El Borak and Other Desert Adventures (88 page)

He shook himself impatiently. This affair was no ordinary revival of an ancient mystic cult. The Shaykh ez Zurim might rule supreme in Shalizahr where sleeping ages woke in immemorial life, but Gordon sensed something behind this — a dim gigantic shadow looming behind these veils of mystery and intrigue.

What was the prize for which the great nations of the world sparred behind locked doors? India! The golden key to Asia.

Something more than the mad whim of a Persian dreamer lay behind this fantastic plot. He questioned Othman’s assertion that he had rebuilt the city out of his own private fortune. He doubted if any Persian fortune would have proved adequate for the obviously stupendous expenditure. The rebuilding of Shalizahr indicated powerful backing, with unlimited resources.

Then Gordon forgot all other angles of the adventure in concern over the fate of Lal Singh. Impassive in contemplating his own peril, and the destinies of nations, he rose and paced the floor like a caged tiger as he brooded over the mystery of the Sikh’s disappearance. Othman’s denial of any knowledge of the prisoner had a sinister suggestion.

Gordon seated himself as he heard sandalled feet pad in the corridor and immediately the door opened and Musa entered, followed by a huge negro bearing viands in gold dishes, and golden jug of wine. Musa closed the door quickly, but not before Gordon had a glimpse of a helmet spike protruding from the tapestries which obviously masked an alcove across the corridor. So Othman had lied when he said no guard would be placed to watch him.

Gordon considered himself absolved of any implied agreement to remain in the chamber.

“Wine of Shiraz,
sahib
, and food,” Musa indicated unnecessarily. “Presently a girl beautiful as a
houri
shall be sent to entertain the
sahib.”

Gordon started to decline, when he realized that the girl would be sent anyhow, to spy on him, so he merely nodded.

Musa motioned the slave to set down the food, and he himself tasted each dish and sipped liberally of the wine, before bowing himself out of the room, herding the negro before him. But Gordon, suspicious as a hungry wolf in a trap, emptied the jug behind the divan and ate the food only after his investigations, armed by his years of experience in Oriental intrigues, convinced him that the dishes had not been tampered with.

He had scarcely completed the meal when the door opened again, just long enough to admit a slim, supple figure: a girl clad in gold breast-plates, jewel-crusted girdle, and filmy silk trousers. She might have stepped out of the
harim
of Haroun ar Raschid. But Gordon started to his feet with an exclamation, for he recognized her even before she lifted her filmy
yasmaq
.

“Azizun! What are you doing here?”

Her dark eyes were dilated with fear and excitement, her words tumbled over one another and her fingers fluttered childishly at his hands.

“They stole me,
sahib
, the Hidden Ones, one night as I walked in my father’s garden in Delhi. By secret, devious ways they brought me to this city of devils, to be a slave with the other girls they steal out of India. Aye, they ply their slave trade under the very noses of the British, who suspect nothing.”

Gordon said nothing, but the red glint in his black eyes was eloquent. He
had discovered another reason for destroying this den of snakes. The girl hurried on, stammering in her haste.

“I have dwelt here for a month! I have almost died of shame! I have been whipped! I have seen other girls die of torture. Oh, what shame for my father, that his daughter should be made a slave of pagans and devil-worshippers!

“My heart almost burst when I saw you brought in among Muhammad ibn Ahmed’s swordsmen. I was watching from a tapestried doorway. While I racked my brain for a way to get word with you, the Master of the Girls came to send a girl to the
sahib
to learn, if possible, whether he were a spy or a true man, and if he possessed any hidden weapon. I prevailed upon the Master of the Girls to send me. I told him I was your enemy, that you slew my brother.”

She meditated for a moment over the enormity of the lie; her brother was one of Gordon’s best friends.

“Azizun, do you know anything of Lal Singh, the Sikh?”

“Yes,
sahib!
They brought him here captive to make
a fedaui
of him, for no Sikh has yet joined the cult. But Lal Singh is a very powerful man, as the
sahib
knows, and after they reached the city and delivered him into the hands of the Arab guards, he broke free and with his bare hands slew the brother of Muhammad ibn Ahmed. Muhammad demanded his head, and he is too powerful even for Othman to refuse in this matter.”

“So that’s why the Shaykh lied about Lal Singh,” muttered Gordon.

