El Borak and Other Desert Adventures by Robert E. Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

curtain drawn across an archway. Bardylis had said there were no thieves in Attalus, but caution was so much a natural part of Gordon that he found himself a preyto uneasiness. The room opened onto a corridor, and the corridor, he believed, gave onto an outer door. The people of Attalus apparently did not find it necessary to safeguard their dwellings; but though a native might sleep in safety, that might not apply to a stranger.
    Finally Gordon drew aside the couch which formed the main piece of furniture for the chamber, and making sure no spying eyes were on him, he worked loose one of the small stone blocks which composed the wall. Taking the silk-bound packet from his shirt, he thrust it into the aperture, pushed back the stone as far as it would go, and replaced the couch.
    Stretching himself, then, upon the couch, he fell to evolving plans for escape with his life and those papers which meant so much to the peace of Asia. He was safe enough in the valley, but he knew Hunyadi would wait for him outside with the patience of a cobra. He could not stay here forever. He would scale the cliffs some dark night and bolt for it. Hunyadi would undoubtedly have all the tribes in the hills after him, but he would trust to luck and his good right arm, as he had so often before. The wine he had drunk was potent; weariness after the long flight weighted his limbs. Gordon’s meditations merged into dream. He slept deeply and long.

IV

    When Gordon awoke it was in utter darkness. He knew that he had slept for many hours, and night had fallen. Silence reigned over the house, but he had been awakened by the soft swish of the curtains over the doorway.
    He sat up on his couch and asked: “Is that you, Bardylis?”
    A voice grunted, “Yes.” Even as he was electrified by the realization that the voice was
not
that of Bardylis, something crashed down on his head, and a deeper blackness, shot with fire-sparks, engulfed him.
    When he regained consciousness, a torch dazzled his eyes, and in its glow he saw three men — burly, yellow-haired men of Attalus with faces more stupid and brutish than any he had yet seen. He was lying on a stone slab in a bare chamber, whose crumbling, cobwebbed walls were vaguely illumined by the gutturing torch. His arms were bound, but not his legs. The sound of a door opening made him crane his neck, and he saw a stooped, vulture-like figure enter the room. It was Abdullah, the Tajik.
    He looked down on the American with his rat-like features twisted in a venomous grin.
    “Low lies the terrible El Borak!” he taunted. “Fool! I knew you the instant I saw you in the palace of Ptolemy.”
    “You have no feud with me,” growled Gordon.
    “A friend of mine has,” answered the Tajik. “That is nothing to me, but itshall gain me profit. It is true you have never harmed me, but I have always feared you. So when I saw you in the city, I gathered my goods and hastened to depart, not knowing what you did here. But beyond the pass I met the
Feringhi
Hunyadi, and he asked me if I had seen you in the valley of Iskander, whither you had fled to escape him. I answered that I had, and he urged me to help him steal into the valley and take from you certain documents he said you stole from him.
    “But I refused, knowing that these Attalan devils would kill me if I tried to smuggle a stranger into Iskander, and Hunyadi went back into the hills with his four Turks, and the horde of ragged Afghans he has made his friends and allies. When he had gone I returned to the valley, telling the guardsmen at the pass that I feared the Pathans.
    “I persuaded these three men to aid me in capturing you. None will know what became of you, and Ptolemy will not trouble himself about you, because he is jealous of your strength. It is an old tradition that the king of Attalus must be the strongest man in the city. Ptolemy would have killed you himself, in time. But I will attend to that. I do not wish to have you on my trail, after I