Since the first hint of light the wolves of Afzal Khan had poured lead into the fortalice from the reeflike ledge that broke the valley floor. Three times they had broken cover and charged, only to fall back beneath the merciless fire that raked them. Hopelessly outnumbered, the advantage of weapons and position counted heavily for the Turkomans.
O'Donnell had stationed five of the best marksmen in the tower and the rest held the walls. To reach the inclosure meant charging across several hundred yards of open space, devoid of cover. All the outlaws were still among the rocks east of the sangar, where, indeed, the broken ledge offered the only cover within rifle range of the redoubt.
The Pathans had suffered savagely in the charges, and they had had the worst of the long-range exchanges, both their marksmanship and their weapons being inferior to the Turkomans'. But some of their bullets did find their way through the loopholes. A few yards from O'Donnell a kaftaned rider lay in a grotesque huddle, his feet turned so the growing light glinted on his silver boot heels, his head a smear of blood and brains.
Another lay sprawled near the charred hut, his ghastly face frozen in a grin of agony as he chewed spasmodically on a bullet. He had been shot in the belly and was taking a long time in dying, but not a whimper escaped his livid lips.
A fellow with a bullet hole in his forearm was making more racket; his curses, as a comrade probed for the slug with a dagger point, would have curdled the blood of a devil.
O'Donnell glanced up at the tower, whence wisps of smoke drifting told him that his five snipers were alert. Their range was greater than that of the men at the wall, and they did more damage proportionately and were better protected. Again and again they had broken up attempts to get at the horses in the stone pen. This pen was nearer the inclosure than it was to the rocks, and crumpled shapes on the ground showed of vain attempts to reach it.
But O'Donnell shook his head. They had salvaged a large quantity of food from the burning hut; there was a well of good water; they had better weapons and more ammunition than the men outside. But a long siege meant annihilation.
One of the men wounded in the night fighting had died. There remained alive forty-one men of the fifty with which he had left Shahrazar. One of these was dying, and half a dozen were wounded—one probably fatally. There were at least a hundred and fifty men outside.
Afzal Khan could not storm the walls yet. But under the constant toll of the bullets, the small force of the defenders would melt away. If any of them lived and escaped, O'Donnell knew it could be only by a swift, bold stroke. But he had no plan at all.
The firing from the valley ceased suddenly, and a white turban cloth was waved above the rock on a rifle muzzle.
"Ohai, Ali el Ghazi!" came a hail in a bull's roar that could only have issued from Afzal Khan.
Yar Muhammad, squatting beside O'Donnell, sneered. "A trick! Keep thy head below the parapet, sahib. Trust Afzal Khan when wolves knock out their own teeth."
"Hold your fire, Ali el Ghazi!" boomed the distant voice. "I would parley with you!"
"Show yourself!" O'Donnell yelled back.
And without hesitation a huge bulk loomed up among the rocks. Whatever his own perfidy, Afzal Khan trusted the honor of the man he thought a Kurd. He lifted his hands to show they were empty.
"Advance, alone!" yelled O'Donnell, straining to make himself heard.
Someone thrust the butt of a rifle into a crevice of the rocks so it stood muzzle upward, with the white cloth blowing out in the morning breeze, and Afzal Khan came striding over the stones with the arrogance of a sultan. Behind him turbans were poked up above the boulders.
O'Donnell halted him within good earshot, and instantly he was covered by a score of rifles. Afzal Khan did not seem to be disturbed by that, or by the blood lust in the dark hawklike faces glaring along the barrels. Then O'Donnell rose into view, and the two leaders faced one another in the full dawn.
O'Donnell expected accusations of treachery—for, after all, he had struck the first blow—but Afzal Khan was too brutally candid for such hypocrisy.
"I have you in a vise, Ali el Ghazi," he announced without preamble. "But for that Waziri dog who crouches behind you, I would have cut your throat at moonrise last night. You are all dead men, but this siege work grows tiresome, and I am willing to forgo half my advantage. I am generous. As reward of victory I demand either your guns or your horses. Your horses I have already, but you shall have them back, if you wish. Throw down your weapons and you may ride out of Khuruk. Or, if you wish, I will keep the horses, and you may march out on foot with your rifles. What is your answer?"
O'Donnell spat toward him with a typically Kurdish gesture. "Are we fools, to be hoodwinked by a dog with scarlet whiskers?" he snarled. "When Afzal Khan keeps his sworn word, the Indus will flow backward. Shall we ride out, unarmed, for you to cut us down in the passes, or shall we march forth on foot, for you to shoot us from ambush in the hills?
"You lie when you say you have our horses. Ten of your men have died trying to take them for you. You lie when you say you have us in the vise. It is you who are in the vise! You have neither food nor water; there is no other well in the valley but this. You have few cartridges, because most of your ammunition is stored in the tower, and we hold that."
The fury in Afzal Khan's countenance told O'Donnell that he had scored with that shot.
"If you had us helpless you would not be offering terms," O'Donnell sneered. "You would be cutting our throats, instead of trying to gull us into the open."
"Sons of sixty dogs!" swore Afzal Khan, plucking at his beard. "I will flay you all alive! I will keep you hemmed here until you die!"
"If we cannot leave the fortress, you cannot enter it," O'Donnell retorted. "Moreover you have drawn all your men but a handful from the passes, and the Khurukzai will steal upon you and cut off your heads. They are waiting, up in the hills."
Afzal Khan's involuntarily wry face told O'Donnell that the Afghan's plight was more desperate than he had hoped.
"It is a deadlock, Afzal Khan," said O'Donnell suddenly. "There is but one way to break it." He lifted his voice, seeing that the Pathans under the protection of the truce were leaving their coverts and drawing within earshot. "Meet me there in the open space, man to man, and decide the feud between us two, with cold steel. If I win, we ride out of Khuruk unmolested. If you win, my warriors are at your mercy."
"The mercy of a wolf!" muttered Yar Muhammad.
O'Donnell did not reply. It was a desperate chance, but the only one. Afzal Khan hesitated and cast a searching glance at his men; that scowling hairy horde was muttering among itself. The warriors seemed ill-content, and they stared meaningly at their leader.
The inference was plain; they were weary of the fighting at which they were at a disadvantage, and they wished Afzal Khan to accept O'Donnell's challenge. They feared a return of the Khurukzai might catch them in the open with empty cartridge pouches. After all, if their chief lost to the Kurd, they would only lose the loot they had expected to win. Afzal Khan understood this attitude, and his beard bristled to the upsurging of his ready passion.
"Agreed!" he roared, tearing out his tulwar and throwing away the scabbard. He made the bright broad steel thrum about his head. "Come over the wall and die, thou slayer of infidels!"
"Hold your men where they are!" O'Donnell ordered and vaulted the parapet.
At a bellowed order the Pathans had halted, and the wall was lined with kalpaks as the Turkomans watched tensely, muzzles turned upward but fingers still crooked on the triggers. Yar Muhammad followed O'Donnell over the wall, but did not advance from it; he crouched against it like a bearded ghoul, fingering his knife.