“We’ll camp in the canyon tonight. The horses are tired, and there’s no point in struggling through these gulches in the dark. Tomorrow we’ll do some exploring and scouting. There’s no doubt that the Mongol was one of the Hidden Ones. He must have been on foot when he fell. If he’d been on a horse, he wouldn’t have fallen unless the horse fell too. The Ghilzai didn’t find a dead horse. Only a dead man. If he was afoot, it’s certain that he wasn’t far from some camp or rendezvous. A Mongol wouldn’t walk far; wouldn’t walk a hundred feet unless he had to, in fact.
“The more I think of it the more it seems to me that the Hidden Ones have a rendezvous somewhere in that country across the gorge. It could make a perfect hide-out. The Hills in this particular corner of the globe aren’t thickly inhabited. Khor is the nearest village, and it’s a long day’s hard ride, as we’ve found. Wandering clans stay out of these parts, fearing the Ghilzais, and Baber Khan’s men are too superstitious to investigate much across that gorge. The Hidden Ones, hiding over there somewhere, could come and go pretty much undetected. That old road we’ve been following most of the day used to be a main caravan route, centuries ago, and it’s still practicable for men on horses. Better still, it doesn’t pass near any villages, and isn’t used by the tribes now. Men following it could get to within a day’s ride of Kabul without much fear of being seen by anyone. I remember seeing it on old maps, drawn on parchment, centuries ago.
“Frankly, I don’t know what we’ll do. Mainly we’ll keep our eyes open and await developments. Our actions will depend on circumstances. Our destiny,” said Gordon without cynicism, “is on Allah’s knees.”
“La illaha illulah; Muhammad rassoul ullah!” agreed Yar Ali Khan sonorously, stroking his beard like a reverent cut-throat, completely mollified.
As they came down into the canyon they saw that the trail led across the rock-strewn floor and into the mouth of a deep, narrow gorge which debouched into the canyon from the south. The south wall of the canyon was higher than the north wall, and much more sheer; it swept up like a sullen rampart of solid black rock, broken at intervals by narrow cleft-like gorge-mouths. Gordon rode into the gorge in which the trail wound and followed it to the first bend, finding that bend was but the first of a succession of kinks. The ravine, running between sheer walls of rock, writhed and twisted like the track of a serpent and was already filled to the brim with darkness.
“This is our road, tomorrow,” said Gordon, and his men nodded silently, as he led them back to the main canyon, where some light still lingered, ghostly in the thickening dusk. The clang of their horses’ hoofs on the flint seemed startlingly loud in the sullen, brutish silence.
A few hundred feet west of the trail-ravine another, narrower one opened into the canyon. Its rock floor showed no sign of any trail, and it narrowed so rapidly that Gordon was inclined to believe it ended in a blind alley.
About half-way between these ravine mouths, but near the north wall, which was at that point precipitous, a tiny spring bubbled up in a natural basin of age-hollowed rock. Behind it, in a cave-like niche in the cliff, dry wiry grass grew sparsely, and there they tethered the weary horses. They camped at the spring, eating from tins, not risking a fire which might be seen from afar by hostile eyes — though they realized that there was a chance that they had been seen by hidden watchers already. There is always that chance in the Hills. The tents had been left in Khor. Blankets spread on the ground were luxuries enough for Gordon and his hardy followers.
His position seemed a strategic one. The party could not be attacked from the north, because of the sheer cliffs; no one could reach the horses without first passing through the camp. Gordon made provision against surprize from the south, or from east or west.
He divided his party into two watches. Lal Singh he placed on guard west of the camp, near the mouth of the narrower ravine, and Ahmed Shah had his station close to the mouth of the eastern ravine, up which, it was logical to suppose, peril was most likely to come. Ahmed Shah had that post instead of Lal Singh (who could have bested him in any sort of a battle) because his external senses were a shade more acute than the Sikh’s; the senses of any savage being naturally keener than the specially-trained faculties of a civilized man, however intensely cultivated.
Any hostile band coming up or down the canyon, or entering it from either ravine, would have to pass these sentries, whose vigilance Gordon had proven many times in the past. Later in the night he and Yar Ali Khan would take their places.
