In the mountains the light of the sun is strongest; there the shadows are deepest. The herds find there the richest grass, and the water that rushes from the snows overhead.

In the mountains the herder sleeps under the open eyes of God. And he hears the voice of the winds, betokening sunrise and storm.

In the mountains the eagle beholds the world beneath his wings.

Is an eagle to be found in the lowlands? Nay—naught is there but the sparrow-hawk and kite.

Afghan proverb

Chan, the minstrel, rose and girded tight his shawl-belt. It was the hour of sunset and the namaz gar—the evening prayer. From the village below his tent Chan could hear the mullah’s cry; but although scarcely a village in the southern foothills of the Himalayas did not join in the prayer to the Prophet in the year 1609, Chan heeded neither mullah’s cry nor his own spiritual welfare.

Sunset to Chan the minstrel meant sometimes supper of mutton or rice and sometimes a yearning stomach. This evening, however, he had left the stock of rice and dried apricots in his felt tent untasted. He had been engaged in the more important work of composing a love lyric.

The song was finished—and the Afghan youth boasted a critical ear, schooled in the musical modes of the wandering bards of Samarkand, likewise a skilled finger to stir the one string of his guitar—and Chan sprang into the saddle of his pony, which had been grazing behind the tent. He adjusted the shagreen quiver of arrows behind his left shoulder, slinging his guitar over his right arm.

Chan was a dark-faced, merry-eyed youth—although a wisdom beyond his years, born of many privations and no little fighting, lurked behind the smile in those same brown eyes. The zirih— sleeveless coat of mail—gripped his lithe body tightly under the ragged and travel-stained red-velvet cloak. Blue turquoise glimmered on the dagger-hilt that peered from his girdle, and a brown cap of sable fur topped his black locks.

His pony began to trot mechanically down toward the village as the minstrel hummed the refrain of his new lyric triumphantly. An unstrung bow bobbed at his saddle-peak. Chan, who was as skilled at making play with bowstring as guitar string, had long ago passed the test of Afghan archery—to shoot, at full gallop, an arrow at a mark, loosen the bow and use it as a whip, then restring to let fly another arrow at the same mark.

“My bow for an enemy, my song for my mistress,” he hummed, “and both, my faith, reach to the heart—aye, both to the heart.”

Thus sang Chan as he trotted onward, fully prepared to take either weapon in hand—so uncertain were these times in the hills of Hindustan.

“Nay,” he murmured to the ears of his pony that twitched back responsively; “shall we sew the pearls of wit upon the cord of love or ply the arrow-stitches of vengeance! Hai—ohai, the day is fair and soon we shall see the gray stone walls that enclose the fairest jewel of paradise!”

Meditating in this manner, he passed through the village—not without a tentative sniff at the odors that rose with the smoke of the cooking-fires before the huts. He called cheerily at the flocks of black-faced sheep that pressed home from the pasture trails. Snatching at a cluster of dying, yellow roses, he arrayed the blossoms bravely in his cap.

The pony, knowing well the way, passed rapidly under twisted junipers, over grassy downs, and by glens already shadowy with evening. A wind, stirring in lazy gusts from the mountain passes overhead, tossed the dried balls of gray thistles before the rider, who struck at them readily with his bow.

Chan’s hut had been on the mountain slope just within the upper timber line where he could watch what was going on in the valleys, fully prepared to flee to the rocky passes if need be. Overhead, the giant shoulders of the Koh-i-Baba thrust up from the pine forest; still farther rose the barren wastes of the heights to the snow peaks, encrimsoned by the setting sun.

He was now riding through the fertile uplands of the province known to his race as Badakshan, which was on the marches of the empire of Hindustan, the border above Kabul Valley, and the passes through the Hindu Kush—the Shyr and Khyber Passes, already scenes of age-old battles—and a thorn in the side of the emperor of Hindustan, Padishah Jahangir, the Mogul, Lord of the World and Master of Ind.

Without guidance the pony turned aside from the valley trail through the dried broom that led to a gorge under one of the cliffs. Here an apple orchard almost concealed a tiny sandstone house. Chan tethered his mount to one of the trees and advanced, peering about him in the uncertain light.

Overhead the sky was still blue and the sun was blood-colored behind the summits, but in the gorge darkness fell swiftly, and already a star or two was winking into being in the East. A dog slunk off at his approach. Chan glanced at it in some surprise, humming still as he took his guitar in hand.

Under a rose-bush near the house wall he sat cross-legged, and smiled. Within the stone wall, he thought, a lovely girl would be expecting his song. Chan, of course, had never seen her face, but he had talked with her and knew that she must be lovely.

Then his figure stiffened and he looked attentively at the ground.

Many horses had passed here since his last visit. The bushes were broken through in places and the earth trampled. The minstrel ran an exploring finger over one of the imprints and drew in his breath sharply, feeling the mark of leather shoes.

For a space the man was silent, his senses keenly alert. The quietude of the stone house weighed upon him, and he remem-

bered the furtive manner of the dog. He even fancied that he heard a moan issue from within.

Abruptly the howl of the dog disturbed him. Chan sprang up and ran into the door, stooping under the low portal. At his feet he could make out a human body that moved and sighed. A glance around the bare stone chamber, and a second, more hesitant, into the screened woman’s quarters, showed him that no one else was to be seen.

He bent over the form at his feet and saw that it was the mother of the house.

“Aie!” she cried, seeing Chan. “Aie!”

“What has come to pass? Whither your daughter—”

The mother rose to her knees, tresses disheveled about her shoulders and her hands bloodied. She who had often driven him from the orchard with abuse grasped his knees, leaving thereon the stains of torn fingers.

“Evil has come upon this house. Riders passed along the road, and one saw the child of my heart and liver watching from under the trees. They took her, and beat me when I cried out—taking the rings from my fingers—”

The woman held up her hands and Chan saw that two fingers had been cut off. He freed himself from her grasp, drawing a long breath, and stepped toward the door.

“Who were the riders, and whither did they turn their horses’ heads?”

For a space the mother was silent, looking fearfully out of the door. Then a fresh outburst of grief overcame her.

“Alacha, the Slayer, it was, with his men. May Ali the just pursue him with retribution! May he taste the evil he has stored up for others! Barkallah! O Chan, brave Chan, men say you are quick and shrewd. Mount, good Chan, speed your shaft—”

Mechanically the young minstrel slung the guitar over his back and strung his bow.

“Went they south or north?”

“South, toward the camp of that black Turkoman, Alacha.” Her weak voice rose in sudden terror. “Strike not at Alacha, foolish one! Anger not those who hold the valley within their grasp. Nay—send the shaft into the breast of my pearl of beauty, my innocent daughter—”

But the minstrel strode from door and house, mounting with a single leap. Behind him the peasant woman rocked in her misery, heedless of her own hurt. Chan wore no spurs, yet the pony wheeled away at full gallop at the urge of its rider.

Alacha, sometimes called the Kara, or Black Turkoman, was the landholder of the valley of Badakshan—that wide, fertile valley which was more like a plain, high in the foothills of the Himalayas, wherein were the villages of the Afghans and the Mongol Hazaras and great Balkh, the mother of cities. Alacha was jagirdar, or fief -holder of the Mogul, and his authority over the land was absolute so long as the yearly tax of grain, animals, cloths, and silver was paid by him to the Mogul and judicious presents were sent to the court at the festivals.

Surrounded by his Turkoman, Persian and Uzbek followers, living in his stately, moving camp, the Slayer had well earned the name bestowed on him by the Afghan tribes of the country-side. Perhaps for this reason he had been selected by Jahangir, the Mogul, as a fitting ruler of Badakshan, which was far from peaceful. Once the warriors of Badakshan had aided the Mogul during the stress of battle, but the memory of an emperor is short, and independence is the breath of life to an Afghan.

To resist the authority of Alacha was to strike against the might of the Mogul. To lift weapon against the rulers of the valley was to risk the terrors of fire and pillage. So the mother in her grief had known, and so Chan knew. But the minstrel was great of soul.

Riding swiftly beyond the confines of the village, he passed the last of the tilled land and so came at full gallop to a rise in the trail where, silhouetted against the afterglow of the sky, two riders sat their horses.

They were tall men, fully armed. One by the drape of his turban and his long cloak appeared an Afghan. But Chan made out at his shoulder a small, round shield of a kind worn by followers of the Mogul. The other rider, bearded and wide of shoulder, wore a peculiar sheepskin hat tilted on one side of his shaggy head.

Both sat their horses easily, watching him. Both were powerful men, travel-stained. Neither spoke as he neared them, but he of the turban dressed his shield swiftly, seeing Chan pluck forth an arrow from over his shoulder.

Never doubting that the two were an afterguard of the armed party that had carried off the girl, Chan loosed the arrow. It rang against metal on the chest of the turbaned rider. The next moment Chan was on his foe, discarding his bow for the long Persian dagger in his girdle.

The minstrel struck swiftly, wheeling his pony as the rider maneuvered his own mount readily. Steel clashed against steel as Chan sought to close with his adversary, who faced him silently without giving ground. Momentarily Chan thought to feel the weapon of the other warrior strike his unprotected back. But the tall wearer of the sheepskin hat watched passively, even laughing once deep in his throat.

“Ho, stealer of women!” grunted the minstrel hotly, for it was his fashion to speak aloud while fighting and ever to voice the thought that was in his mind. “Despoiler of a home! Tearer of the veil of a maiden’s chastity! Dog—”

Thus addressed, he of the turban caught Chan’s wrist with his free hand and with a grip of remorseless fingers loosened the minstrel’s hold on the dagger until the weapon clanged to earth.

Unarmed, Chan fronted his foe resolutely, stunned by the swift skill that had overcome him as if he were a child in arms.

“Aye, dog,” he muttered, “for you bear the insignia of shame, being yet an Afghan—” he pointed at the round shield—“for, like a dog you stray about seeking the scraps that fall from the Mogul’s table and lick the hand that crushes the life from your race!”

Instead of striking the youth, the warrior of the turban drew a long, hissing breath and peered intently at Chan’s face as if to mark his adversary. His own features were veiled by a loosened fold of the turban. And, bending head upon chest, he seemed to draw back into the screening shadows of evening. It was the silent watcher who spoke.

“Stripling, do your arrows burn in their quiver that you loose them thus? We are no takers of women. Some riders passed, at speed, two bow-shots before you, and in the dust of their going I saw a woman across the saddle-peak of one. Likewise another woman ran after them screaming. If you seek them, go—but look before you loose a second shaft.”

Chan peered from one to the other, bewildered.

“Be you not men of the Mogul?”

“Aye, and—nay. Go!”

Glancing at the fierce eyes that bored into his from under shaggy brows, Chan stooped to snatch up his dagger without quitting saddle. He gathered up his reins, muttering to himself, “This is no man of human mold—” measuring the long waist, high shoulders and massive thews of the taller warrior—“and verily his mate is a swordsman of the brood of hell—”

“Of the Mogul’s bodyguard,” grunted he of the sheepskin hat. “O one of small wit, you have crossed steel with him who is master of the scimitar in all Hindustan. There is another riddle for your addle-pate. Now, go!”

And Chan galloped away, not before his late adversary had checked him long enough to learn his name.

He urged his horse along the grassy trail, peering into the gathering shadows as he went. It was not long before he reined in suddenly, throwing his pony back on its haunches.

Leaping from the saddle, Chan ran to a white huddle that lay across the road. It was the form of a young woman, unveiled. Where throat met breast the hilt of a dagger projected, and under the still head and scattered tresses the earth was damp.

Chan shaded his eyes to search the trail ahead, but saw only a haze of dust at a distant turn.

“Alacha has passed,” he sighed.

Barely could be make out the face of the dead woman— rounded, innocent features, stained with dust, dark eyes that strained wildly up at the empty vault of the skies, a full, young mouth twisted with strange, sudden pain.

He touched the dagger-hilt gently without moving it and found it to be heavily jeweled, of Persian workmanship. Once or twice the minstrel had seen the weapon in the girdle of the Slayer.

“Aye,” he sighed again, “my precious flower of beauty was fair, even as I foreknew. Her cheeks are like the rounded rose-petals, her throat is fair as the soft throat of a pigeon.

“Aie—my fair one, my pearl of love, my bird that fell from the nest! Allah in His wisdom has taken you to His mercy—so Muhammad Asad, the holy man would tell me. I mocked at him, yet can I doubt the meaning of death?”

As if the story were written in the dust of the road, its message was clear for Chan to read. Held upon the saddle-peak of Alacha, the girl had managed to draw his dagger from his girdle unseen in the dim light and had struck, not at her foe but at herself, choosing the surest release from her bondage.

It was like Alacha, the minstrel pondered bitterly, to toss the body aside into the road when he saw that the woman would die. By tomorrow he would have forgotten the incident. Alacha, by nature and political position, was scarcely afraid of consequences.

So Chan, grieving at the death of the woman he had wooed without seeing her face, took up the body in his arms. With some difficulty he mounted, bearing his burden, and set off back along the way he had come, toward the village.

Far overhead on his right the snow peaks were turning from dark crimson to purple. Darkness was in the valley, and a cold wind stirred the dust under the pony’s hoofs, wafting a strong, chill scent of willows and aspen from the nearby thickets.

Man and horse moved slowly as if tired. Chan’s thoughts were numbed.

“The mountains are red,” he said to himself, “and red is the road. It is the color of blood.”

The muscles of his face moved spasmodically and stiffened. His teeth drew back from set lips.

“In the law of the Prophet is it written; there is the price of blood to be paid. Aye—to be paid.”

II

The Sign at the Crossroads

The light had not failed when the two riders who had recently encountered Chan passed by the village without attracting attention and followed the path as it wound upward along the edge of the forest.

They rode in silence, yet keeping abreast and looking occasion-ally at each other or at the trail ahead or behind in the fashion of men who have been much together and are accustomed to notice their surroundings with a wariness that is the mark of troubled times.

Here the forest gave back and numerous fields of lush grass appeared cut by ravines, down which unseen streams murmured over worn stones. An owl hooted somewhere in the direction of a bare pine that towered against the darkening sky. And ahead of them a flight of wide-winged birds rose lazily. At the same time a stringent odor came to them on the wind.

The Afghan motioned his companion to halt and pointed out another path running athwart their own. Midway where the two met, a stout stake projected from the ground. A last, lingering vulture flapped away from the stake, rising from the body of a man transfixed by the wooden point.

“This is my homeland,” observed he of the turban slowly, “and I have not slept within its borders since some months before I joined company with you. Behold the sign for the traveler.”

He laughed once shortly, and passed on, his horse shying at the dead body.

“Even so,” remarked the elder rider calmly, “we must sleep and our horses have come far this day from the pass you call the Khyber.”

The Afghan glanced back at the stake and the form over which the carrion birds were assembling, now that the two riders had passed the crossroads.

“Not here, old warrior. Nearby in a ravine should be a holy man, Muhammad Asad, whom I seek. Come!”

Up one of the watercourses which descended from the slopes of the overhanging hills there was a granite cliff bearing certain writings in the Turki tongue, chiseled into the face of the rock. These writings, maxims of the Koran, were laboriously traced by the hermit mullah, Muhammad Asad, whose blindness precluded his writing upon parchment.

Unlike the Hindu fakirs, Muhammad Asad lived not upon mendicant charity, but was supplied with food by the villagers. A thin native boy who had kindled a fire in the mouth of the cliff’s base—the abode of the mullah—stared at the two newcomers who walked their horses into the circle of light.

The hermit, a lean man with white beard and skin darkened almost to black by the sun, stood up in his neat cloak and spotless turban and greeted the two, seemingly without surprise.

“It is written,” he cried in a melodious voice, “that guests are a blessing from Allah. Doubly fortunate am I, in this ill-omened year, that I should share my evening meal. Dismount!”

“A true Afghan greeting,” observed the turbaned warrior to his companion, turning his horse loose to graze.

At this the blind mullah lifted his head sharply, as one who hears a familiar note of music.

“A true believer speaks,” he murmured. “Aye, in the hills of Badakshan it is the law that even an enemy may sleep unafraid beneath the roof of an Afghan. Are you friend or enemy?”

His sightless eyes peered in the direction of the two visitors as if seeking out the secrets that were hidden from him. The Afghan strode to the fire.

“A friend, Muhammad Asad,” he responded almost roughly. “Aye, one who rides pursued by sorrow. My companion is a warrior known to many lands and courts, although a caphar— unbeliever. Come, give him food.”

Muhammad Asad still stood as if listening for something he did not hear.

“It is written,” he said again gently, “that he who is pursued by sorrow knows not what the road may bring to him.”

He motioned his guests to the fire, but refused to share their repast, saying that hunger lacked. Then he dismissed the boy and bade them spread blankets by the fire within the shallow cave, which was little except a depression in the face of the cliff.

“Enough to an Afghan,” he observed quietly, “his rug and blanket. Let the hired mercenaries of the World-Gripper* have their silks and cushions.”

The Afghan warrior looked up sharply, his glance straying to the round shield that rested against his quiver, within arm’s reach. In the firelight his hawk-like features stood out clearly, the skin tight upon the bone, his keen eyes quick and clear, his thin-lipped mouth straight as a knife-cut in the dark face.

Aman in the prime of life, his bearing and actions suggested a soldier, and a scar running from cheek to eye indicated a severe wound sustained years ago. He ate little, and watched the mullah thoughtfully.

His big-boned, bearded companion, however, made away with enough for two men and looked regretfully at the last remains of the pilau—a dish of rice and mutton, highly seasoned. Then he lay back upon his sheepskin coat, paying little attention to the talk of the other two, for he knew only a smattering of Turki.

“Warrior,” observed the mullah, folding thin arms in his wide

sleeves. “You have come far this day. Aye, from the Khyber neck where the guards of Alacha watch the land. You are a soldier of the Mogul, and you have come hither to hear what Muhammad Asad can tell you about the valley.”

The Afghan started and glared at the priest.

