The Best of Robert E. Howard Volume One: Crimson Shadows

by Robert E. Howard

  A furious babble rose, dominated by Erlik Khan’s voice, speaking English, the one common language of those mixed breeds.

  “They hide behind the god; drag them forth.”

  “Let us rather fire a volley,” protested a dark-skinned powerfully built man whom Harrison recognized–Ak Bogha, a Turk, his fez contrasting with his full dress suit. “We risk our lives, standing here in full view; he can shoot through that screen.”

  “Fool!” The Mongol’s voice rasped with anger. “He would have fired already if he had a gun. Let no man pull a trigger. They can crouch behind the idol, and it would take many shots to smoke them out. We are not now in the Crypts of Silence. A volley would make too much noise; one shot might not be heard in the streets. But one shot will not suffice. He has but an axe; rush in and cut him down!”

  Without hesitation Ak Bogha ran forward, followed by the others. Harrison shifted his grip on his axe haft. Only one man could come at him at a time–

  Ak Bogha was in the narrow strait between idol and wall before Harrison moved from behind the great green bulk. The Turk yelped in fierce triumph and lunged, lifting his knife. He blocked the entrance; the men crowding behind him had only a glimpse, over his straining shoulder, of Harrison’s grim face and blazing eyes.

  Full into Ak Bogha’s face Harrison thrust the axe head, smashing nose, lips and teeth. The Turk reeled, gasping and choking with blood, and half blinded, but struck again, like the slash of a dying panther. The keen edge sliced Harrison’s face from temple to jaw, and then the flailing axe crushed in Ak Bogha’s breastbone and sent him reeling backward, to fall dying.

  The men behind him gave back suddenly. Harrison, bleeding like a stuck hog, again drew back behind the idol. They could not see the white giant who lurked at bay in the shadow of the god, but they saw Ak Bogha gasping his life out on the bloody floor before the idol, like a gory sacrifice, and the sight shook the nerve of the fiercest.

  And now, as matters hovered at a deadlock, and the Lord of the Dead seemed himself uncertain, a new factor introduced itself into the tense drama. A door opened and a fantastic figure swaggered through. Behind him Harrison heard Joan gasp incredulously.

  It was Ali ibn Suleyman who strode down the hall as if he trod his own castle in the mysterious Djebel Druse. No longer the garments of western civilization clothed him. On his head he wore a silken kafiyeh bound about the temples with a broad gilded band. Beneath his voluminous, girdled abba showed silver-heeled boots, ornately stitched. His eye-lids were painted with kohl, causing his eyes to glitter even more lethally than ordinarily. In his hand was a long curved scimitar.

  Harrison mopped the blood from his face and shrugged his shoulders. Nothing in the house of Erlik Khan could surprize him any more, not even this picturesque shape which might have just swaggered out of an opium dream of the East.

  The attention of all was centered on the Druse as he strode down the hall, looking even bigger and more formidable in his native costume than he had in western garments. He showed no more awe of the Lord of the Dead than he showed of Harrison. He halted directly in front of Erlik Khan, and spoke without meekness.

  “Why was it not told me that mine enemy was a prisoner in the house?” he demanded in English, evidently the one language he knew in common with the Mongol.

  “You were not here,” Erlik Khan answered brusquely, evidently liking little the Druse’s manner.

  “Nay, I but recently returned, and learned that the dog who was once Ahmed Pasha stood at bay in this chamber. I have donned my proper garb for this occasion.” Turning his back full on the Lord of the Dead, Ali ibn Suleyman strode before the idol.

  “Oh, infidel!” he called, “come forth and meet my steel! Instead of the dog’s death which is your due, I offer you honorable battle–your axe against my sword. Come forth, ere I hale you thence by your beard!”

  “I haven’t any beard,” grunted the detective. “Come in and get me!”

  “Nay,” scowled Ali ibn Suleyman; “when you were Ahmed Pasha, you were a man. Come forth, where we can have room to wield our weapons. If you slay me, you shall go free. I swear by the Golden Calf!”

  “Could I dare trust him?” muttered Harrison.

