“That will make it easier,” laughed Konstantine, then slipped into Russian which the Persian obviously did not understand. “Gordon, you were mad to come here. You should have known you’d meet someone who knew you as you are — not as these fools think you are.”
“You were the joker in the deck,” admitted Gordon. “I didn’t know the natives called you Bagheela. But I knew some European power must be behind this masquerade. Somebody’s dreaming of an Asiatic empire. So they sent you to combine forces with a fanatic, help him build a city, and make a tool of him. They supplied money and European wits. What do they hope to do — supplant each Eastern ruler now friendly to England with a puppet trained to dance on their string?”
“In part,” admitted Konstantine. “This is but one strand in a far-flung web of imperial plan. I won’t bother to remind you that you might have had a part in the coming empire, if you chose. I can not understand your friendship for the British who rule India. You are an American.”
Gordon smiled bleakly.
“I care nothing for England or English interests. But India is better off under British rule that it would be under men who employ such tools as yourself. By the way, who are your employers now? The agents of the Czar — or somebody else?”
“That will make little difference to you shortly!” Konstantine showed his white teeth in a light laugh. Othman and his men were exhibiting uneasiness, irked at being unable to follow the conversation. The Cossack shifted to Arabic. “Your finish will be interesting to watch. Men say you are stoical as the red Indians of your country. I am curious to test that reputation. Bind him, men —”
His gesture as he reached for the automatic at his hip was leisurely. He knew Gordon was dangerous, but he had never seen the black-haired Westerner in action; he could not realize the savage quickness that had won El Borak his name. Before the Cossack could draw his pistol Gordon sprang and struck as a panther strikes. The impact of his fist was like that of a trip-hammer and Konstantine went down, blood spurting from his jaw, the pistol slipping from its holster.
Before Gordon could snatch the weapon Khuruk Khan was upon him. Only the Pathan realized Gordon’s deadly quickness, and even he had not been swift enough to save the Cossack. But he kept Gordon from securing the pistol, for El Borak had to whirl and grapple as the three-foot Khyber knife rose above him. Gordon caught the knife-wrist as it fell, checking the stroke in mid-air, the iron sinews springing out on his own wrist with the effort. His right hand ripped a curved dagger from the Pathan’s girdle and sank it to the hilt under his ribs almost with the same motion. Khuruk Khan groaned and sank down dying, and Gordon wrenched away the long knife as he crumpled.
All this had happened in a stunning explosion of speed. Konstantine was down and Khuruk Khan was dying before the others could get into action, and when they did they were met by a yard of razor-edged steel in the hand of the most terrible knife-fighter North of the Khyber.
Gordon did not put his back to the wall; he sprang into the thick of his foes, wielding his dripping knife murderously. They swirled about him; he was the center of a whirlwind of blades that flickered and lunged and swiped, yet somehow missed their mark again and again as he shifted his position so swiftly that he baffled both eye and hand. Their numbers hindered them; they cut thin air or gashed one another, confused by his speed and demoralized by his wolfish ferocity.
At such close quarters the long knife was more deadly than saber or tulwar, and Gordon was master of its every use, whether the terrible downward swing that splits a skull, or the savage upward rip that spills out a man’s entrails. It was butcher’s work, but El Borak never made a false motion, was never for an instant in doubt or confused. Like a typhoon he waded through that milling jam of straining bodies and flailing blades, and he left a red wake behind him.
The sense of time is lost in the madness of battle. However long it seemed to the combatants, it was only a matter of moments until the melee burst asunder as the survivors gave back, stunned by the havoc wrought among them. And as the press gave way Gordon cleared a path with a devastating swing of his knife and bounded toward the nearest door — the one on the left of that opening into the hallway.
“Stop him!” screamed the Shaykh, from his place of safety across the room, flanked by his stolid Sudanese. In his fury he ran across the chamber, shrieking maledictions at his groping, floundering, bemused warriors.