“This is sorcery!” he grunted. “You are blind—”

“Sight, Muslim,” smiled Muhammand Asad, “lies inward as well as outward. A lame sense is aided by the crutch of wisdom. Nay—you walk and sit like one who is sore and wearied, as I can hear. Were you not a follower of the World—Gripper—may Allah heap upon him the fruits of his tyranny—Alacha’s guards would not lightly let you pass. And since my poor home is hidden from the high road, you have sought me out.”

The other fingered his sword irresolutely.

“On the farther side of the village, O kwajah, we beheld a youth who calls himself Chan, and he rode in pursuit of men who had taken a woman from the village. Know you aught of this?”

“A woman!” Muhammad Asad’s thin face darkened. “That is an evil thing. So Alacha has dared openly to pierce the veil of the harem?

“Yet it is like to other deeds of the Slayer. He struck down with his sword the child who brought out to him the keys of Balkh—because it was thought he would not strike a child—and laughed, saying that the bandits of the Hindu Kush should taste the power of their emperor.”

He paused, shaking his head.

“My years are many, O honored guest—” the blind man dwelled forcibly on the last two words—“and much have I heard of the warfare of the tribes, sometimes between themselves, for that has been the fate of the Afghan, and more often to defend them from the Uzbek of the West or the Persian of the South. But never before have I heard the name of emperor cried out in the valley of the Hindu Kush that is Badakshan. So I have proclaimed from the minaret of Balkh that this is a year of danger and peril,

wherein the evil omens cluster about Badakshan as the vultures sink to the body of the slain messenger on the high road. For that Alacha had the soles of my feet beaten with wands, and I gave thanks to Allah, for I suffered in a just cause.”

“I have been in Hindustan,” said the soldier, “and there also have wars been. I have not heard of these things.”

“Doubtless the emperor of Hindustan has paid you in good gold,” responded the priest. “Watching from our hills, we have seen the armies of the Mogul overrun the province of Kabul, and once our fighting men under our leader Abdul Dost saved the World-Gripper his life. Has Jahangir forgotten that?”

“The court is far from Badakshan, and the revenues from the hills have been scanty, O kwajah. Money is the thews by which the Mogul holds his empire together.”

“Yet Jahangir sent Alacha. Once we dispatched a messenger to complain to the Mogul. When the Slayer learned of this the messenger did not return to us, nor did his word reach farther than one of the lesser ameers.”

And Muhammad Asad, kneeling by the embers of the fire, told of villages stripped of their stores of grain so that hunger walked ominously through the valley, of droves of horses requisitioned for the imperial army, of bakhshis, treasurers, who made a list of the goods of each man and took one-third for Alacha.

He described hunts, ordered for the pleasure of Alacha, in which farmers’ crops were trampled by the riders, and of cattle driven off in nightly raids which the jagirdar countenanced.

“It is our fate that this should be laid upon us. What could we do? The imperial standard is set before the tent of Alacha. Through him the Mogul speaks. There is no one to call him to account. Once when our councilors of Balkh were trying to keep the young men and the wandering Hazaras from revolt, I sent a second messenger, this time to our former leader-in-arms, Abdul Dost. But Alacha is shrewd and the messenger lies on the high road near my abode.”

The Afghan stared into the fire, plucking at his beard.

“Yet, O kwajah, you should be a man of peace and I and our older men fought for Akbar, the father of Jahangir. It was he gave me rank of mansabdar on the battlefield—”

“And now the pay for which you have sold your sword is gleaned from the empty bellies of our tribe. The Mogul is no longer a hill man, and he has forgotten that his grandsire was of Mongol blood. He has turned Hindu, and it is said he eats the drugs of the Persians. The shadow of his hand lies over the land.”

“Only in a united India, O kwajah, is there hope of peace. The Mogul’s hand binds together the empire.”

“Evil, Muslim, is to be spurned. And Alacha is evil. Doubtless you fear him—”

“Bismillah! I, who have turned my horse from no man, fear the Black Turkoman?”

The mullah smiled a little. “There speaks Abdul Dost.” He nodded as if in confirmation of what he had previously suspected. “Once, Abdul Dost, I heard your voice on the high road, in the year of the Ox. And I do not easily forget.”

At this the Afghan soldier who had taken service with the Mogul fell to stroking his short black beard, as was his habit when disturbed. Since the death of his master, the last Afghan ruler of Badakshan, Abdul Dost had followed the path of war behind the standard of the Mogul, though more often engaged in independent forays with his old companion who now slept profoundly by the fireside, secure in the presence of friends.

Mingled emotions showed in the dark face of the Muslim warrior. He had heard something—for little news drifted south through the mountains save what Alacha chose to send—of the tyranny that had oppressed his people. Yet he had honored the service of Akbar, the Great, father of Jahangir, from childhood, and like the best type of Mohammedan soldier, he was faithful to his leader.

Muhammad Asad with uncanny perspicacity seemed to follow the trend of his visitor’s thoughts.

“The time I heard your voice, Abdul Dost,” he meditated aloud, “you helped to save a child from the path of charging buffalo. Behold, the child is grown to half-boyhood and he honors your name. He it is who tends my fire and who is now gone to the village. Have the drugs and wine and the flung gold of the Mogul changed your spirit? Are you no longer a true Afghan?”

Abdul Dost looked up with smoldering intensity but said nothing.

“Dreams, Abdul Dost,” continued the blind priest, “are the visions of the soul in flight without the body. In the first of this moon I dreamed that one who was skilled in war, whose name is a talisman in Badakshan, who had the noble stamp of the ancient race of Sulieman in his features, came to the oppressed people of Badakshan and placed upon his strong shoulders the cloak of faith, and took within his hand the staff of leadership.”

Again he nodded with the assurance of the aged.

“And, behold, Abdul Dost, you came to my fireside and the first portion of my dream was true. Yet because you cherished the rank of mansab, in the pay of the money-gleaner Jahangir, I would not share bread and salt with you until I knew whether you were true Afghan or—” and his mild voice strengthened in righteous wrath—“a dog that feeds at the table of the Mongol who has forgotten his birth, his faith, and the two laws—the law of the Koran and the law of Genghis Khan, who was the first and greatest Mongol.”

The subtle oratory of the ardent-spirited mullah worked profoundly on the simpler emotions of the soldier. But to Abdul Dost truth was self-evident: his mind was shaped for action, yet before acting it was not his nature to ponder at length.

“Bismillah!” He flung out an eloquent hand. “O kwajah, hither I came to drink at the refreshing well of your wisdom. What avails it to reproach me for that I have been a warrior of the Mogul. It is no shame. Were more of our heedless and quarrelsome men obedient to authority, the balm of peace would

heal the sores of past wars that afflict Badakshan. In a just ruler lies the solution of our unrest.”

“Not so, Abdul Dost. Can a tiger be prisoned within bars? Is an eagle fashioned by God to fly with clipped wings? Jahangir has proclaimed himself lord of Badakshan. It is the heritage of the Afghans to have no rulers except themselves!”

His low voice rang with conviction. Abdul Dost stretched an appealing hand toward the mullah as if beseeching relief from his own trouble.

“Then would you have Badakshan rebel against the Mogul?”

As he said this, footsteps sounded outside the cave. The mansabdar moved on his knees and his hand went to his sword-hilt, but the kwajah smiled, saying, “It is the boy.”

The stripling, panting from a hard run, salaamed respectfully to Abdul Dost and burst into pent-up speech.

He had been to the village and had come with news warm on his lips. Chan, the minstrel, the master of artful song, had entered the village with the body of a young woman across his saddle. Chan had shown the knife of Alacha fast in the throat of the woman. He had shown the body to the headmen of the village.

“The Slayer has crossed the barrier of the harem,” cried the boy. “So said the elders. And Chan asks that the price of blood be paid.”

Muhammad Asad turned to Abdul Dost, his fragile countenance dark with religious zeal.

“Allah has ordained it thus, Abdul Dost. Here is the answer to your question. A woman has been slain, and Alacha must pay the price. When a freshet from the snow-line rises and rushes downward, who can stay its course?”

The mansabdar, concealing his deep anxiety before the boy, stared into the fire. He knew that this murder of a woman, unlike the previous slaughter of tribesmen and peasants under the thin guise of justice, meant war in Afghan territory.

“No man can stay the working of fate,” cried Muhammad Asad. “The will of God will come to pass, even thus. And I prophesy! Ai—the spirit that has come into my soul calls for speech.”

He rose, extending emaciated arms to the roof of the cave, against which the smoke rose, blackening the rock. His sightless eyes turned skyward.

“Ai—hear these, my words. I, Muhammad Asad, humblest of the servants of God, foretell what will come to pass. In my soul it is clear. I know—I have long known. Blood will cover the mountains; bones will whiten in the valleys. The hand of Death will strike upon Badakshan!”

Abdul Dost and the boy watched the aged man with mingled feelings in which awe predominated. Often had the blind mullah foretold events of importance, perhaps purely from keen judgment arising from his close knowledge of affairs in the hills, perhaps from premonition sharpened by deep meditation, the fruit of long fasting and inward thought.

“There will be a battle in the valley,” he cried. “The cannon and the elephants of the World-Gripper array themselves against the horsemen of the hills—and others.

“I see clouds of riders coming, dense as the flight of arrows from the passes where no riders are. I see bright swords drawn from scabbards that are now rusted. I see these horsemen, who once rode through Afghanistan, Kwaresan, Iran and Khorassan, but are not now in the land—”

He resumed his seat on the ground by Abdul Dost, his eyes closed. For a space there was silence, save for the deep breathing of the boy.

“What riders mean you?” asked Abdul Dost at length, for the words had puzzled him.

“How should I know, Afghan? But this thing you will see, for it is written.”

His delicate, strained features became all at once very gentle.

“Aye, Abdul Dost, there will be war, and the terrors of war. But out of the fighting peace may come. Will you take up the reins of leadership?”

Hereupon the boy gazed avidly at the veteran warrior, the light of hero-worship strong in his brown eyes.

“I have a bow, O great Abdul Dost,” he ventured, “and I can shoot crows very skillfully. Will you grant me the honor of riding behind your left side?”

The mind of the warrior was upon other things.

“Too much strife and taking of life have I seen, O kwajah, lightly to draw the sword of conflict. War? I know not. I must think. A leader?”

He turned at this to look at his sleeping companion, who had wakened alertly at the priest’s outburst but now reposed again, his harsh face lined with fatigue.

“Hai—a leader, say you! Here is one who is a father of battles. At his side I have learned much of the art of war.”

The boy looked his disbelief that Abdul Dost had aught to learn, and the mullah, hearing, became immersed in meditation.

“Verily is this man a master of battles,” went on Abdul Dost. “He has led the caphar Kazaks who wield curved swords, like that at his side. And his voice has commanded the hordes of Tartary. The wiles of the Turk he knows, likewise the Rájput charge, and the battle-plan of the Mogul generals.”

“Then his infidel sword is for sale?” Muhammad Asad spoke bitterly. “The Afghans lack gold, while the Mogul scatters diamonds from the back of his gold-quilted elephant—”

Abdul Dost shook his head with a laugh.

“You cannot see, O kwajah, that this old warrior wears a torn sheepskin coat and his belt is worn leather, while his horsehide boots are stained with usage. His weapon is a curved sword, very heavy, but without jewels.

“Much wealth, perhaps, has he been given, but I have seen him fling it among hungry villagers. I have seen him go hungry to pay for fodder for his horse—”

“So he will aid—”

“Kwajah, my companion does not seek war. He rides where he wills. I know not what is in his mind. His aid to us is worth three

times a thousand fine horsemen. Yet he will not draw sword for pay or for what we Afghans cherish—renown in our history.”

At this Abdul Dost lay back on his blanket, resting his head on his arm.

“This man is Khlit, who is called the Curved Saber,” he said finally. “He—and I also—seek not war. Tomorrow we will ride to Alacha and hold council, seeking to adjust the wrongs of Badakshan.”

Almost immediately Abdul Dost slept. The priest sat passively, drawing nearer to the embers as the heat of the fire dwindled. The boy fidgeted with tiny bow and arrows until the healthy drowsiness of childhood claimed him. The light of the fire had vanished and the cave was in darkness.

But in the village a fire had been kindled that grew and spread to other villages as Chan the minstrel rode through the valley, calling upon the tribes to see the body of the fair woman, his dead mistress, carried upon the saddle of his pony.

III

The Slayer Speaks

In the satin tent of Alacha, jagirdar of Badakshan, slaves set forth the morning meal. A scarlet canopy embroidered with images of birds and beasts worked in sewn pearls shaded the entrance, inside which a white cloth had been laid. Scent had been thrown into the air by the experienced servitors.

Alacha himself reclined on cushions by the cloth. A slender man with olive face and dark, neatly dressed hair, wearing the undress silk tunic and white cotton trousers of the Mogul court. His black eyes were restless and insolent. One jeweled hand cherished a falcon on an adjacent perch.

Barely did he taste the dishes of rice, minced fowl, jellies, sugar candies and rose-water. His full-lipped mouth smiled as he stroked the bird, but he was engrossed in meditation. Waving away the dishes, he clapped his hands for the guard that stood without the tent.

“The horsemen who were on post at the Shyr,” he commanded briefly.

Alacha was ever sparing of words and was a master of cutting irony. It was characteristic of the jagirdar that, unlike the ordinary ameer of the court, he disliked to have courtiers and lieutenants attend him.

Attentively he surveyed the two warriors, who bowed nine times—the imperial salaam—before the tent entrance. He spoke in a very clear, high-pitched voice.

“So you passed into Badakshan him whom I ordered to be brought to me?”

“May your forgiveness anoint us, unworthy! Abdul Dost gave rank and showed signet ring of mansabdar. So we passed him, not knowing his name. And his companion we passed, for he is the warrior that you in your wisdom sought—Khlit, of Tatar blood.”

Not a flicker of the full eyes nor a movement of the jeweled hands showed that Alacha was surprised. He studied the two men inscrutably and dismissed them with a nod. They salaamed and departed, thankful to escape punishment.

Alacha reached into a silver casket by his side and drew out a rolled paper. Attentively he scanned this, noting the seal of the imperial vizier. Then he lay back with closed eyes while a stolid slave slowly waved a plumed fan of peacock feathers back and forth over his head.

But the Slayer was not asleep. When a sentinel appeared to announce that two riders sought speech with him, he scarcely stirred.

“Admit them.”

Only once as Abdul Dost and Khlit rode their horses into the enclosure before the satin tent did the jagirdar glance at them, marking faces, bearing, and clothing. When the two visitors stood before him, Alacha was stroking the feathers of his pet, seemingly indifferent to their presence.

This irked Abdul Dost, who was ever straightforward.

“I have a message for your ear alone, Alacha, landholder of the Mogul,” he said directly. “Dismiss your men.” For some Turkoman guards had lingered near at hand.

Alacha turned his head enough to make certain that the untouched dishes of the morning meal remained on the cloth for the entertainment of guests.

“Sit, distinguished mansabdar,” he murmured, “and partake of my humble bounty. Alas, these savage hills offer little that is dainty in food.”

Abdul Dost remained grimly erect.

“Until I have spoken my message and received an answer I will not break my fast, Alacha, and then not at your cloth.”

“Know you not the courtesy of the court, worthy warrior?” responded Alacha. “Why have you come, bearing arms, to the tent of your superior?”

With a short laugh Abdul Dost tapped the hilt of his scimitar.

“This weapon, Alacha, has served the Mogul more than once; and as for my companion, because of aid he once rendered to Nur-Jahan, who is to be Jahangir’s queen-bride, his right to wear sword is unquestioned.”

Alacha did not press his point, yet signed to his men to remain where they were. So the three faced one another, Khlit watching quietly, only half-catching what was said, Abdul Dost impatient and more than a little surprised at the almost effeminate aspect of the man who had brought terror into the hills of his people. The Slayer noted every move of his visitors and every change of expression without seeming to do so, but for the most part his attention was devoted to Khlit.

He heard immovably Abdul Dost’s recital of the oppression that had come upon Badakshan, of the hunger of the villages, the anger at the hunting and the spoil taken by the agents of the

jagirdar.

“There is no merchant but seeks to leave Badakshan because when by hard labor and thrift he increases his property, the bakhshi who is your treasurer levies upon him the sum of his

profits. No peasant can keep his herds, for the animals are driven off by your soldiers. Weapons are seized wherever found—and how is an Afghan to live, weaponless?”

Carefully Alacha adjusted the silk hood over his pet.

“Those who had gold or silver—and they are few in this land,” went on the mansabdar bitterly, “have buried it, so now none is to be had, save what you seize. One-third of the young men of the tribes are called upon for military service, and their sisters have been carried off by your men in raids, which you have not sought to punish. Badakshan bleeds, and your hand holds the knife. That is my message.”

The hood tied to his satisfaction, Alacha turned his attention to a dish of sweetmeats and selected a sugared pomegranate with care.

“When sickness afflicts a human body, worthy mansabdar, does not a skilled physician bleed the patient?”

“Nay—if death is the result of the bloodletting. Allah alone decides the life and death of men.”

“Of men, verily. Yet these scum of the hills be but low-born beggars, and their fathers before them were thieves. Who shall treat a jackal like a hunting-dog, or a miscreant like a man of honor?”

Alacha’s black eyes snapped as he glanced swiftly up at Abdul Dost.

“Soldier, who sent you?”

Under his mustache the mansabdar smiled.

“Am I one to carry another’s words? Alacha, it is the truth I speak. What will you answer?”

“You have been in the villages?”

The Turkoman’s keen eyes seemed to probe out the information he sought.

“Bah—the bazaars will have their tale, and dogs will growl. Perchance the threadbare mullahs have poured the poison of their anger into your ears. Muhammad Asad, perchance?”

Abdul Dost’s scarred face gave him the secret he angled for.

“By the beard of the Prophet! It was Muhammad Asad.” “Alacha, you have the blood of a woman on your hands. You

know the law. Men will gather in pursuit of blood—”

“So they talk thus? Nay. The wanton of the village who was

enamoured of a wandering minstrel slew herself.”

Abdul Dost shook his head grimly. Always a man of meager speech, anxiety weighed upon him. Much depended upon the reply of Alacha.

“Your answer?” he asked again.