  “A Druse keeps his word,” whispered Joan. “But there is Erlik Khan–”

  “Who are you to make promises?” called Harrison. “Erlik Khan is master here.”

  “Not in the matter of my private feud!” was the arrogant reply. “I swear by my honor that no hand but mine shall be lifted against you, and that if you slay me, you shall go free. Is it not so, Erlik Khan?”

  “Let it be as you wish,” answered the Mongol, spreading his hands in a gesture of resignation.

  Joan grasped Harrison’s arm convulsively, whispering urgently: “Don’t trust him! He won’t keep his word! He’ll betray you and Ali both! He’s never intended that the Druse should kill you–it’s his way of punishing Ali, by having some one else kill you! Don’t–don’t–”

  “We’re finished anyway,” muttered Harrison, shaking the sweat and blood out of his eyes. “I might as well take the chance. If I don’t they’ll rush us again, and I’m bleeding so that I’ll soon be too weak to fight. Watch your chance, girl, and try to get away while everybody’s watching Ali and me.” Aloud he called: “I have a woman here, Ali. Let her go before we start fighting.”

  “To summon the police to your rescue?” demanded Ali. “No! She stands or falls with you. Will you come forth?”

  “I’m coming,” gritted Harrison. Grasping his axe, he moved out of the alcove, a grim and ghastly figure, blood masking his face and soaking his torn garments. He saw Ali ibn Suleyman gliding toward him, half crouching, the scimitar in his hand a broad curved glimmer of blue light. He lifted his axe, fighting down a sudden wave of weakness–there came a muffled dull report, and at the same instant he felt a paralyzing impact against his head. He was not aware of falling, but realized that he was lying on the floor, conscious but unable to speak or move.

  A wild cry rang in his dulled ears and Joan La Tour, a flying white figure, threw herself down beside him, her fingers frantically fluttering over him.

  “Oh, you dogs, dogs!” she was sobbing. “You’ve killed him!” She lifted her head to scream: “Where is your honor now, Ali ibn Suleyman?”

  From where he lay Harrison could see Ali standing over him, scimitar still poised, eyes flaring, mouth gaping, an image of horror and surprize. And beyond the Druse the detective saw the silent group clustered about Erlik Khan; and Fang Yim was holding an automatic with a strangely misshapen barrel–a Maxim silencer. One muffled shot would not be noticed from the street.

  A fierce and frantic cry burst from Ali ibn Suleyman.

  “Aie, my honor! My pledged word! My oath on the Golden Calf! You have broken it! You have shamed me to an infidel! You robbed me both of vengeance and honor! Am I a dog, to be dealt with thus! Ya Maruf!”

  His voice soared to a feline screech, and wheeling, he moved like a blinding blur of light. Fang Yim’s scream was cut short horribly in a ghastly gurgle, as the scimitar cut the air in a blue flame. The Chinaman’s head shot from his shoulders on a jetting fountain of blood and thudded on the floor, grinning awfully in the golden light. With a yell of terrible exultation, Ali ibn Suleyman leapt straight toward the hooded shape on the divan. Fezzed and turbaned figures ran in between. Steel flashed, showering sparks, blood spurted, and men screamed. Harrison saw the Druse scimitar flame bluely through the lamplight full on Erlik Khan’s coifed head. The hood fell in halves, and the Lord of the Dead rolled to the floor, his fingers convulsively clenching and unclenching.

  The others swarmed about the maddened Druse, hacking and stabbing. The figure in the wide-sleeved abba was the center of a score of licking blades, of a gasping, blaspheming, clutching knot of straining bodies. And still the dripping scimitar flashed and flamed, shearing through flesh, sinew and bone, while under the stamping feet of the living rolled mutilated corpses. Under the impact of
struggling bodies, the altar was overthrown, the smoldering incense scattered over the rugs. The next instant flame was licking at the hangings. With a rising roar and a rush the fire enveloped one whole side of the room, but the battlers heeded it not.

