E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK®

by E. Hoffmann Price

  “I don’t know, sidi. I got a glimpse of him on the wall, and it seemed that he wore a tall hat like the Brethren. But before he mounted his horse, he stumbled through the underbrush. I couldn’t understand what he said, except a word or two—”

  “And what was that?” asked Ismeddin.

  “He spoke like the Feringhi engineers when they play that game of an evening. You know, when they poke sticks at little balls on a table, one who misses the ball says ‘Damn’ and the other says ‘Tough luck, Old Man.’”

  The darwish laughed.

  “Captain Rankin, by Allah! Scared out at the last minute, he went over the side. Thought they were firing at him. But what was he doing on the wall? He should have stayed in the monastery if— But maybe he wasn’t ready yet to take the Holy Carpet.”

  “God alone is wise and all-knowing!” interjected Aieed. “And those Feringhi are all madmen.”

  To which Ismeddin agreed, and the horses having somewhat regained their wind, the darwish resumed the gallop.

  They rode steadily for an hour or more. And as they rode, Ismeddin chanted the song about the forty daughters of the Sultan. He patted the carpet slung across the pommel of the saddle, and laughed.

  “The one certain way of keeping Sidi Rankin from stealing the Holy Carpet. Me, prime minister in Kuh-i-Atesh! With a world dripping with loot, and the son of the Old Tiger needing me to keep Sir John in his place!”

  Ismeddin reined his horse to a walk. He whistled a low note in ascending scale. In answer came the same trilling, quavering whistle.

  “Ho, there, Hussayn! Bring out some fresh horses!” he commanded.

  “Ready and waiting!” replied a voice from the darkness. “Are you far enough ahead for a pot of coffee? I’ll send ’Amru back a way to watch the road.”

  Ismeddin dismounted, tossing the reins to Shaykh Hussayn. Then he unslung the burden from the pommel of his saddle, and dropped it to the ground by the smoldering fire. As Aieed fanned the coals to life, Ismeddin unrolled the precious carpet.

  “Ya Allah!” exclaimed the darwish.

  By the light of the glowing coals, Ismeddin recognized the very carpet on which Abdullah the Scribe had sat in the market-place of Kuh-i-Atesh. He examined the rug, peering at it from end to end to assure himself that his eyes were not deceiving him. But there was no mistake; it was the very rug, and no other.

  “That infidel hung the false carpet beneath the true one, so that the theft wouldn’t be noticed for several hours, or a day, perhaps. The brethren are so accustomed to seeing it that as long as something—almost anything that looks like a rug—hung there before the shrine, they suspected nothing.”

  “I take refuge from Satan!” exclaimed Shaykh Hussayn. He looked Ismeddin over from head to foot, and from foot to head. “Allah give me another twenty years to marvel at the first time Ismeddin was outwitted!”

  “Allah grant you forty more!” retorted Ismeddin. “But not to marvel at Captain Rankin. As long as the Amir’s troops think we have the carpet, the infidel can make good his escape.”

  Aieed the groom let out a fresh horse. Ismeddin swallowed his coffee, and leaped to the saddle.

  “Mount up and follow me!” he commanded. “I’m going to find Rankin!”

  * * * *

  Ismeddin’s search for Rankin appeared to be a hopeless task; but the darwish knew the hills, and immediately made his disposition of the Companions. He ordered them to ride out in pairs and fours, cutting across country where none but seasoned mountaineers could pick their way, and patrolling the passes leading in every direction from Kuh-i-Atesh. Ismeddin himself took charge of the southwestern quarter of the field, Rankin’s most logical route, with a detachment of the Companions covering the ground as only ex-brigands could.

  Rankin could get through; but the odds were against him.

  For three days they patrolled. At times Ismeddin heard the distant crackle of rifle and pistol fire, and the drumming of hoofs; and then, later, one of the Companions would report an engagement with a patrol of the Amir’s troops on their way back to Kuh-i-Atesh. But still there was no sign of Rankin.

