CHAPTER XXIX
THE SAYAK FURY
Edith was fully awake, but exhausted by her long vigil and the events of the last hours. It was hard for her to grasp all that came upon the heels of the caravan.
It was not long before she was conscious of a high voice from the plain not far from the Kurgan. It came out of the moonlight, wailing and shadowy as the light itself in its substance.
She could not distinguish the words. Donovan, every faculty bent into listening, breathed softly. An attentive quiet had settled upon the castle. Edith caught the drift of strange syllables, intoned after the fashion of a chant. The voice came nearer and grew more distinct.
"By Jove!"
She took Donovan's arm. "What is it?"
"Mahmoud. It is some kind of message. Something about the caravan being prepared. Listen:
"The stars are setting!" he repeated, "and the caravan … starts for the dawn of … nothing. O, make haste."
"It's queer." Edith shivered, not perceiving that the night cold had gripped her in her sleep. "Why, he is walking in front of the camels, and coming here."
Donovan was intent on what was passing. The chant went on.
"For the men of faith a fitting grave is dug," he murmured. "But for some there is no grave.… Their seats are empty, in which they shall ride … The master of the caravan calls, and they will come … when what is written will come to pass"
Edith could see Mahmoud now. Wrapped in his long cloak, the hakim moved through the moonlight like some disembodied spirit. His lean arms were raised. His voice shrilled into the air.
Owing to the waning moon and the shadows cast by the moving forms of the camels, the appearance of Mahmoud, as he shifted from shadow to shadow, from place to place, was illusory. Long watching had strained Edith's sight so that she experienced the phenomenon known to those who have centered their faculties of attention throughout a night vigil—a blurring of outlines and a disturbance of vision that cloaked the vista of the plain with the aspect of a mirage. But the caravan was no mirage.
Edith was not the only one in the Kurgan to be bewildered.
Flashes from the rampart lanced into the murk; shattering reports assailed her ears. The firing grew heavier—became thunderous. A camel squealed; the voice of Mahmoud, heard in the brief intervals between shots, went on, although the cloaked figure seemed to have sunk to the ground.
Donovan laughed through set teeth.
"So Monsey's men have nerves," he cried, "even as you and I. That shooting is out of hand."
He watched the scene under them keenly, hands cupped beside his eyes. Swirling smoke eddied across his vision, veiling the courtyard except for the rifle flashes. All the firing seemed to be directed at Mahmoud.
"Not much good bombarding the landscape at night," he shouted to Edith cheerfully. "It excites the men and makes a lot of smoke. I've seen it before this."
She pressed trembling hands to her ears, wondering whether his words were not intended merely to hearten her.
"What is … happening?" she cried. "And Mahmoud?"
"Some mummery of the hakim … always means something…. Wait."
His disjointed sentences barely reached her. Then he gripped her arm and bent forward.
New sounds were adrift in the courtyard. Horses neighed—hoofs beat upon stone. Men shouted and cursed. To Edith, struggling with wavering senses, the Kurgan and the plain alike were an ocean in which shapes darted and a flood of plunging forms swept under the tower. She heard Donovan cry:
"The horses are loosed."
In the smoky murk she could see nothing clearly. A horrid sound rose from the further end of the Kurgan—a man's scream. It seemed to her that new forms, white and gray, pressed past the base of the tower, on the broken roof of the hold, and swept over the distant wall to the north.
Surely she caught the gleam of bare steel, against the flash of a rifle. The shooting dwindled, but voices growled and roared.
"Sayak!" And again: "Sayak!"
Then came the words, clearly to the girl:
"Tahir el kadr." And again: "Dono-van Khan—ho!—Dono-van Khan!"
Donovan's lips almost touched her ear. "By Jove! That was clever, what? The Sayaks have crept through the breaches to the north and south and have cut loose the horses. They have launched a surprise attack"
With the word, he left her. The girl saw him dive down the stairs. A fresh uproar had arisen in the interior of the tower. There was a crashing of wood and the impact of running feet, followed by the swift, regular crack of a rifle.
Stunned, she sought for Donovan. Peering over the parapet, she saw a lantern flicker into light in the mid-courtyard. Monsey and some of his Tartars were visible beside it, the Russian hatless, his face wet with perspiration, a smoking revolver in his hand.
On a pile of stones, Edith made out a Sayak boy, sighting a musket that was longer than his own body; behind the boy cloaked forms waved bare knives. Surely these were women. Edith even fancied that she saw the majestic form of the hadji of Yakka Arik moving on the rampart.
Monsey was shouting to his men. She caught the flash of his revolver, before a mass of rushing Sayaks swept toward him and the light went out suddenly, leaving the Kurgan in its murk. Cries of pain and anger resounded. Edith recollected that Donovan must have disappeared down the stairs and turned after him, her one thought to find him and keep close to his side.
At the last landing where Aravang had been left a struggle was progressing in the dark, revealed vaguely by a lantern placed on the heap of logs, broken beams, and firewood that had risen close to the opening in the floor.
