El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (31 page)

“Are you ready to surrender, Gordon?”

Gordon laughed at him.

“Come and get us!”

“That’s just what I intend to do — at dawn!” the Cossack assured him. “You are as good as a dead man now!”

“That’s what you said when you left me in the ravine of the
djinn,”
Gordon retorted. “But I’m still alive — and the
djinn
is dead!”

He had spoken in Arabic, and a shout of anger and unbelief rose from all quarters. The Kurds, who had not asked Gordon a single question about his
escape from the labyrinth of the ape, slapped their rifle stocks and nodded at each other as much as to say that slaying
djinni
was no more than was to be expected from El Borak.

“Do the Assassins know that the Shaykh is dead, Ivan?” called Gordon satirically.

“They know that Ivan Konaszevski is the real ruler of Shalizahr, as he has always been!” was the wrathful reply. “I don’t know how you killed the ape, or how you got those Kurdish dogs out of their cell, but I do know that I’ll have all your skins hanging on this wall before the sun is an hour high!”

“Kurdish dogs!” murmured the mountain warriors, caressing their rifles vengefully. “Ha!
Wallah!”

But Gordon smiled, for he knew that if Yusuf ibn Suleiman had been captured, Ivan would have taunted them with the news. Gordon did not believe that any extended investigations of the dungeons had been, or would be made. All the attention of the Assassins was concentrated on the tower, and there was no point in their exploring the cells at the present. Gordon felt that he was justified in believing that Yusuf was still safe in the tunnel below the palace, waiting to let in Lal Singh and the Ghilzais.

Presently a banging and hammering sounded somewhere on the other side of the courtyard, which was not visible from the tower, and Konaszevski yelled vengefully: “Do you hear that, you American swine? Did you ever hear of a storming
belfroi
? Well, that’s what my men are building — a mantlet on wheels that will stop bullets and protect fifty men behind it. As soon as it’s daylight we’re going to push it up to the tower and batter down the door. That will be your finish, you dog!”

“And yours,” retorted Gordon. “You can’t storm this tower without exposing yourself at least a little; and a little is all I’ll need, you Russian wolfhound!”

The Cossack’s answer was a shout of derisive laughter that was not convincing because it shook with fury, and thereafter there was no more parleying. Men still fired from the garden walls and the roofs outside, not hoping to hit anything, but evidently intending to discourage any attempt to escape from the tower. Gordon did consider such a break; they could shoot out the lanterns which lighted the garden and make the try in the darkness — but he abandoned the idea. Men clustered thickly behind every wall that hemmed the garden in. Such an attempt would be suicide. The fortress had become a prison.

Gordon frankly admitted to himself that this was one jamb out of which he could not get himself by his own efforts. If the Ghilzais did not show up on schedule, he and his party were finished; and it gave him a twinge to think of Yusuf ibn Suleiman waiting for days, perhaps, in the corridors under the palace, until hunger drove him into the hands of his enemies, or down the
ravine to escape. Then Gordon remembered that he had not told the Kurd how to reach the exit at the other end of the labyrinth.

The hammering and pounding went on in the unseen section of the court. Even if the Ghilzais came at sunrise they might be too late. He reflected that the Ismailians would have to break down a long section of the wall to get such a machine as Ivan had described into the garden. But that would not take long.

The Kurds did not share their leader’s apprehensions. They had already wrought a glorious slaughter; they had a strong position; a leader they already worshipped as men used to worship kings; good rifles and plenty of ammunition. What more could a mountain warrior desire? They hugged their rifles and boasted vain-gloriously to each other and fired at everything that moved, letting the future take care of itself. So through the long hours the strange fight went on, the cracking of the rifles punctuated by the din of the hammers in the torch-lit court.

The Kurd with the sword-cut died just as dawn was paling the lanterns in the garden below. Gordon covered the dead man with a rug and stared haggardly at his pitiful band. The three Kurds knelt at the loop-holes, looking like blood-stained ghouls in the ghostly grey light. Azizun was sleeping in utter exhaustion on the floor, her cheek pillowed on a childishly soft round arm.