“To the men of Badakshan—nothing. To you, Abdul Dost, who are in the service of the Mogul, this.”

The Turkoman spoke softly, almost idly.

“You complain of money exacted. It is to pay the price of my jagir to the treasurer of the Mogul, who bestowed it upon me. You speak of men slain and other hardships. Consider the maxim of the Koran that ill-doers shall taste the fruits of their evil. The Afghans are lawless; the hand that governs them must be stern.”

At this Abdul Dost stroked his beard gravely.

“Then you will not hear the council of the headmen, nor make amends for the misdeeds of your men?”

“Nay.”

“Then, Alacha, give heed to what also is written in the book of our faith. An eye shall be given for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life—”

Swiftly the noble rose, drawing back the flap of the tent. Standing almost breast to breast against Abdul Dost, he pointed to the embroidered banner that hung at the enclosure entrance.

“Behold the standard of the Mogul, soldier,” he said calmly. “It is the standard you have followed in battle. By this sign may you know I am master of Badakshan.”

Before Abdul Dost could reply Alacha turned quickly to Khlit and spoke in the steppe dialect of Turki.

“Warrior, my heart is opened like a flower at sight of your face. The Master of the World has sent for you. Too long your sword has been absent from his court.”

Khlit, hands thrust into his belt, booted feet wide apart, and sheepskin hat thrust carelessly askew on his gray hair, looked at the Slayer curiously. Alacha stooped to draw the parchment firm an from his silver chest. Before exhibiting it to Khlit he asked quickly:

“You have skill to read? You also, Abdul Dost?”

“Not I,” responded the old warrior indifferently. “Such scrawls are for priests and dogs of councilors who live by words.”

Abdul Dost shook his head, moody at the reception accorded his message.

“This is from the hand of Jahangir, the Sun of Benevolence, Monarch of Hindustan.”

Alacha exhibited the imperial seal.

“It is a summons to the court which now holds festival at Lahore, not six days’ ride from the southern passes of Badakshan. There welcome awaits you, gifts that Jahangir alone can bestow, a robe of honor, a horse from the pick of the imperial stable, and rank in the army of India.”

Khlit took the missive in his gaunt hand curiously and passed it back to the jagirdar silently.

“Do not fail to obey the request of the emperor,” pressed Alacha. “The imperial favor shines upon few. Nur-Jahan, it is said, is your friend, and the Light of the World sways our prince with a single word. High honor is yours for the taking; rest and wealth for your old age.”

“I would like a good horse,” observed Khlit.

“It is yours. It is my exalted privilege to be bearer of the firman of my lord the Mogul.” Alacha bowed his dark head. “Jahangir desires your presence. I would that I were in your place!”

Smilingly he watched his two visitors depart. When they had mounted and vanished through the enclosure gate the smile passed from his olive face as if by magic and he scowled, spitting upon the ground where Abdul Dost had stood. Then he called for a mounted messenger.

Kneeling upon the white cloth, he seized parchment and a feathered pen and laboriously wrote something. These he read over carefully before sealing. They were addressed to a high official of the court—to the vizier, in fact, who had sent the missive Alacha had shown to Khlit, and who was in favor with Jahangir and his queen-to-be.

As the letter of the vizier had been in Persian—a language unknown to Abdul Dost, who clung to his native tongue, and hence undecipherable by the mansabdar as the Slayer well knew— Alacha had written his reply in the flowery phrases of the Persian courtiers:

Perfection of nobility, star of grandeur, glorious son of Jamshyd, pillar of empire and monument of magnanimity: I, unworthy as the dust beneath thy horse’s hoofs, presume to address thee in the matter of the unrest amid the scorpion-nest of Badakshan.

The exalted message of thy wisdom, that “all who lift high their heads among the Afghans should have their heads stricken from their shoulders,” has delighted my eyes. Yet to accomplish thy lofty aim, it has been necessary for me to pretend that thy words were otherwise—to the warrior known as the Curved Saber who now rides to Lahore with my assurance that the sun of imperial favor is inclined to shine upon him.

Since this warrior is notable in craft and feats of arms, thy wisdom will perceive that it is best to retain him at court away from these ill-omened ones of Badakshan. Gain then the ear of Jahangir, to the end that Khlit be granted some trifling favor such as a robe of honor or a horse. Nur-Jahan, the favorite, has regard for the ancient warrior.

If gifts will not nourish his restless spirit in peace, then, O vizier, chains and perchance the cells of eye-blinding Gwalior must play their part.

The missive closed with elaborate compliments and promises of extensive payment of presents of camels, cloth, weapons and women and boy servitors from Alacha to the Mogul at the coming festival.

This accomplished and the messenger dismissed, Alacha instructed certain spies among the Hazara peasants who had been won to his cause by rich bribes to keep close track of the move-

ments of Abdul Dost. No Afghans, as Alacha well knew, would play the part of a spy or betray their leader.

From the peasants he turned with a grimace to his own officers.

“Hold a muster of my soldiery,” he commanded. “Send a party of horsemen to hunt down that mad priest, Muhammad Asad, and another to fetch me the witless minstrel Chan. Strip him of weapons and clothing and sew him into the fresh hide of a bullock where he may have his fill of blood and sing odes to his dead mistress to his heart’s content.”

Abdul Dost and Khlit reined in their horses by mutual consent where the path to the Shyr neck intersected the trail along which they were riding. Here they were on a slight hillock that afforded a view over the fertile, rolling plain of Badakshan.

But the fields beside the trail, illumined by the warm sun of early Autumn, showed only trampled grain, in which a broken wooden plow lay like some forlorn gravestone in a desecrated cemetery.

On the other side of the highway a shepherd watched them listlessly, lying with his dog at the edge of a willow thicket. No sheep were visible, as Abdul Dost noticed. Below them the huts of a village clustered about a dark pool of water, and around this squatted a ring of cloaked figures.

Along a wooded ridge beyond the village trotted a body of horse, their spear-tips glittering within the thin foliage of as-pens and cypress, and the glint of armor showing under rich vestments—Turkoman riders in the service of Alacha.

Abdul Dost surveyed them moodily, gazing from the almost inanimate villagers to the dark stretches of pines that reached up over his head to the edge of the timberline. He raised his eyes to serried peaks, towering high against the blue vault of the sky. The rarefied air of that altitude revealed valleys and peaks alike with startling distinctness.

Emerging from an ice-coated moraine, two eagles circled over the pine-tops on tranquil wings. Abdul Dost pointed to them.

“They are of the hills,” he muttered, “and freedom is their life. Allah the all-wise has decreed that they shall be spared the yoke of servitude.”

Long and searchingly he gazed at Khlit’s rugged features.

“You and I have slept under the stars together these many nights, and we have partaken of the same salt. You have drawn your reins along the path I have followed—until now. Do you abide in Badakshan, or ride through the Khyber to the court at Lahore?”

Carefully he concealed his own deep interest in Khlit’s answer. The presence of the veteran warrior in Abdul Dost’s land meant much to him. He had come to rely upon the wisdom of the former Cossack. With unrest and strife in the air of the hills, he was loath to have Khlit depart.

On the other hand, with honor and ease awaiting him at the court of India, Abdul Dost would not ask Khlit to share his own unsettled fortunes further.

Torn between soldierly loyalty to the Mogul and love for his own people now suffering at the hand of Alacha, Abdul Dost had his problem to thresh out, his decision to make. And so he yearned for the companionship of the man who had been a true friend, sharer of his tent and food through many adventures, in which the skilled sword of Abdul Dost had aided Khlit as often as the old warrior’s craft had served them both.

“What think you?”

Khlit leaned thoughtfully upon his saddle-peak, questioning his friend with shrewd gray eyes set in a network of wrinkles but still keen.

“The good-will of Jahangir is a jewel beyond price.” Khlit nodded slowly, meditating aloud.

“Never have I seen this Mogul, Abdul Dost, who calls himself Lord of the World. There should be great warriors at his table, and much feasting and wise words.”

“Aye,” said Abdul Dost.

“Also gold. I have no gold. Nor a good horse, other than this steppe pony.”

“Aye.”

In spite of himself Abdul Dost’s frank face clouded under Khlit’s gaze. “These things, assuredly, you would have. Did you not fetch Nur-Jahan safely from the mountains of Tartary—” he waved a lean hand to the North and East where the giant peaks of the Himalayas were dimly to be discerned—“when you rode hither from the horde of the Tatar Khans?”

“She, also, will remember.”

“Aye,” replied Abdul Dhost, somewhat dryly.

“As for the Mogul, is he not of the blood of the ancient Mongol khans whose forebear was Genghis, the Great? In my veins runs the blood of Genghis. This thing I would tell him, Abdul Dost. As for a woman, her will is the wind’s will.”

“And so you go to the court?” Abdul Dost checked what he would have said, and lifted hand and head. “That is well. May your shadow grow, and your years be ripe with honor.”

“My years come to an end. And honor—” Khlit smiled grimly —“is there any honor other than the friendship of true men?”

He took up his reins, squaring his shoulders, and felt of saddle-bags and girdle wherein were whetstone and a brace of Turkish pistols.

“Abdul Dost, give me your hand. I ride far, but with the first snowfall in the mountains I shall come back to Badakshan and seek you.”

Just a little, the Afghan shook his head, his eyes straying to the valley.

“What is written is written. This is farewell.”

Long and earnestly the two looked into each other’s eyes as they clasped hands after the custom of Khlit. And thus each spoke briefly, concealing the anxiety that weighed on them.

In Khlit’s mind rang the words of the blind priest, foretelling battle in the land of his friend, and in his soul was a great curiosity

as to the friendship of princes, and whether indeed the Mogul was a man of his word.

In Abdul Dost’s thoughts was the certainty that he would not see Khlit again, in his heart the crying need of companionship in difficulty. But of this he would not speak, fearing to obstruct the path of Khlit’s good fortune.

He watched his friend ride away along the path to the South, between rising shoulders of barren, sandstone summits. Until Khlit’s sheepskin hat had vanished around a turn in the trail he remained motionless.

Then he picked up his reins and moved onward along the high-way at a walk, tugging the head of his horse aside as the beast, from long habit, sought to follow Khlit’s mount.

IV

To the builder of empire, the opener of roads, the healer of sickness, the planner of cities—respect.

For the bearer of water, the tiller of fields, the wielder of a protecting sword—gratitude.

To the wearer of another’s sword, the crown of another’s greatness, and to him who sits in another’s throne—terror.

From father to son, the thrones of Agra, Delhi, Chitore, Kabul had passed, from Babur, the first great figure in history among the Moguls, who carved the empire of India out of chaos with his sword, to Humayon, the chivalrous, to Akbar, Jallal’ u’din Akbar, who knit together the warring provinces of the empire by supreme diplomacy and humane law making, to Jahangir.

And during the reign of Jahangir the empire of the Moguls reached its zenith.

The World-Gripper inherited much of the hardiness of his fore-bears, and added thereto many vices of his own. Born in the shadow of a mighty throne, already acclaimed by a multitude of servants, he was not forced to undergo the healthful discipline of privation. Clever, unquestionably, supremely courteous at occasion, he was narrow of mind, hasty of temper, cruel when aroused, and always suspicious.

Of Turki-Mongol father and Hindu mother, schooled by Persian wiseacres, he revealed the traits of mixed breeding. A lover of women of many races, pampered of body and gross of appetite, the traces of degeneracy that were to mark the downfall of the Moguls already appeared in him.

Yet at that time, as it is written in the annals of his reign, when the favorable constellation of Aries was rising into the sky, the supremacy of Delhi and Agra over the world from the Indian Sea to the territory of the once-powerful Mongol khans, from Ethiopia to China, was at its height.

The brilliancy of the Mogul court was the talk of the outer world. Ambassadors came from Tibet, Khorassan, and Africa to receive magnificent presents. Portuguese priests, envoys and soldiers had established themselves at court; Hawkins was sailing thither from England, to be the forerunner of the East India Company; France, under Louis XIII, was rising to greatness in Europe; the Ming dynasty in China was at its brightest.

But the empire of the Mogul was supreme. Envoys from Ferangistan—Europe—were regarded as visitors from inferior states. The fiery Rájputs were held in temporary check; the Maharattas, Persians and Turks acknowledged the overlordship of Agra; only the Afghans maintained pretense of liberty.

At this time the revenues of the Mogul are estimated at two hundred million rupees, and the men under arms at four hundred thousand. And these were composed largely of the pick of the warlike Rájputs, the Punjabis, Turks, and Persians with a smattering of Portuguese mercenaries—musket-men, or matchlock-men.

And in the rising tide of his power Jahangir held festival at Lahore, capital of the province of the Five Rivers, in that year. The rainy season had passed and the river had sunk to its bed, leaving a vast stretch of mud between water and the lofty buildings of the palaces.

On the high-water mark of the river bank Jahangir in his whim had ordered a gold chain to be placed. This chain ran into the main

hall of his palace, where it was connected with a series of sixty golden bells.

“So that any man of the land may have justice,” Jahangir had said. “No matter who he may be, let him touch the gold chain and the bells will sound in my ear. Thus will I dispense the imperial mercy.”

Courtiers had acclaimed the words, yet guards had been placed at the river bank to protect the gold of the chain, and it came to pass in time that these guards had considered it part of their duty to keep away any who sought to meddle with the Chain of Justice, as it was called. Their officers had hinted that the peace of the mighty monarch was not lightly to be disturbed.

Thus the bells had been silent, and as Jahangir feasted on a certain night in his banquet hall their presence was all but forgotten by himself and the ameers in attendance.

Jahangir sat upon a slight dais facing the rows of nobles, Hindu and Muslim, who shared with him the dainties of northern fruits; wine—for the monarch chose to ignore the Muslim laws at nights—and meats cut skillfully from the choicer portions of game slain that day in the nearby jungle, whither the court had come to escape the heat of late Summer in the dry plain of Hindustan.

He was a stout, broad-faced man, with sharp black eyes, clean-shaven except for a dark mustache. Garbed in a comfortable silk tunic and small, pearl-sewn turban, his hands, neck and head were brilliant with jewels. Behind him, unnoticed, glimmered the gold bells in torch and candle light. Often he laughed at a compliment or jest from his ameers, for the banquet had endured many hours and heating cups of spirits had touched bearded lips as musicians made merry behind screens of latticework.

So, being in high good humor, the World-Gripper listened to a favorite vizier who whispered respectfully in his ear.

“My Padishah, light of my eyes and guider of my fortunes, a common soldier waits to attend you, sent from your zealous ser-

vant Alacha. Khlit is his name, and he is the Ferang (European) who once had the all-desirous privilege of serving Nur-Jahan, Light of the World—”

“I will receive his presents.”

The monarch’s geniality was heightened by mention of the favorite whom he desired above all others to make his wife.

At this the vizier hesitated, for Khlit had brought no gifts, as was customary—in fact, had none to bring. Mentally the courtier summed up the old warrior’s meager possessions and announced smilingly that Khlit’s most valued treasures—a fine, curved sword, declared the courtier, and his horse—were at the disposal of the Mogul.

“My Padishah,” he purred, bowing, for Alacha had remembered him with no little gold, “your jagirdar who holds the turbulent Afghans trembling before the sound of the voice of your authority, has sent a string of fifty long-haired Bactrian camels laden with gold and silk cloth as a gift to lay before your feet. He humbly asks that some robe of honor be accorded the warrior, who is a power among the wild Mongol khans of the North. One of Alacha’s spies—a priest, among the Mongols of the steppe— spoke to him before this of the power of the khan.”

Jahangir’s benignity waxed amain. The camels were a welcome addition to his animals of the military train. He nodded, and the sentries at the farther end of the hall ushered in Khlit.

Courtiers and monarch alike stared at the gaunt figure of the Cossack, and many whispers went the rounds exclaiming upon the uncouthness of the newcomer’s dress and the rude insolence of his bearing.

For, instead of performing the salaam as he had been instructed or even touching his hand to the floor and then to his forehead, Khlit advanced among the banquet cloths with his accustomed swaggering gait and raised his hand, bending his head slightly.

The spectators looked from him to the emperor and at the vizier curiously.

Khlit stood before the sitting monarch quite calmly, meeting his frowning stare fairly. “Padishal salamet!” he exclaimed in broken Turki, and the plump, bejeweled councilor frowned and grimaced behind Jahangir, at the unequaled effrontery of utterance before the emperor should be pleased to speak.

But chance worked in Khlit’s favor. Jahangir had frowned, whereat the courtiers murmured and half-rose, sensing the displeasure of their lord. Yet the World-Gripper was meditating, rather pleasantly than otherwise.

“I am told,” his cultured voice observed clearly, “that you have been a leader of the Mongol khans who enjoy the honor of being our neighbors. Doubtless you have come to pay your respects to the Presence. It rejoices us greatly that the barbarians of the North have bent their eyes before the sun of India.”

The idea of a representative from the descendants of Genghis Khan attending upon his pleasure rather interested the man to whom power was the breath of life. Uncouth as Khlit might be, and uncertain as his mission to the court certainly was—save for the hinted message of Alacha that the vizier had not seen fit to reveal in full—it was characteristic of Jahangir that he chose instantly to assume that Khlit could be placed on par with the other outlandish envoys of Ethiopia, Abyssinia and Tibet who at present added to his pomp, eating their heads off the while.

Khlit, not understanding, looked calmly and inquiringly at the vizier, who quickly paraphrased the monarch’s remarks, altering their meaning.

“Warrior, the Master of the Universe asks if you be related by blood to the Mongol khans. Alacha informs me you once held rank among them.”

“Aye,” assented Khlit readily.

The vizier salaamed.

“My Padishah,” he cried, “the warrior places himself at the call of your pleasure.”

In this fashion did a skillful diplomat cover over the perils that threatened from Khlit’s introduction. Jahangir was pleased. The reminder of his own importance went to his head like wine.

“Let the graybeard keep his horse and sword,” he responded, which was well, as Khlit would never have suffered parting from his weapon. “We will add the word-defying grace of womanly beauty to the value of the slight gifts from our hand. Let Nur-Jahan herself be summoned from the imperial quarters to place at his waist a better sword. Meanwhile robe him in a cloth-of-gold khilat, as is meet for the eyes of the Splendor of the World.”