They seemed paralyzed by the rapid movements of the American. Gordon reached the door and jerked at it, and his heart fell into his boots. It was bolted on the other side. Clusters of armed men stood between him and the other doors, and now they converged toward him as Othman yelled with gratification and lashed them on. Gordon wheeled, his back to the wall at last, facing death in the onrushing hedge of bristling steel backed by wild faces, but aware of no emotion except a ferocious intent to take a bloody toll among his slayers.
The door opened behind him and he whipped around in a flash and struck at the arm that extended a big blue pistol — checked the blow just in time because he recognized the gun and the hand that held it — and then the blue muzzle spat flame and smoke and thunder and a hail of lead crashed into the oncoming horde.
At that range it was slaughter. The heavy slugs ripped through tense bodies to deal death to the men behind them. Through a swirling fog of smoke Gordon saw men staggering and falling, heard one high-pitched shriek ring above the clamor, and saw a rose-colored turban tossed convulsively as it sank — a roar of dismay drowned the death-cries as Gordon sprang through the open door and slammed it.
“You’ve killed Othman!” he roared.
Lal Singh laughed in the fierce exurberance of the moment, and shot home the bolt. Azizun was clinging to Gordon’s arm, half-mad with terror, and the Kurds were clustered about him — Yusuf ibn Suleiman in the plumed helmet, scimitar in hand, and the other five, armed with swords and daggers.
“The girl came to us where we waited in the tunnel, and cried out that they meant to slay you, sahib!” shouted Lal Singh, white teeth flashing in his black beard. “We came swiftly, snatching blades from weapon-racks as we ran! Now we await your orders!”
In the other chamber howls of fear and dismay that greeted the fall of Othman were turning into screams of blood-thirsty frenzy. Not lightly may a man slay a Shaykh ez Zurim, head of a cult that was old when England was a savage wilderness. The bolted door began to tremble under the impacts of battering hilts and frantic bodies. Ivan Konstantine’s voice was lifted like the slash of a saber above the clamor.
“Out into the corridor, you dogs! Surround that chamber!”
“Out of here, quick!” snapped Gordon, and led his followers at a run across the chamber to the opposite door. He did not know where it led, but there no time to pick and choose. They had to escape the trap before it closed. They burst into a corridor that led off from the larger hall at right angles — and collided with a pack of Arab swordsmen hurrying in the direction of the noise. One was Muhammad ibn Ahmed.
“Ya kalb!” yelped Yusuf ibn Suleiman and glutted his resentment in a swipe that shattered the captain’s helmet and stretched him dead on the floor. An instant of raking steel and snarling, straining effort — an Arab blade licking like a jet of blue lightning through a Kurdish heart — blades biting and men falling — and then Gordon and his people were fleeing down the corridor, leaving a huddled welter of writhing or motionless figures behind them. Only five Kurds now, and one of them was bleeding from a gashed shoulder.
Into the corridor behind them burst a throng of wild figures that came pelting after them, a frantic vision of blazing eyes, gaping mouths and waving blades. Guns banged and bullets spatted venomously on the wall. Ahead of the fugitives a stair led upward. Beyond the stair more men were rushing to head them off, as swordsmen from all over the palace came in answer to the unwonted din.
“Up the stair!” Gordon had his arm about Azizun’s waist, sweeping her along with her toes scarcely touching the floor, almost crushing h
er with the unconscious strength of his grasp. They swarmed up the stair as the mob came down the passage in full cry. They had almost reached the head when the crack of a Luger split the din and one of the Kurds groaned, stumbled and fell backward headlong down the steps like a bundle of old clothes. The limp body crashed against the legs of the men just leaping on to the lower steps, and they went down in a blaspheming heap.
Ivan Konstantine was running down the corridor, firing as he came. Lal Singh whirled on the top step and snapped the empty pistol at him. Ivan instinctively dodged, leaping behind another man. Before he could fire again his targets had gained the upper landing and were out of sight and range for the moment.
They emerged into a broad hallway, and veiled women shrieked and scattered. But from the doorways came more menacing figures — tall blacks with broad scimitars. From all sides except one they converged on the invaders. These fled the only way open to them — down the hall, toward a bronze door at the end. Gordon had no idea what it concealed, but that did not matter; there was no other place to go. The door stood partly open.
