El Borak and Other Desert Adventures

by Robert E. Howard

  Following this lead blindly, Gordon uncoiled his rope, whirled the weighted end about his head and sent it curving upward. The hook bit into the rim of the ledge and held, and Gordon went up it, climbing the thin, smooth strand as swiftly and easily as most men would manipulate a rope-ladder. He had not sailed the Seven Seas without profiting by the experience of climbing ropes, in all sorts of weather.

  As he passed the smear on the stone he confirmed his belief that it was blood. A wounded man being hauled up to the ledge, or climbing as he was climbing, might have left such a smear.

  Yar Ali Khan, below him, fidgeted with his rifle, trying to get a better view of the ledge, and alternately criticizing his companion’s action, and adjuring him to caution. His pessimistic imagination peopled the ledge with assassins lying prone and unseen; but the shelf lay bare when Gordon pulled himself over the edge.

  The first thing he saw was a heavy iron ring set deep in the stone above the ledge, out of sight of anyone below. The metal was worn bright as if by the friction of much usage. More blood was smeared thickly at the place where a man would come up over the rim, if he climbed a rope fastened to the ring, or was hoisted.

  And yet more blood drops spattered the ledge, leading diagonally across it toward the sheer wall, which showed considerable weathering at that point. And Gordon saw something else — the blurred but unmistakable print of bloody fingers on the rock of the wall. He stood motionless for a few moments, heedless of Yar Ali Khan’s importunities, while he studied the cracks in the rock. Presently he laid his hand on the wall over the bloody finger-prints, and shoved. Instantly, smoothly, a section of wall swung inward, and he was staring into a narrow tunnel, dimly lit by the moon somewhere behind it.

  Wary as a stalking panther he stepped into it, and immediately heard a startled yelp from Yar Ali Khan, to whose inadequate view it had seemed that he had simply melted into the solid rock. Gordon emerged head and shoulders to objurgate his astounded follower to silence, and then continued his investigations.

  The tunnel was short, and moonlight poured into it from the other end where it opened into a cleft. The moonlight slanted down from above into this cleft, which ran straight for a hundred feet and then made an abrupt bend, blocking further view. It was like a knife-cut through a block of solid rock.

  The door through which he had entered was an irregular-shaped slab of rock, hung on heavy, well-oiled iron hinges. It fit perfectly into its aperture, and its irregular shape made the cracks appear to be merely seams in the cliffs, produced by time and erosion.

  A rope ladder made of heavy rawhide was coiled on a small rock shelf just inside the tunnel mouth, and with this Gordon returned to the ledge outside. He drew up his rope and coiled it, then made fast the ladder and let it down, and Yar Ali Khan swarmed up it in a frenzy of impatience to be at his friend’s side again.

  He swore softly as he comprehended the mystery of the vanishing trail.

  “But why was not the door bolted on the inside, sahib?”

  “Probably men are coming and going constantly. Men outside might have desperate need of passing through this door, without having to shout for someone to come and let them in. There wasn’t a chance in a thousand of its ever being discovered. I wouldn’t have discovered it if it hadn’t been for the blood-marks; at that I was just playing a hunch, when I pushed on the rock.”

  Yar Ali Khan was for plunging instantly into the cleft, but Gordon had become wary. He had not seen or heard anything that would indicate the presence of a sentry, but he did not believe that a people who showed so much craft in concealing the entrance to their country would leave it unguarded, however slight might be the chances of its discovery.

  He hauled up the raw-hide ladder, coiled it back on the shelf and closed the door, cutting off the circulation of the moonlight and plunging that end of the tunnel into darkness, in which he commanded Yar Ali Khan to await his report. The Afridi cursed under his breath, but Gordon believed that one man could reconnoiter beyond that cryptic bend better than two, and as usual he had his way. Yar Ali Khan squatted in the darkness by the door, hugging his rifle and muttering anathema, while Gordon strode down the tunnel and into the cleft.

  This was simply a narrow split in the great solid mass of the cliffs, and an irregular knife-edge of star-lit sky was visible, hundreds of feet overhead. Enough moonlight found its way into the crevice to make it light enough for Gordon’s catlike eyes.

