El Borak: The Complete Tales

by Robert E. Howard

  “Till the last card falls!” she retorted. His face was a blur in the starlight, but she sensed rather than saw his grim smile of approval.

  The camel’s hoofs made no sound as they dropped down the slope and circled far wide of the Turkish camp. Like ghosts on a ghost-camel they moved across the plain under the stars. A faint breeze stirred the girl’s hair. Not until the fires were dim behind them and they were again climbing a hill-road did she speak.

  “I know you. You’re the American they call El Borak, the Swift. You came down from Afghanistan when the war began. You were with King Hussein even before Lawrence came over from Egypt. Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what’s my status?” she asked. “Have you rescued me or captured me? Am I a prisoner?”

  “Let us say companion, for the time being,” he suggested. “We’re up against a common enemy. No reason why we shouldn’t make common cause, is there?”

  “None!” she agreed, and leaning her blond head against his hard shoulder, she went soundly to sleep.

  A gaunt moon rose, pushing back the horizons, flooding craggy slopes and dusty plains with leprous silver. The vastness of the desert seemed to mock the tiny figures on their tiring camel, as they rode blindly on toward what Fate they could not guess.

  CHAPTER 4

  Olga awoke As dawn was breaking. She was cold and stiff, in spite of the cloak Gordon had wrapped about her, and she was hungry. They were riding through a dry gorge with rock-strewn slopes rising on either hand, and the camel’s gait had become a lurching walk. Gordon halted it, slid off without making it kneel, and took its rope.

  “It’s about done, but the Walls aren’t far ahead. Plenty of water there--food, too, if the Juheina are still there. There are dates in that pouch.”

  If he felt the strain of fatigue he did not show it as he strode along at the camel’s head. Olga rubbed her chill hands and wished for sunrise.

  “The Well of Harith,” Gordon indicated a walled enclosure ahead of them. “The Turks built that wall, years ago, when the Walls of Sulaiman were an army post. Later they abandoned both positions.”

  The wall, built of rocks and dried mud, was in good shape, and inside the enclosure there was a partly ruined hut. The well was shallow, with a mere trickle of water at the bottom.

  “I’d better get off and walk too,” Olga suggested.

  “These flints would cut your boots and feet to pieces. It’s not far now. Then the camel can rest all it needs.”

  “And if the Juheina aren’t there--” She left the sentence unfinished.

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  “Maybe Osman won’t come up before the camel’s rested.”

  “I believe he’ll make a forced march,” she said, not fearfully, but calmly stating an opinion. “His beasts are good. If he drives them hard, he can get here before midnight. Our camel won’t be rested enough to carry us, by that time. And we couldn’t get away on foot, in this desert.”

  He laughed, and respecting her courage, did not try to make light of their position.

  “Well,” he said quietly, “let’s hope the Juheina are still there!”

  If they were not, she and Gordon were caught in a trap of hostile, waterless desert, fanged with the long guns of predatory tribesmen.

  Three miles further east the valley narrowed and the floor pitched upward, dotted by dry shrubs and boulders. Gordon pointed suddenly to a faint ribbon of smoke feathering up into the sky.

  “Look! The Juheina are there!”

  Olga gave a deep sigh of relief. Only then did she realize how desperately she had been hoping for some such sign. She felt like shaking a triumphant fist at the rocky waste about her, as if at a sentient enemy, sullen and cheated of its prey.

  Another mile and they topped a ridge and saw a large enclosure surrounding a cluster of wells. There were Arabs squatting about their tiny cooking fires. As the travelers came suddenly into view within a few hundred yards of them, the Bedouins sprang up, shouting. Gordon drew his breath suddenly between clenched teeth.

  “They’re not Juheina! They’re Rualla! Allies of the Turks!”

  Too late to retreat. A hundred and fifty wild men were on their feet, glaring, rifles cocked.

  Gordon did the next best thing and went leisurely toward them. To look at him one would have thought that he had expected to meet these men here, and anticipated nothing but a friendly greeting. Olga tried to imitate his tranquility, but she knew their lives hung on the crook of a trigger finger. These men were supposed to be her allies, but her recent experience made her distrust Orientals. The sight of these hundreds of wolfish faces filled her with sick dread.

  They were hesitating, rifles lifted, nervous and uncertain as surprised wolves, then:

  “Allah!” howled a tall, scarred warrior. “It is El Borak!”

  Olga caught her breath as she saw the man’s finger quiver on his rifle-trigger. Only a racial urge to gloat over his victim kept him from shooting the American then and there.

  “El Borak!” The shout was a wave that swept the throng.

  Ignoring the clamor, the menacing rifles, Gordon made the camel kneel and lifted Olga off. She tried, with fair success, to conceal her fear of the wild figures that crowded about them, but her flesh crawled at the bloodlust burning redly in each wolfish eye.

  Gordon’s rifle was in its boot on the saddle, and his pistol was out of sight, under his shirt. He was careful not to reach for the rifle--a move which would have brought a hail of bullets--but having helped the girl down, he turned and faced the crowd casually, his hands empty. Running his glance over the fierce faces, he singled out a tall stately man in the rich garb of a shaykh, who was standing somewhat apart.