  Harrison was aware that someone was pulling and tugging at him, someone who sobbed and gasped, but did not slacken their effort. A pair of slender hands were locked in his tattered shirt, and he was being dragged bodily through billowing smoke that blinded and half strangled him. The tugging hands grew weaker, but did not release their hold, as their owner fought on in a heart-breaking struggle. Then suddenly the detective felt a rush of clean wind, and was aware of concrete instead of carpeted wood under his shoulders.

  He was lying in a slow drizzle on a sidewalk, while above him towered a wall reddened in a mounting glare. On the other side loomed broken docks, and beyond them the lurid glow was reflected on water. He heard the screams of fire sirens, and felt the gathering of a chattering, shouting crowd about him.

  Life and movement slowly seeping back into his numbed veins, he lifted his head feebly, and saw Joan La Tour crouched beside him, oblivious to the rain as to her scanty attire. Tears were streaming down her face, and she cried out as she saw him move: “Oh, you’re not dead–I thought I felt life in you, but I dared not let them know–”

  “Just creased my scalp,” he mumbled thickly. “Knocked me out for a few minutes–seen it happen that way before–you dragged me out–”

  “While they were fighting. I thought I’d never find an outer door–here come the firemen at last!”

  “The Yat Soys!” he gasped, trying to rise. “Eighteen Chinamen in that basement–my God, they’ll be roasted!”

  “We can’t help it!” panted Joan La Tour. “We were fortunate to save ourselves. Oh!”

  The crowd surged back, yelling, as the roof began to cave in, showering sparks. And through the crumpling walls, by some miracle, reeled an awful figure–Ali ibn Suleyman. His clothing hung in smoldering, bloody ribbons, revealing the ghastly wounds beneath. He had been slashed almost to pieces. His head-cloth was gone, his hair crisped, his skin singed and blackened where it was not blood-smeared. His scimitar was gone, and blood streamed down his arm over the fingers that gripped a dripping dagger.

  “Aie!” he cried in a ghastly croak. “I see you, Ahmed Pasha, through the fire and mist! You live, in spite of Mongol treachery! That is well! Only by the hand of Ali ibn Suleyman, who was Amir Amin Izzedin, shall you die! I have washed my honor in blood, and it is spotless!

  “I am a son of Maruf,

  Of the mountain of sanctuary;

  When my sword is rusty

  I make it bright

  With the blood of my enemies!”

  Reeling, he pitched face first, stabbing at Harrison’s feet as he fell; then rolling on his back he lay motionless, staring sightlessly up at the flame-lurid skies.

  Untitled

  You have built a world of paper and wood,

  Culture and cult and lies;

  Has the cobra altered beneath his hood,

  Or the fire in the tiger’s eyes?

  You have turned from valley and hill and flood,

  You have set yourselves apart,

  Forgetting the earth that feeds the blood

  And the talon that finds the heart.

  You boast you have stilled the lustful call

  Of the black ancestral ape,

  But Life, the tigress that bore you all,

  Has never changed her shape.

  And a strange shape comes to your faery mead,

  With a fixed black simian frown,

  But you will not know and you will not heed

  Till your towers come tumbling down.

  “For the Love of Barbara Allen”

  “’Twas in the merry month of May,

  When all sweet buds were swellin’,

  Sweet William on his death-bed lay

  For the love of Barbara Allen.”

  My grandfather sighed and thumped wearily on his guitar, then laid it aside, the song unfinished.

  “My voice is too old and cracked,” he said, leaning back in his cushion-seated chair and fumbling in the pockets of his sagging old vest for cob-pipe and tobacco. “Reminds me of my brother Joel. The way he could sing that song. It was his favorite. Makes me think of poor old Rachel Ormond, who loved him. She's dyin’, her nephew Jim Ormond told me yesterday. She’s old; older’n I am. You never saw her, did you?”

  I shook my head.

  “She was a real beauty when she was young, and Joel was alive and lovin’ her. He had a fine voice, Joel, and he loved to play his guitar and sing. He’d sing as he rode along. He was singin’ ‘Barbara Allen’ when he met Rachel Ormond. She heard him singin’ and came out of the laurel beside the road to listen. When Joel saw her standin’ there with the mornin’ sun behind her makin’ jewels out of the dew on the bushes, he stopped dead and just stared like a fool. He told me it seemed as if she was standin’ in a white blaze of light.