  He had not reached the bend when a scruffing of feet beyond it warned him. He had scarcely concealed himself behind a broken outcropping of rock that was split away from the side-wall, when the sentry came. He came leisurely, and in the manner of one who performs a routine task perfunctorily, secure in his conviction of the inaccessibility of his retreat. He was a squat Mongol with a square, copperish face, wicked slanted eyes, and a wide gash-like mouth. Altogether, his appearance was not unlike those devils which abound in Hill-country legends as he strode along with the wide roll of a horseman, trailing a high-powered rifle.

  He was passing Gordon’s hiding-place when some obscure instinct brought him about like a flash, teeth bared in a startled snarl, rifle jumping for a shot from the hip. But even as he turned, Gordon was on his feet with the instant uncoiling of steel spring muscles, and as the rifle muzzle leaped to a level, the scimitar lashed down. The Mongol dropped like an ox, his round skull split to the teeth.

  Gordon crouched motionless, glaring along the corridor. As no sound gave indications that anyone else was within hearing, he risked a low whistle which brought Yar Ali Khan headlong into the cleft, teeth bared and eyes blazing in expectancy of a fight.

  He grunted expressively at the sight of the dead man.

  “Yes — another Erlik-worshipper. The devil who sired them only knows how many more are hidden along this defile. We’ll drag him behind these rocks where I hid. It’s usually a good plan to hide the body, when you’ve made a kill. Come on! If there were any more around that bend, they’d have heard the blow I struck.”

  Gordon was correct. Beyond the bend the long, deep defile ran empty to the next kink. Gordon believed that the man he had killed was the only sentry posted in the cleft, and they strode on without hesitation. The moonlight in the narrow gash above them was paling when they emerged into the open at last. Here the defile broke into a chaos of broken rock, and the single gorge became half a dozen, threading between gaunt isolated crags and split-off rocks like the separate mouths of a river that splits into streams at the delta. Crumbling pinnacles and turrets of black stone stood up like gaunt ghosts in the grey light which betrayed the coming of dawn.

  Threading their way between these grim sentinels, they presently looked out upon a level, rock-strewn floor that stretched for three hundred yards to the foot of an abrupt cliff. The trail they had been following, grooved by many feet in the weathered stone, crossed the level and looped up the cliff, tier by tier, on ramps cut in the rock. But what lay on top of the cliffs they could not guess. To right and left the solid wall veered away, flanked by the broken pinnacles.

  “What now, sahib?” In the grey light the Afridi looked like a mountain goblin surprized out of his crag-cave by dawn.

  “I think we must be close to our destination. Listen!”

  Over the cliffs rolled the blare they had heard the night before, but now much nearer — the strident, awesome, sullen roar of the giant trumpet.

  “Have we been seen?” wondered Yar Ali Khan, working the bolt of his rifle.

  “That is on the lap of Allah. But we must see, and we can not climb that road up the cliff without first knowing what lies above it. Here! This will serve our purpose.”

  It was a weathered crag which rose like a tower among its lesser fellows. Any Hill-bred child could have scaled it. Yar Ali Khan and Gordon went up it almost as swiftly as if it had been a stairway, being careful to keep its bulk between them and the opposite cliffs, until they reached the summit, which was higher than the cliffs, and lay behind a spur of rock, staring t
hrough the rosy haze of the rising dawn.

  “Allah!” swore Yar Ali Khan, involuntarily reaching for the rifle slung on his back.

  Seen from their vantage point the opposite cliffs assumed their real nature as one side of a gigantic mesa-like block which reminded Gordon of the formations of his native Southwest. It rose sheer from the surrounding level, four to five hundred feet in height, and its perpendicular sides seemed unscalable except for the point where the trail had been laboriously cut into the stone. East, north and west it was girdled by crumbling crags, separated from the plateau by the level canyon floor which varied in width from three hundred yards to half a mile. On the south the plateau abutted on a gigantic, bare mountain whose gaunt peaks dominated the surrounding pinnacles.

  But the watchers devoted only a glance to the geographical formation, mechanically analyzing and appreciating it. It was an incredible phenomenon of another nature which gripped their whole attention.

  Gordon had not been sure just what he expected to find at the end of the bloody trail. He had anticipated a rendezvous of some kind, certainly: a cluster of horse-hide tents, a cavern, perhaps even a village of mud and stone nestling on a hill-side. But they were looking at a city whose domes and towers glistened in the rosy dawn, like a magic city of sorcerers stolen from some fabled land and set down in this desert spot!