Khlit looked curiously at the resplendent garment that was drawn over his rough sheepskin coat and at the girdle of many-colored silk placed around his leather belt. He listened silently to the announcement that a satin tent had been placed at his disposal near the cantonment of the personal cavalry of the emperor, a tent with a native servant—in the pay of the vizier who was Alacha’s friend. Only at mention of a blooded Arabian horse did he nod, well pleased.

Jahangir turned to his wine, relishing his whim, and looked on with all the artless pleasure of a pleased child when the stately figure of veiled Nur-Jahan came into the room. The nobles rose and bowed profoundly.

Khlit scanned the woman who had come in his care from the plains of Tartary to the arms of the Mogul, admiring the brilliance of her Indian dress, the pearls in her black hair. But—as etiquette demanded—she did not speak before she took a gold-inlaid scimitar from one of the bakhshis in attendance.

This she passed through the silk girdle about the warrior, saying:

“It is a weapon of proved, Damascus steel, precious as the metal with which it is wrought. Wear it on behalf of the one who gives it.”

At this Jahangir smiled, and the courtiers murmured politely. Only one—a northern noble related to Alacha, Paluwan Khan, of the Mavr-un-nahr Turks—whispering that to gird on two swords was an omen of war to the death.

But Khlit reflected that Nur-Jahan had changed. Once she had been talkative, had laughed readily and artlessly. Now her fine

eyes—all that he could see—were melancholy. Bending closer as she gave the weapon a last pat, she said softly—

“You have won the favor of Jahangir, yet watch for treachery among the ameers.”

She bent her veiled head profoundly before the monarch who had sent for her from the ends of his kingdom and who loved her deeply, acknowledged the salutation of the courtiers and vanished between the draperies through which she had come.

Had Nur-Jahan enjoyed at that time the mastery over the narrow-minded emperor which she assumed—to the everlasting good of India—at a later period, she might have spoken more boldly. Perhaps, for she was a woman of keen insight and rare statesmanship, she might have averted the tragedy that was to come to pass among the Afghan hills.

“Bid the Mongol take his place among the lesser ameers,” ordered Jahangir, “and see that he never lacks for food or comfort. Request him to be often before our eyes, and especially when we debate, as we will soon do, upon certain matters of warfare.”

Thus Khlit took his place at one of the farther settees, at the banquet, and ate and drank heartily, meditating the while upon the reception he had been accorded, upon the man who was monarch of many million souls, and upon the warning of Nur-Jahan.

The ameers accepted him for the most part with polite curiosity, some with friendliness and some few—from the northern provinces—with veiled jealousy.

Silently, for he understood little that was said, he watched the pomp and panoply of the richest court in the world. He appeared at the levees, came mounted on his new Arab to the ceremonious guard-mount, wherein Rájput and Muslim alternated in attendance before the quarters of the emperor.

He studied the immense throngs of camp followers, merchants, soldiery, and envoys that filled the narrow streets of Lahore, crowding the tall, wooden buildings. He even asked the meaning of the gold chain at the river bank.

Thus for several days Khlit dwelt in the camp of the Mogul, awaiting the time when he had been told he would be called upon to speak in council, received generally with respect, thanks to the favor Nur-Jahan had shown him. Unlike the ameers and the officers who went everywhere mounted on elephants and accompanied by gorgeously clad followers, Khlit kept to himself for the most part, spending long intervals in meditation in his tent.

“The woman remembered,” he said to himself. “Will the man forget?”

Always he watched the faces of the ameers, studying their customs and looking on at the machinery of empire, especially the routine of the army. Long hours were spent in investigating the elephant artillery, the corps of camel guns, the Portuguese company of musketeers and the numerous native cavalry. What he saw he kept to himself, awaiting the time to speak.

V

The Bells of Justice

It was one evening when the coolness of early night brought the nobles to the palace and the usual feasting that Khlit made his memorable response to a question of Jahangir.

The emperor had been closeted with some of his more intimate councilors, and had instructed certain officers of the army— Abdullah Khan, newly arrived from victories in the Dekkan; Raja Man Singh, leader of the Rájputs; Paluwan Khan and the aged I’timad-doulat, father of Nur-Jahan—to attend him. Khlit was among the number.

The screens had been drawn from the arched embrasures over-looking the river. The last glow of sunset cast a half-light over the lighted bazaars of the city, wherein throngs still bartered, quarreled and sang. Jahangir had drawn his officers slightly apart from the rest of the courtiers. Bowls of wine had been filled and emptied.

As a mark of high favor Jahangir had tasted some delicacy and ordered his servants to place the dish before Abdullah Khan, who

rose and bowed. The monarch did likewise with Khlit, who, not liking the dainty set before him, left it untasted.

“What!” smiled the Mogul, who was disposed to be gracious. “Does our choice offend the taste of the great Mongol?”

“Padishah,” bowed the vizier who was the friend of Alacha, “he is voiceless, overwhelmed by the ocean of your magnanimity.”

“He is a boor,” whispered one ameer.

“A witless barbarian,” scoffed Paluwan Khan. “With but one horse.”

Khlit understood much of what was said.

“A horse,” he responded slowly, “carried Genghis Khan where an elephant could not go—to mastery in battle.”

A heavy silence fell upon those of the assemblage—and they were many—who heard this remark. Experienced courtiers, smooth-faced Turks, intriguers from the court of the Sultan of Constantinople, bearded Armenian money-lenders, elaborately robed emissaries from the declining Caliphate of Baghdad, alert Persians—all glanced discreetly at the Mogul to see how he would take the words. For only Jahangir and his ameers rode upon elephants. But the Mogul, still disposed to treat Khlit agreeably for certain reasons known to himself, laughed, taking the response to apply only to Paluwan Khan.

“Kaber dar—have care—warrior,” he cried. “Did not we our-self mount this day upon the back of a favorite royal male elephant and shoot blunted arrows of gold among the multitude in honor of the victories of worthy Abdullah Khan over the low-born malcontents of the Dekkan? Aye, we scattered jewels from the balcony of the palace—”

He broke off, struck by a fresh thought. Khlit was silent, waiting for what was to come. The vizier had whispered, when the wine cups first circulated, that Jahangir would make a request of him.

“The constellation of Aries arises,” murmured the Mogul. “The year is rife with omen for our reign. Come, our wisest mas-

ters of warfare are gathered here. Who can decide my question— what is the best weapon?”

Inquiringly he glanced at the half-nude Ethiopians, who grinned stupidly, their round heads rolling on sweaty shoulders, what with the influence of strong distilled arrack that they guzzled greedily.

“Bah,” murmured Jahangir to the vizier petulantly, “their skulls avail not save for drinking-cups for their foes. No presents did they bring save some worthless slaves, the hide of an ass and an ox-horn filled with civet.”

“Padishah,” smiled the councilor, “doubtless the slaves were some of the three hundred children of the barbarous Negro chief.”

“And the skin,” put in Paluwan Khan, who possessed a sharp tongue, “was taken from a dead ass by the roadside—”

“The civet,” added a Persian, not to be outdone, “is what they covet to drown the stench of their bodies—”

The good-natured but uncomprehending Negroes grinned on. Jahangir passed by the leopard-skin-clad Abyssinians with the remark that only an animal would take the hide of a beast to cover its buttocks.

But Paluwan Khan gave answer that the mace, favorite weapon of the Turkomans, was best. A slim Kashmiri noble raised a voice for the arrow, which struck down at a distance. Soft-spoken Hindus argued for the spear, and the talkative Persian avowed that the javelin was most useful, since it combined the functions of spear and arrow.

The discussion was witty, ceremonious. Khlit tried to under-stand it, his head bent as if listening for something he did not hear. Then Raja Man Singh, descendant of kings who traced their lineage to the gods, leader of the clans of Marwar and Oudh— warriors born and bred—called out in a clear voice:

“The sword, O prince. The sword is the arm of chivalry, the weapon of the Rájput. With these others a man may strike but once; with a sword is he master of many blows.”

At this Khlit, to whom the speech was translated, nodded sagely. Closely he looked at the Rájput noble, marking his open, intelligent face as if he wished to remember it well.

“Yet these weapons suffice but for the individual,” began Jahangir again. “I speak of battles. You have all said that never was there an army in the world such as mine. What is the best weapon by which we may strike those who are our foes?”

Those who knew him best were well aware that a purpose underlay the idle words of the monarch. Eyes met eyes inquiringly, and jeweled hands fingered well-trimmed mustaches.

“How may we smite those of ill-fortune who on our marches have sinned against Allah and our empire by arraying themselves in battle-ranks?”

A massive, black-faced Turk salaamed, bellowing in a hearty voice:

“Great Sultan, give me leave to set my cannon-mouths against the miscreants. Verily I will erect a barricade of withes, carts and iron chains between my roarers and blow this accursed scum to

”

——.

So spoke the chief of the artillery, one Ra’dandaz Khan, the Lord Thunder-Thrower.

“And by the thundering cannon,” added the captain of the Portuguese mercenaries, “I will place my matchlock-men to pick off the leaders of the traitors and stay their charge. Thus will I serve the Lord of India!”

Jahangir glanced at Abdullah Khan, fresh from conquest.

“Mirror of the Glory of Allah, Index of the Book of Creation, Refuge of the World,” uttered that successful leader smoothly, “under your gracious words my heart expands. Yet before your wisdom my knowledge is like a grain of sand, lying below a lofty mountain. As you know, wise intrigue and offers of wealth undermine the strength of our foes.”

Raja Man Singh frowned at the stilted phrases. “Lord,” he cried, “the best of battle is the charge at pace that scatters the ranks of an enemy fairly.”

Jahangir smiled at the Rájput whose reckless bravery was a saying in the land, and turned to Khlit.

“Warrior,” he observed, “men say that you are a Rustum of the Age, a master of battles, leader of the Mongols. I await your answer.”

Thoughtfully Khlit looked from the raja to the Mogul. “Lord,” he said gravely, “have you forgotten the tulughma?”

Frowning, the Mogul shook his broad head as if trying to recall a familiar phrase. Ameer glanced at ameer. The vizier hastily prompted Khlit to explain the word.

“It is the weapon of Genghis Khan, your ancestor,” continued the old warrior. “It is the ‘Mongol swoop.’ By it he defeated—” Khlit looked in turn from Paluwan Khan to the man from Baghdad, and to Raja Man Singh—“Turkoman, Caliph, and Hindu.”

“I have heard the phrase,” Jahangir nodded, leaning back upon his cushions almost under the golden bells. “What is the maneuver?”

“A charge,” responded Khlit through his interpreter, “yet not the charge of the Rájput. A flight of arrows, yet not the arrow-flights of your archers. A strategem that is not the deceit of Abdullah Khan.”

“The tulughma? I know it not.”

“Lord, if your army faced the Mongols in battle you would see the swoop of Genghis Khan. Are the deeds of the first of your race no longer sung by your bards?”

Impatiently Jahangir toyed with his necklace. Petulantly he spoke:

“Graybeard, these are parables. Come, I have a thought for what you must do. You will reveal this maneuver in actual war-fare. Warrior, I have shown you favor, and I have decided that you will accompany my army which is about to set out.”

He sat erect, glancing at his ameers.

“My servants, the dark head of rebellion has arisen in the empire. The message came to my ear this nightfall. You must mount for war on my behalf—”

The Mogul fell silent, but no spoken word had arrested his speech. The golden Bells of Justice had given tongue.

Close by his head they echoed in chiming melody, faint tinkling mingled with sonorous deep-toned note. For the first time in Lahore, the bells had sounded.

Dust-stained, haggard of face, and feverish of eye, his clothing streaked with mud, his velvet cloak bespattered and torn, Chan the minstrel kneeled before the Mogul.

“Justice!” he cried. “My lord, justice for the wronged!”

Rather pleased than otherwise was Jahangir the Mogul at sight of the suppliant form. Not a little surprised was he, however, for since the day of the guards no commoner had lightly approached the gold bell-rope. Still more aroused was he when a slave whispered that the newcomer had cast the guard at the rope into the mud of the riverbed when the sentinel had sought to restrain him.

“Speak!” he commanded. “The gate of the court of mercy is open to you.”

Chan raised his bare head, his features tense with youthful anxiety.

“Lord of the World,” he muttered, his voice rising as he half-chanted his message, “holy men have been slain. Mullahs, brothers of Muhammed Asad, who is beloved of God, have been done to death by lawless men. I saw women taken into the bondage of lust, and villages burned. I have come from the tribes over which you are lord in pursuit of justice.”

“Who is this slayer?”

“Lord, your lips have framed his name—Alacha, the Slayer. And the tribes are the Afghans.”

At this the sparkle died from the black eyes of the monarch. The interest that had given life to his pale face faded, and he frowned.

“The Afghans sent you?” He spoke sharply, evidently irritated. “Nay, my lord.”

Chan dwelled on the face of the monarch anxiously. “Unbidden I came to beg of you the royal justice. The Afghans ask no mercy.”

Almost indifferently Jahangir turned aside, speaking softly to his nearest attendants, among them the vizier. The ameers stared curiously at the minstrel as if at a man condemned.

“My servants,” the Mogul addressed them again, ignoring Chan, “this ill-fortuned one has voiced the tidings I was about to relate. In the hills of the Afghans within rebellious Badakshan men are arming for revolt, as is their custom. The tribes have mounted for war, impiously spurning my authority and acclaiming a leader of their own—”

“Lord,” the minstrel, unused to court etiquette, interrupted, “they seek but to defend themselves against oppression. Wrong has been done by Alacha. Wherefore I, a suppliant, came to the gold bell of which I had heard. Would you close the gates of justice against my plea—”

His high voice trailed off hopelessly as two armed servitors approached him at a sign from the vizier. Jahangir’s frown deepened. He did not altogether relish having the tale of how a claimant for justice had been received repeated throughout his kingdom.

“Personal wrong-doing,” he salved his conscience, “ever merits our attention. Yet this Alacha is a faithful servant of our standard, and his acts are in the interest of our rule. We cannot pardon rebellion.”

A wave of his hand dismissed the minstrel, who had risen moodily to his feet.

“Throw him from the summit of the palace. Yet—” he fingered his tiny gold scimitar irresolutely—“hold! Even to such a villainous conspirator does our mercy extend. Bear him to the quarters of our outer guards and there have the sinews of his knees severed, that he will bear no more messages.”

A complimentary murmur greeted this manifestation of the royal clemency. Only Chan, drawing his slim figure erect, smiled bitterly.

“For his mercy,” he said slowly, “I thank my lord, the Mogul.”

Unseen, Khlit rose in his corner and moved toward Chan. This act, however, caught the eye of the watchful vizier, who whispered to Jahangir. “Padishah, River of Unending Forgiveness, be-fore this dark one came you were speaking to the Mongol—”

“True. Your reminder reveals the zeal of a faithful servant.”

New animation flooded the smooth countenance of the monarch, who motioned to Khlit as Chan was led out—the minstrel casting the while a scornful glance at the warrior whom he had last seen in company with Abdul Dost.

“Dog, who feeds from the Mogul’s table,” whispered the boy with the hot scorn of youth, passing Khlit as he went by between the guards.

Khlit, heedful of Jahangir, paid no attention beyond a quick glance.

VI

The Song of Chan

“Old warrior, now is the moment when you may show gratitude for the costly scimitar given to you, and the robe of honor. When my army mounts for the Afghan campaign, you will ride with the ameers—Raja Man Singh, the Brave (the Rájput bent his head at this); Paluwan Khan; the Lord Thunder-Thrower; and my faithful Ferangs, the musket-men. Your words of the Mongol battles have struck my fancy. Teach Raja Man Singh this tulughma of yours and gifts you have received will be as nought beside the treasure I will bestow.”

So spoke the Mogul, and the warrior heard the words interpreted, standing in silence, his lined face thoughtful.

“Can the Rájputs ride as the Mongols did?” he asked bluntly. “By the many-armed gods!” The raja sprang from his seat, but Jahangir waved him aside.

“We shall see. That will be your task—to cooperate with the Prince of Marwar in crushing this snake which has turned against me. Abdul Dost has assumed the leadership of the Afghans and

raised the unholy standard of revolt. He—son of Suleiman—was once in my pay. Now is he branded an outlaw, and rebel.” Moodily Khlit raised his eyes.

“Lord,” his deep voice addressed the interpreter, “is not Abdul Dost the son of Mongol fathers? His ancestors were yours— Genghis and Timurlane, the Conquerors. His land is the home-land of the Moguls.”

Sheer surprise kept Jahangir silent.

“Abdul Dost served you well,” went on the warrior gruffly, for he chose his words with difficulty. “Have you forgotten? Nay, it was to ask you this and to require your aid for him and his people that I rode hither.”

Ameer glanced at ameer mockingly. Paluwan Khan lay back on his cushions well-pleased. The vizier sighed in sheer relief. His task of spying upon Khlit was done.

With a single sentence the warrior had cast into the balance the favor he had earned from Jahangir.

“The quarrel of Abdul Dost is just,” explained Khlit earnestly. “Consider it in wise council among your captains. His quarrel is with Alacha, who is both evildoer and tyrant. Behead Alacha and place Abdul Dost in his stead.”

A courtier laughed impulsively at this, and the sound broke the gathering wrath of Jahangir, who reflected that Khlit was after all a common soldier and an uncouth man, knowing nought of affairs of state.

“Set an Afghan to rule Afghans?” he cried. “A wolf to lead wolves? Nay, Alacha at my bidding has had the heads of the leading men in Badakshan carried around on poles. As fast as he does so these dark ones set up another leader. So long as there is any trace of the people of Badakshan they will keep up this disturbance.”

His brow darkened again at this, and a flush rose in his cheeks. That morning during the hunt two beaters had unluckily come upon the scene when Jahangir had been about to shoot down a

fine nilgau and the incident still rankled, although the monarch had had the feet cut from under the two.

“Ho, warrior, by Allah and all his saints!”

Jahangir bethought him of the Hindus present.