The hammering had ceased and in the stillness he heard a creaking of massive wheels. He knew that the juggernaut the Ismailians had built during the night was being rolled across the courtyard, but he could not yet see it. He could make out the black forms of men huddled on the roofs of the houses beyond the outer wall. He looked further, over the roofs and clustering trees, toward the northern edge of the plateau. He saw no sign of life, in the growing light, among the boulders that lined the rim of the cliffs. Evidently the guards, undeterred by the fate of Yusuf and the other original sentries, had deserted their post to join the fighting at the palace. No Oriental ruler was ever able to command absolute obedience from all his men. But as he watched Gordon saw a group of a dozen or so men trudging along the road that led to the Stair. Konaszevski would not long leave that point unguarded, and Gordon could guess what would be the fate of the men who had deserted it.

He turned back toward his three Kurds who were looking at him silently, bearded faces turned toward him. He looked like the wildest barbarian that ever trod a battlefield, naked to the waist, his boots and breeches smeared with blood, his bronzed breast and shoulders scratched, and stained with powder smoke.

“The Ghilzais have not come,” he said abruptly. “Presently Konaszevski will send his slayers against us under cover of a great shield built on wheels. They will break down the door with a ram. We will slay some of them as they come up the stair. Then we will die.”

“Allah il allah!”
they answered by way of agreement and acceptance of their
Kismet
. “We shall slay many before we die!” And they grinned like hungry wolves in the dawn and thumbed the bolts of their rifles.

Outside, from every wall and window guns began to crack and bullets spattered thick about the loop-holes. The men in the tower could see the storming-machine now, rumbling ponderously across the courtyard. It was a massive affair of beams and brass and iron, on ox-wagon wheels, with an iron-headed ram projecting from an aperture in the center. At least fifty men could huddle behind and beneath it, safe from rifle-fire.

It rolled toward the wall and came to a halt, and sledge hammers began to crash on the wall.

All the noise had awakened Azizun who sat up rubbing her eyes, stared bewilderedly about her, and then cried out and ran to Gordon to cling to him and be comforted. Little of comfort he could offer her from his great store of pity for her. There was nothing now he could do for her, except to interpose his body between her and their enemies in the last charge, and mercifully save his last bullet for her.

Sensing the desperation of their position she lay like a child in his arms, her face hidden against his broad breast, moaning faintly. Gordon sat quietly, waiting the last grapple with the patience of the wild in which he had spent so much of his life, and his expression was composed, almost tranquil, though his eyes blazed unquenchably.

“The wall crumbles,” muttered a lynx-eyed Kurd crouching over his rifle at a loop-hole. “Dust rises under the hammers. Soon we will be able to see the workmen who swing the sledges on the other side of that wall. Then —”

“Listen!”

All in the tower heard it, but it was Azizun who started up and cried out as a new sound cut the medley to which they had become accustomed. It was a burst of firing off toward the north, and at the sound every rifle in Shalizahr was still suddenly.

Gordon sprang to a loop-hole on the north side of the tower. He looked over the roofs of Shalizahr toward the road that stretched out in the still white dawn. Half a dozen men were running along that road, firing backward as they ran. Behind them other figures were swarming out of the rocks that clustered the rim of the plateau.

These figures, miniature in the distance but distinctly etched in the early light, levelled rifles. Shots cracked, a cloud of smoke puffed out, and the fleeing
figures stumbled and fell sprawling. A fierce deep yelling came to the ears listening in the suddenly noiseless city.

“Baber Khan!” ejaculated Gordon. Again the negligence of the Stair guards had aided him. The Ghilzais had climbed the unguarded Stair in time to slaughter the sentries coming to mount guard there. But he was aghast at the numbers which were swarming up on the plateau. When the stream of men ceased there were at least three hundred warriors pouring up the road toward Shalizahr. There was but one explanation: Lal Singh had not met them with his plan of attack. Gordon could visualize the scene that must have taken place when they reached the appointed rendezvous and found El Borak not there — the berserk rage of Yar Ali Khan and the vengeful fury that would send the tribesmen recklessly up the Stair to make a direct onslaught on the city of which they knew nothing, save that it held enemies they thought had slain their friend. What had happened to Lal Singh he could not even guess.

