“Not even we can fight a whole city,” grunted Yar Ali Khan.
Gordon fell silent while he studied the distant view. The city did not show to be so large as it had appeared at first glance. It was compact, but unwalled. The houses, two or three stories in height, stood among clusters of trees and surprizing gardens — surprizing because the plateau seemed almost solid rock. Gordon reached a decision.
“Ali, go back to our camp in the Gorge of Ghosts. Take the horses and ride for Khor. Tell Baber Khan what’s happened and say to him that I need him and all his swords. Bring the Ghilzai through the cleft and halt them among these defiles until you get a signal from me, or know I’m dead. Here’s a chance to sever two necks with the same stroke. If Baber Khan wipes out this nest of vipers, the Amir will pardon him.”
“Shaitan devour Baber Khan! What of thee?”
“I’m going into that city.”
“Wallah!” swore the Afridi.
“I’ve got to. The Yezidees have gone there, and Lal Singh must be with them. They may kill him before the Ghilzai could get here. I’ve got to get him away before we can lay any plans about attacking the city. If you start now, you can get to Khor shortly after nightfall. If you start back from Khor immediately, you should arrive at this spot shortly after sun-up. If I’m alive and at liberty, I’ll meet you here. If I don’t, you and Baber Khan use your own judgment.”
Yar Ali Khan immediately found objections.
“Baber Khan has no love for me. If I go to him alone he will spit in my beard, and I will kill him and then his dogs will kill me.”
“He’ll do no such thing, and you know it.”
“He will not come!”
“He’d come through Hell if I sent for him.”
“His men will not follow him; they fear devils.”
“They’ll come fast enough when you tell them it’s men who haunt Ghulistan.”
“But the horses will be gone. The devils will have stolen them.”
“I doubt it. Nobody’s left the city since we took the trail, and no one has come in behind us. Anyway, you can make it to Khor on foot, if necessary, though of course it’ll take longer.”
Then Yar Ali Khan tore his beard in wrath and voiced his real objection to leaving Gordon.
“The swine in that city will flay you alive!”
“Nay, I will match guile with guile. I’ll be a fugitive from the wrath of the Amir, an outlaw seeking sanctuary. The East is full of lies about me. They’ll aid me now.”
Yar Ali Khan abandoned the argument suddenly, realizing the uselessness of it. Grumbling in his beard, wagging his turbaned head direfully, the Afridi clambered down the crag and vanished in the defile without a backward look.
When he was out of sight Gordon also descended and went toward the cliffs.
III
THE HIDDEN ONES
Gordon expected, at each step, to be fired at from the cliffs, although he had seen no sentinels among the rocks at their crest when he looked from the crag. But he crossed the canyon, reached the foot of the cliff and began mounting the steep road — still flecked here and there with red drops — without having sighted any human being. The trail wound interminably up a succession of ramps, with low, heavy walls on the outer edge. He had time to admire the engineering ability which made that road possible. Obviously it was no work of Afghan hillmen; it looked ancient, strong as the mountain itself.
For the last thirty feet the ramps gave way to a flight of steep steps cut into the rock. Still no one challenged him, and he came out on the plateau among a cluster of boulders, from behind which seven men who had been squatting over a game, sprang to their feet and glared wildly at him. They were Kurds, lean, hard-bodied warriors with hawk-beak noses, their slim waists girdled with cartridge belts, and with rifles in their hands.
Those rifles were instantly levelled at him. Gordon displayed neither surprize nor perturbation. He set his rifle-butt on the ground and eyed the startled Kurds tranquilly.
These cut-throats were as uncertain as cornered wildcats, and therefore equally dangerous and unpredictable. His life hung on the crook of a nervous trigger-finger. But for the moment they merely glared, struck dumb by his unexpected materialization.
“El Borak!” muttered the taller of the Kurds, his eyes blazing with fear and suspicion and murder-lust. “What do you here?”
Gordon ran his eyes leisurely over them all before he replied, an easy, relaxed figure standing carelessly before those seven tense shapes.
“I seek your master,” he replied presently.
This did not seem to reassure them. They began to mutter among themselves, never relaxing the vigilance of eye or trigger-finger.