“And by Vishnu and Siva! You presume upon our goodwill mightily. Yet you may atone for your mistake—”

Twice within the hour had the voice of Chan interrupted his imperial master. The notes of a song in a strong youthful voice wafted through the open embrasures that gave on the river, where the guardhouse stood.

False as Hell is the Mogul’s word,

Tarnished and broken the Mogul sword!

Several of the courtiers moved toward the windows to draw the screens.

Evil fruit from the Mogul’s seed,

And the faith of the Mogul is lost indeed—

Came the echo of a distant struggle, a single short cry of pain. And then silence.

“Unlike that unfortunate,” resumed Jahangir impassively, “you may yet win honor at our behest. Ride with the ameers against Abdul Dost. You have knowledge of the country and the Afghan wiles. Defeat him, and claim greater favors at our all-forgiving hand.”

“And if the ungrateful warrior refuses?” put in the vizier swiftly.

“Death of the gods!” The Mogul’s slender patience gave way. “Has he not our robe of honor on his poverty-stricken back? Will he choose the cistern of ——, rather than my service?”

Uncomprehending and no little troubled, Khlit stood his ground, trying to grasp what was passing. He had hoped to speak a word to Jahangir for his friend. To aid Abdul Dost he had come to Lahore, and had been gratified by his reception. Now he saw his plans scattered as dust before the wind. He turned to the

vizier, whom he thought to be his friend. That shrewd councilor straightaway looked at the floor.

“Take the boor hence,” cried Jahangir, “and learn his answer. Raja Man Singh, Paluwan Khan, attend me!”

Khlit looked up as the vizier and others approached him.

“I must think,” he responded to their inquiries. “Come to my tent, and you will learn what I have decided.”

With that he turned and stalked from the chamber. Those who clustered about him hung back, unwilling to leave the important council that was under way, and appreciating the fact that Khlit could not quit the Mogul’s camp without being observed by the guards.

So it happened that because of their anxiety to learn what was passing in the hall where the Afghan campaign was being discussed, it was some moments before the vizier and others went to the warrior’s tent by the posts of the outer guard, never doubting that his decision would be favorable. They judged him by their own standard, and thus were startled as well as genuinely surprised at what they found.

Khlit’s tent was empty, his couch and scimitar—the gift of Jahangir—lying on the carpet. Both horses were gone, likewise the robe of honor. As to this last, they had an inkling from the palace sentinels.

“A warrior in an imperial khilat we passed out, verily, for we could not gainsay one of such a rank. A servant followed him, riding unsteadily upon a horse of the royal stable. They drew their reins to the North.”

Puzzled, the men of the court searched the vicinity with torches and found the servant, who had been in the pay of the vizier, bound and gagged behind the satin tent.

It was not long before they came to understand the truth—that Khlit had substituted the maimed Chan for his servant, carrying him from the guard tent, saying that he would care for the minstrel’s hurt.

“Said the Mongol aught when he bound you?” they demanded of the trembling native.

“Aye, my lords. He said, ‘Beware the tulughma.’ ”

VII

Word to Abdul Dost

Far above the Shyr Pass stood a round hut of woven cypress and pine branches, its entrance overlooking a grassy glade, around which the pine forest pressed on three sides. Up the mountain, open tracts of grass were revealed, rising to the region of barren shale rock.

By climbing a giant fir a view could be gained of the whole Shyr Pass, through which the Amu Daria threaded its ribbon-like length.

Beside the river almost directly under the fir—so steep were the sides of the gorge—appeared the trail through the pass, looking for all the world from that height like a yellow ant road. And like ants were the moving black specks, coming and going busily along the trail. Sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, they passed under the hut—sometimes the long cavalcade of a caravan was visible.

For many days a girl—she who had put together the hut with her own hands—had climbed the sticky branches of the fir to spend hours in scanning the trail with keen eyes, oblivious of the movements of her cattle, which grazed at will on the upper pastures.

Now she was standing in the hut entrance, nibbling at a round bread-cake and frowning at the mist that drove down from the summits overhead. She was slender and very erect of figure, this Afghan girl, with a ragged woolen coat, plainly designed for a man, about her boyish shoulders.

She braced herself against the bad-i-purwan, the Wind of Purwan—the northern wind—that moaned daily through the pass, harbinger of the Autumn season. Behind the hut, like some gigantic field of ripened grain, the pine trees bent and rocked.

Branch rubbed against branch; massive treetops lifted, to bend low with a crackling protest the next moment.

Feeling the chill of the blast—for the upper slopes of the Afghan hills, the Koh-i-Baba, were many degrees colder than the valley below, where the yellow grain of late Summer was still visible—the solitary maiden rubbed one bare foot tentatively against her leg, drawing the hood of the cloak over her streaming black hair. Her attitude was wary, even defiant. And suddenly she ceased munching the bread, to draw a startled breath.

Within, or rather against, the rush of the wind the note of a high voice reached her ears.

No more I watch at the noble’s gate.

For I gaze at the world from the mountain peak—

The roving glance of the hill girl, keen as it was, failed to discern any human being nearby.

“Now the sweet Ghilani saint aid me!” she murmured, dreading the approach of the invisible singer.

Had not tales been told in the hill villages of Ghils and other terrifying spirits of the heights that rode on the breast of the wind and carried off the souls of men to eternal damnation?

No vulture I, to hover over carrion. An eagle I, to strike down my prey!

At this, a horse burst through the underbrush in front of the hut, and the song halted abruptly as the rider sighted watching girl and hut.

He sat a wearied Arab in curious fashion, and he was weapon-less. A very tarnished red velvet cloak was wrapped about his slender shoulders, a fur cap pulled over his ears. His face was dark with cold, and his cheeks hollowed by privation. Chan, de-spite his lusty singing, had lost somewhat of his debonair manner during a hard journey.

But he swept off his cap with a flourish.

“Allah the generous be thanked,” he murmured to himself. “Food, shelter, woman—a fair maid of my own people and one

that I have seen before, methinks. Peace be with you!” he greeted her, his eyes dwelling upon her face, which seemed strangely familiar.

“And upon you also be peace,” she replied gravely, scanning him with the determined interest of those who must distinguish between friend and foe.

Chan walked the horse to her side, and she noted seriously that the beast was of excellent breed, its saddle costly with silver mountings and cloth-of-gold trappings.

The horse was plainly of better quality than the rider—stolen without doubt, she guessed at once. This somewhat lulled her suspicions, for Chan was undoubtedly an Afghan.

“Who are you?” she demanded, returning to her bread. “What are you doing here? Whither do you ride?”

“One thing at a time, magpie,” smiled Chan. “At present I hunger, and for the present I ride no farther than yonder hut. As for my name, have you never heard of Chan of the Hills, the minstrel of the chieftains? Verily it is my ill-fortune to lack my guitar, which was reft from me by certain ill-omened slaves of the World-Gripper. Allah grant that—

Every fool who made me bow my head, His head will be bowed by my sword.

“Of course,” he meditated, “I lack a sword; yet I have a horse, see you—a notable horse, given me by a thrice-exalted warrior. Help me down from my horse.”

Chan’s smile vanished as he felt of a limp leg that hung useless.

“A mark of the benevolence of the River of Mercy and Fountain of Forgiveness, in other words, the Mogul. By the mercy of God was it ordained that my warrior friend should grasp the executioner by the scruff of his dirty neck when he swung scimitar to hamstring my other leg. So I can yet stand on one foot, but I cannot climb down from this noble steed.”

With an exclamation the girl helped the youth to a bench in the hut and busied herself with lighting from flint and tinder a

fire of brushwood on the flat stones that served for a hearth. Then she offered him milk and began to heat a bowl of rice—after she had unsaddled the Arab and left it to graze.

Food and warmth brightened the eyes of the minstrel.

“Aie, kichik gul—Oh, little flower—scarce did I think to find a woman of my people so close to the Shyr. What is your name? Why are you alone?”

“I am called Tala-i-Nur. My brother was sent as jighit, or mounted messenger, to look for our leader some time since and was slain by Alacha—and also was my sister slain. Because of this my father with all of our family joined the Afghan standard.”

Curiously Chan looked from the girl to the ill-made hut.

“Then must you love the smell of danger, Tala, for Alacha and his men hold the Shyr beneath us—wherefore came I climbing over the mountain.”

“Aye—I have seen.”

Chin on hands, the Afghan maid smiled somberly, gazing into the crackling fire. At this Chan was silent, thinking that the girl had chosen her lofty pasturage in order to watch what went on in the pass.

“Verily,” he mused, “it is cold and windy here for the yailak— the Summer pasture. Perchance you watch other things than cows.”

“Who can know what Allah has ordained?”

Suspicion smoldered half-hidden in Tala’s dark eyes. An Afghan does not like to be questioned. And the spies of Alacha were thick on the countryside.

“That horse of yours bears the Mogul’s brand on its flank.” Chan nodded.

“Aye, little sharp-eyes. Well for me he was the pick of the imperial stables. Never were men so pressed as I and my warrior lord. We rode like the fiends of the wind up the Jhilam bank to the North, where we parted—he for the mountains of the Roof of the World, and I for Kabul and the Shyr. I rode at night along goat?

path and sheep-track and ate what I could pluck by the way—for dismount I could not.”

He grimaced ruefully and glanced up as a patter of rain struck against the felt roof of the hut. Through the many gaps in the woven walls, wind whistled and swept the swirling smoke into Tala’s intent face.

“Tell me what goes on in the land,” asked the minstrel eagerly. “Where lies Abdul Dost? Has he many followers? Has he seized Balkh and Khanjut?”

The girl seemed not to heed him. She was fingering a bow, stringing it and fitting an arrow to the cord. Presently she glanced at her guest from under the tangle of black hair—dark as a raven’s wing, he thought admiringly.

“Would you know what is in my mind?” she questioned. “Aye.”

“You are a spy!”

Springing erect, Tala drew taut the bowstring, leveling the arrow-point at Chan’s chest with a steady hand. She breathed deeply, her strong young body rigid with defiance.

“You are the one who tried to slay Abdul Dost. You ride a horse of the World-Gripper. Claiming to be a minstrel, you lack tambour or guitar—and lie about it clumsily. Now you seek to make me talk of the Afghan army.”

Chan’s mouth opened wide. Then he laughed, a flash of admiration in his brown eyes.

“Clever little magpie! Yet you know the Afghan code. Even a foe is safe under Afghan roof.”

“But you are—a spy of the World-Gripper.”

The arrow-point drew back to the haft of the bow as the girl deftly pulled bowstring to ear. The boy’s eyes did not waver, nor did the smile fade from his lips.

“Tala,” he said slowly, “your brother was sent as a messenger—and slain.”

“Aye, and my sister also, at the hand of Alacha.”

“Yet am I sent as a messenger from my warrior friend to Abdul Dost, your leader. The word I bear means much to the Afghans. Would you slay me?”

“I do not believe you.”

“But you must believe.”

Chan’s smile had vanished. Earnestness shone from his tired face. Stretching forth his crippled leg, he began to unwind the bandages. Stiff with dust and blood, they came off slowly, finally revealing the purple line of a fresh wound behind the knee.

Turning, with an involuntary twitch of agony the boy pulled up his torn cotton trouser, and Tala saw the raw ends of the severed ligaments. Her arms dropped a little and the bowstring slacked.

Chan stared at his crippled limb dumbly. Gone was all the merriment that the boy assumed so bravely, nourishing his own courage thereby.

“I shall never walk as a man again. Ever I must crawl with a crutch. Ai—at a word from the Mogul did they this thing. And he called it mercy.”

Now a flush overspread the girl’s cheeks—a flush that changed swiftly to a nerveless pallor. Arrow and bow fell to her feet. Chan raised his clenched hands toward the roof of the hut.

“I cannot walk, Tala. But I can ride—and loose arrow from bow. Aye, I shall sew the arrow-stitch of vengeance. It will heal my wound.”

He turned on the girl savagely.

“Think you this is a disguise? Would the wise Alacha, the shrewd, fox-like Alacha, choose a cripple for a spy? Ha—think you so?”

Tala’s hands flew to her face and covered her eyes. Tears dripped from between her fingers to the earth that was the only floor of the hut. Then she ran to Chan and fell on her knees.

“Forgive me!” she cried. “I doubted, but now your words ring true. Oh, it was the poison of Alacha that made me doubt. I deemed you the one that had caused my sister’s death.”

Uncertainly, for she still wept, Tala cleansed the bandages in fresh water and bound them about Chan’s knee, because she had no other linen. As she did so, she released long pent-up emotion in swift speech.

“I never doubted you were Chan. Often have I heard you sing under the trees of our orchard in the village before I came here. But Alacha spoke of you, and I believed, because I could not know it was but a trick of the Slayer.”

“Alacha—you?” The Afghan youth stared, bewildered.

“Aye. You remember the woman to whom you sang love songs in the evening, and who listened behind the lattice of her window. The window looking out upon the orchard.”

“But she is dead.”

“My sister, older than I. Chan, I listened too, for I was envious of your singing, knowing that you had seen the form of my sister who was more fair than I. Aye, Chan, I sat by her knee in the evening after sunset prayers and saw her splendid face grow lovelier at your song. At such times the poison of jealousy was in my heart.

“Then came Alacha, riding by from a hunt. He saw the face of my sister unveiled and seized her, beating me to earth when I struggled to aid her.”

Tala, the labor of her dressing finished, sat up, the tears still bright on her cheeks.

“I heard Alacha whisper to his men that here was a means to make the low-born Afghans draw the sword of open revolt. Chan, Alacha had been ordered by the Mogul to stir up the Afghans to rebel—so Badakshan could be despoiled, and the strength of the Afghan tribes scattered to the winds. Seeing that I had heard what was said, the man to whom he spoke would have seized me also, but Alacha stayed him, smiling slowly after his fashion.

“ ‘Chan, our spy,’ he said so that I could hear, ‘has shown us a fair flower to be our victim.’ ”

“But,” observed the minstrel, “I did not see you when I rode to the hut that night.”

“Nay, I tried to follow the Slayer and his men. I was soon tired and fell by the road. Then I heard that you had carried the body of my sister through Badakshan to arouse the tribes, and so I believed all the more what the Slayer had said. When my father, mourning for my sister, said that you had gone to the Mogul camp I felt in my heart that you were a traitor. But now I see the truth. Forgive me!”

The boy laid his hand on her shoulder, sighing.

“We are but children, Tala, before the craft of the Mogul and his agents. See how he turns Afghan against Afghan. What have I to forgive? So you came here to watch the movements of the Slayer?”

“Aye—and more.”

Tala related how when the Afghans took up arms, Alacha— who was well-prepared—had given up Balkh, but had fallen back on the Shyr Pass, the main road to Kabul and the Mogul’s cities. He held Khanjut, the “Iron Gate” of the pass, on the Afghan side, while Abdul Dost assembled his forces in the plains.

“The Mogul musters his army at Lahore, not far from Kabul,” mused the boy. “And by the Shyr he will pass his men through the Koh-i-Baba hills, which are the walls of Badakshan. Oh, they are shrewd. How can we oppose such men?”

“By the sword of the tribes.” Tala’s brown eyes flashed. “And even the women will do their part—even I. Here I can see little, for the mists and the rain veil the movements in the pass below. So I have decided on what I must do. Alacha has an eye—so it is said—for the Afghan women. I will drive my cows by the trails I know to the bed of the pass. The Slayer’s men will seize the animals for their food, but I—”

“You will be taken!” cried the boy.

“That is what I plan.”

The girl’s serious brow was stern with purpose. Her eyes fell, but she nodded bravely.

“I have heard that Alacha keeps the fairest women for himself. Thus shall I see what goes on in his camp and hear something of his plans—for I am quick of ear.”

The boy’s face fell; then he laughed—checking himself swiftly, as he put his hand on the tangle of her hair. “O little flower, I am very wise. I have journeyed among the camps of the world—and seen Alacha and the Mogul. Such men as they, Tala, have eyes solely for the elegant women of Persia and Hindustan. The Slayer scarce would notice you in your rags—”

“Am I not fair?” She gazed at him wide-eyed, questioning. “Alas, Alacha had eyes for my sister! And, somewhat, I resemble her.”

At this Chan gazed at the girl keenly.

“True, Tala. You are very like her. Yet we Afghans are not spies and, therefore, are blind to the tricks of our foes.”

Tala rose with a nod, bravely determined. “I shall go to the camp of Alacha and watch, and if any one tries to harm me I shall shoot him with my bow.”

Chan shook his head moodily. Then his eyes brightened.

“So be it, Tala. If you could learn aught to aid Abdul Dost. . .” He smiled, merry again. “And I will join you, after I have de-livered my message. I will come to seek you at the Shyr bank, behind the Iron Gate, wearing some old garments of the holy man, Muhammad Asad.”

“Alacha would slay you.”

“Nay, for I will be a begging kwajah, lame, for all to see.”

He caught the girl’s slim wrist fiercely. “O Tala, you and I will contrive a mighty thing. We will be a thorn in the side of the World-Gripper! For we will sow the seeds of fear.”

While the Afghan maid listened, wondering, Chan told her the message that he bore to Abdul Dost—that the old warrior who had befriended him was bringing aid to Abdul Dost. That a horde

of wild riders would come to Badakshan from the North, through the mountain passes.

“Such men as you and I have never seen, O Tala. They live for fighting alone, and they ride like the demons of the air. They wear the hides of beasts for armor, and their bodies are like iron.”

“Who are they?” Tala was amazed.

“The Tatar Horde. They, like the Afghans, are the children of Genghis Khan. Eh, little flower, we will spread fear in the camp of our enemy. We will foretell the coming of the spirits of the dead warriors, of whom the Mogul’s bards sing.”

His eyes were smoldering as if with fever.

“Thus will I knit the arrow-stitch of vengeance. Once before, the Tatar Horde swept through the Caliphate and Samarkand crumbled like a house of dust before them, and Balkh and Lahore. Ameers and sultans were cut down like ripe grain. So, we will sing, you and I—”

Chan laughed, clutching her slender shoulders. “We will sing a chant of doom—of doom from the mountains. We will say that the Ghils are a-horse, and the dead walk again. The Mogul’s men live by omens. Eh—we will give them an omen, a mighty omen. They will hear the trumpets of the Conqueror, Genghis Kahn.”

