CHAPTER XXVII
SANCTUARY OF THE TOWER
By now the aspect of the courtyard had changed. Alamans, Kurds, and Tartars were lying on their sides behind the ramparts, mostly to the west. Others stood by the horses, and still others by the unlit flares.
The trap was set.
Edith, as she made her way to the hold, saw Abbas, lantern in hand, talking to one of the groups of men. He looked at her keenly, but seeing the figure of a native shadowing her, was content to call out:
"You don' forget me, Abbas Abad. You watch for me, yess, by Allah!"
With a sigh of relief the girl gained the semi-gloom of the room under the tower. In her absence a lantern had been brought to the Tartar on guard—a broad Mongol wearing a round black hat, a bandoleer of cartridges over his shoulder.
Beside him Donovan leaned against the table. Edith advanced toward the ladder slowly, wondering how the armed sentry was to be dealt with. Donovan must be freed. It was for that she had come to the room.
Apparently the prisoner had not noticed her; but his eyes had quickened and he stood with both feet planted firmly on the floor. Here, however, was a situation which Aravang felt himself competent to master without any assistance. He grinned and seated himself on the sizable packing case on which the Tartar loafed.
The man scanned him with some suspicion and without making room for the burly native. Edith paused, holding her breath. She saw Aravang turn toward the guard as if to say something. The man stared at him from slant, cruel eyes that widened and started from their sockets as a steel-like hand flew up and closed about his throat.
No cry was uttered. Aravang still sat on the box. But in his two hands he held the writhing Tartar helpless.
Releasing one hand, Aravang thrust the other's bulletlike head against the stone wall. There was a dull crack and the figure of the guard slumped upon the. box.
"Some one is coming," said Donovan quietly, first in English then in Turki. Aravang stood up with knotted hands, as if prepared to face and conquer new enemies for the sake of his mistress. Edith, however, had seen Monsey and a party of his men walking toward the tower. They were armed and seemed in haste.
Urgent need spurred the girl's aroused wit. She could explain nothing to Aravang. Instead, she sprang forward, turned over the box and pointed into its empty depths.
Donovan caught her purpose at once and barked a short command at Aravang. Their powerful friend moved slowly, but with two motions of his great arms he had lifted the unconscious sentry from the floor where the man had slipped into the box. Then he turned the box right side up, over the body, concealing all trace of his victim.
Yet not before Edith had pulled the bandoleer from the Tartar's shoulder, and the round cap from his head. She stripped off Aravang's heavy woolen hat and flung it into a corner, planting the Tartar's cap in its place and the cartridge belt over his arm. Meanwhile Aravang picked up the rifle, which he handled clumsily—not being accustomed to possession of such modern weapons.
Edith faced about as Monsey strode into the door, flung her a quick glance and moved toward Donovan.
"I can spare only a moment," the Russian smiled. "But after I have kept an appointment with the Sayaks I intend to return" he broke off. "Where is the other guard?"
He looked quickly from Donovan to the girl. His men watched from the doorway. Aravang, not understanding, was mute. Before Donovan could speak, Edith answered.
"Ask Abbas," she said. "He wants me to wait for him—after your appointment."
"The devil!"
"I think he is," Edith smiled.
Knowing Abbas, Monsey did not question her. And then there was the dull report of a rifle from the plateau. The Tartars stirred uneasily.
"Announcing our visitors," observed Monsey. He felt Donovan's bonds, muttering that he liked to be sure of his reception when he called again.
"One can never be too sure," nodded Donovan affably.
The Russian ordered the girl curtly up the ladder to the tower. "And no tricks, my lady." Edith obeyed with surprising readiness. After glancing around and making sure that all was as he wished, Monsey strode toward the door as a scattered burst of firing resounded nearer the Kurgan."
When he left the room his men followed. Edith, in the upper chamber, waited impatiently until Aravang's shaggy head was thrust up into the opening. Behind him came Donovan, stroking the wrists that the cords had numbed. The three faced each other silently in the gloom. It was Edith who spoke first.
"Come," she said thoughtfully, "to the tower top."
Donovan had taken the native's weapon and the bandoleer. He jerked open the breech, made sure that a cartridge was inserted, and ordered Aravang to surrender his revolver to Edith.
"Why?" he frowned. "I rather like it here—as a base of operations.'
"Because I want you to," insisted the girl.
Familiar by now with the damaged stairway, she advanced up to the open air. Donovan followed more slowly.
Night had fallen. But splinters of light were thrusting into the gloom of the Kurgan as the waiting men began to light the kerosene-soaked flares. First one and then another pine bundle crackled and blazed.
By the growing light they could see dark figures running up the Kurgan's entryway, and the line of Monsey's men standing behind the parapet. These had not yet begun to fire. The reports Edith had heard came from the patrols as they were driven back to the moat.