The taller Kurd’s voice rose irascibly, dominating the others: “You chatter like crows! This thing is plain: we were gambling and did not see him come. Our duty is to watch the Stair. We have failed in our duty. If it is known there will be punishment. Let us slay him and throw him over the cliff.”
“Aye,” agreed Gordon equably. “Do so. And when your master asks: ‘Where is El Borak, who brought me important news?’ Say to him: ‘Lo, thou didst not consult with us concerning this man, and so we slew him to teach thee a lesson!’”
They winced at the biting irony of his words and tone.
“None will ever know,” growled one. “Shoot him.”
“Nay, the shot would be heard and there would be questions to answer.”
“Cut his throat!” suggested the youngest of the band, and was scowled at so murderously by his fellows that he fell back in confusion.
“Aye, cut my throat,” taunted Gordon, laughing at them. “One of you might survive to tell of it.”
This was no mere bombast, as most of them knew, and they betrayed their uneasiness in their black scowls.
“Knives are silent,” muttered the youngster, trying to justify himself.
He was rewarded by receiving a rifle butt driven angrily into his belly, which made him salaam involuntarily, and then lift up his voice in gasping lamentation.
“Son of a dog! Would you have us fight El Borak’s guns with naked steel?”
Having vented some of their spleen on their tactless comrade, the Kurds grew calmer, and the taller man inquired uncertainly of Gordon: “You are expected?”
“Would I come here if I were not expected? Does the lamb thrust his head unbidden into the jaws of the wolf?”
“Lamb?” The Kurds cackled sardonically. “Thou a lamb? Ha, Allah! Say, rather, does the grey wolf with blood on his fangs seek the hunter!”
“If there is fresh-spilt blood it is but the blood of fools who disobeyed their master’s orders,” retorted Gordon. “Last night, in the Gorge of Ghosts —”
“Ya Allah! Was it thee the Yezidee fools fought? They knew thee not! They said they had slain an Englishman and his servants in the Gorge.”
So that was why the sentries were so careless; for some reason the Yezidees had lied about the outcome of that battle, and the Watchers of the Road were not expecting any pursuit.
“None of you was among those who in their ignorance fell upon me in the Gorge?”
“Do we limp? Do we bleed? Do we weep from weariness and wounds? Nay, we have not fought El Borak!”
“Then be wise and do not make the mistake they made. Will you take me to him who awaits me, or will you cast dung in his beard by scorning his orders?”
“Allah forbid!” ejaculated the tall Kurd. “No order had been given us concerning thee. Nay, El Borak, thy heart is full of guile as a serpent’s. But if this be a lie our master shall see thy death, and if it be not a lie, then we can have no blame. Give up thy rifle and scimitar, and we will conduct thee to him.”
Gordon surrendered the weapons, secure in the knowledge of the big pistol reposing in its shoulder scabbard under his left arm.
The leader then picked up the rifle dropped by the young Kurd, who was still bent double and groaning heartily: straightened him with a resounding kick in the rump, sh
oved the rifle in his hands and bade him watch the Stair as if his life depended on it; then turned, barking orders to the others.
As they closed around the seemingly unarmed American, Gordon knew their hands itched to thrust a knife in his back. But he had sown the seeds of fear and uncertainty in their primitive minds, and he knew they dared not strike.
They moved out of the clustering boulders and started along the wide road that led to the city. That road had once been paved, and in some places the paving was still in fair condition.
“The Yezidess passed into the city just before dawn?” he asked casually.
“Aye,” was the terse reply.
“They couldn’t march fast,” mused Gordon. “They had wounded men to carry. And then the Sikh, their prisoner, would be stubborn. They’d have to beat and prod and drag him.”
One of the men turned his head and began: “Why, the Sikh —”
The tall leader barked him to silence, and turned on Gordon a baleful gaze.
“Do not answer his questions. Ask him none. If he mocks us, retort not. A serpent is less crafty. If we talk to him he will have us bewitched before we reach Shalizahr.”
So that was the name of that fantastic city; Gordon seemed to remember the name in some medieval historical connection.
“Why do you mistrust me?” he demanded. “Have I not come to you with open hands?”