Darkness came swiftly in the canyon, seeming to flow in almost tangible waves down the black slopes, and ooze out of the blacker mouths of the ravines. Stars blinked out, cold, white and impersonal. Above the invaders brooded the great dusky bulks of the broken mountains, brutish, primordial. As Gordon fell asleep he was wondering what grim spectacles they had witnessed since the beginning of Time, and what inhuman creatures had crept through them before Man was.
Primitive instincts, slumbering in the average man, are whetted to razor-edge by a life of constant hazard. Gordon awoke the instant Yar Ali Khan touched him, and at once, before the Afridi spoke, the American knew that peril was in the air. The tense grasp on his shoulder spoke plainly to him of imminent danger.
He came up on one knee instantly, gun in hand.
“What is it?”
Yar Ali Khan crouched be side him, gigantic shoulders bulking dimly in the gloom. The Afridi’s eyes glimmered like a cat’s in the dark. Back in the shadow of the cliffs the unseen horses moved restively, the only sound in the nighted canyon.
“Danger, sahib!” hissed the Afridi. “Close about us, creeping upon us in the dark! Ahmed Shah is slain!”
“What?”
“He lies near the mouth of the ravine with his throat cut from ear to ear. I dreamed that death was stealing upon us as we slept, and the fear of the dream awoke me. Without rousing you I stole to the mouth of the eastern ravine, and lo, there lay Ahmed Shah in his blood. He must have died silently and suddenly. I saw no one, heard no sound in the ravine, which was as black as the mouth of hell.
“Then I hurried along the south wall to the western ravine, and found no one! I speak truth, Allah be my witness. Ahmed is dead and Lal Singh is gone. The devils of the hills have slain one and snatched away the other, without waking us — we who sleep lightly as cats! No sound came from the ravine before which the Sikh had had his post. I saw nothing, heard nothing; but I sensed Death skulking there, with red eyes of awful hunger and fingers that dripped blood. Sahib, what men could have done away with such warriors as the Sikh and Ahmed Shah without a sound? This gorge is indeed the Gorge of Ghosts!”
Gordon made no reply, but crouched on his knee, straining eyes and ears into the darkness, while he considered the astounding thing that had occurred. It did not occur to him to doubt the Afridi’s statements. He could trust the man as he trusted his own eyes and ears. That Yar Ali Khan could have stolen away without awakening even him was not surprizing, for the Afridi was of that breed of men who glide naked through the mists to steal rifles from the guarded tents of English soldiers. But that Ahmed Shah should have died and that Lal Singh been spirited away without the sound of a struggle was incredible. It smacked of the diabolical.
“Who can fight devils, sahib? Let us mount the horses and ride —”
“Listen!”
Somewhere a bare foot scruffed on the rock floor. Gordon rose, peering into the gloom. Men were moving out there in the darkness. Shadows detached themselves from the black background and slunk forward. Gordon drew the scimitar he had buckled on at Khor, thrusting his pistol back into its scabbard. Lal Singh was a captive out there, probably in the line of fire. Yar Ali Khan crouched beside him, gripping his Khyber knife, silent now, and deadly as a wolf at bay, convinced that they were facing ghoulish fiends of the dark mountains, but ready to fight men or devils, if Gordon so willed it.
The dim-seen line moved in slowly, widening as it came, and Gordon and the Afridi fell back a few paces to have the
rock wall at their back, and prevent themselves from being surrounded by those phantom-like figures.
The rush came suddenly, impetuously, bare feet slapping softly over the rocky floor, steel glinting dully in the dim starlight. Gordon could see like a cat in the dark, and Yar Ali Khan’s eyes were such as can be possessed only by a man bred in the abysmal blackness of the Hills. Even so they could make out few details of their assailants — only the bulks of them, and the shimmer of steel. They struck and parried by instinct and feel as much as by sight.