  “Shaytan rip me open!” exclaimed the darwish, as he received negative reports from every quarter. “He couldn’t have gotten beyond the limits of the ground we’ve covered. He must be between our patrols and the walls of Kuh-i-Atesh. So we’ll close in.”

  The morning of the following day proved the worth of Ismeddin’s decision.

  The old darwish was riding along the narrow trail leading toward the ruins of a village sacked and looted several years previously by a band of raiding Kurds. In the distance, approaching the ruins, Ismeddin saw a man on foot, carrying a bundle on his back.

  The wanderer was reeling, and his course zigzagged drunkenly. He stumbled, pitched forward on his face, lay there sprawled in the sun-baked dust. Then he laboriously rose to his knees, and with the aid of his staff, he lifted himself to his feet and resumed his staggering march.

  There was something about the shape of the wanderer’s burden that spurred Ismeddin to action. He urged his horse off the trail, and down the steep slope toward the wanderer. As he descended, Ismeddin signaled his followers to halt and take cover.

  “Ho, there, Sidi Rankin!” he hailed.

  For Rankin indeed it was, or what remained of him. By some unbelievable volition, he marched on when by all reason he should long since have dropped by the trail, with the vultures to administer the last rites, and a Sixteenth Century Persian carpet to serve as a shroud. His face was gashed and caked with dirt, and his long darwish cloak was slashed and tattered and stained with dried blood.

  “Ho, there, Sidi Rankin!” repeated Ismeddin.

  Rankin halted. With painful deliberation he unslung his bundle, laid it carefully on a rock, and drew the blade whose hilt peeped over his shoulder. Then he advanced at a brisk double-time, scimitar at the port.

  Ismeddin marveled at that slashed, gory wreck of a man that had reeled and tottered just a moment ago, and now advanced with the agility of a tiger.

  The darwish drew his blade, and crouched low in the saddle to meet the charge. The bay mare snorted and pawed and reared at the smell of slaughter that the wind blew from the enemy.

  At the instant of closing, Rankin shifted his attack from Ismeddin’s right, where his blade would have full reach, to the left, where the darwish would have to cut over his horse’s neck. Ismeddin wheeled just in time to evade Rankin’s sweeping cut; and as he wheeled, Ismeddin’s scimitar flamed in a dazzling arc.

  Rankin’s blade rang against the rocks a dozen feet away.

  Ismeddin dived out of the saddle, bearing Rankin to the ground.

  “Take it easy, idiot!” growled the darwish. “I’m Ismeddin.”

  Rankin struggled vainly for a moment in Ismeddin’s strong grasp. His strength and courage had left him with his blade. He glared for a moment at his enemy, and then recognized the ancient beggar who had accosted him as he played the scribe in the market-place of Kuh-i-Atesh.

  “It’s your turn, Ismeddin. I got six of them on the way out here. You’re the only one who had sense enough to disarm me.”

  The darwish helped Rankin to his feet, and supported him for a moment as he regained his balance. Then he took from his saddle-bags a cake of bread, and dates, and unslung a skin of water.

  “Here, eat!”

  But before Rankin could accept the food and drink, Ismeddin remembered that his mission was not complete, and withdrew the water and bread.

  “Ya Allah!” he exclaimed. “This interfering with honest looting is dirty business! Before there is bread and salt between us, there is this matter of a wager you made with an old man in the souk.”

  Rankin caught a flicker of steel in the background, half-way up the wall of the ravine, and marveled that Ismeddin
would parley when he could take the carpet without further discussion. The remark about settling the wager before there was bread and salt between them had a sinister implication; yet the darwish thus far had shown no intention of resorting to force.

  “Well then,” said Rankin, as he took from the belt beneath his cloak two heavy purses, “here is the loser’s portion, as we agreed. And as much more if you and your men will escort me to Mosul. Take it, and let me eat.”

  “Wallahi!” exclaimed the darwish. “To refuse you food is painful. But you forget the wager: whoever shall hold the others life in his hands and yet refrain from exposing his rival, that one shall take the carpet. And the loser, for his good will, shall have from the winner a purse of five hundred tomans.