“Aye!” The Kurd laughed mirthlessly. “Once I saw you come to the Turkish masters of Bitlis with open hands; but when you closed those hands the streets ran red. Nay, El Borak, I know you of old, from the days when you led your outlaws through the hills of Kurdistan. I can not match my wits against yours, but I can keep my tongue between my teeth. You shall not snare me and blind me with cunning words. I will not speak, and if any of my men answer you, I will break his head with my rifle butt.”
“I thought I recognized you,” said Gordon. “You are Yusuf ibn Suleiman. You were a good fighter.”
The Kurd’s scarred face lighted at the praise, and he started to speak — then recollected himself, scowled ferociously, swore at one of his men who had not offended in any way, squared his shoulders uncompromisingly, and strode stiffly ahead of the party.
Gordon did not stride; rather he strolled, with the air of a man walking amidst an escort of honor, rather than a guard, and his bearing had its effect on the warriors. By the time they reached the city they were shouldering their rifles instead of carrying them at the ready, and allowing a respectful interval between themselves and him.
As they approached Shalizahr the secret of the groves and gardens became apparent. Soil, doubtless brought laboriously from distant valleys, had been used to fill some of the many depressions which pitted the surface of the plateau, and an elaborate system of deep, narrow irrigation canals threaded the gardens, obviously originating in some natural water supply near the center of the city. The plateau, sheltered by the ring of crumbling peaks, presented a more seasonal climate than was common in those mountains.
The road ran between large orchards and entered the city proper — lines of flat-roofed stone houses fronting each other across the wide, paved street, each with an expanse of garden behind it. There was no wall about the city. The plateau itself was a fortress. Half a mile of ravine-gashed plain separated the city from the mountain which frowned above and behind it. The plateau was like a great shelf jutting out from the massive slope.
Men at work in the gardens and loitering along the street halted and stared at the Kurds and their captive. Gordon saw Druses, many Persians, Arabs, a few Indians. But no Afghans. Evidently the heterogenous population had no affiliations with the native inhabitants of the land.
The people did not carry their curiosity beyond questioning stares. The street widened into a suk closed on the south side by a broad wall which enclosed the palacial building with its gorgeous dome.
There was no guard at the massive bronze-barred gates, only a gay-clad negro who salaamed deeply as he swung open the portals. Gordon and his escort came into a small courtyard paved with colored tile, in the midst of which a fountain bubbled and pigeons fluttered about it. The Kurds marched straight on across the court and were halted on the broad pillared portico by a guard of thirty Arabs whose plumed helmets of silvered steel, gilded corselets and gold-chased scimitars contrasted curiously with the modern rifles in their hands.
The hawk-faced captain of the guard conversed briefly with Yusuf ibn Suleiman, and Gordon divined that no love was lost between them. The captain, whose name was Muhammad ibn Ahmed, presently made a gesture with his slim brown hand, and Gordon was surrounded by a dozen glittering Arabs, and marched among them up the broad marble steps and through the wide arch whose bronze doors stood wide. The Kurds followed, without their rifles, and not looking at all happy.
They passed through wide, dim-lit halls, from the vaulted and fretted ceilings of which hung smoking bronze censers, while on either hand velvet-curtained arches hinted at inner mysteries. Tapestries rustled, soft footfalls whispered, and once Gordon saw a slim white hand grasping a hanging as if the owner peered from behind it.
Even the swagger of the Arabs — all except their captain — was modified. The Kurds were openly uneasy. Mystery and intangible menace lurked in those dim, gorgeous halls. Gordon felt that he might have been traversing a palace of Nineveh or ancient Persia, but for the modern weapons of his escort.
Presently they emerged into a broader hallway and approached a double-valved bronze door, flanked by even more gorgeously-clad guardsmen, Persians, these, scented and painted like the warriors of Cambyses. These bizarre figures stood impassively as statues while the Arabs strode by with their captive, or guest, and entered a semi-circular room where dragon-worked tapestries covered the walls, hiding all possible doors or windows except the one by which they had entered. Golden lamps hung from the arched ceiling which was worked in fretted gold and ebony. Opposite the great doorway there stood a marble dais. On the dais stood a great canopied chair, scrolled and carved like a throne, and on the velvet cushions which littered the seat lolled a slender figure in a pearl-sewn khalat. On the rose-colored turban glistened a great gold brooch, made in the shape of a human hand gripping a three-bladed dagger. The face beneath the turban was oval, the color of old ivory, with a small pointed black beard. The dark eyes were contemplative. The man was a Persian.