Bodies thrashed about the stones, dark faces alight with panic peered up into the opening from below, while men fought to push themselves up through the aperture.
On the lowest step of the stairs, just in front of her, the girl recognized Donovan instinctively. He was swinging a clubbed rifle at the tide of enemies. Several bodies at his feet half choked the opening.
Then Edith realized that the men of the Kurgan had not waited to light the pile under the tower, but were using it to storm their sanctuary. Two forms, locked in conflict, rolled downward through the opening.
A body was pulled from the aperture which glowed redly like the entrance to some purgatory. She saw the evil face of Abbas peering up, as Donovan was pressed back and grappled by a squat Tartar.
It seemed to the girl that the Alaman had come to seek her, despite the fury that was raging without. His purpose was reënforced by the terror of his men, to whom the tower loomed as a refuge from the deadlier hatred without.
Her heart quickened as she saw Donovan struggling silently with the native on the steps below her. Abbas also had seen the Englishman, and his arm drew back, a knife in its palm. Fire surged through the girl's body and gripped her brain.
She clasped the revolver she held in both hands, pointed it at the Alaman's broad face and pulled the trigger. The report bellowed in the confined space.
Seldom have women, even the bravest, been able to resist closing their eyes when they discharged a weapon. With lids tight shut Edith continued to press the trigger savagely. She was fighting for the man she loved. To save Donovan, she would have gripped Abbas with bare hands. So, since the first ages of man, have women fought when peril faced their husbands and children. And so were native women fighting that night in the Kurgan.
Edith, her eyes still tight shut, continued to pull the trigger of her revolver, even after it clicked fruitlessly and all the cartridges had sped from its chambers, even the one that the girl, mindful of the Mohammedan legend, had thought was marked for her. The tower had grown quieter. Presently she was conscious of a cheery voice:
"Cease firing, Edith."
She opened her eyes. The bodies still stirred on the stone floor of the tower room; the lantern flickered on the logs below. Sounds of conflict swept in from without. But the stair and the pile of wood were empty of foes, and Donovan was not to be seen.
"Where are you?" she exclaimed anxiously.
"Present." Donovan emerged from under the stairs, directly beneath her feet and stepped swiftly to her side. He was laughing. "I took to the first dugout handy when you began to strafe the place. Brave girl!"
His eyes were tender as he bent over her. She shivered, staring down at the lantern, unable to realize the truth that he was still well and whole, at her side. Then she clung to him, burying her head in his shoulder.
"Did—did I kill Abbas?" He heard her choked voice from somewhere under his chin.
"Abbas?, No, you missed him, with something to spare. Aravang was alive and kicking in the mêlée below. He pulled the Alaman down, I think. By rights that native of yours ought to be dead a dozen times before now. But he isn't—thanks to some Providence that looks after his kind. Edith, do you realize you saved my life?" He was talking quickly, anxiously, his eyes fixed on the vista of the room below, with its array of broken men that he shielded carefully from her sight.
"I? How?"
"Well," he laughed again, not altogether steadily, "your first shot knocked the brains out of that Tartar on top of me. The others ran from your barrage after Aravang tackled their chief. So did I—run. You creased the back of my jaw just a little with a bullet, besides singeing my neck. I fancy your last shot got Aravang in the leg. I heard him swear"
"Oh, dear! I meant to shoot Abbas."
She looked up, her lips trembling with a smile. For the first time she saw Donovan's tired face, spotted with blood—from his slain antagonist—and with a dark line running down from his own injured chin.
"Oh!"
Edith fainted in his arms.
Aravang's mighty strength had held the stairs at the head of the pile of wood until Donovan's rifle came to his aid; but by then the kul was grappling with an agile Kurd who slashed at him with a knife and tore at his face with fanglike teeth. The two had rolled to the floor under Donovan's feet and out into the opening through which the men of Abbas were pressing warily against the swinging rifle butt over their heads.
Fortunately for Aravang, his foes were half-mad with panic born of the peril that had overwhelmed the walls of the stronghold. For not alone had the fighting men of Yakka Arik come to the assault under cover of Mahmoud's diversion in front of the tower. Women, boys, and old men, the Sayaks had come, summoned by Iskander during the hours of quiet after Donovan's warning, armed with whatever they could lay hand on and ready to die in the defense of their homes and the temple. And at their head the hadji had advanced.
So the men about Abbas felt in their hearts a greater fear than that of the mystery of Yakka Arik—the fear of righteously angered women and aged men led by a priest, of fathers and husbands who cared not for their own lives so long as the marauders were slain—and the struggling Aravang was unheeded until he rose, swaying above the body of his victim, the Kurd.
Just at that moment Abbas, standing above him on the wood, reached for his knife. And Aravang, seeing this, groped for Abbas with teeth agrin. A pawlike hand jerked the Alaman down, behind the pile, and the bloody face of the kul glared in his.