Gordon killed the first man to come within sword-reach, and Yar Ali Khan, galvanized by the realization that their foes were human after all, sounded a deep yell and exploded in a berserk burst of wolfish ferocity. Towering above the squat figures, his three-foot knife overreached the blades that hacked at him, and its edge bit deep. Standing side by side, with the wall at their backs, the two companions were safe from attack from the rear or flank. Steel rang sharply on steel and blue sparks flew, momentarily lighting wild bearded faces. There rose the ugly butcher-shop sound of keen blades cleaving flesh and bone, and men screamed or gasped death-gurgles from severed jugulars. For a few moments a huddled knot writhed and contorted near the rock wall. The work was too swift and desperate and blind to allow much consecutive thought or plan. But the advantage was with the men at bay. They could see as well as their attackers; man for man, they were stronger and more agile; and they knew when they struck their steel would flesh itself only in enemies. The others were handicapped by their numbers and the darkness, and the knowledge that they might kill a companion with a blind stroke must surely have tempered their frenzy.
Gordon, ducking a sword before he realized he had seen it swinging at him, found time for an instant of surprize. Thrice his blade had grated against something yielding but impenetrable. These men were wearing shirts of mail! He slashed where he knew unprotected thighs and heads and necks would be, and men spurted their blood on him as they died.
Then the rush ebbed as suddenly as it had flooded. The attackers gave way and melted like phantoms into the darkness. That darkness had become not quite so absolute. The eastern rims of the canyon were lined with a silvery fire that marked the rising of the moon.
Yar Ali Khan gave tongue like a wolf and charged after the dim, retreating figures, foam of aroused blood-lust flecking his beard. He stumbled over a corpse, stabbed savagely downward before he realized it was a dead man, and then Gordon grabbed his arm and jerked him to a halt. He almost dragged the powerful American off his feet, as he plunged like a lassoed bull, breathing gustily.
“Wait, you idiot! Do you want to run into a trap? Let them go!”
Yar Ali Khan subsided to a wolfish wariness that was no less deadly than his berserk fury, and together they glided cautiously after the vague figures which disappeared in the mouth of the eastern ravine. There the pursuers halted, peering warily into the black depths. Somewhere, far down it, a dislodged pebble rattled on the stone, and both men tensed involuntarily, reacting like suspicious panthers.
“The dogs did not halt,” muttered Yar Ali Khan. “They flee still. Shall we follow them?”
He did not speak with conviction, and Gordon merely shook his head. Not even they dared plunge into that well of blackness, where ambushes might make every step a march of death. They fell back to the camp and the fear-maddened horses, which were frantic with the stench of fresh-spilt blood.
“When the moon rises high enough to flood the canyon with light,” quoth Yar Ali Khan, “they will shoot us from the ravine.”
“That’s a chance we must take,” grunted Gordon. “Maybe they’re not good shots.”
With the tiny beam of his pocket flashlight Gordon investigated the four dead men left behind by the attackers. The thin pencil of light moved from face to bearded face, and Yar Ali Khan, looking over his shoulder, grunted and swore: “Devil worshippers, by the beard of Allah! Yezidees! Sons of Melek Taus!”
“No wonder they stole through the dark like cats of hell,” muttered Gordon, who well knew the uncanny stealth possessed by the people of that ancient and abominable cult which worships the Brazen Peacock on Mount Lalesh the Accursed.
Yar Ali Khan made a sign calculated to fend off devils which might be expected to be lurking near any place where their votaries had died.
“Come away, sahib. It is not fitting that you should touch this carrion. No wonder they slew and stole like the djinn of silence. They are children of night and darkness, and they partake of the attributes of the elements which gave them birth.”
“But what are they doing here?” mused Gordon. “Their homeland is in Syria — about Mount Lalesh. It’s the last stronghold of their race, to which they were driven by Christian and Moslem alike. A Mongol from the Gobi, and devil-worshippers from Syria. What’s the connection?”
He grasped the coarse woolen khalat of the nearest corpse, and swore down Yar Ali Khan’s instant objections.
“That flesh is accursed,” sulked the Afridi, looking like a scandalized ghoul, with the dripping knife in his hand, and blood trickling down his beard from a broken tooth. “It is not fit for a sahib such as thou to handle. If it must be done, let me —”
“Oh, shut up! Ha! Just as I thought!”
The tiny beam rested on the linen jerkin which covered the thick chest of the mountaineer. There gleamed, like a splash of fresh blood, the emblem of a hand gripping a three-bladed dagger.
“Wallah!” Discarding his scruples, Yar Ali Khan ripped the khalats from the other three corpses. Each displayed the fist and dagger.
