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.
IX
THE RED ORCHARD
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.
A scattering fire was returned from the nearest house-tops, but no shot was fired from the garden or in the orchard, and the shooting from the roofs was weak and ineffective.
“Look!”
A band of men, a hundred or so in number, emerged into the street from among the houses. They moved in ragged order out along the road, firing as they went. Gordon cursed suddenly and passionately, for he foresaw the trick. The Kurds craning over his shoulders wagged their turbans in confirmation.
“They go to draw the Afghans into a charge. They will fall back in confusion presently. There was never an Afghan who could resist pursuing a fleeing enemy. The Ghilzais will run into the trap set for them, after all.”
The nearest point of the Afghan line was a few hundred yards beyond the orchard. The Ismailians had scarcely passed the orchard wh
en they received a withering fire from the full length of the irregular line, and their uneven ranks wavered as a dozen men fell. They held long enough to fire a volley in return, and then began to fall back. The bodies that dotted the plain showed that the Ismailians were prepared to pay a fair price for their ultimate victory.
The wolf-like yelling of the Afghans came plainly to the group in the tower as the Assassins broke and fled toward the shelter of the houses. Just as the Kurd had predicted and Gordon had feared, the Ghilzais leaped up and charged after them, firing as they ran and howling like blood-mad demons.
They converged from both sides into the road, and there, though Baber Khan was unable to check their headlong rush, he did at least manage to beat and curse them into a more compact body as they surged into the end of the street.
The fleetest of the tribesmen were not a hundred yards behind the last-most Ismailians when the latter dashed between the orchard and the garden and raced on up the street. Gordon clenched his hands until his nails bit blood from his palms. Now the foremost of the Afghans were passing the further end of the garden — a few moments more and they would be in the jaws of the trap.
But something went wrong. Later Gordon learned that it was a turbaned head poked incautiously up above the garden wall that spoiled Ivan’s trap. Baber Khan, with eyes that missed nothing, spied that head, and the bullet he instantly smashed through it caused the owner to jerk the trigger of his cocked rifle even as he died. At the crack of his rifle his mates, keyed to almost unbearable tension, fired mechanically and practically involuntarily. And the men in the orchard across the way, reacting without stopping to think, poured a ragged volley into the onrushing horde. And of course, at that, the men on the roofs ahead began firing spontaneously and without orders. When a trap that is hinged with hair-trigger precision is sprung prematurely, the result is always demoralization and confusion.
A score of Afghans bit the dust at the first volley, but Baber Khan instantly realized the trap and saw and took the only way out. The unexpected fire was like a slap of cold water in the faces of his men, sobering them out of their blind blood-madness, and before that could turn to panic, Baber Khan commanded their staggering attention by a high-pitched furious yell, and wheeling, led them straight at the orchard wall. They were accustomed, since their cradles, blindly to follow where he led. They followed him now, with the bullets from all sides ripping through their ranks.
A volley that blazed along the wall full in their faces left a line of crumpled bodies in the road but did not stop the charge. They went over the orchard wall like a typhoon-driven wave in the teeth of raking lead and biting steel, swamped the fifty men crouching there with sheer numbers, shot, stabbed or knocked them in the head before they could even break away, and then, from behind the wall themselves opened a savage fire on the garden and the houses.
In an instant the whole complection of the fight had changed. The road was full of dead men, but, at a loss of some forty warriors, Baber Khan had slipped out of the trap before it could close.
The Ghilzais were well covered by the wall, and the trees which crowded the orchard. Lead rained into the orchard from the garden across the way, and from the roofs of the houses, but with little effect. There were fountains in the orchard for water, and fruit on some of the trees. Unless dislodged by a direct charge, they could hold their position for days.
On the other hand, they were themselves in a vise. They could not take the city by sniping from behind an orchard wall, and if they emerged from their cover, they would be exterminated. They could not charge the houses, and they could not fall back across the plain and descend the Stair without being followed and massacred as they retreated. Continual firing from the houses would gradually decrease their numbers, until a charge would sweep over the wall and crush them as they had crushed the fifty riflemen who had first held the orchard.
And in the meantime, Gordon reflected savagely, he was hemmed up there in that accursed tower, while the men who had come to rescue him fought for their lives against a crafty and merciless foe. Tigerishly he paced the floor, his eyes burning, his hands quivering with the desire to be gripping gun butt or sword hilt. Azizun knelt near the wall, watching him with wide eyes, and the Kurds were silent.
The spattering of bullets on the tower outside maddened him. They were not shooting at anything they could see; were simply warning him to keep under cover; to remain hemmed in until Ivan Konaszevski could exterminate his friends and return to destroy him at his leisure. A red mist floated before Gordon’s eyes, making everything seem to swim in a gulf of blood.