  “It was mornin’ in the mountains and they were both young. You never saw a mornin’ in spring, in the Cumberlands?”

  “I never was in Tennessee,” I answered.

  “No, you don’t know anything about it,” he retorted, in the half humorous, half petulant mood of the old. “You’re a post oak gopher. You never saw anything but sand drifts and dry shinnery ridges. What do you know about mountain sides covered with birch and laurel, and cold clear streams windin’ through the cool shadows and tinklin’ over the rocks? What do you know about upland forests with the blue haze of the Cumberlands hangin’ over them?”

  “Nothing,” I answered, yet even as I spoke, there leaped crystal clear into my mind with startling clarity the very image of the things of which he spoke, so vivid that my external faculties seemed almost to sense it–I could almost smell the dogwood blossoms and the cool lush of the deep woods, and hear the tinkle of hidden streams over the stones.

  “You couldn’t know,” he sighed. “It’s not your fault, and I wouldn’t go back, myself, but Joel loved it. He never knew anything else, till the war came up. That’s where you’d have been born if it hadn’t been for the war. That tore everything up. Things didn’t seem the same afterwards. I came west, like so many Tennessee folks did. I’ve done well in Texas–better’n I’d ever done in Tennessee. But as I get old I get to dreamin’.”

  His gaze was fixed on nothing, and he sighed deeply, wandering somewhat in his mind as the very old are likely to do at times.

  “Four years behind Bedford Forrest,” he said at last. “There never was a cavalry leader like him. Ride all day, shootin’ and fightin’, bed down in the snow–up before midnight, ‘Boots and Saddles’, and we were off again.

  “Forrest never hung back. He was always in front of his men, fightin’ like any three. His saber was too heavy for the average man to use, and it carried a razor edge. I remember the skirmish where Joel was killed. We come suddenly out of a defile between low hills and there was a Yankee wagon train movin’ down the valley, guarded by a detachment of cavalry. We hit that cavalry like a thunder-bolt and ripped it apart.

  “I can see Forrest now, standin’ up in his stirrups, swingin’ that big sword of his, yellin’ “Charge! Holler, boys, holler!” And we hollered like wild men as we went in, and none of us cared if we lived or died, so long as Forrest was leadin’ us.

  “We tore that detachment in pieces and stomped and chased the pieces all up and down the valley. When the fight was over, Forrest reined up with his officers and said, “Gentlemen, one of my stirrups seems to have been shot away!” He had only one foot in a stirrup. But when he looked, he saw that somehow his left foot had come out of the stirrup, and the stirrup had flopped up over the saddle. He’d been sittin’ on the stirrup leather, and hadn’t noticed, in the excitement of the charge.

  “I was right near him at the time, because my horse had fell, with a bullet through its head, and I was pullin’ my saddle off. Just the
n my brother Joel came up on foot, smilin’, with the morning sun behind him. But he was dazed with the fightin’ because he had a strange look on his face, and when he saw me he stopped short, as if I was a stranger. Then he said the strangest thing: ‘Why, granddad!’ he said, ‘You’re young again! You’re younger’n I am!’ Then the next second a bullet from some skulkin’ sniper knocked him down dead at my feet.”

  Again my grandfather sighed and took up his guitar.

  “Rachel Ormond nearly died,” he said. “She never married, never looked at any other man. When the Ormonds came to Texas, she came with ’em. Now she’s dyin’, up there in their house in the hills. That’s what they say; I know she died years ago, when news of Joel’s death came to her.”

  He began to thrum his guitar and sing in the curious wailing chant of the hill people.

  “They sent to the east, they sent to the west,

  To the place where she was dwellin’,

  Sweet William’s sick, and he sends for you,

  For the love of Barbara Allen.”

  My father called to me from his room on the other side of the house.

  “Go out and stop those horses from fighting. I can hear them kicking the sides out of the barn.”