  “Now at what time between this moment and the day that we made our wager did you hold the life of Ismeddin in your hands?”

  “Not once,” acknowledged Rankin. “But—”

  “Then by that sign,” interrupted Ismeddin, “the Holy Carpet is mine, for I knew that you were in the monastery, and I refrained from denouncing you. One word from me, and your hide would even now be nailed to the city gate, and in their eagerness they would have flayed you before they killed you, and this you know well.”

  As he spoke, Ismeddin unslung a bundle lashed to the pommel of his saddle, and unrolled a rug.

  “This is the carpet which you left in place of the one I sought. There is proof that in sparing your life, I gave you the chance to take the real, and leave me the substitute!”

  At these words Rankin’s spirit revived, instead of dying before his battered, hacked body: for with followers at his back, Ismeddin offered proof and invited argument instead of seizing what he could take.

  “Not so fast there, Ismeddin, not so fast!” exclaimed Rankin exultantly. “Prove first that you held my life in your hands, instead of showing that you arrived some moments after I had succeeded! How do you think that I came to be accepted as a brother of the order of dancing darwishes? On what point of ritual could you have exposed me when the brethren themselves did not suspect me? Had you known enough about the mysteries of the order to betray me, you yourself would have entered as I did.”

  The darwish smiled and stroked his beard.

  “But a wager is a wager, you still admit?”

  “Granted,” assented Rankin. “Then prove that my life was in your hands.”

  Ismeddin drew from his belt a scrap of paper.

  “Here it is. Look at it!”

  Rankin examined the fine naskh script, and the elegant ta’alik.

  “Nothing but my own handwriting.”

  “Nothing but your death warrant, had I used it!” retorted Ismeddin. “The script that an infidel impostor submitted in a competition at the Amir’s command.”

  Rankin laughed good-humoredly.

  “Absurd! The shaykh himself complimented me on it.”

  “But supposing, Sidi Rankin,” resumed Ismeddin, “that I had called to the Amir’s attention that the triple dots over sheen and the double dots over qaf and beneath yé were made from left to right, according to the Feringhi direction of writing, even though the characters themselves were faultlessly made as we make them, from right to left. Your instinct betrayed you, and you never thought to make the right-hand dot first when you wrote, and you can plainly see how your reed moved in making them.

  “One word to the Amir—but to say more is insulting.”

  “You saw that in the souk, when you read the letter I wrote for the Afghan, before we made our wager,” raged Rankin, contending for more than the life he had so boldly risked. “And then you went to the Amir and announced your mission, so that it was impossible from the outset for me to betray you.”

  The darwish smiled; but he retreated a pace.

  “Only a fool or an inglesi would wager without being certain in advance of the outcome; particularly when he adds to his oath the word of an inglesi. You wagered recklessly, not I. And who but yourself proposed the wager?

  “You could have told the captain of the guard that I would blind his men with an explosion of flashlight powder, and take the carpet while they were sightless?” mocked Ismeddin.

  Rankin turned and seized the Holy Carpet. His laugh was high-pitched and cackling.

  “My life hung on three dots? What if I had mispronounced the password? What if they had seen me taking the carpet? What of the sentries patrolling the wall while you made your juggleries down there in the courtyard?”

  Rankin’s laughter froze Ismeddin.

  The darwish signaled with his arm, and whistled a shrill note. Here and there from behind rocks and clumps of shrubbery along the slope appeared the heads of the Companions. The click of cocking pieces and the ring of bolts snapped home mingled strangely with Rankin’s terrible laughter.

  “Let them fire!” cried Rankin as he shouldered the rug. “And be damned to your three dots!”

  Rankin strode along the trail at a brisk march, carpet balanced on his shoulder.

  Ismeddin stared for a moment, reached again for the skin of water and cake of bread. But again he remembered that he served the Sultan, and not himself: and the darwish shouted a command.

  The Companions swooped down on Rankin like falcons striking their prey.

  The darwish mounted his horse, and took the trail toward Bir el Asad.

  “Serving kings is a dirty business,” he growled.