  “You keep poor watch, Mitkhal ion Ali,” said Gordon. “If I had been a raider your men would be lying in their blood by this time.”

  Before the shaykh could answer, the man who had first recognized Gordon thrust himself violently forward, his face convulsed with hate.

  “You expected to find friends here, El Borak!” he exulted. “But you come too late! Three hundred Juheina dogs rode north an hour before dawn! We saw them go, and came up after they had gone. Had they known of your coming, perhaps they would have stayed to welcome you!”

  “It’s not to you I speak, Zangi Khan, you Kurdish dog,” retorted Gordon contemptuously, “but to the Rualla--honorable men and fair foes!”

  Zangi Khan snarled like a wolf and threw up his rifle, but a lean Bedouin caught his arm.

  “Wait!” he growled. “Let El Borak speak. His words are not wind.”

  A rumble of approval came from the Arabs. Gordon had touched their fierce pride and vanity. That would not save his life, but they were willing to listen to him before they killed him.

  “If you listen he will trick you with cunning words!” shouted the angered Zangi Khan furiously. “Slay him now, before he can do us harm!”

  “Is Zangi Khan shaykh of the Rualla that he gives commands while Mitkhal stands silent?” asked Gordon with biting irony.

  Mitkhal reacted to his taunt exactly as Gordon knew he would.

  “Let El Borak speak!” he ordered. “I command here, Zangi Khan! Do not forget that.”

  “I do not forget, ya sidi,” the Kurd assured him, but his eyes burned red at the rebuke. “I but spoke in zeal for your safety.”

  Mitkhal gave him a slow, searching glance which told Gordon that there was no love lost between the two men. Zangi Khan’s reputation as a fighting man meant much to the younger warriors. Mitkhal was more fox than wolf, and he evidently feared the Kurd’s influence over his men. As an agent of the Turkish government Zangi’s authority was theoretically equal to Mitkhal’s.

  Actually this amounted to little, but Mitkhal’s tribesmen took orders from their shaykh only. But it put Zangi in a position to use his personal talents to gain an ascendency--an ascendency Mitkhal feared would relegate him to a minor position.

  “Speak, El Borak,” or
dered Mitkhal. “But speak swiftly. It may be,” he added, “Allah’s will that the moments of your life are few.”

  “Death marches from the west,” said Gordon abruptly. “Last night a hundred Turkish deserters butchered the people of El Awad.”

  “Wallah!” swore a tribesman. “El Awad was friendly to the Turks!”

  “A lie!” cried Zangi Khan. “Or if true, the dogs of deserters slew the people to curry favor with Feisal.”

  “When did men come to Feisal with the blood of children on their hands?” retorted Gordon. “They have foresworn Islam and worship the White Wolf. They carried off the young women and the old women, the men and the children they slew like dogs.”

  A murmur of anger rose from the Arabs. The Bedouins had a rigid code of warfare, and they did not kill women or children. It was the unwritten law of the desert, old when Abraham came up out of Chaldea.

  But Zangi Khan cried out in angry derision, blind to the resentful looks cast at him. He did not understand that particular phase of the Bedouins’ code, for his people had no such inhibition. Kurds in war killed women as well as men.

  “What are the women of El Awad to us?” he sneered.

  “Your heart I know already,” answered Gordon with icy contempt. “It is to the Rualla that I speak.”

  “A trick!” howled the Kurd. “A lie to trick us!”

  “It is no lie!” Olga stepped forward boldly. “Zangi Khan, you know that I am an agent of the German government. Osman Pasha, leader of these renegades burned El Awad last night, as El Borak has said. Osman murdered Ahmed ibn Shalaan, my guide, among others. He is as much our enemy as he is an enemy of the British.”

  She looked to Mitkhal for help, but the shaykh stood apart, like an actor watching a play in which he had not yet received his cue.

  “What if it is the truth?” Zangi Khan snarled, muddled by his hate and fear of El Borak’s cunning. “What is El Awad to us?”

  Gordon caught him up instantly.

  “This Kurd asks what is the destruction of a friendly village! Doubtless, naught to him! But what does it mean to you, who have left your herds and families unguarded? If you let this pack of mad dogs range the land, how can you be sure of the safety of your wives and children?”

  “What would you have, El Borak?” demanded a grey-bearded raider.

  “Trap these Turks and destroy them. I’ll show you how.”

  It was then that Zangi Khan lost his head completely.

  “Heed him not!” he screamed. “Within the hour we must ride northward! The Turks will give us ten thousand British pounds for his head!”

  Avarice burned briefly in the men’s eyes, to be dimmed by the reflection that the reward, offered for El Borak’s head, would be claimed by the shaykh and Zangi. They made no move and Mitkhal stood aside with an air of watching a contest that did not concern himself.

  “Take his head!” screamed Zangi, sensing hostility at last, and thrown into a panic by it.

