Gordon’s hard body tensed as that of a hound which scents peril in the wind. “Tell me about it!” he commanded, and in a few terse words Lal Singh sketched the attack on the Amir.
“At your quarters I learned you had departed for Khor,” said Lal Singh. “I returned to the palace and the Amir urged me to follow you and bring you back. He was sick of his wounds, and nearly dead with terror.”
“Did he say anything about the expedition he planned to lead against Khor?” asked Gordon.
“Nay, sahib. But I think he will not leave the palace until you return. Certainly not until his wounds heal, if indeed he does not die of the poison with which the dagger blades were smeared.”
“You have received a repreive of Fate,” said Gordon to Baber Khan, and to Lal Singh he said: “Come down to the village, eat and sleep. We’ll start for Kabul at dawn.”
As the five men started down the slope, with the weary horse plodding after them, Baber Khan asked Gordon: “What is your thought, El Borak?”
“That somebody’s pulling strings in Constantinople, or in Moscow, or in Berlin,” answered the American.
“So? I deemed these Hidden Ones mere fanatics.”
“More than that, I fear,” said Gordon. “Apparently it’s a secret society with anarchistic principles. But I’ve noticed that every ruler who’s been killed or attacked has been an ally or a friend of the British empire. So I believe some European power is behind them.
“But what were you going to show me?”
“A corpse in a broken hut!” Baber Khan turned aside and led them toward the hovel. “My warriors came upon him lying at the base of a cliff from which he had fallen or been thrown. I made them bring him here, but he died on the way, babbling in a strange tongue. My people feared it would bring a curse on the village. They deem him a magician, and with good cause.
“A long day’s journey southward, among mountains so wild and barren not even a Pathan could dwell among them, lies a country we call “Ghulistan.”
“Ghulistan!” Gordon echoed the sinister phrase. In Turkish or Tatar it means Land of Roses, but in Arabic it means The Country of the Ghouls.
“Aye! An evil region of black crags and wild gorges, shunned by wise men. It seems uninhabited, yet men dwell there — men or demons. Sometimes a man is slain or a child or woman stolen from a lonely trail, and we know it is their work. We have followed, have glimpsed shadowy figures moving through the night, but always the trail ends against a blank cliff through which only a demon could pass. Sometimes we have heard the voice of the djinn echoing among the crags. It is a sound to turn men’s hearts to ice.”
They had reached the ruined hut, and Baber Khan pulled open the sagging door. A moment later the five men were bending over a figure which sprawled on the dirt floor.
It was a figure alien and incongruous: that of a short, squat man with broad, square, flat features, colored like dark copper, and narrow slant eyes — an unmistakable son of the Gobi. Blood clotted the thick black hair on the back of his head, and the unnatural position of his body told of shattered bones.
“Has he not the look of a magician?” asked Baber Khan uneasily.
“He’s no wizard,” answered Gordon. “He’s a Mongol, from a country far to the east. But what he’s doing here is more than I can say —”
Suddenly his black eyes blazed, and he snatched and tore the blood-stained khalat away from the squat throat. A stained woolen shirt came into view, and Yar Ali Khan, looking over Gordon’s shoulder, grunted explosively. On the shirt, worked in thread so crimson it might at first glance have been mistaken for a splash of blood, appeared a curious emblem: a human fist grasping a hilt from which jutted three double-edged blades.
“The Triple-Bladed Knife!” whispered Baber Khan, recoiling from that dread symbol which had come to embody a harbinger of death and destruction to the rulers of the East.
All looked at Gordon, but he said nothing. He stared down at the sinister emblem trying to capture a vague train of associations it roused — dim memories of an ancient and evil cult which used that same symbol, long ago.
“Can you have your men guide me to the spot where you found this man, Baber Khan?” he asked at last.
“Aye, sahib. But it is an evil place. It is in the Gorge of Ghosts, close to the borders of Ghulistan, and —”
“Good. Lal Singh, you and the others go and sleep. We ride at dawn.”
“To Kabul, sahib?”
“No. To Ghulistan.”
“Then you think — ?”
“I think nothing — yet; I go in search of knowledge.”
II
THE BLACK COUNTRY
Dusk was mantling the serrated sky-line when Gordon’s Ghilzai guide halted. Ahead of them the rugged terrain was broken by a deep canyon and beyond the canyon rose a forbidding array of black crags and frowning cliffs, a wild, hag-like chaos of broken black rock.
“There begins Ghulistan,” said the Ghilzai, and his hook-nosed comrades loosened their knives and clicked their rifle-bolts. “Beyond that gorge, the Gorge of Ghosts, begins the country of horror and death. We go no further, sahib.”
Gordon nodded, his eyes picking out a trail that looped down rugged slopes into the canyon. It was the fading trace of an ancient road they had been following for many miles, but it looked as if it had been used frequently, and lately.
The Ghilzai nodded, divining his thought.