“Yes,
sahib
. Lal Singh lies in a dungeon below the palace, and tomorrow he is to be given to the Arab for torture and execution.”

Gordon’s face darkened and became sinister.

“Lead me tonight to Muhammad’s sleeping quarters,” he requested, his narrowing eyes betraying his deadly intention.

“Nay, he sleeps among his warriors, all proven swordsmen of the desert, too many even for thee, Prince of Swords! I will lead you to Lal Singh!”

“What of the guard hidden in the corridor?”

“He will not see us go. And he will not open the door or allow any one else to enter until he has seen me depart.”

She drew aside the tapestry on the wall opposite the door and pressed on an arabesqued design. A panel swung inward, revealing a narrow stair that wound down into lightless depths.

“The masters think their slaves do not know their secrets,” she muttered. “Come.” Producing and lighting a tiny candle, she held it aloft as she led the way onto the stair, closing the panel after them. They descended until Gordon estimated that they were well beneath the palace, and then struck a narrow, level tunnel which ran away from the foot of the stair.

“A Rajput who planned to run away from Shalizahr showed me this secret way,” she said. “I planned to escape with him. We hid food and weapons here.
He was caught and tortured, but died without betraying me. Here is the sword he hid.” She paused and fumbled in a niche, drawing out a blade which she gave to Gordon.

A few moments later they reached a heavy, iron-bound door and Azizun, gesturing for caution, drew Gordon to it and showed him a tiny aperture to peer through. He looked into a corridor flanked by rows of cells with barred doors. Archaic bronze lamps hung at intervals cast a mellow glow. Some fifty feet away the corridor made an abrupt turn.

Before one of the nearer cell doors stood a resplendent Arab in glittering corselet and plumed helmet, scimitar in hand.

Azizun’s fingers tightened on Gordon’s arm.

“Lal Singh is in that cell,” she whispered. “Do not shoot the Arab. Slay him in silence. He has no gun and he is arrogant of his swordsmanship. The ring of steel will not be heard above.”

Gordon tried the balance of the blade she had given him — a long Indian steel, light but well-nigh unbreakable, and about the same length as the Arab’s scimitar.

Gordon pushed open the secret door, and as he stepped into the corridor he saw the face of Lal Singh staring through the bars behind the Arab. The hinges of the hidden door creaked, and the Arab whirled catlike, snarled and glared wildly, and then came to the attack with the instant decisiveness of a panther.

Gordon met him half-way, and the wild-eyed Sikh gripping the bars until his knuckles were bloodless, and the Indian girl crouching in the open doorway witnessed a play of swords that would have burned the blood of kings.

The only sounds were the quick, soft, sure shuffle and thud of feet, the slither and rasp of steel on steel, the breathing of the fighters. The long, light blades flickered lethally in the illusive light. They were like living things, like parts of the men who wielded them, welded not only to hand but to brain as well. To the girl it was bewildering and incomprehensible. But Lal Singh appreciated to the fullest the superlative skill which scintillated there in lightning intricasies, and he alternately chilled and burned with the bright splendor of the fray.

Even before the Arab, he knew when the hair-line balance shifted, sensed the inevitable outcome an instant before the Arab’s lip drew back from his teeth in ferocious recognition of defeat and desperate resolve to take his enemy into death with him. But the end came even before Lal Singh realized its imminence. A louder ring of blades, a flash of steel that baffled the eye — Gordon’s flickering blade seemed lightly to caress his enemy’s neck in passing — and then the Arab was stretched on the floor, his head all but severed from his body. He had died without a cry.

Gordon stood over him for an instant, the sword in his hand stained with
a thread of crimson. His shirt had been torn open and his muscular breast rose and fell easily. Only a film of perspiration glistening there and on his brow betrayed the strain of his recent exertions.

He stooped and tore a bunch of keys from the dead man’s girdle, and the grate of steel in the lock seemed to awaken Lal Singh from a trance.

“Sahib!
You are mad to come here! But what a fight! What a fight!”

Gordon pulled open the door, and the Sikh stepped forth, light and supple as a great panther, and picked up the Arab’s sword. At the feel of the hilt he sighed with deep satisfaction. “What now,
sahib?”

“We won’t have a chance if we make a break before dark,” snapped Gordon. “Azizun, how soon will another guard come to relieve the man I killed?”

“They change the guard every four hours. His watch had just begun.”