Another realized their plight and their intention. A figure ran out of a side-door just ahead of them and darted toward the bronze portal, with a huge key in his hand.
“The Master of the Girls!” yelled Yusuf furiously. “He will lock the door in our faces, for us to be butchered —”
Behind them a dozen Sudani swordsmen were coming in long bounds, and the first of the horde from below were swarming into the hall from the stair. The Master of the Girls had accurately grasped the situation, and acted boldly. If he could get into the chamber ahead of them, and lock them out — but he did not reckon with the long legs of Lal Singh which hurled the Sikh along at a speed not even the burdened Gordon could approximate. The Persian reached the door — then wheeled snarling and lifting a knife. But before he could strike, the heavy pistol, swinging like a battle-axe in Lal Singh’s hand, crushed his skull and hurled him dead to the floor, and over his twitching body the panting, sweat-soaked fugitives stumbled across the threshold.
VI
A BROKEN TRAP
Not until the bronze door had been locked and bolted did Gordon look about, shaking the sweat from his eyes. And then he realized they were in a trap. They were in an enclosed balcony which hung above the pillared portico. Through a wide casement he could see the courtyard with its fountain and fluttering pigeons, the wall with its bronze-barred gate open, and beyond that the square and the broad, shaded street of Shalizahr. Men were running down this street, weapons in their hands. Men were swarming through the open gate. The courtyard was a milling mass of furious humanity. The babel of voices was dominated by a many-throated shout that rose again and again, howling that the Shaykh was slain! the Shaykh was slain!
Yusuf ibn Suleiman came to the window and stood beside Gordon. He spat, wiping blood from his beard. He had thrown away the plumed helmet.
“What man can avert his Fate?” he inquired without emotion. “We be seven men and a chit of a girl. Seven swords against five hundred.”
“Is there any way out of here?” asked Gordon.
The Kurd pointed toward the door, now re-echoing with the assault of steel-shod rifle butts. “Through that door and the swords outside.” He nodded toward the window. “Or down those columns and through that pack of wolves in the courtyard. Nay, El Borak, we die here.”
Gordon nodded in silent agreement. The sun was setting. It would be at least an hour before Yar Ali Khan could possibly reach Khor. If he and the Ghilzai started back at once they could not reach Shalizahr before dawn. And Gordon knew that as far as he and his companions were concerned the game would be played out long before midnight.
“Look!” Yusuf laughed and pointed. “We Kurds are not the only careless fools! Here come the men who at sunset relieve the guard watching the Stair!”
Far down the street, where it emerged into the plain, a group of men, small in the distance, had turned about and were hastening back toward the city. The setting sun struck glints from their rifles. Some distance behind them hastened another group.
“The men they were to have relieved!” Yusuf laughed sardonically. “They wish to be in at the slaughter! They fear they are missing sport! Fools, to leave the Stair unguarded! Yet what foe need they fear, with El Borak hemmed in the palace like a trapped wolf?”
He sprang back as a volley rattled in the courtyard below. The bullets ripped through the sandal-wood lattice work about the window. The mob had discovered the hiding place of their prey.
“They will be climbing up on ladders next!”
“Doubtless. They’ll have to climb to the window, or break down the door to get to us,” answered Gordon. “That door looks pretty solid.”
“They will break it with a ram,” said Yusuf ibn Suleiman.
Gordon shrugged his shoulders impatiently. There was no fatalism in his nature. He meant to fight to the last, bitter end. But he knew that the Kurds would fight, too, while they could stand or see, simply because they trusted him and were proud of his leadership.
An insistent knock banged the door, and Konstantine called: “Gordon, you’re trapped! You’re surrounded by five hundred fighting men, crazy mad because you killed their Shaykh! I’m the supreme power in Shalizahr right now. I know you’ve got no ammunition. I’ve sent for a timber to batter down this door, and then we’ll simply swamp you with numbers. Why don’t you come out and surrender? I’ll promise you a quick death instead of slow torture.”