He scarcely knew it when one of the Kurds wandered down into the lower chamber; but he was aware of the man’s return, for he came up the steps three at a time, his eyes blazing.
“Effendi! Come and look! I tore the carpet off the floor of that chamber down there looking for loot, which is often hidden beneath floors, and I found a brass ring set in a slot. When I pulled upon it a trap-door opened in the floor, and a flight of stone-steps leads down!”
Gordon came out of his maze of helpless rage like an awakening panther, and raced headlong down the stair after the warrior. An instant later he was crouching over the open trap, striking one of the matches he had found in the upper chamber. The steps led down a few feet into a narrow tunnel. Gordon knelt in meditation while the match flickered out.
“That tunnel leads towards the palace,” he said presently. “If Ivan knew of this he’d have led his men through it to attack us. Othman must have used this way in passing secretly to and from the palace. He’d naturally have secrets he’d keep even from Ivan. It’s probable that only he and his black slaves knew of this tunnel; which means that no living men except ourselves know of it.”
“We do not know where it leads to in the palace,” reminded the Kurd.
“No. But it’s worth taking a chance. Get the others.”
When the three Kurds came trooping down with the girl, hugging her make-shift silk garment about her, he said briefly: “I’m gambling that this will lead us into some part of the palace that isn’t full of Assassins. There can’t be many men in the palace, and they are in the front part of the building, judging from the sound of the firing. Anyway, it’s better to take a chance than to wait here to be butchered.
“If we get into the palace alive, we’ll make for the tunnel where Yusuf ibn Suleiman is hiding. There’s no point in his waiting there now, but of course he probably doesn’t know that. If we get there I’m going to send you men and the girl out through the ravines.” And in a few words he told them how to reach the cave and the hole in the cliff.
“We do not wish to leave thee, effendi!” Weariness and wounds were telling on the Kurds at last; their bearded faces were drawn and haggard, but they spoke with sincerity.
“You’ll obey my orders, as you swore to do, and so will Azizun —” as the girl showed evidences of mutiny. “You know the way to Khor. Go there, and give the people the same pass-word I told to Yusuf. Don’t be afraid in going through the ravines. The djinn is dead — and it was never anything but an ape, anyway. If you reach Khor, get into communication with Azizun’s family in Delhi. They’ll pay you well for returning her.”
“The dogs pollute their Hindu money! Thy command is enough. But, effendi, what of thee?”
“After you’ve gotten safely into the ravines I’m going to slip out of the palace and try to reach the orchard where the Afghans are at bay. They came to save me. I can not desert them. It is a point of izzat.”
He used the Afghan term unconsciously, but the Kurds understood; they too had their code of honor.
“I tell you this now, so if I fall before we reach the tunnel where Yusuf is, the rest of you will know what to do. Make for Khor! And now let’s go!”
They entered the tunnel, lighting their way with improvised torches. It was ornate for such a passage, walled with friezed marble, arched and tiled. It ran straight for some distance, until Gordon knew they were well under the palace
. He was wondering if it connected with the dungeons when they came to a narrow flight of steps leading up to a bronze door. Careful listening betrayed no sound beyond the door, and Gordon pushed it open cautiously, rifle ready. They emerged into an empty chamber, of which the secret door formed a panel in the wall. When Gordon pushed it shut behind them a hidden spring clicked. Their escape was cut off in that direction.
They stole across the chamber and peered through the curtained door into the dim corridor beyond. No sound broke the silence of the palace except the dry cracking of rifles some distance away. It was the men in the front part of the building shooting at the tower. Gordon smiled thinly to think that while the riflemen were so engaged, the folk they thought safely trapped were invading the palace behind them.
“Do you know exactly where we are now, Azizun?”
“Yes, sahib.”
“Then lead us to the room which opens on the secret stair. There’s no use warning everyone to go quietly.”
“I do not think we will be discovered. The male slaves will be at the other end of the town, watching the fighting. The women, slaves and houris, will be hiding in terror in the upper chambers — possibly locked in by their masters,” replied Azizun, leading them swiftly along the winding corridor.
She was apparently correct in her surmise, for they reached the door of the chamber which Gordon had occupied the day before without seeing anyone. But even as Gordon reached for the door, their hearts jumped into their throats at the mutter of two low voices and the soft tread of many feet in the chamber. It was as unexpected as a shot from ambush. Before they could retreat the door was thrown open, and then Gordon’s rifle muzzle jammed hard into the belly of the man who had opened it.
For an instant both men stood frozen.
“Sahib!”
“Lal Singh!”
The Kurds behind Gordon stared wildly as they saw the great bearded Sikh throw his arms about their effendi in an embrace of glad relief. Behind Lal Singh Yusuf ibn Suleiman in his Arab finery grinned like a bearded mountain devil, and fifty wild figures with rifles and tulwars crowded the chamber.