He leaned back against the wall, his small body exhausted. “Now I will sleep.”

So Tala cast wood upon the fire and dragged her blankets close to the stone hearth, and made Chan comfortable thereon. She sat close to him, watching until he slept.

But she did not sleep. From time to time she replenished the fire, gazing into its glow and turning over in her mind the strange things the minstrel had said.

And in this manner did a boy and girl plan to match their wits against the intrigue of a master plotter.

In the early morning they parted, Tala assembling her herd and driving it down to the valley, while Chan turned his horse’s head toward Badakshan and the Afghan camp.

Before sunset the tidings he brought were repeated to Abdul Dost, where the chief of the Afghans had planted his standard in the plain.

“Do not give battle with your full strength until I join you. With my men, I will reach Badakshan from the northern passes before snow closes the valleys.”

That was the message from Khlit. On hearing it Abdul Dost flushed with pleasure and uttered a broad oath, saying to the blind Muhammad Asad, who sat near him, that they would have the aid of the old warrior whose wisdom was worth more than two thousand swords.

The mullah nodded gravely.

“Verily does it seem that the aid of this warrior could not be bought with gold. It is in my mind that he has felt the tie of friendship, and that he keeps faith with you. Yet what tribes are these of the North and how may they come hither?”

Neither Muhammad Asad nor Abdul Dost had seen the Mongol clans. Between the Afghan valleys and Mongolia rose the mountain barrier of the Himalayas. No merchants went to the steppe. Only some legends and tales of travelers had reached their ears.

What manner of men were these from the steppe? They did not know.

“And how,” asked a warrior, “are they to surmount the barrier of the hills? Can an army pass over the Roof of the World? Nay, it may not be.”

Abdul Dost realized the force of this.

“We are in the hand of God,” he repeated gravely. “We will wait.”

His men—villagers, shepherds, hunters, clansmen—were impatient for action. Afghans, Hazaras, Kirghiz—all had assembled to fight for their liberty. From the distant tribes of Ferghana and from the desert itself they had come. Old men and former soldiers, boys and priests, had cheerfully taken up the burden of

The boy who had been the ward of blind Muhammad Asad rode proudly at the left hand of the mansabdar. Hope was rife in Badakshan—the reckless exuberance of the Afghan who never reckons the strength of a foe.

Meanwhile in the Shyr Pass Alacha sat in his red tent, hearing the messages of his spies, drilling his men, plundering cattle and grain. And in Kabul the high ameers of the World-Gripper mobilized the imperial army. Raja Man Singh and Paluwan Khan planned the coming campaign. The Lord Thunder-Thrower cast more shot for his camel artillery. The matchlock-men furbished their weapons under the eye of a Portuguese captain of mercenaries.

The imperial army, the corps d’armée of the Mogul, formed itself slowly into a gigantic, machine-like whole. Levies of horse-men from the northern provinces trotted in daily, the warriors resplendent in silver armlets, silk and cloth-of-silver and precious jewels sewn into turban and tunic—bearing upon their backs more often than not the whole of a year’s pay while their families in the villages hungered.

Camp followers, bazaar-merchants, armorers, courtesans, flocked to Kabul until a veritable city of tents arose in the valley by the winding river.

Then came the day when Jahangir placed robes of honor on Raja Man Singh, Paluman Khan and the ameers of his host; the alam, the imperial standard, was raised, the kettledrums sounded, and the long camel-trains began to move forward to the northern pass, attended by the advance guard of Rájput cavalry. From the balcony of his palace the World-Gripper watched the dust that rose over the moving host.

“See that an accounting is made to me,” he observed idly to the vizier who stood by him. “An accounting of the spoil taken from the Afghans. It will add in my memoirs to the glory of my reign.”

VIII

By the waters of Kerulon, by the hills of Khantai Khan, in the heart of the ocean of grass, a palace is.

Above the waters of the sacred river, under the breasts of the mountain, there is the court of a monarch.

The eyes of a warrior host turn toward the lord of souls. Yet he moves not and the standard over his head stirs not. For the palace is a tomb, and the standard is dust. And no man may see the warrior host that lies at the feet of Genghis Khan.

Yet in the hearts of men still lives the fear that was fear of Genghis Khan.

In the annals of the Mongol khans it is written that the Horde journeyed south and west from their homeland by the Kerulon and the basin of Jungaria in the Autumn of a year early in the seventeenth century, and this was to escape the Winter cold that was creeping down from Lake Baikal, as well as the inroads of the Chinese.

For the khans and their people lived not in cities. Their yurts, great felt tents, moved over the mid-Asian steppe drawn by bullocks, and with the yurts moved the herds that were the remaining wealth of the Mongols.

They roved restlessly, seldom dismounting from their shaggy ponies, passing aimlessly over the vast spaces, ringed by distant snow ranges that lay just to the north of the Himalayas.

The clans of Mongolia were thinned in numbers; their glory was a thing of the past, recited in song by the minstrels, brooded over beside the fires at night. They wore the sheepskin and leather taken from the animals slain for food. Their weapons were antiquated, being fashioned for the hunt—bows, and short swords.

Powerful, slow-thinking men, warriors and herders, the khans ate what they might, drank deep of mare’s milk and slept much, listening at times to the songs of the minstrels.

So Khlit found them by the lakes north of the Thian Shan. “It is well,” they said. “He who was our Kha Khan has come to us to sleep in our tents and eat of our food.”

Word passed swiftly along the invisible channels of the steppe that the Cossack in whose veins ran Tatar blood, and who—

himself a descendant of their royal chiefs—had once been their leader, had returned to them out of the mysterious splendor of Ind beyond the mountains to the South.

“He has come in the twilight of old age,” they said. “It is well. For the steppe which is our home is his also.”

And then swiftly the messages changed. The gray-haired chiefs of the kurultai, the council, assembled and spoke together.

“The warrior who was Kha Khan has followed the path of battle in the land of Ind,” they repeated gravely. “He has come with a word for our hearing.”

Hunters who were following the gazelles and wild horses of the plains began to drift back to the yurts, hearing the rumor. Khans, seeking Winter quarters for their clans, rode to the kibitka where Khlit sat.

“There is war beyond the mountains to the South and West,” they said next. “A people of our race live in a valley there—the valley of Badakshan.”

Then also riders passed from the lakes to the outlying hordes, as the Tatars still called their tribes, although now but a shadow of the numbers that had overrun China, the Himalayas, Iran, Persia, and the Caucasus.

“The Kirghiz and the Afghans, who are like to us, ask aid,” they remarked to each other. “They are the children of Timurlane, the Lame Conqueror, who is of the line of Genghis Khan.”

“The army of Ind rides to the hills,” replied shrewder ones, “and there is the wealth of a kingdom in the camp of the Mogul’s men. Aye there is gold and weapons—horses, jewels and cattle.”

Under the magic stimulus of war the men of the hordes gathered about the lakes. Once assembled, they sought Khlit out. The elder men of the Jun-gar brooded silently. And Khlit addressed his old friends of the kurultai.

“To the South,” he said. “lies a road that the khans have not followed for the space of eight times the life of a man. In the time of Genghis Khan the road led to the Caliphate; now it leads to Ind.”

Bearded heads bent attentively to catch his words; slant eyes peered at him immobilely from under tufted brows. Massive, scarred hands clutched spear-shafts as the Tatar chieftains leaned on their spears to listen.

“At the end of the road danger awaits the rider,” went on Khlit’s deep voice. “I have been your leader. Brothers, khans, you know I speak not idle words—” his glance roved from face to face—“nor make promises that may not be kept. I have made a pledge that I will bring aid to a warrior, my brother-in-arms, Khan of Badakshan.”

“Aye.” The fur-capped head of youthful Berang, khan of the Torgot clan, nodded. “O Khlit, we know.”

“Then hear my message. Before this I have said that I would lead those who dare follow against Jahangir, the World-Gripper, the Mogul. Now I say, brothers, khans, that of those who follow me few will return.”

Silence greeted this, and the hard eyes did not falter.

“Well said, by the blood of the horse of Natagai!” bellowed a lion-like voice—Chagan, the sword-bearer, a man thick-set as a gnarled oak, powerful enough to break the neck of a yak by a twist of his hands. “That is no lie. Good!”

Khlit lifted his hand. “Spoil there may be—spoil from the tents of the Chatagais. * Yet those who are slain may bear away no gold. I want no riders to follow me who think of naught but plunder.”

“Aye,” said the khans. “In flashing sword-strokes does a warrior find honor.”

“If there be a battle—and a battle I seek—those who follow me must face the tramp of elephants and the thunder of cannon. I want no cowards.”

The khans growled at this, clutching their weapons the tighter. One grumbled that Genghis had overmastered the “moving castles,” the elephants, when he vanquished the emperor of Han.

“And among those who come with me there will be no leaders. I will lead, and he who disobeys will die. At my side will be the

* The Mogul race of India.

yak-tail standard, as when we drove the Chinese banners before us at the Kerulon.”

“Ho!” cried one. “That was a battle. The minstrels will sing of that.”

“But not of this,” broke in Khlit harshly. “For we will be in a strange, southern land, and the bards of Ind will not remember the bravery of the Tatar khans. Nay, we will have naught but hard blows and hard words, for we go to the aid of an oppressed people. Nor—” he faced them gravely—“do I seek the leadership save that one man must be chief and not many. And I know how we may strike the Mogul.”

His aged countenance lighted up at this, and his keen eyes gleamed. “Ha, lords! We be old, many of us, and our race is passing into the shadows. Come, shall we strike one good blow with the sword—” his curved sword flashed in his hand at this—“of Genghis, the Conqueror! Shall we ride into battle once more? Has our blood grown too thin to shed?”

The somber faces shone, and the intent eyes held his fiercely.

“Tomorrow at daybreak—” Khlit sheathed his weapon and folded his arms across his broad chest—“I ride to the South. Those who will go with me must be mounted and assembled at the council place by then.”

Such was his last address to the Tatar khans.

That night beside the campfires that sprinkled the plain and flickered into the lakes the men of the Horde sat in unwonted talk. Here and there the one-stringed fiddle of a minstrel strummed and a deep voice recited an endless chant of former glory. And with this rose the plaint of the women—the sound of mourning that has since the world was new attended the departure of the warriors.

And with the dawn, when the fires had sunk to embers, there was a stirring of figures, the soft tread of horses, and the clink of weapons.

The first glow of scarlet sunrise over the steppe showed a multitude of riders gathered around the tent of Khlit.

Truly it was a strange army. For there was no baggage save the saddlebags on the spare horses—each Tatar brought an extra mount. Nor was any ammunition train to be seen. Each warrior carried his own weapons.

There was no muster, no fretting of waiting ranks. The riders of the clans grouped about their respective banners, and the whole hive-like mass centered around the yak-tail standard.

This was outlined clearly against the yellow of the flooding sky. It moved forward, and helmeted heads and spear-points followed swiftly. Once a woman burst from a tent to run, weeping, beside the horse of a young warrior, who thrust her aside with his foot.

Again rose the song of the minstrels, harsh and discordant in the semi-darkness. Groups of old women, straining aged eyes, clutched the young ones to them in silence.

“Hai—the Horde is onward bound.. . the khans of Tatary ride. . . they follow the standard of Genghis. . . Woe to those who stand in their way.. .”

It was the chant of the riders, remembered from ancient times. And, in the half-light of dawn, the black mass of riders under the banners seemed not otherwise than the mass of the ancient Horde.

IX

Alacha Hunts

Tala sat watchfully upon the broad rump of a buffalo, the last of her herd. While the beast drank from a pool in one of the icy mountain streams, the girl eyed the surrounding thicket thought-fully. She had drawn a fold of her heavy cloak across the lower portion of her face, and only her alert eyes were visible, under a dark tangle of hair.

The echo of a distant shout pierced the quiet of the glade. Over-head the echo reverberated from lofty sandstone cliffs, winding in and out among narrow rock ravines, and returning unexpectedly from the face of some distant mountain. The buffalo raised its

dripping muzzle inquiringly, but Tala made no move to pull its nose-cord away from the stream.

She listened keenly as the voices of men approached through a willow thicket along the bank of the stream. Then horses’ hoofs were heard, trampling on stones. Tala sat upright, her small figure tense. She had been waiting for the coming of the riders.

And presently, as she had anticipated, a brilliant cortège trotted through the willows, led by two noblemen. She recognized the silks and velvets of Alacha and the russet-and-green overtunic of Paluwan Khan—the Northern Lord. On the gloved wrist of the Slayer rested his favorite gyrfalcon, hooded.

In contrast to the light hunting-garb of the handsome, olive-skinned Turkoman, the khan rode fully armed in khud—steel headdress—and zirih beneath his tunic, with mace and sword at his girdle. Paluwan Khan was a dark-browed, stoop-shouldered man, and more than a little bow-legged.

Tala faced them defiantly, only drawing the cloak closer under her eyes.

“An Afghan, by the soul of Ali!” cried Paluwan Khan, scowling.

“And not ill-shaped,” added Alacha, fingering his mustache. “No place this, for a brat of the ill-omened brood,” grunted the khan.

“After all,” murmured Alacha, his slant eyes straying idly back to his falcon, from the girl, “she is dirty, and rags distort even the finest limbs. Ho, little thief, what do you here? What seek you in the hunting-ground of the Mogul?”

Tala’s eyes blazed.

“This land was my father’s field,” she cried. “And you, O Alacha, are a greater thief than I, for your men have taken my cattle, leaving only this buffalo that is sick and like to die.”

“Then is your father a traitor, wench,” said Alacha in a color-less voice. Unlike the khan, he seemed to enjoy the hot words of the girl. “For he is with the black standard of rebellious Abdul Dost.”

Under his gaze, curiously thoughtful, as if the aspect of the woman called up a familiar thought, Tala turned her head aside.

“Am I not to be paid for the cattle?” she asked passively.

Paluwan Khan laughed in his beard and would have spurred on, but Alacha turned cold eyes from Tala to the foremost of his retinue, a gigantic Turk, Hossein by name.

“Hossein, offspring of sin,” he observed, twisting the end of his light mustache delicately, “your race is covetous of the women of other lands. Let me see, I have given you Georgian, Circassian, Khorassani and Kirghiz, but never—before this—an Afghan. Would yonder sharp-tongued baggage please you?”

“Aye, my lord,” bellowed the stout warrior. “There is no bounty like my lord’s.”

He was clad in the barbaric splendor that was then the fashion in Constantinople. A blue kaftan, fur-tipped, enveloped his massive shoulders, over a white robe embroidered with cloth-ofgold, somewhat soiled. Hossein had wrestled in the courts of the Osmanli, and his garb mimicked the splendor of the sultans, just as the jewels on his black paws imitated the Greek fashion, and also the chain of turquoise about his bull neck.

“Aye, fountain of imperial mercy,” he salaamed, small eyes glittering. “If her tongue be too sharp for my taste, a knife will blunt it—”

Tala thrust out a contemptuous lower lip. “Is this the justice of Alacha?”

Neither of the nobles deigned to reply. Hossein advanced on Tala, seizing the nose-cord of the buffalo. Alacha looked on, much amused.

The Slayer was something of a philosopher, having passed his boyhood as disciple in a meddresse of Samarkand, and wandering from there to Bokhara and its mosques, to idolatrous Antioch and cosmopolitan Constantinople. Nominally a Mohammedan, he was familiar with the doctrines of Shiite and Sunnite, Zoroastrian and Hebrew, and the shamans, or conjurer-priests, of Mongolia.

Thus he had the intelligence and capacity for evil of the mosque-raised boy and the ready wits of a wanderer.

He could quote readily from the Persian poets, the astronomy of Uleg Beg, or the hero epic of the Ramayana. Supremely intelligent, he allowed others to do his fighting for him, and his quarreling. In great favor with the petulant Jahangir, he was skilled in anticipating the moods of his monarch.

Some said that the cruelty of the slender Turkoman was not natural to him, being assumed to satisfy Jahangir; others that by cruelty he hoped to make his name feared, being loath to hazard his person in battle to that end.

Now he glanced up, his smooth face revealing as much surprise as it was capable of showing. A broad, bent figure clad in heavy sheepskins had approached Hossein silently and laid a massive hand on the Turk’s shoulder.

“By the gods!” murmured Alacha.

He stared at the companion of the newcomer, a veiled woman mounted on a white Arab.

“Stand aside,” said, or rather growled, the man of the sheep-skins.

Hossein gaped and stepped back to shake off the hand that gripped him. Failing in this, he reached for a knife in his girdle.

“Unmannered dog!” he shouted. “Child of a dog—”

His heavy voice waxed shrill with anger. He had noticed the brown, curling hair and the blue eyes of the man who faced him— a Circassian.

Between Turk and Circassian there was a world-old feud. The stranger folded his arms, his eyes hard. Upon shoulder and swelling forearm the leather garments clung tightly, molded over iron-like muscles. He did not move to touch the short, bare sword thrust through his belt.

Alacha, who was a keen observer, noted that the sheepskins of the powerful stranger seemed ill in keeping with the splendid workmanship of the sword. And he fancied that the woman, although wearing the heavy wool of a commoner, bore herself

too well on the blooded horse to be a person of the countryside. Her veil and the pearl chaplet bound over her dark hair were of Persian design.

Paluwan Khan, impatient at the second interruption, commanded Hossein to knock the stranger down, seize the girl and continue on with the hunt, in the name of Allah’s mercy.

“Nay,” cried the woman on the horse, “he is my man—” nod-ding at the broad figure in sheepskins—“and he will take the Afghan woman for me.”

Alacha toyed with the silver chain of his hawk and frowned, puzzled by the imperious voice of the woman and the boldness of her servant.

“Hossein,” he purred, “are you minded to give place to a boor, a shepherd clown?”

His glance still dwelt on the veiled stranger, noting the stately figure and the wealth of dark hair. Why did such a one ride alone, except for a single slave? Who was she? What did she want of the Afghan child?