"Aid!" Abbas Abad screamed: "Aid—O my worthy friends—leave me not"
But down through the aperture came the ragged fusillade from the revolver of Edith Rand, and the followers of Abbas fled away from this new peril, crying that the place was bewitched and that there were spirits in the tower. Abbas felt on the stone floor for the knife which had dropped from his hand in his fall and saw that Aravang had set his foot on it. And he read his death in the savage eyes that flamed into his.
"Thou art the man," roared Aravang, "who would have burned my mistress. Taste then what thou hast stored up!"
Aravang had taken a small log in his free hand, and upon this the eyes of the merchant fastened while prayers and offers of money flooded from his quivering lips. In the midst of his begging he flung his stout body forward, seeking to upset the kul, his hand clutching for the precious knife. Aravang stepped back swiftly and Abbas reached the knife—only to sink down upon it, his skull shattered by a blow from the log driven down with all the kul's weight behind it.
Then Aravang took up the body of his enemy in his arms and strode over the massed wood, limping under the hurt of Edith's wandering bullet, but inexorable in his purpose.
He staggered forward among frantic horses toward a group of Tartars who had flocked together in the center of the courtyard, while the struggle ebbed about them in the moonlight. He stepped over bodies that writhed on the stones and pushed aside unheeding a Sayak girl who was moaning out her life, a bayonet in her breast
"Sayak!" he heard the battle cry of the tribe: "Sayak!"
The darkness under the parapets was rife with sound and movement as scattered Tartars and Alamans sought vainly for leaders and gave back under blows from swords that they could not see.
"They are devils!" cried one. "Flee—flee!"
Aravang headed toward where he could see two robed Sayaks standing and a third kneeling. Beside them a figure lay prone on the floor. As he approached, the kul heard the kneeling Sayak speaking very quietly.
"Taman shud (it is finished)," Iskander was saying, swaying upon his knees. "Ohé, my enemy is slain by my hand … as I have sworn … it has come to pass."
Then Aravang saw that the body on the stones was that of Monsey. Beside it he tossed the bulky form that was Abbas, and turned to Mahmoud, who, with the hadji, stood beside the Arab chieftain.
"The son of Tahir is dying," said Mahmoud to Aravang.
While the fury without ebbed through the Kurgan Donovan sat passively on the lowest step, holding the precious burden of the woman close to his chest. Having assured himself that she was uninjured, he waited, stroking the coils of heavy hair that had fallen loose upon her shoulders.
And while he waited, for the fall of the dice of destiny, the battling elements of this world of the hills tore at each other, and parted.
The smoke lifted and drifted away from the walls of the castle. In the heavens, the moon declined behind the cloud bank to the west, and the stars alone looked down upon the mountain top.
To the exhausted watcher on the stairs it seemed as if his life and the life of the woman in his arms were carried onward by a current he could no longer resist. But he held her firmly, joyful in the knowledge that they could not now be parted.
Footsteps approached the tower entrance slowly. Looking down, Donovan saw Mahmoud peering up at him apathetically, a lantern held in a clawlike hand. Behind him Aravang limped, soaked in his own blood, blackened and bruised, wounded in body and every limb, but keeping himself stoically upright.
"Salaam, Mahmoud," said the Englishman. "Is the fighting finished?"
"It is finished."
"And the son of Tahir?"
"He is no more. He sought the man Monsey and found him." The hakim beckoned. "Come, Dono-van Khan. You must leave the castle. Your work here is done."
With that, he turned away. The Englishman rose stiffly and carried his burden into the courtyard, where masses of Sayaks—men, women, and boys—were gathered about the dark groups of prisoners. He stepped over prone bodies and went down the steps to the plain where the horses were being collected and a string of camels waited. Aravang followed.
They went onward until they came to the edge of the woods, where the native led Donovan to an open ravine where was the bed of a stream and pools of fresh water. Here they bathed Edith's face, somewhat hopelessly—being unskilled in caring for the needs of a woman—and sat down to wait until she should return to her senses.
Presently a glimmer of fiery light crept through the screen of trees between them and the plateau, and the crackle of flames came to their ears.
Donovan questioned the native with a glance.
"Mahmoud, the all-wise, has set fire to the Kurgan, Excellency. Thus will the bodies, all except two, be buried and the nest of the dead Vulture will be no more."
The white man nodded.
"So, Iskander led the Sayaks into the north and south of the Kurgan, Aravang," he mused, "while Mahmoud drew their attention and fire to the west? It was well done. Yet whence came these numbers?"
He spoke idly, his gaze on the unconscious girl, as if merely confirming his belief as to what had passed. Aravang was resting his head on his bent arms—both men numbed by pain and the relief from long suspense.
"Excellency, during the pause between the first attack and the end, the whole village of Yakka Arik came to the Kurgan. You saw what followed, when rifles were useless before daggers near at hand in the dark. But it was the fear of Mahmoud that brought it to pass."
"Fear?" Donovan dipped his hand into the water and laid it on Edith's curls gently. "I wonder. Then, after all, as Major Fraser-Carnie might say, it was merely a question of morale. But why did the camels come?"
Aravang did not reply at once.
"Soon you will see," he muttered.