has led the rulers of Shalizahr. They too plotted a kingdom among these Hills.”

“But the Amir has doomed me anyway!”

“You need not fear his displeasure now! Any man who has freed him of the fear of the Triple-Bladed Dagger is sure of the Amir’s pardon, regardless of his past offenses. My head upon it! Why do you think I summoned you to help me take this city? Merely to aid my own interests? You know me better than that. I knew that if we stamped out this nest of cobras together, it would win you the Amir’s pardon.”

Baber Khan sighed gustily.

“The sword is lifted from my neck by your words, El Borak. I have had no love for the life of an outlaw, but I was caught in a web of lies.”

“We have broken that web. But at a bitter price. I wish it could have been done at lesser cost of brave men.”

“All would have died, and me with them, if the Amir had come against us, as he planned,” grunted Baber Khan. “Those who died, died as a Ghilzai wishes to die. And there will be loot for the living, and the women of the dead.”

“Let’s don’t be too hasty about plundering. We’ll have to deliver the city
to the officers of the Amir, but I think I can persuade him to make you governor of the city. With these Ismailite thieves replaced by decent citizens from other parts of the kingdom, this will make a city of which any king should be proud. The Amir will wish to reward me for my part in this affair. I will ask him to place you in charge of the city. Governor of Shalizahr — how does that sound, Baber Khan?”

“Your generosity shames me,” said the Afghan chief, tugging at his beard in his deep emotion. “But what will you do, El Borak? You have provided for everyone except yourself.”

“Well, just now I’m going to take water to those poor devils out there, and tie up their wounds the best I can. I see Lal Singh and Yusuf coming with water, and my legs are alive again.”

“My men are coming back into the orchard. Let them do it. You are weary and wounded; you have been fighting all day, and all last night!”

“I can help. I’m alright. A few hours sleep tonight will make a fresh man of me. Dawn must find me on my way.”

“Whither, in the name of Allah?” ejaculated Baber Khan.

“First to Khor, to pick up Azizun. Then to Kabul to tell the Amir what has occurred, and secure your pardon and appointment as Governor of Shalizahr.”

“You will return to Shalizahr with it?”

“I’ll send Lal Singh back with the Amir’s escort. I have business in India.”

“Allaho akbar!
Is there no rest or quiet about you? You are like a hawk roaming ever before the wind. What will you do in India?”

“I’ve got to take Azizun to Delhi. And I have a score to settle in Peshawar with a fat swine named Ditta Ram. Three years ago he murdered a friend of mine. I never could prove it, and another friend, an English official, begged me for his sake not to take the law into my own hands. I’ve been waiting three years for the dog to make a slip, and now he’s made it, and I can prove he’s made it. He’s put himself outside the protection of the law, and I’m going to settle that old score.”

“Allah!” marvelled Baber Khan. “And they say we Afghans are a relentless breed!”

He was still shaking his head in wonder as Gordon limped away, a hand outstretched for the jugs of water Lal Singh and Yusuf ibn Suleiman were bringing across the orchard.

Hawk of the Hills

To a man standing in the gorge below, the man clinging to the sloping cliff would have been invisible, hidden from sight by the jutting ledges that looked like irregular stone steps from a distance. From a distance, also, the rugged wall looked easy to climb; but there were heartbreaking spaces between those ledges — stretches of treacherous shale, and steep pitches where clawing fingers and groping toes scarcely found a grip.

One misstep, one handhold lost and the climber would have pitched backward in a headlong, rolling fall three hundred feet to the rocky canyon bed. But the man on the cliff was Francis Xavier Gordon, and it was not his destiny to dash out his brains on the floor of a Himalayan gorge.