“Good!” He glanced at his watch and was surprized to note the hour. He had been in Shalizahr much longer than he had realized. “Within four hours it will be sun-down. As soon as it’s dark we’ll make a break to get away. Until we’re ready Lal Singh will hide on the secret stair.”

“But when the guard comes to relieve this one,” said the Sikh, “it will be known that I have escaped from my cell. You should have left me here until you were ready to go,
sahib.”

“I didn’t dare risk it. I might not have been able to get you out when the time came. We have four hours lee-way. When they find you’re gone, maybe the confusion will help us. We’ll dress this body in your clothes and lay it in the cell, with the face turned away from the door. When the other guard comes, maybe he’ll think it’s you, asleep or dead, and start looking for the original guard instead of you. The longer it is before they find you’ve escaped, the more time we’ll have.”

“Nay!” exclaimed the Sikh suddenly. “I forgot the other prisoners — in a cell beyond the turn in the corridor. They have heard the sound of the fighting, and our voices. They will betray us to the guard when he comes. I saw the Arabs hustling them along the passage a few hours ago — six villainous Kurds.”

“Kurds?” Gordon looked up with quickened interest. With a few swift strides he rounded the turn in the corridor and halted, staring at a certain cell. Bearded faces crowded the grille of that cell. Lean hands gripped the bars. Poisonous hate burned in the eyes that mutely beat against him.

“You were faithful
fedauis,”
he said. “Why are you locked in a cell?”

Yusuf ibn Suleiman spat toward him.

“Melikani
dog, thou! The Shaykh said we were either knaves or fools to be surprized on the Stair as you surprized us. So at dawn we die under the daggers of Muhammad ibn Ahmed’s slayers, Allah curse him and you!”

“Yet it must be just, if it be the will of thy master, the Shaykh ez Zurim,” he reminded them.

“May the dogs gnaw the bones of the Shaykh ez Zurim!” they replied with whole-hearted venom, and Gordon decided these men must be new recruits to the cult, lacking the age-old tradition that made most of the Hidden Ones servile slaves to the head of the order.

He weighed in his hand the keys he had taken from the dead guard, and the Kurds looked at them as men in Hell look at an open door.

“Yusuf ibn Suleiman,” he said abruptly, “your hands are stained with many crimes, but not the violation of a sworn oath. The Shaykh has betrayed you — cast you from his service. You owe him no allegiance.”

Yusuf’s eyes were those of a wolf.

“If I could send him to Jehannum ahead of me,” he muttered, “I would die happy.”

All stared tensely at Gordon, sensing a purpose behind his words.

“Will you swear, each man by the honor of his clan, to serve me until vengeance is accomplished, or death releases you from the vow?” he asked, placing the keys behind him so as not to seem to be flaunting them too flagrantly before helpless men. “Othman will give you nothing but the death of a dog. I offer you revenge and a chance to die honorably.”

Yusuf’s eyes blazed in response to a wild surge of hope, and his sinewy hands quivered as they grasped the bars.

“Trust us!” was all he said, but it spoke volumes.

“Aye, we swear!” clamored the men behind him. “Hearken, El Borak, we swear!”

He was already turning the key in the lock; wild, cruel, treacherous according to western standards, they had their code of honor, those fierce mountaineers, and it was not so far different from the code of his own Highlander ancestors but that he could understand it.

Tumbling out of the cell they lifted their hands toward him, palms outward.

“
Ya khawand! We
await orders!”

Motioning them to follow him, he strode back down the corridor to where the dead Arab lay.

“Drag the body into that cell and you, Yusuf ibn Suleiman, put on his garments.”

The celerity with which they obeyed him modified the suspicion in Lal Singh’s dark eyes, and the Sikh relaxed his grip on his scimitar. In a very few moments Yusuf ibn Suleiman emerged in the plumed helmet, corselet, and silken garments of the Arab, and his features were sufficiently Semitic to deceive anyone who was expecting to encounter an Arab in that garb.

“Give him the Arab’s scimitar, Lal Singh,” commanded Gordon, and the Sikh obeyed readily.

“You will play the part of a guard patrolling this corridor,” said Gordon. “These others will hide behind yonder secret door. In four hours time one will come to relieve you. He will think you are the man whose garments you wear, and you must kill or capture him before he recognizes you. With Lal Singh and your companions to aid you, it should be easy.