“Are Mongols Muhammadans, sahib?” he asked presently.
“Some are. But that man in Baber Khan’s hut wasn’t. His canine teeth were filed to sharp points. He was a devotee of Erlik, the Yellow God of Death. Probably a priest. Cannibalism is an element of some of their rituals.”
“The man who killed the Sultan of Turkey was a Kurd,” mused Yar Ali Khan. “Some of them worship Melek Taus, too, secretly. But it was an Arab who slew the Shah of Persia, and a Delhi Moslem fired at the Viceroy. What would true Muhammadans be doing in a society which includes Mongol and Yezidee devil-worshippers?”
“That’s what we’re here to find out,” answered Gordon, snapping off the electric torch.
They squatted in the shadow of the cliffs, in silence, as the moonlight, weird and ghostly, grew in the canyon, and rock and ledge and wall took shape. No sound disturbed the brooding quiet.
Yar Ali Khan rose at last and stood up etched in the witch-light glow, a fair target for anyone lurking in the ravine-mouth. But no shot rang out.
“What now?”
Gordon pointed to dark splotches on the bare rock floor that the moonlight made visible and distinct.
“They’ve left us a trail a child could follow.”
Without a word Yar Ali Khan sheathed his knife and secured his rifle from among the pack-rolls near the blankets. Gordon likewise armed himself and also fastened to his belt a coil of thin, strong rope with a short iron hook at one end of it. He had found such a rope invaluable time and again in mountain travel. The moon had risen higher, fully lighting the canyon, drawing a thin thread of silver along the middle of the ravine. That was enough light for men like Gordon and Yar Ali Khan.
Through the moonlight they approached the ravine-mouth, rifles in hand, clearly limned for any marksmen who, after all, might be skulking there, but ready to take the chances of luck, or fate, or fortune or whatever it is that decides the destiny of men on blind trails. No shot cracked, no furtive figures flitted among the shadows. The blood drops sprinkled the rocky floor thickly. Obviously the Yezidees had carried away some grim wounds.
Gordon thought of Ahmed Shah, lying dead back there in the canyon, without a cairn to cover his body. But time could not be spared now for the dead. The Yusufzai was past hurting; but Lal Singh was a prisoner in the hands of men to whom mercy was unknown. Later Ahmed Shah’s body could be taken care of; just now the task at hand was to track down the Yezi
dees and get the Sikh away from them before they killed him — if, indeed, they had not done that already.
They pushed up the ravine without hesitation, rifles cocked. They went afoot, for they believed their enemies were on foot, unless horses were hidden somewhere up the ravine; the gulch was so narrow and rugged that a horseman would be at a fatal disadvantage in any kind of fight.
At each bend of the ravine they expected and were prepared for an ambush, but the trail of blood drops led on, and no figures barred their way. The blood drops were not so thick now, but they were still sufficient to mark the way.
Gordon quickened his pace, hopeful of overtaking the Yezidees, who now seemed undoubtedly in flight. They had a long start, but if, as he believed, they were carrying one or more wounded men, and were likewise burdened with a prisoner who would not make things any more convenient for them than he could help, that lead might be rapidly cut down. He believed that the Sikh was alive, since they had not found his body, and if the Yezidees had killed him, they would have had no reason for hiding the corpse.
The ravine pitched steeply upward, narrowing, then widened as it descended and abruptly made a crook and came out into another canyon running roughly east and west, and only a few hundred feet wide. The blood-spattered trail ran straight across to the sheer south wall — and ceased.
Yar Ali Khan grunted. “The Ghilzai dogs spoke truth. The trail stops at a cliff that only a bird could fly over.”
Gordon halted at the foot of the cliff, puzzled. They had lost the trace of the ancient road in the Gorge of Ghosts, but this was the way the Yezidees had come, without a doubt. Blood spattered a trail to the foot of the cliffs — then ceased as if those who bled had simply dissolved into thin air.
He ran his eyes up the sheer pitch of the wall which rose straight up for hundreds of feet. Directly above him, at a height of some fifteen feet, a narrow ledge jutted, a mere outcropping some ten or fifteen feet in length and only a few feet wide. It seemed to offer no solution to the mystery. But halfway up to the ledge he saw a dull reddish smear on the rock of the wall.