On either side of the throne stood a giant Sudanese, like images of heathen gods carved out of black basalt, naked but for sandals and silken loin-cloths, with broad-tipped tulwars in their hands.
“Who is this?” languidly inquired the man on the throne, in Arabic.
“El Borak, ya sidna!” answered Muhammad ibn Ahmed, with a swagger in his consciousness that the announcement of that name would create something of a sensation anywhere East of Stamboul.
The dark eyes quickened with interest, sharpened with suspicion, and Yusuf ibn Suleiman, watching his master’s face with painful intensity, drew in a quick breath and clenched his hands so the bails bit into the palms.
“How comes he in Shalizahr uannounced?”
“The Kurdish dogs who watch the Stair say he came to them, swearing that he had been sent for by the Shaykh ez Zurim.”
Gordon stiffened as he heard that title. It was incredible, fantastic; yet it was true. His black eyes fixed with fierce intensity on the oval face.
He did not speak. There was a time for silence as well as for bold speech. His next move depended entirely on the Shaykh’s next words. They might brand him as an imposter and doom him. But he depended on two things: the belief that no Eastern ruler would order El Borak slain without first trying to learn the reason behind his presence; and the fact that few Eastern rulers either enjoy the full confidence of their followers, or themselves wholly trust those followers.
After a pause the man on the throne spoke at, but not to, the Kurd: “This is the law of Shalizahr: no man may ascend the Stair unless he makes the Sign so the Watchers of the Stair can see. If he does
not know the Sign, the Warder of the Gate must be summoned to converse with the stranger before he may mount the Stair. El Borak was not announced. The Warder of the Gate was not summoned. Did El Borak make the Sign, below the Stair?”
Yusuf ibn Suleiman sweated as he wavered between a dangerous truth and a lie that might be even more dangerous. He shot a venomous glance at Gordon and spoke in a voice harsh with apprehension: “The guard in the cleft did not give warning. El Borak appeared upon the cliff before we saw him, though we were vigilant as eagles. He is a magician who makes himself invisible at will. We knew he spoke truth when he said you had sent for him, otherwise he could not have known the Secret Way —”
Perspiration beaded the Kurd’s narrow forehead. The man on the throne did not seem to hear his voice and Muhammad ibn Ahmed, quick to sense that the Kurd had fallen in disfavor, struck Yusuf savagely in the mouth with his open hand.
“Dog, be silent until the Shaykh deigns to command thy speech!”
Yusuf reeled, blood starting down his beard, and looked black murder at the Arab, but he said nothing.
The Persian moved his hand languidly, yet with impatience.
“Take the Kurds away. Keep them under guard until further orders. Even if a man is expected, the Watchers should not be surprized. El Borak did not know the Sign, yet he climbed the Stair unhindered. If they had been vigilant, not even El Borak could have done this. He is no magician. You have my leave to go. I will talk to El Borak alone.”
Muhammad ibn Ahmed salaamed and led his glittering swordsmen away between the silent files of warriors lined on each side of the door, herding the shivering Kurds before them. These turned as they passed through the door and fixed their burning eyes on Gordon in a silent glare of hate.
Muhammad ibn Ahmed pulled the bronze doors shut behind them. The Persian spoke in English to Gordon.
“Speak freely. These black men do not understand English.”
Gordon, before replying, kicked a divan up before the dais and settled himself comfortably on it, with his feet propped on a velvet footstool. He had not established his prestige in the Orient by meek bearing or timid behavior. Where another man might have tip-toed, hat in hand and heart in mouth, Gordon strode with heavy boots and heavy hand, and because he was El Borak, he lived where other men died. His attitude was no bluff. He was ready at all times to back up his play with hot lead and cold steel, and men knew it, just as they knew that he was the most dangerous man with any sort of weapon between Cairo and Peking.