Near the rocks on the further plateau she thought she saw the light robes of groups of men moving. Overhead the stars had claimed the sky and the half-moon was shedding a hazy light Donovan took it all in.
"Monsey is no man's fool," he muttered. "He knows his men are liable to stampede under the old fear of the Sayaks, in the dark. Those flares"
"Quick!" cried Edith. "We must do something before it is too late."
The man paid her a tribute of admiration in a swift glance. Then his eyes hardened with recollection of the peril below. The whole vista of the courtyard was fast being revealed by the sputtering flares. The door leading to the hold and the tower where they stood must be clearly outlined to any one who chanced to look that way. It would be difficult, practically impossible, to escape from the door into the courtyard without being seen.
Still, that was their only chance of safety, Donovan reasoned. A quick sally, a rush to one of the breaks in the wall on a side away from the Sayak attack—a gantlet of bullets
He knelt down, resting his rifle on a fallen timber, waist-high, and searched for Abbas. Edith tugged at his shoulder vigorously.
"What, dear?" he asked, without shifting his position.
"Not that, Donovan Khan," the girl exclaimed. "That is not why I brought you here.'
"Righto!" he murmured cheerily. "But it will help, you know"
"No—not that." She crouched beside him, her face close to his. "Don't you see? We can do more than that!"
A ragged volley came out of the gloom, two hundred yards across the plateau. Under cover of the swirling smoke that rose over the ground, they saw groups of Sayaks advancing. Behind the parapet the waiting cohorts held their fire, as Monsey, running back and forth, swore at them angrily. The Englishman knew that when an answering volley came from the Kurgan it must do deadly execution among the attackers, who, besides the disadvantage of numbers and inferior arms, had the glare of the pine torches in their eyes.
"We must warn the Sayaks, Donovan Khan."
His eye fixed on Monsey, he did not grasp at first the full significance of her words. She shook him impatiently. "Call to Iskander. Or it will be too late."
"Too late? Ah!"
The instant Donovan understood her purpose, its whole meaning was clear to the mind of the soldier. Laying down his weapon he took the girl's hand in his and studied her anxiously.
"Hurry!" she whispered.
"You do not know it all, Edith. Our warning might check the Sayak attack, but it would bring all these beggars of Monsey's on us, at the tower. It would cut us off. Our only chance is a surprise sally—and we would be throwing that chance away"
"I understand."
"During the fighting, if we keep silence, we might slip away, Edith, I will not throw aside your chance."
Her eyes held him. He could see every shade of expression in her eager face by the glare below. And he saw no fear—only pride and urgent need.
"Donovan Khan, you told me that the Sayaks would continue to storm the Kurgan until they are utterly cut to pieces." She did not wait for his answer. "We can save the lives of a hundred men. And then Yakka Arik"
Edith sighed. "I am thinking of the women of Yakka Arik.
"We can save them, Donovan Khan, perhaps. Now, hurry." The girl gave him a little push as a second volley—harmless as the first—came from the scattered muskets of the oncoming natives. "Don't you see? It doesn't matter—you and I. We will have each other; they can't change that, now, can they?"
Donovan had seen men, before now, fling their bodies into the face of death. It was something of a miracle to him, this settled purpose of the girl at his side. He rose, with a laugh that had much gladness in it.
"By Jove! You are playing the game, Edith."
Donovan, once convinced, was a man of action. He cupped his hands to his mouth and faced the gloom of the plateau in which he could now make out the Sayaks not a hundred yards away.
"Iskander, son of Tahir!" His shout rang out clearly over the bustle below and the confused sounds from the near-by natives. "Go back!"
He had spoken in Turki. Men stared up from the courtyard at the tower in astonishment. Hands were withdrawn from rifles. Monsey seemed turned to a graven image of attention. Donovan continued in English.
"Iskander, Donovan Khan is speaking. A trap has been set. Twice your numbers are in the Kurgan with magazine rifles."
Crack-crack! Monsey's revolver spat at the tower summit, the bullets thudding into the beams overhead. Edith fancied that the Sayaks had halted. Donovan paid no attention to the shots.
"’Ware the ditch!" he shouted, in the silence that now held the castle. "It is dug out and staked, in front of you. Monsey has prepared for you. Go back!"
A pause, in which Edith strained her ears. Then came Iskander's answering hail out of the dark:
"Dono-van Khan, I hear."
In response to a command the girl could not distinguish, the forms of the Sayaks began to melt back into the rocks and trees. As if to confirm the warning, a heavy volley burst from the wall of the castle—too late now to do serious harm. Confused firing was kept up by Monsey's men, who seemed to have been startled by the voice from the tower and were emptying their weapons across the plateau. Faintly, Edith heard the Arab's second hail
"I hear … and will not forget …"