“And I promise you a knife in your guts,” snarled Gordon. “Come and get us if you can!”
Konstantine swore, then laughed. They heard muttering voices, the quick pad of feet outside the door, the jangle of weapons. Suddenly there came a gust of firing, a spattering of bullets against the door, and then Ivan’s angry voice cursing his followers for wasting ammunition.
Down in the courtyard the crowd milled and raved, dark arms upflung brandishing clenched fists or weapons, dark faces upturned to howl imprecations. They filled the small courtyard, and men massed thickly in the square outside the gate. These fired sporadically at the balcony and some of their bullets smashed into windows above it, bringing feminine screams. A voice yelling angrily from the portico below put a stop to the shooting.
Gordon glanced at his men. Their eyes burned wolfishly and they grinned without mirth, thumbing their red-stained blades. They knew they were going to die, but they were not afraid. He did not insult them by reminding them that they might have escaped while he was fighting with the Shaykh’s men in the chamber where he confronted Konstantine. He did ask: “How did you get there so quick? The fight had been going on only a few moments when you were at the door.”
Azizun, crouched shivering on a divan, answered him: “I saw Musa leading you to the chamber where Bagheela waited. I had never seen him, but I heard a slave speak his Feringhi name — Ivan Konstantine. I knew him, then, and knew that he knew you and would expose you as an imposter. So I ran to the tunnel and told the men.”
Lal Singh, looking down into the courtyard, spoke casually: “They rear ladders against the pillars.”
Simultaneously the door began to jerk and quiver as a heavy timber, swung between brawny arms, smashed against it.
“Drag the heaviest divan across the door to brace it,” directed Gordon. “It’s a strong door. It won’t be easy to break it with a wooden ram.”
He bound up the wounded Kurd’s shoulder with strips torn from his shirt, and told him to watch the door; with the others Gordon took his stand at the window.
The sun had set and twilight was darkening into blue dusk. Men were scrambling up the ladders with knives in their teeth. The ladders were too short. Men climbed on the shoulders of their comrades, balancing precariously, while they thrust up at the men in the window and tried to get a hold on the ledge. The Sikh prodded them with his long saber and they lost their footing and tumbled, three or four together, down upon the heads of the mob. The others fell back sullenly, and the
defenders saw them pull the ladders down and begin the job of fastening them together, end to end.
No more shots were fired. With the palace full of their people, the men in the courtyard dared not risk bullets. Gordon was content that his last great fight should be fought out with naked steel.
The men in the hall finally decided that the timber they were using for a ram was too light to have any effect on the thick bronze portal and the massive lock and hinges. Gordon heard Konstantine ordering someone to go search for a heavier ram. There came a lull in the fighting that was like a moment of quiet in the middle of a hurricane. Down in the courtyard the roar of the mob had sunk to a sullen muttering, punctuated by the banging of hammers. The warriors in the balcony took advantage of the interlude to catch their breath and bind up wounds.
Azizun crept to Gordon’s side, her eyes dilated with fear. Little of comfort he could offer her from his great store of pity for her. He had cast the dice and lost, for himself, for them all. There was nothing he could do for her now, except to interpose his body between her’s and their enemies in the last charge, and save a merciful sword-stroke for her in the end. Sensing the desperation of their position she lay like a child face down on the divan beside him, clasping his hands and pressing her cheeks against them. Gordon sat quietly, awaiting the last grapple with the patience of the wild in which he had spent so much of his life, and though his expression was composed, his eyes burned like the reflection of flame on black water.
Dusk deepened quickly into darkness. Below in the courtyard torches tossed, redly limning fierce faces, streaming crimson on blades that would be stained with a redder smear before midnight. The hammers had ceased. The voice of the mob was a sustained, wordless roar, deep with menace and edged with hate. Azizun thrust her fingers in her ears to shut it out.
Feet pounded down the hall, fierce voices shouted, and the door staggered under an impact that made the walls vibrate, and brought every man in the balcony to his feet, tense with the realization that the death-grip was imminent. The door would not stand long under such blows.