“That trail is well-traveled, of late. By it the demons of the black mountains come and go. But men who follow it will not return.”
Yar Ali Khan jeered, though he secretly shared their superstitions. “What need demons with a trail?”
“When they take the shape of men they walk like men,” Ahmed Shah grunted in his bushy beard.
“Demons fly with wings like a bat!” asserted Yar Ali Khan.
The Ghilzai ignored the Afridi, and pointed to the jutting ledge over which the trail wound.
“At the foot of that slope we found the man you called a Mongol. Doubtless his brother demons quarreled with him and cast him down.”
“Doubtless he tripped and fell,” grunted Gordon. “Mongols are desert men. They’re not used to mountain climbing, and their legs are bowed and weakened by a life in the saddle. Such a one would stumble easily on a narrow trail.”
“If he was a man, perhaps,” conceded the Ghilzai. “I still say — Allah!”
All except Gordon started convulsively, and the Ghilzais turned pale and threw up their rifles, glaring wildly. Out over the crags, from the south, rolled an incredible sound — a strident, braying roar that vibrated among the mountains.
“The voice of the djinn!” ejaculated the Ghilzai, unconsciously jerking the rein so his horse squealed and reared. “Sahib, in the name of Allah, let us begone! It is madness to remain here!”
“Go back to your village if you are afraid. I’m going on.”
“Baber Khan will weep for thee!” the leader of the band yelled reproachfully over his shoulder as he kicked his pony into a wild run. “He loves thee like a brother! There will be woe in Khor! Aie! Ahai! Ohee!” His lamentations died away amidst the clatter of hoofs on stone as the Ghilzais, flogging their ponies hard, topped a ridge and vanished from view.
“Run, sons of noseless dams!” yelled Yar Ali Khan. “We will brand your devils and drag them to Khor by their tails!” But he fell mute the instant the victims were out of hearing.
Ahmed Shah shifted nervously in his saddle, and Yar Ali Khan tugged at his patriarchal beard and eyed Gordon sidewise, like an apprehensive ghoul with a three-foot knife. But El Borak spoke to Lal Singh: “Have you ever heard a sound like that before?”
The tall Sikh nodded.
“Yes, sahib, in the mountains of the devil-worshippers.”
Gordon lifted his reins without comment. He too had heard the roar of the ten-foot bronze trumpets that blare over the bare black mountains of forbidden Mongolia, in the hands of shaven-headed priests of Erlik.
Yar
Ali Khan snorted. He had not heard those trumpets, and he had not been consulted. He thrust his horse in ahead of Lal Singh, so as to be next to Gordon as they rode down the steep slopes in the purple dusk. He bared his teeth at the Sikh, and said roughly to Gordon: “Now that we have been lured into this country of devils by treacherous Ghilzai dogs who will undoubtedly steal back and cut the sahib’s throat while he sleeps, what have you planned for us?”
It might have been a gaunt old wolfhound growling at his master for patting another dog. Gordon bent his head and spat to hide a grin.
“We’ll camp in the canyon tonight,” he said. “The horses are tired, and there’s no point in struggling through these gulches in the dark. Tomorrow we’ll begin our exploring.
“That Mongol 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. And being afoot, it’s certain that he wasn’t far from some camp. A Mongol wouldn’t walk far, if he could help it.
“I believe that the Hidden Ones have a rendezvous somewhere in that country across the gorge. The Hills hereabouts are very thinly settled. Khor is the nearest village, and it’s a long hard day’s ride away, 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 almost undetected. That old road we’ve been following most of the day used to be a 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 don’t know just what we’ll do. 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 Alik Khan sonorously, 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 in a sullen rampart of solid black rock, broken at intervals by narrow gorge mouths. Gordon rode into the gulch 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 gulch opened into the canyon. Its rock floor showed no sign of any trail, and it narrowed so rapidly that Gordon believed 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 provisions against surprize from the south, 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. 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, and 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 beside 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 hastened 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 his post. I saw nothing, heard nothing; but I sensed Death skulking there. Sahib, what men could have done away with such warriors as Lal Singh 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 the English army. But that Ahmed Shah should have died and Lal Singh been spirited away without the sound of a struggle 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, possibly in 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 backs, 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 starli
ght. The men at bay 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 sweep was devastating. Side by side, with the wall at their backs, the two companions were safe from attack on rear or flank.
Steel rang sharp on steel and blue sparks flew, momentarily lighting wild bearded faces. There rose the ugly butcher-shop sound of blades cleaving flesh and bone, and men screamed or gasped death-gurgles from severed jugulars. For a few moments a huddled knot writhed and milled near the rock wall. The work was too swift and blind and desperate 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 enemy bodies. The others were handicapped by their numbers, 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, experienced a brief pulse 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 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 pulled him back. He almost dragged the powerful American off his feet, as he plunged like a lassoed bull, breathing gustily.