  But as he rode, his frown was replaced by a smile, for Ismeddin contemplated the payment he would exact of Sir John.

  * * * *

  Shortly after the morning prayer, Shams ud Din the Sultan sat beneath the glittering canopy of his throne of state. The captains of the guard and the officers of the court filed into the throne room and took their posts about the dais. Sir John Lindsay occupied his customary post at the Sultan’s left.

  The great gong rolled and thundered, formally announcing that the Sultan’s Presence was for his people.

  A wazir approached the dais. But his petition was not presented.

  There was a clatter of hoofs in the courtyard. A horseman charged into the hall of audience, followed by a second. At the very foot of the dais they reined in their foaming horses. Both dismounted. And Ismeddin, tossing the reins to the grimy, bandaged survivor of hard fighting in the hills who served as groom, leaped up the steps to the throne.

  “Ana dakhilak, ya sultan!” he cried. “Under your protection, O King!”

  “You have our protection, ya Ismeddin,” responded the Sultan: and then, remembering the old days when hard-pressed riders sought him, “Turn out the guard!”

  “Never mind the guard!” said the darwish. “They’re a day’s march behind me!”

  The Sultan’s brows rose in saracenic arches.

  Sir John twice opened his mouth to speak, and twice decided it was too late. Sir John had a premonition of evil: for with the Sultan’s being startled into granting protection, no matter what devil’s mess was following in the trace of the wily darwish, the Sultan was bound by his word to protect Ismeddin to the uttermost.

  Ismeddin grinned, and stroked his beard. As he eyed Sir John, his grin widened.

  “Ya sultan,” he announced, “Captain Rankin will not steal the Holy Carpet.”

  Sir John sighed deeply, and ceased looking as though he could bite a rifle-barrel in half.

  “Is this the truth?” demanded the Sultan.

  “By your life and by your beard!” affirmed the darwish. “This is the very truth of the One True God. I have done that which you commanded, and Rankin is safe, though corroded by the treachery of man.”

  But the Sultan suspected something that should not be revealed in public: so he signaled his wazir to dismiss the court. And as the hall of audience was cleared of all save Ismeddin and his groom, and the Resid
ent, the Sultan said, “O subtle serpent, for what villainy have you tricked me into giving you protection? For the sake of what thievery and what slaying have you made a fool of me?

  “Let it pass this time, but by your life, I will have your head if ever another device serves you as this one did.

  “But prove to me that Rankin did not steal the Holy Carpet.”

  The darwish turned to his foaming horse, and with his poniard swiftly cut the lashing of the pack behind the cantle of the saddle. He flung the bundle at the foot of the dais, and unwound the outer covering of rags. Then he unrolled a rug somewhat over four feet wide and slightly less than ten feet long, and flung its rich folds upon the steps.

  “Behold the Holy Carpet which Rankin did not steal!”

  The Resident started as though prodded with red-hot irons.

  The Sultan roared his rage.

  “God, by God, by the Very God! I sent you to keep Rankin from stealing the carpet, and Allah curse your father, you stole it yourself! I sent you as a preserver of the peace, and you ride back with war at your heels! O crack-brain! Son of a camel and father of a pig!”

  “Ana dakhilak, ya sultan,” murmured the darwish, and grinned.

  Sir John was choking, but he finally managed to articulate.

  “Your Majesty, protection or no protection, this fellow must be surrendered to the Amir, and the carpet returned.”

  “Your Excellency,” interposed the darwish, “I am his protected, and his captains and lords bear witness. And he will protect me to the uttermost.”

  Sir John knew that Ismeddin spoke the truth.

  And Sir John knew that no explanations would be acceptable to his superiors. He wondered just how soon his successor would report for duty. He saw the concessions sacked and burned by horsemen from the hills.

  “My good man,” resumed Sir John, “I understand His Majesty’s obligation to his protected. But you who have served His Majesty so faithfully simply couldn’t hold out for protection at the cost of war. And your life isn’t in danger. Return this accursed carpet, and go your way. I will reward you richly.”