Paluwan Khan spurred to his side.

“In the name of Satan and all his brood, why barter words with a woman? They profit a man nothing, and they sting like serpents.”

Alacha waved him aside. Surely the newcomer was beautiful. Probably, since she was alone, she was masterless. If he could know for certain that she was not wife or mistress of some noble more powerful than himself—

“O khanum—” he bent his handsome head slightly—“have you a claim to this wretched girl, that you countermand the word of Alacha?”

“I desire her.” The woman seemed to be smiling behind her veil. “And I have been listening, my lord, behind yonder thicket to—the words of Alacha.”

“Ah.”

The Turkoman bit his carefully tended mustache reflectively. The woman had wit. Likewise—so he assured himself—there must be a purpose behind her speech. If he only knew—

“Khanum, it is never my wish to forgo the desire of beauty. You have a sturdy scoundrel to attend you—eh, he is not lacking in boldness. Then let him try his strength with the wrestler, Hossein. Let the Afghan maiden be the prize.”

He expected a protest, perhaps the disclosure of her name and rank. And by soft words he hoped to win her favor.

“So be it,” she said after a pause. “Geron is no weakling.”

At this the Circassian silently discarded coat and belt and stood forth in leather jerkin and woolen trousers. Hossein, after a glance at his master, did likewise, baring hairy shoulders and arms, massive and full-fleshed.

“Ho, Circassian dog,” he bellowed, “I will make kohl for your blue eyes out of the dust. Nay, I will redden your pale cheeks with blood.”

Geron glanced at him impassively. He stood not as tall as the Turk, but he was broader across the shoulders and chest. More-over his arms were of gorilla-like length, and his legs—unlike Hossein’s—were heavily thewed.

“Is your man skilled as a wrestler, khanum?” growled Paluwan Khan, becoming interested. He had pressed forward, to form a ring about the two champions, with others of the hunting-party.

“If not, his bones will crack like twigs, and I shall take that bright sword of his, for it likes me well.”

“He is no wrestler,” observed the woman. “Ai—”

Hossein with professional shrewdness had suddenly gripped Geron about the shoulders, his plump arms twining for a head-lock. The Circassian, taken by surprise, twisted about and broke free with some trouble. He stood erect, breathing deeply, and then gasped wholeheartedly. The Turk, angered by the failure of his first hold, butted him full in the stomach.

“Is your man a wrestler?” asked the woman quickly. “I think he is a ram.”

She broke off as Geron was heavily thrown by a more successful trick of the Turk. The breath seemed to have been knocked from his stout body by this second impact, yet when Hossein

would have fallen upon him with a cry of triumph, he wriggled aside and stood erect, glaring at his tormentor.

Squealing with self-inspired rage, Hossein rushed at him head down. Again they grappled, and the two powerful bodies swayed and staggered over the turf. Alacha barely glanced at them. He was sure of the outcome, and he was more interested in the woman who took delight in a man’s sport.

The Turk, feinting craftily, jerked Geron’s knees from under him and pounced upon his sweating shoulders, driving home the head-hold he sought—his forearm locked under the chin of his adversary, his weight full on Geron’s neck.

“Now the twig will snap, crack—like that!” Paluwan Khan grinned, and snapped his fingers

The woman clapped her hands.

“Geron!” she cried. “Make an end.”

But the Circassian’s broad face was purple, and he gasped. Be a man ever so strong, he cannot put forth his strength without wind in his lungs. Hossein was silent now, striving wickedly to break the neck of his foe. The wrestling match had become a deadly struggle.

Tala sat her buffalo, scrutinizing combatants and spectators with sharp interest. Such sport was in her mind the play of slaves. Men of her race fought with sharp sword-edges. Although she might well have done so, she made no effort to run off.

She had noted every detail of the appearance of the woman on the horse. But chiefly she watched the Slayer.

The two wrestlers had sunk to the ground, Geron underneath. The friends of Hossein had raised a triumphant shout. This seemed to act as the spur the great Circassian needed, for a brown arm shot out from the writhing mass and closed about the throat of the Turk.

The watchers saw Hossein thrust back and his grip broken as easily as a severed vine is pulled from a tree trunk. The muscles of Geron’s arm swelled and cracked as he rose slowly to his knees, gulping deep breaths of air into a laboring chest.

Out of red eyes, under sweat-dripping brows, he stared at the struggling Hossein. The Turk, by a crafty twist, jerked free, blood spurting from his throat and mouth as be did so. Then Geron, still kneeling, caught him sidewise by the waist and rose with his burden to his feet.

Gripping the Turk fast on his shoulder, Geron stared about him and stepped to the edge of the pool. His hands shifted from waist to the neck of Hossein and his broad shoulders heaved.

Hossein, the skilled wrestler, flew through the air and fell, a good four paces away, into the pool near the watching Tala. The water was shallow, yet Hossein lay passive beneath it, stunned.

“Let him lie,” said Alacha softly. “I have no service for a weak-ling.”

But Geron paced forward a trifle unsteadily, stooped, and drew the unconscious body from the water. Without looking at it he walked to his sheepskin coat and belt, girded on his sword and seized the nose-cord of Tala’s buffalo. Then he spoke to Paluwan Khan.

“This blade—” he smote the haft of his short weapon—“was fashioned for my hand, not for yours, my lord.”

The noble shrugged his shoulders and would have urged Alacha forward on the hunt, but the Slayer had been whispering to the woman.

“In the name of all the gods, who is your champion? He handled Hossein like a sack of grain.”

“My lord,” she laughed, “he is no miller but a maker of swords. He is Geron, the armorer of the Mogul.”

Alacha stared at the man who for half a generation had tempered and shaped the Damascus and Persian blades for Jahangir.

“The imperial favor would shine upon us coldly,” swore Paluwan Khan in his ear, “if your stupid wrestler had broken the neck of the great smith. Said I not a woman was a breeder of trouble—”

“But such a woman,” whispered Alacha. “Half the spoils of Afghanistan for a sight of her face.”

To the stranger he added:

“The Afghan girl is yours; verily your wrestler is a worthy servant indeed. Yet for you a champion of nobler blood should be supplied. Will you lighten my eyes with gladness by allowing me to escort you to the camp? Perhaps if you have no tent, or await some one from the court—”

“I wait for no one, Alacha,” she responded. “But I will ride with you to your tent.”

Whereupon, preceded by Geron and Tala on her buffalo, the woman and Alacha turned back along the stream toward the camp of the Mogul’s army.

Within the inner recess of Alacha’s tent the woman of the pearls seated herself upon the cushions of the Slayer, yet when he would have knelt upon the rug in front of her, she checked him with an imperious gesture.

“It is not fitting you should sit,” she explained, adding softly, “You know not my rank.“

This indeed was causing Alacha no little worry. He frowned, for he fancied that his visitor was making game of him. If he could but know her name, and her purpose in seeking him—

Smilingly he offered his visitor dainty refreshment of sherbet, ice-cooled, and figs in syrup. These, however, the woman commanded to be taken to Tala in the entrance compartment of the tent, with more substantial fare for Geron.

Alacha’s smooth brow flushed darkly at this affront to his hospitality. He fumbled with the jewels at his throat, trying to meet the glance of the dark-eyed beauty who was tranquilly scrutinizing the splendid coloring of a peacock—one of the Slayer’s pets.

“Now, my lord.” she observed at length, “I wish you to tell me how the campaign goes—how you and the pillars of empire have fared against the Afghan.”

Politely, slightly ironically, he bowed. “To do that, my lady, I must first know your name.”

“Then—” the brown eyes flashed at him mockingly over the veil—“I must needs tell you. The whole of the Mogul’s army has

passed through the Shyr into Badakshan; you have burned to the ground a score of villages, and planted as many headmen upon stakes. Balkh you have seized, and levied tribute of half their wealth upon its merchants. Slaves you have taken—”

“From the thieving Pathans.”

“Who must become the servants of Jahangir. Was it wise? My lord Alacha, you have advanced the imperial army over half Badakshan, destroying the crops, fruits and vineyards that you have not stripped for yourself—”

“Khanum, we have driven the Afghans before us.”

“Verily? You have not engaged them in battle.”

“Nay, they fly before the imperial standard. True, they harass our foraging parties and our supply caravans. They be born brig-ands.”

“Who love their freedom.”

Alacha’s full lip curled. Was the woman seeking to play upon him? She wore the headdress and veil of a married woman, yet she rose alone near the army. She had befriended an Afghan girl. Wherefore?

“Your words are a well of wisdom, khanum,” he parried. “Per-chance also your wisdom has found a part for the hill maiden to play.”

His visitor nodded gravely.

“Aye, my lord. I shall send her to Abdul Dost with a message.”

The Turkoman laughed. If this were intrigue it was poorly con?

cealed. He became more bold, for he fancied the woman sought

to win his favor. That she should be a friend of the Afghans he

doubted. The men of the hills had no wits in their empty skulls.

“It is written that the fairest of women unite the pearls of

wisdom to the diamond of beauty,” he smiled, approaching her.

“Happy is the hour when such a companion comes to my tent—”

“Have you not bound the girdle of fidelity to your master, the

Mogul, about the cloak of war?” she asked calmly. “Alacha, I have

seen the manner in which you serve your lord. No eyes have you

for aught save the women you may take, or the spoil you may pile beside your tent.”

The Turkoman shrugged his shoulders, staring curiously at the woman who treated him as a servant.

“Alacha,” she continued thoughtfully, “I also serve the Mogul, and he trusts me above his generals. Wherefore I say to offer Abdul Dost fair terms. Let the Afghan make peace in honor. Offer amends for the pillaging done by your men. Send the girl Tala with the message.”

“Amends—to the Afghan? When we have the imperial army mustered for battle? What would Jahangir say?”

He laughed tolerantly. It pleased him to match words with his fair visitor.

The brown eyes fell serious at once, and she spoke with masculine directness.

“Alacha, you and the other ameers think much of the glory that may be won in a battle. Yet are we all servants of India, and the Mogul of India.” Her voice quickened and she sat erect. “Where have your spies been? Have you no tidings of aid coming to Adbul Dost from the northern tribes?”

“Aye—some talk there has been among the mountain men of Mongol clans gathering beyond the hills. But naught have I heard from the priest who is my spy among the Mongols.”

“Talk! If you meet these same clans in battle the imperial army will feel the weight of a skilled sword. Grant them peace and you may win strong allies—Afghans and Mongols. Then will the empire of India wax greater thereby.”

Alacha smiled, adjusting the folds of his elaborate cloak.

“The clans will never win through the passes of the Roof of the World, my lady. Verily, this is a matter for the wisdom of men, not for a woman’s tongue. Will you not rest—”

“Nay. Alacha, once I came through the passes of the northern hills from the desert and the city of the black priests—Khoten. For guide I had a warrior of the Mongol clans. Now he has gone back to his people.”

“Can horsemen ride over the rock passes? Can horses find feed in the snow? Nay, have no fear—”

He sought to touch her hand.

“Fool!”

The woman rose swiftly. From under her veil she drew a long string of pearls, unwound from about her throat.

“You have an eye for spoil. Know you these royal jewels? Know you their owner?”

Alacha’s olive face paled and his lips quivered. He stepped back, raising both hands to his forehead. For he had looked into the gateway of death, and his usually placid nerves failed him momentarily.

“Nur-Jahan!” he cried “Light of the World, queen-to-be of Jahangir! Pardon. How was I to know? Kulluh—I am your slave.”

With a quick thought he drew his dagger and held its hilt toward her. “Slay me if I have displeased—”

She waved him back impatiently, smiling under her veil at the transparent attempt at heroics. Adjusting the splendid pearls once more about her throat, she made a sign for quiet.

“Jahangir knows not I have left the court. When I heard the news from Mongolia I hastened hither, for those at the court had no thought for the coming of the clans. Only Geron knows, and he is my faithful slave, for he came from my home in Persia.”

Her voice softened at this, and Alacha breathed a sigh of re-lief. Nur-Jahan was unlike the women of India. Once a wanderer, daughter of a poor caravan-follower, her beauty and splendid intellect had made a name for her at the court of Akbar, father of Jahangir.

Her former husband, Sher Afghan, the Tiger Lord, had been slain by Jahangir’s order—almost the first act of the young Mogul’s reign. Nur-Jahan, formerly called Mir-un-nissa, alone of those at the court of Delhi was unafraid of Jahangir—had even received his wooing coldly.

Sorrow and the vicissitudes of life had left their stamp on the woman’s soul, although her fairness seemed to have grown the

greater for suffering. Her courage in holding up the mirror of truth to the eyes of the narrow-minded and short-tempered monarch had increased her influence over him. Fearless, prone to follow her own path, her wisdom overmatched the wits of the statesmen of the court.

Nur-Jahan was destined to be the greatest empress of India. And the love of the Mogul for her was the brightest spot in a dissolute life. Although the Taj Mahal was built as the tomb of another woman, Nur-Jahan, the Persian, was the fairest figure of the Mogul era.

And it was this love, headstrong and jealous, of Jahangir for the Persian that Alacha had feared.

“Tomorrow,” said Nur-Jahan, “we will send the girl with the message to Adbul Dost. Oh, Alacha, much have I risked in coming hither. The Mogul has greater foes near his side than the Afghans. He must not suffer a defeat on this border of his king-dom. Nay, now is the time for peace.”

With that she withdrew to a small tent on the outskirts of the camp that Geron had set up, and with her went Tala.

And the great Persian out of kindness to the maid gave her fresh garments of the Afghan fashion to replace her rags and ordered her to sleep at the foot of her own couch.

Now when the cry of the namaz gar went up and the manifold activity of the camp was stilled while ten thousand Muslims knelt in worship, Nur-Jahan crouched by the carpet that was her bed and prayed.

And when she ceased she heard without the tent the curious song of a minstrel to his love, low-toned and musical. Yet when she and Geron looked from the tent canopy they saw a slender beggar, wearing holy garments, sitting beneath the wide limbs of a plane tree, and looking up tranquilly into the evening

Alacha did not pray. He sat on the cushions where the fragrance of the attar of rose—Nur-Jahan’s favorite perfume—still clung

faintly, and in his soul was the poison of a temptation that twined into his thoughts and would not be dismissed.

“Jahangir knows not she has come hither,” he repeated under his breath.

He rested his handsome head on clenched hands, feeling again the fear that had gripped him when he thought of the Mogul.

“By the gods—whoever they be—she is fair. For a glimpse of her face I would hazard—much.”

And his new longing drove out the fear. His mind had ever dwelt on women. And Nur-Jahan, whose beauty pierced the veil that concealed it, had been in his tent, at his side.

“Aye, the Persian has risked much,” he communed with his thoughts. “Verily she has hazarded the favor of Jahangir to ride hither. Why? She came to me. Perchance she does not dislike me—”

Isolated from the court, monarch of a kingdom, Alacha had fed upon his own vanity. He had fashioned a shallow heaven out of his own desires.

“She seeks mercy for the Afghans—unknown to the Mogul. Is she the empress of the age, or—fool?”

While the shadows deepened in the tent, he sat in meditation. Impatiently he ordered away attendants who would have brought candles and the evening meal. He glanced from time to time across the space between the tents to where the silk curtains of Nur-Jahan’s shelter glowed, shaking slightly in the cool, evening breeze.

“Geron knows.”

He rose to pace the carpets of his pavilion restlessly. Once be glanced up at the distant peaks of the Himalayas, where the snow summits loomed chilly and roseate with the afterglow of the sun, and thought amusedly that Nur-Jahan had come to the camp to make peace with Abdul Dost because she feared an army of horsemen might cross a half-thousand miles of those ravines.

This reflection encouraged him in a subtle fashion. No one would credit the warning of the Persian. That was well. If the

campaign were ended at this stage there would be scant triumph for Alacha.

So it must not be ended.

He nodded to himself slowly, then started with a hissing breath of alarm as a dark figure crawled to his feet. It was a great, silent form, like an animal’s.

“Mercy, lord. Do not turn the warmth of your favor from Hossein!”

The wrestler, stripped of his finery, with tattered tunic and baggy trousers water-soaked, rose to his knees. Light from a torch at the gate of the khanate—the strip of heavy calico, upon bamboo poles that encircled the tent—shone upon his white eyeballs rolling in a blood-stained face.

“Lord of the Northern World, Monarch of the Stars,” he chattered, his teeth unruly with the cold, “your slaves say that you cursed me because the Circassian dog tricked me. But I—”

“You would like revenge upon Ger—upon the blue-eyed Circassian?” observed Alacha thoughtfully.

“My lord, it is my prayer—”

“Come then.”

The Turkoman moved toward the gate of the khan ate. Hossein followed, happy that Alacha had not struck him or sent him away. A defeated wrestler, cast off by his master, Hossein’s fortunes would have sunk to the dust, and the prospect of further largesse and slaves been as naught.

At the gate Alacha dismissed the spearman who stood guard, and commanded the torch to be borne away. Leaning against the post of the barrier, he gazed silently over the encampment. An arrow’s shot away glimmered the tent of Nur-Jahan in the shadows under the grove of plane trees.

The smoke of a thousand cooking fires was dwindling into the cold air of evening, and the sky overhead, shot with the brilliance of myriad stars, was curiously transparent. Somewhere behind the hills an invisible gateway was opening through which the light of a full moon—the harvest moon—was flooding.

But as yet the only illumination in the camp came from the moving torches, where men threaded their way between the tents, or a noble passed hither and yon with his retinue.

Flares reflected ruddily upon the standard of Paluwan Khan, among the dark lines of horses of the Punjabi cavalry. Voices echoed from the water tank, about which groups of footmen, armor and weapons put aside, gambled and sang.

As an undertone to this came the ceaseless mutter of camels, coughing and grunting over their fodder, and—at intervals—the bellowing call of an elephant.

“Soon, Hossein,” whispered the Slayer, “the moon will be up.” “Aye, lord.”

“Before then—”

Alacha’s low voice dwindled into silence. His forehead was very hot, although the chill of evening had settled upon the earth. Restlessly his hands twitched at his throat. Every nerve seemed to be on fire.

