They had followed him blindly, obeyed his every order, demonstrated their courage and faithfulness beyond question. If he deserted them now, they were doomed. They could never make their way back through the hills without him. Such as were not lost to die of starvation would be slaughtered by the vengeful Khurukzai who would not forget their defeat by these dark-skinned riders.
Sweat started out on O'Donnell's skin in the agony of his mental struggle. Not even for the peace of all India could he desert these men who trusted him. He was their leader. His first duty was to them.
But, then, what of that damning letter? It supplied the key to Suleiman Pasha's plot. It told of hell brewing in the Khyber Hills, of revolt seething on the Hindu plains, of a plot which might be nipped in the bud were the British officials to learn of it in time. But if he returned to Shahrazar with the Turkomans, he must give the letter to Suleiman Pasha or be denounced to Orkhan—and that meant torture and death. He was in the fangs of the vise; he must either sacrifice himself, his men, or the helpless people of India.
"Ohai, Ali el Ghazi!" It was a soft hiss behind him, from the shadow of a jutting rock. Even as he started about, a pistol muzzle was pressed against his back.
"Nay, do not move. I do not trust you yet."
Twisting his head about, O'Donnell stared into the dark features of Suleiman Pasha.
"You! How in Shaitan's name—"
"No matter. Give me the papers which you hold in your hand. Give them to me, or, by Allah, I will send you to hell, Kurd!"
With the pistol boring into his back, there was nothing else O'Donnell could do, his heart almost bursting with rage.
Suleiman Pasha stepped back and tucked the papers into his girdle. He allowed O'Donnell to turn and face him, but still kept him covered with the pistol.
"After you had departed," he said, "secret word came to me from the North that the papers for which I sent you were more important then I had dreamed. I dared not wait in Shahrazar for your return, lest something go awry. I rode for Khuruk with some Ghilzais who knew the road. Beyond the Pass of Akbar we were ambushed by the very people we sought. They slew my men, but they spared me, for I was known to one of their headmen. They told me they had been driven forth by Afzal Khan, and I guessed what else had occurred. They said there had been fighting beyond the Pass, for they had heard the sound of firing, but they did not know its nature. There are no men in the tower in the Pass, but the Khurukzai fear a trap. They do not know the outlaws have fled from the valley.
"I wished to get word with you as soon as possible, so I volunteered to go spying for them alone, so they showed me the footpaths. I reached the valley head in time to see the last of the Pathans depart, and I have been hiding here awaiting a chance to catch you alone. Listen! The Turkomans are doomed. The Khurukzai mean to kill them all. But I can save you. We shall dress you in the clothing of a dead Pathan, and I shall say you are a servant of mine who has escaped from the Turkomans.
"I shall not return to Shahrazar. I have business in the Khyber region. I can use a man like you. We shall return to the Khurukzai and show them how to attack and destroy the Turkomans. Then they will lend us an escort southward. Will you come with me and serve me, Kurd?"
"No, you damned swine!" In the stress of the moment O'Donnell spat his fury in English. Suleiman Pasha's jaw dropped, in the staggering unexpectedness of English words from a man he thought to be a Kurd. And in the instant his wits were disrupted by the discovery, O'Donnell, nerved to desperate quickness, was at his throat like a striking cobra.
The pistol exploded once and then was wrenched from the numbed fingers. Suleiman Pasha was fighting in frenzied silence, and he was all steel strings and catlike thews. But O'Donnell's kindhjal was out and ripping murderously into him again and again. They went to the earth together in the shadow of the big rock, O'Donnell stabbing in a berserk frenzy; and then he realized that he was driving his blade into a dead man.
He shook himself free and rose, staggering like a drunken man with the red maze of his murder lust. The oilskin packet was in his left hand, torn from his enemy's garments during the struggle. Dusk had given way to blue, star- flecked darkness. To O'Donnell's ears came the clink of hoofs on stone, the creak of leather. His warriors were approaching, still hidden by the towering ledges. He heard a low laugh that identified Yar Muhammad.
O'Donnell breathed deeply in vast content. Now he could guide his men back through the passes to Shahrazar without fear of Orkhan Bahadur, who would never know his secret. He could persuade the Turkoman chief that it would be to his advantage to send this letter on to the British border. He, as Ali el Ghazi, could remain in Shahrazar safely, to oppose subtly what other conspirators came plotting to the forbidden city.
He smiled as he wiped the blood from his kindhjal and sheathed it. There still remained the Khurukzai, waiting with murderous patience beyond the Pass of Akbar, but his soul was at rest, and the prospect of fighting his way back through the mountains troubled him not at all. He was as confident of the outcome as if he already sat in the palace at Shahrazar.
FRAGMENT: ORIGINAL OPENING OF STORY
Table of Contents
"FEEL THE EDGE, DOG, and move not!" The hissing voice was no less menacing than the razor-edged blade that was pressed just beneath Kirby O'Donnell's chin. The American lay still, staring up into the dim ring of bearded faces, vague as phantoms in the dull glow of a waning electric torch. He had fancied himself safe in the guarded palace of his friend Orkhan Bahadur but anything, he reflected, could happen in Shahrazar the Forbidden. Had these men who came so silently by night discovered the real identity of the man who called himself Ali el Ghazi, a Kurdish wanderer? Their next words set his mind at rest on that score.
"Rise from your couch, Ali el Ghazi," muttered the leader of the men. "Rise slowly and place your hands behind you. This dagger has sent a Kurd to Hell before now."
O'Donnell slowly obeyed the order, raging inwardly, but outwardly imperturbable. His keen edged scimitar and kindhjal lay almost within his grasp, but he knew that a move toward them would send four curved blades plunging into his heart, wielded by desperately taut nerves.
As he came to a sitting position, his wrists were gripped fiercely, and bound behind him. The edge still trembled against his throat. A single yell might bring aid, but he would never live to complete it. He thought he knew the leader of the gang— one Baber Khan, a renegade Gilzai who followed Orkhan Bahadur as a jackal follows a tiger.
"Not a word;" whispered the deadly voice. "Come with us."
The American was hauled roughly to his feet and moved across the chamber among the close clump of his captors. A knife point bored into his ribs. The bare feet made no sound as they left the chamber and emerged into a broad hallway, flanked by thick columns. Somewhere a cresset glowed, lighting the place fitfully and dimly. Baber Khan had extinguished his electric torch. But in the light of the cresset O'Donnell saw the black mute Orkhan Bahadur had given him as a body guard—more a royal gesture than anything else, for Orkhan did not suppose that Ali el Ghazi had enemies in Shahrazar. The black man must have been dozing when the killers crept upon him, for he had had no chance to use his wide-tipped tulwar. His white eye-balls were rolled up, glimmering whitely in the torch-light. His black throat was cut from ear to ear.
The eldritch group saw no one as they stole down the weirdly lurid hallway. They might have been ghosts of some of the many men whose blood had stained that pillared hall since the days of Timur-il-leng, and the Tatar sultans. Silence lay over the palace, the silence of death-like slumber. They came to a stair which led downward, and down this they went, into swallowing gloom. On a lower landing they halted, and O'Donnell felt himself forced to his haunches. He could see nothing, but he felt hairy silk-clad bodies pressing him close. A voice whispered so close to his ear that the hot breath burned him.