  “The city of the djinn!” ejaculated Yar Ali Khan, jolted back into his original belief concerning the nature of their enemies. “Allah is my protection against the evil of Shaitan the Damned!” He snapped his fingers in a gesture older than Muhammad.

  The plateau was roughly oval in shape, about a mile and a half in length from north to south, somewhat less than a mile in width from east to west. The city stood near the southern extremity, etched against the dark mountain behind it, its flat-topped stone houses and clustering trees dominated by a large edifice whose purple dome gleamed in the sharp dawn, shot with gold.

  “Enchantment and necromancy!” exclaimed Yar Ali Khan, completely upset.

  Gordon did not reply, but the Celtic blood in his veins responded to the somber aspect of the scene. The harsh gauntness of the gloomy black crags was not softened by the contrast of the city; that instead partook of their sullen menace, in spite of its masses of green and sheen of color. The glitter of its purple, gold-traced dome was sinister. The black crags, crumbling with unholy antiquity, were a fit setting for it. It was like a city of demoniac mystery, rising amidst ruin and decay, and gleaming only with sinful life.

  “This must be the stronghold of the Hidden Ones,” muttered Gordon. “I’d expected eventually to find their headquarters concealed in the native quarter of some city like Delhi, or Bombay. But this is a logical point. From here they can strike at all the countries of Western Asia and have a safe hideout to retire to. But who would have expected to find a city like that here, in a country so long supposed to be practically uninhabited?”

  “Not even we can fight a whole city, whether devils or men,” grunted Yar Ali Khan.

  Gordon fell silent while he studied the distant view. Carefully analyzed, the city did not show to be so large as it had appeared to be at first glance. It was compactly planned, 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, as far as the watchers could see. Gordon reached a decision.

  “Ali, hasten back to our camp in the Gorge of Ghosts. Take the horses and ride for Khor. Tell Baber Khan all that has occurred, 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 that I’m dead. Here’s a chance to sever two necks with the same stroke. If Baber Khan helps us wipe 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, let you and Baber Khan use your own judgment. But the important thing just now is to get the Ghilzais here.”

  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 is men who haunt Ghulistan.”

  “But the horses will be gone. The devils will have stolen them.”

  “I doubt it. No one has 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. It will just take longer.”

  Then Yar Ali Khan tore his beard in wrath and voiced his real objection to leaving Gordon.

  “Those sons of dogs in that city will flay you alive!”

  “Nay, I will match guile with guile. I will be a fugitive from the wrath of the Amir, an outlaw seeking sanctuary. The East is full of lies concerning me. They will 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 likewise descended and went toward the cliffs.

  III

  THE PEOPLE OF ISMAIL

  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, and just as obviously its construction had not been recent. 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, making a deepening slot as they approached the crest. 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 as if he had been an apparition. They were Kurds to a man, lean, hard-bodied warriors with hawk-beak noses, their slim waists girdled by cartridge-belts, and with rifles in their hands.

  These rifles were instantly levelled at him. Gordon made no move, nor did he display either perturbation or surprize. He set his rifle-butt on the ground and eyed the startled Kurds tranquilly.

  These cut-throats were undecided 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 tallest of the Kurds, his eyes blazing with fear and suspicion and the instinct to kill. “What do you do 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 tallest Kurd’s voice rose ir
ascibly, 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 and see that no one mounts it without permission. 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, and shot uneasy glances at one another.

  “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,” advised Gordon, laughing at them. “One of you might survive to tell the tale.”

  This was no mere bombast, as most of them knew, and they betrayed their uneasiness in their black scowls. They yearned to slay him, but they dared not use their rifles; and at least the older warriors knew the ghastly price they would pay for attacking him with edged weapons. He would have no compunction about using either the rifle in his hand, or the pistol they knew he carried concealed somewhere.

  “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 his voice in gasping lamentation.

  “Be silent, son of a dog! Would you have us fight El Borak’s guns with naked steel?”

  Having worked off some of their dissatisfaction on their unfortunate comrade, the Kurds grew calmer, and one of the others inquired of Gordon, uncertainly: “You are expected?”