  His demoralization was completed by Gordon’s taunting laugh.

  “You seem to be the only one who wants my head, Zangi! Perhaps you can take it!”

  Zangi howled incoherently, his eyes glaring red, then threw up his rifle, hip-high. Just as the muzzle came up, Gordon’s automatic crashed thunderously. He had drawn so swiftly not a man there had followed his motion. Zangi Khan reeled back under the impact of hot lead, toppled sideways and lay still.

  In an instant a hundred cocked rifles covered Gordon.

  Confused by varying emotions, the men hesitated for the fleeting instant it took Mitkhal to shout:

  “Hold! Do not shoot!”

  He strode forward with the air of a man ready to take the center of the stage at last, but he could not disguise the gleam of satisfaction in his shrewd eyes.

  “No man here is kin to Zangi Khan,” he said offhandedly. “There is no cause for blood feud. He had eaten the salt, but he attacked our prisoner whom he thought unarmed.”

  He held out his hand for the pistol, but Gordon did not surrender it.

  “I’m not your prisoner,” said he. “I could kill you before your men could lift a finger. But I didn’t come here to fight you. I came asking aid to avenge the children and women of my enemies. I risk my life for your families. Are you dogs, to do less?”

  The question hung in the air unanswered, but he had struck the right chord in their barbaric bosoms, that were always ready to respond to some wild deed of reckless chivalry. Their eyes glowed and they looked at their shaykh expectantly.

  Mitkhal was a shrewd politician. The butchery at El Awad meant much less to him than it meant to his younger warriors. He had associated with so-called civilized men long enough to lose much of his primitive integrity. But he always followed the side of public opinion, and was shrewd enough to lead a movement he could not check. Yet, he was not to be stampeded into a hazardous adventure.

  “These Turks may be too strong for us,” he objected.

  “I’ll show you how to destroy them with little risk,” answered Gordon. “But there must be covenants between us, Mitkhal.”

  “These Turks must be destroyed,” said Mitkhal, and he spoke sincerely there, at least. “But there are too many blood feuds between us, El Borak, for us to let you get out of our hands.”

  Gordon laughed.

  “You can’t whip the Turks without my help and you know it. Ask your young men what they desire!”

  “Let El Borak lead us!” shouted a young warrior instantly. A murmur of approval paid tribute to Gordon’s widespread reputation as a strategist.

  “Very well!” Mitkhal took the tide. “Let there be truce between us--with conditions! Lead us against the Turks. If you win, you and the woman shall go free. If we lose, we take your head!”

  Gordon nodded, and the warriors yelled in glee. It was just the sort of a bargain that appealed to their minds, and Gordon knew it was the best he could make.

  “Bring bread and salt!” ordered Mitkhal, and a giant black slave moved to do his bidding. “Until the battle is lost or won there is truce between us, and no Rualla shall harm you, unless you spill Rualla blood.”

  Then he thought of something else and his brow darkened as he thundered:

  “Where is the man who watched from the ridge?”

  A terrified youth was pushed forward. He was a member of a small tribe tributary to the more important Rualla.

  “Oh, shaykh,” he faltered, “I was hungry and stole away to a fire for meat--”

  “Dog!” Mitkhal struck him in the face. “Death is thy portion for failing in thy duty.”

  “Wait!” Gordon interposed. “Would you question the will of Allah? If the boy had not deserted his post he would have seen us coming up the valley, and your men would have fired on us and killed us. Then you would not have been warned of the Turks, and would have fallen prey to them before discovering they were enemies. Let him go and give thanks to Allah Who sees all!”

  It was the sort of sophistry that appeals to the Arab mind. Even Mitkhal was impressed.

  “Who knows the mind of Allah?” he conceded. “Live, Musa, but next time perform the will of Allah with vigilance and a mind to orders. And now, El Borak, let us discuss battle-plans while food is prepared.”

  CHAPTER 5

  It was not yet noon when Gordon halted the Rualla beside the Well of Harith. Scouts sent westward reported no sign of the Turks, and the Arabs went forward with the plans made before leaving the Walls--plans outlined by Gordon and agreed to by Mitkhal. First the tribesmen began gathering rocks and hurling them into the well.

  “The water’s still beneath,” Gordon remarked to Olga. “But it’ll take hours of hard work to clean out the well so that anybody can get to it. The Turks can’t do it under our rifles. If we win, we’ll clean it out ourselves, so the next travelers won’t suffer.”

  “Why not take refuge in the sangar ourselves?” she asked.

  “Too much of a trap. That’s what we’re using it for. We’d have no chance
with them in open fight, and if we laid an ambush out in the valley, they’d simply fight their way through us. But when a man’s shot at in the open, his first instinct is to make for the nearest cover. So I’m hoping to trick them into going into the sangar. Then we’ll bottle them up and pick them off at our leisure. Without water they can’t hold out long. We shouldn’t lose a dozen men, if any.”

  “It seems strange to see you solicitous about the lives of these Rualla, who are your enemies, after all,” she laughed.