In Shalizahr frozen amazement had given way to hasty action. Men were yelling on the roofs, running about in the street. From house-top to house-top the news of the invasion sped like wind, and in a few minutes men were shouting it in the palace courtyard. Gordon knew that Ivan would mount to some vantage point in the dome and see for himself, and he was not surprized, a few moments later, to hear the Cossack’s whip-lash voice shouting orders. The hammering on the wall ceased. Men scurried out from behind the moving shield.

A few moments later men were pouring into the square from the gardens and court, and from the houses that flanked the square. The Kurds in the tower fired valiantly at them and scored some hits, but these were ignored. Gordon watched for Ivan but knew the Cossack would leave the palace at some exit not exposed to the fire from the tower. Presently he glimpsed him far down the street, amidst a glittering company of corseleted Arabs, at the head of which gleamed the plumed helmet of Muhammad ibn Ahmed. After them thronged hundreds of Ismailian warriors, well-armed, and in good marching order, for tribesmen. Evidently Ivan had taught them at least the rudiments of civilized warfare.

They swung along as if they intended to march out onto the plain and meet the oncoming horde in open battle, but at the end of the street they scattered suddenly, taking cover in the gardens and the houses on each side of the street.

The Afghans were still too far away to be able to see what was going on in the city. By the time they had reached a point where they could look down the street it seemed empty and deserted. But Gordon, from his vantage point high above the houses, could see the gardens at the northern end of the town clustered with menacing figures, the roofs loaded with men whose rifles
glinted in the morning light. The Afghans were marching into a trap, while he stood there helpless. Gordon felt as if he were strangling.

A Kurd came and stood beside Gordon, knotting a rude bandage about a wounded wrist. He spoke through his teeth, with which he was tugging at the rag.

“Are those your friends? They are fools. They run headlong into the fangs of death.”

“I know!” Gordon’s knuckles showed white on his clenched fists.

“I know exactly what will happen,” said the Kurd. “When I was a palace guardsman I have heard Bagheela tell his officers his plan of defense, in case an enemy ever attacked the city.

“Do you see that orchard at the end of the street, on the east side? Fifty men with rifles hide there. You can glimpse the gleam of their barrels among the peach blossoms. Across the road is a garden we call the Garden of the Egyptian. There too fifty riflemen lurk in ambush. The house next to it is full of warriors, and so are the first three houses on the other side of the street.”

“Why tell me this?” snapped Gordon, his temper frayed thin by anxiety. “Can I not see the dogs crouching behind the parapets of the roofs?”

“Aye! The men in the orchard and in the garden will not fire until the Afghans have passed beyond them and are between the houses further on. Then the riflemen on the roofs will fire into them from each side and the men in the orchard and in the garden will rake their rear flanks. Not a man will escape.”

“If I could only warn them!” muttered Gordon.

The Kurd waved his hand toward the palace, and the roof of the nearest house, from which even then rifles were cracking from time to time.

“Bagheela would not leave you unguarded. At least a score of men still watch the tower. You would be riddled before you could get halfway across the garden.”

“God! Must I stand here helpless and see my friends slaughtered?” The veins stood out on Gordon’s neck and his black eyes took on a red tinge. Then he crouched suddenly like a panther poised for a spring as firing burst out at the other end of the town. He shouted, a deep, fierce shout of exultation.

“Look! The Afghans are spreading out and taking cover! Baber Khan is a crafty old wolf. Yar Ali Khan might rush headlong into a city he knew nothing about — not Baber Khan!”

It was true. Baber Khan, suspicious as a gaunt old wolf, had mistrusted the appearance of that innocent-looking street. Perhaps his caution had been whetted by the lessening of the firing at the other end of the town, which he had heard as he mounted the Stair. Perhaps his flinty eyes had caught the
glitter of the rising sun on rifle barrels on the roofs. At any rate his three hundred warriors spread out in a long skirmish line, firing from behind boulders and from the natural pockets that pitted the rocky plain.