What monumental folly had sent Nur-Jahan incognito to the camp and to him? Was she truly without a protector other than stout Geron? Was it all not the invisible working of fate?

Fate had been kind to Alacha. He was fast rising to greatness. A moment’s boldness—

“My lord?” came the servile voice of Hossein, fawning.

Tomorrow—Alacha’s racing thoughts resumed their trend— Nur-Jahan might reveal her identity to the other ameers. She might influence them to peace. Aye, she might well strip Alacha of his prestige by a single word whispered in her soft voice into the ear of Jahangir. Already she had hinted she thought Alacha unfaithful to his master.

In this she had wronged Alacha, who served Jahangir well, serving himself the while, as a clever man should. So the Turkoman reasoned with his thoughts. And there came into his mind unbidden the vision of the clear, brown eyes of the famous Persian, the alertness and vital energy of her figure, full-fledged in beauty.

“A jewel of paradise,” he breathed. “Aye, more splendid than the throne of the Mogul—”

“My lord?”

“Before the moon rises,” said Alacha slowly, harkening curiously to the sound of his own words, “go unseen to yonder tent.”

He pointed, and as he did so the glimmer faded from the silk.

“The Circassian lies there asleep, doubtless across the thresh-old. Note his position and keep watch. Remain there until I come.”

“Aye, lord.”

In the darkness Hossein smiled, seeing how his fortunes might be replenished. He bowed and slipped away along the dark stretch of the khan ate, moving softly for all his bulk.

Alacha clapped his hands, and a servant ran from his pavilion to his side.

“Horses,” be commanded. “Two of the best. Have them brought to the outskirts of the grove—” again he pointed—“and tethered there. Do not abide by the horses, but return hither. Haste!”

Scarcely had the footsteps of the man, running barefoot, ceased, when Alacha turned aside and stalked rapidly through the tents toward the pavilion of Paluwan Khan.

By now Alacha knew that the northern Lord would be abed, on his cloak spread on the bare ground, half-unconscious from the effects of a drinking bout. And not otherwise did he find the khan.

Without returning the hurried salute of the guard at the pavilion door, the Turkoman leaned over the squat figure snoring on disordered garments and shook him by the shoulder.

A man awakened from sleep is bemused, and, if tired, angry. Having emptied many cups of rare wine of Kabul and Ferghana, Paluwan Khan first reached for his sword, then swore roundly.

“Hide of a dog—”

Alacha squatted close to him, speaking swiftly. A spy, he said,

had come to the camp. A wandering Persian courtesan in the pay of their enemies had sought to beguile him—Alacha.

“Carcass of Satan!” observed Paluwan Khan drowsily. “Well she knew in what quarter to ply her arts! You have a dagger. Make an end of her and let me sleep.”

“She it was who rode up to us when the sun had crossed the midway, * the mistress of the Circassian—”

“Geron? He is no traitor.”

Alacha’s bright eyes narrowed. For a moment he had forgotten that Paluwan Khan knew the identity of the armorer. He smiled at the drowsy chieftain ironically.

“Ha, my lord! Think you the armorer of Jahangir would wander afield in rags like a stray beggar? Nay. I believe the two to be friends of the Mongol warrior who invaded the court of the King of Kings—”

“Say you so?”

Paluwan Khan had a blunt brain. Jahangir had once observed that while Alacha held too much pride in his brain-cup, Paluwan Khan held too many cups in his brain. Now he thought dully of the act of Nur-Jahan in befriending the Afghan girl, and swore drowsily.

“Send her then,” he growled, “to —— or the Mogul. What affair is it of mine?”

“She is quartered near to you,” responded Alacha quickly. “Grant me a following of four Punjabis—your men—and I will seek her out—”

“Aye,” muttered the khan. “Make an end, by Allah. It is writ?

ten that the tongue of a woman is evil as the bite of a serpent. . .”

He was already asleep. Alacha summoned the two spearmen

who had heard the speech of the nobles, and called up two from

the outer guard. With these Punjabis he hastened back to his tent,

giving them whispered instructions on the way. From the tent

they sought the grove of trees, under which shadows were just forming as moonlight swept the sky over the mountain peaks. Came Hossein to his side with a sibilant word.

Laying aside their spears—clumsy weapons for hand-to-hand work—the four sturdy men of Paluwan Khan slipped to the door of the tent and disappeared within.

Alacha, who had been at some pains to have others than his own men attack Geron in case his plan should miscarry, moved nearer. He heard a low exclamation, the sound of a blow.

Dimly he made out struggling figures within the pavilion. Hossein with a grin of hate drew his dagger and stepped warily nearer. Then, running forward, he struck viciously at a man who grappled with two others.

Alacha saw the two draw back, saw the mottled moonlight glimmer on the light curls of Geron, who took an unsteady step forward, staring at the Slayer with wide eyes that saw naught but a red mist of pain.

Geron gave a grunting cry and sank to the earth, clutching his throat. Pausing only long enough to make sure that Hossein had dealt the giant armorer a deadly blow, Alacha stepped over the prone form of a Punjabi and peered at the woman, who had risen from the couch.

Within the tent the moonlight took on a strange, silvery semblance, shot through with the black arms that were shadows from the branches of trees. It sparkled faintly on the jewels upon the hands of stately Nur-Jahan, and glowed with a flame-like radiance along the string of pearls at her smooth throat.

Swiftly she drew veil across her mouth.

“What means this? Where is Geron?”

“Slain by some Punjabi revelers. Oh khanum, there is peril for you here. Come!”

Alacha stepped toward her and grasped her wrist, his own hand far from steady. The woman’s quick intuition warned her, and she drew away.

The man’s arm closed about her throat; fingers pressed against

her lips. Nur-Jahan thrust at him, her body tense with anger and fright. A quick word and Hossein came, gathering her in huge arms, lifting her to his stout shoulder. To the horses he carried her, being skilled in the handling of women, and laid her across the saddle-peak of one.

Alacha, breathing deeply, stared into the shadows in the tent-corners, moving silently about. His pulse was unruly, and he shivered more than once.

The Afghan girl, he knew, must be within the tent, and her mouth as well as Geron’s must be sealed, for there was no way to know what Nur-Jahan had said to Tala in the earlier hours of the night.

Then did Alacha pause in his tracks, his dark head thrust for-ward between his slender shoulders, the fingers of a groping hand outstretched rigidly.

“Death of the gods!” he swore.

So near to him that his fingers almost touched her cheek he saw, not a tousled-haired, tattered Afghan girl, but a shapely maiden whose black ringlets hung down over her breast, whose garments were of fine silk and velvet, who wore across her throat a slim chain of bead-like black pearls.

The silver-like radiance from above touched her high fore-head strongly. Her motionless eyes stared stolidly into his. It seemed to Alacha—such illusions being sometimes wrought by overstrained nerves—that the figure of the woman had stepped forward through the fabric of the tent.

In reality Tala, who had remained motionless, hoping to escape unseen, was half-paralyzed by the nearness of the Slayer and by the menace of his silent search.

Yet Alacha saw only the likeness of a young girl, who had worn those same pearls and garments like to these—an Afghan girl who had slain herself while he held her upon his saddle.

“How came you here?” he muttered, feeling a chill course through his nerves. “What—”

Not until now had he seen Tala’s face unveiled, nor did he

know that she was sister to the woman he had caused to die. Instinctively, mastered by mounting fright, Tala raised her hand to her throat.

To Alacha the gesture was significant, menacing. He drew back a step; then, overcome by an impulse of fear, he turned and fled from the tent.

When the Punjabis, ordered by Alacha to search the tent, came to look for the woman he had seen, they saw naught but the empty recess of the pavilion and the deserted couch of Nur-Jahan. Tala had slipped under the tent wall and fled into the grove.

Presently Hossein moved away through the trees, with his prisoner in his arms. From the grove he struck into a winding path that led through the scattered bazaars of the camp followers, to the outer lines of the imperial forces and thence to a sheep-track up the hillside.

And after him, slipping from shadow to shadow, came two ponies, stolen from the mounts of the cavalry, and upon these rode Tala and Chan, the minstrel, wearing the garb of a begging

kwajah.

“For,” Chan had whispered to Tala, “the Slayer said to Hossein that before long he would come to seek the woman, and it is my thought that he will come alone.”

“It is the will of God,” responded Tala.

At the council of the ameers the following morning Paluwan Khan smote impatiently with his scabbard upon the carpet before his feet, crying in a mighty voice:

“An end, say I. By the beard of Ali, we will bring these ill-omened ones to a battle. My horsemen have pushed them back and up the broad valley of Badakshan, and now they are at the last of their villages—the whole scum of the devil brood. Now they must fight or give up their lands—”

“A scant battle will it be,” remarked the chivalrous raja, who had all the Rájput distaste of facing an inferior foe. “Yet some tid-

ings have come to me of horsemen riding hither from Mongolia. What say you, Alacha?”

The Turkoman smiled ironically.

“One horseman might come, but not an army. Even the raja’s men would not face the Autumn cold of the upper passes, where snow will soon cover the ground.”

“Nor,” nodded Raja Man Singh, “can even the fiends of the air find sufficient food to feed a clan on yonder rock ravines and desolate forests.”

“Aye,” growled Paluwan Khan impatiently, “it is said that demons and the likeness of foul creatures infest the spaces of the Roof of the World, who prey upon travelers. What manner of men would follow a leader through such-like? Khosh. It may not be.”

He turned to Alacha with reawakened curiosity.

“Ho, lord, what did you with the Persian wench—send her to —— or the Mogul?”

Boisterously he laughed, but Alacha, whose face was some-what strained, did not smile.

“Not to the Mogul,” he said.

Now, following upon this council of the chiefs, the bulk of the imperial army pressed onward toward the upper limits of Badakshan, moving in an orderly mass—artillery and musket-men with the baggage in the center and the cavalry upon the outskirts.

And the chiefs of many villages of the North came to Abdul Dost, crying, “We have seen the flames of our homes and the slaughter of our cattle. Will ye not give battle before all Badakshan is lost?”

To each of these the Afghan leader made the same response. “It is not yet time.”

And the Afghans saw that he looked much to the dark lines in the distant hills that were the passes to the North, and steadfastly watched the sky for signs of storm.

“It is not yet time,” he said again.

X

Through the gate in the mountain comes the buran, the wind that destroys. Shepherds and the flocks of shepherds die at the cold touch of the buran.

From the iron gate of the winds in the sky comes the buran, and where it breathes is desolation.

Before the time of our fathers and their fathers and the memory of the oldest men there came through the gate of the mountain the Destroyer.

Genghis Khan, the Destroyer, rode through the gateway of Mongolia and in his path there was desolation.

“Aye, before the memory of man there came the sea of ice, and the mountains of ice, and no life was in Sungaria.

“Aye, khans of the Horde, the ice moved down from the North, sweeping across the plains of the Mongols as the waves of sand now move across the plains; but when the ice came to the mountains of the Roof of the World it went no farther. Yet here, lords of Mongolia, are the traces of the ice to be seen, graven upon broad, flat stones.

“And before the ice fled the great elephants with tusks as long as a bent tree, and hide heavy-coated—like yonder yak, lords of the Horde.”

A minstrel who rode with the Mongols pointed to a herd of the shaggy, clumsy yaks grazing by the shore of the lake. Already hunters had circled from the Horde to slay the beasts and bring their meat to the next camp.

“That was the age of the hero-spirits, lords,” he recited. “The ten gri-bogdo dwelt upon the heights, and many were the battles they waged. Aye, many the palaces they built of mountain rock that reached to the heavens.

“Upon the winds they rode, leaping from hilltop to plain at a single bound, pouf—like the blast of the wind. The arrows they shot were fashioned of the shafts of pine trees, and still you may see the marks where the arrows pierced the mountain slopes.”

Whereupon he pointed to gullies and giant crevices in the range of hills they were approaching to the South.

“After the spirit heroes came the yellow-haired men from the West, my lords. With long swords they drove the servants of Berkhan before them, driving the Mongols east. They died, and then through the gate came Genghis the Mighty. Aye, his banners moved before the winds to the West, and many were the lands he conquered.”*

With a shout of approval the khans greeted the song of the minstrel, pressing their horses forward eagerly. They did not know that Khlit, who rode at their head, had asked the minstrel to repeat his song as they rode, thus driving fatigue from the minds of his followers.

The Horde had passed through the lake region of Sungaria, splashing along the flooded shores, finding game abundant. They had slept little, covering some seventy miles a day.

Khlit had not wished to urge his horsemen to their speed until the Sungarian Gate should be passed, knowing that it is not well to start too hastily upon a forced march.

He knew well the great task that had confronted them—the journey from the southern limit of the Mongolian plain to the northern tip of Afghanistan. And he calculated that this was to be done in three weeks if he was to aid Abdul Dost as he had promised. By that time, even allowing for a late season, the passes of the Hindu Kush would be ice-coated and impenetrable.

They had followed the horse track that led to the South beside the lake of Ebi Nor—the Wind Lake—and Sairam Nor, instead of the broader, more passable caravan route that made a detour to the West.

Some of the Tatars had brought yurts—heavy, felt tents, erected upon poles—on the backs of pack horses. Seeing this, Khlit had said nothing to the warriors in question. Yet at their first camp and their second, he made these men fetch the water and collect dried camel-dung for fires.

* Legends of the Sungarian Gate, leading from Mongolia into Europe.

When he repeated this performance at the third camp, within the entrance of the Sungarian Gate, and it became clear that his selection of the men was no longer a matter of mere chance, the offending Tatars left their yurts standing and rode on, baggageless like the rest.

“In the Gate,” they grumbled, being aggrieved, “we will meet the spirits of the buran, and the icy wind will bar our passage. Aye, the spirits of the heights will be angry. By what right does this warrior make himself our lord?”

Khlit heard, and remembered, and said nothing.

He mounted before daylight, nor did he call a halt that day or night. The Tatars shifted from time to time to their spare horses, and ate strips of smoke-cured meat in the saddle. Many slept as they rode.

To the West appeared a wide level of steppe, dotted with lakes, stretching to the horizon—a vast expanse of blue. Far before them the snow peaks of the Ala tau loomed in the veils of mist.

“This is the limit of our land,” said some within hearing of Khlit. “And this is the last of the steppe. Before us are the spirit mountains where we have never gone. Upon their summits the Ghils call to men, unseen, plaintively, and the men follow and die—”

“Once through the Sungarian Gate, how may we win back to our Sungarian land?” assented others, feeling perhaps the first irking of fatigue, or being desirous of their homes.

These were the younger warriors, with some of the shamans.

At noon that day, midway through the pass, Khlit rode back into the gatherings of the grumblers.

“Aye,” he said to the younger men, “this is the end of your land. If you would return to the karaul of your people, do so now. Because from this point you must go forward with me.”

He had halted the long ranks of riders that stretched the length of the pass like an endless caravan, the sunlight glittering on lines of spear points.

“The Horde will wait,” he said grimly, “while you ride past.”

The Tatars who had been talking of the Gate looked at each other, and no one moved. It was their fashion to grumble, and they knew that never before in the annals of their armies had men forsaken the standard during a campaign.

“Ha!” Chagan, the sword-bearer, pulled at his long mustache that hung down on the sides of his massive chin, blackened to the eyes by exposure to the sun. “That is well. The first warrior to move would have died at my hand,”

He surveyed the cloaked forms of the shamans, the priests who had scented spoil in the expedition.

“It is fitting,” he added, “that the masters of magic should abide in this accursed place of spirits, so that the tengri of the air will send no evil magic upon the heels of our passage.”

In speaking thus he followed carefully the words of Khlit, who had reason to know the treacherous greed of the conjurers. The Tatar warriors, those who had spoken too freely, seized this occasion to wax mirthful at the expense of the shamans, who were forced—perhaps not unwillingly—to remain in the Gate.

All but one did so, and returned to the karaul by the lakes. This one, Gutchluk by name, brooded much over the words of Chagan, and suspected Khlit to be the author thereof.

This Gutchluk, having traveled to the holy city of Lhasa, and learned many secrets of religion and priesthood from the disciples of the arch-priest, the Dalai Lama, bethought him of the Turkomans, whom he had once visited, and the wealth that was reputed to be in the coffers of the ameers of the Mogul—especially of Alacha, who was known to him.

And so that night he rode south and west, circling the moving lines of horsemen, carrying with him a small pack upon the back of his pony.

And in this manner in the course of a few days word began to drift through the passes to the adherents of Alacha, the Slayer, that the Horde was riding south.

That night there was a moon and the Tatars gazed down upon the troubled waters of the lakes below the pass, seeing their ruffled, wind-tossed surface and the white lines of breakers on the shore—although at the altitude of the pass no air was stirring.

“Lo,” muttered a broad-faced warrior, “the pent winds have escaped; they have come to the Gate.”

“Yet,” responded Chagan readily, “the spirits of the air be friendly to us, for they smite not at us. They ride with us, against our foes.”

This remark was passed from mouth to mouth, and worked the leaven of courage.

The next day, when dawn struck into the gray sky overhead, Khlit, glancing back, saw the loom of heavy clouds above the pass and the darkness of hail. He shook his head and glanced before the moving ranks of the Horde, to the gray mists and the hidden ravines of the mountains.

Now within the hour the riders in the van came upon the skull of a wolf resting in the branches of a tree and below it the weather-smoothed skull of a man.

“An evil omen,” cried some.

Others, noting the fresh track of a pony leading south, were puzzled, not knowing of the flight of Gutchluk.

After watching the last of his men file from the Alau ravines, Khlit halted Berang, khan of the Torgot clan and commander of the rear guard.

The youthful chieftain, keen-eyed and quiet, had been a close companion of Khlit in the days when the Cossack had been Kha Khan of the Horde.

“Yield your banner to another,” ordered Khlit, “and prepare to ride ahead, seizing what guides you may—but in no case a Turkoman.”

Riding bridle to bridle with the gaily dressed Tatar—for Be-rang, unlike his companions, rejoiced in green and red leathers, in silver accouterments, chased mail and a purple Chinese cap with peacock feather—Khlit explained that the khan was to seek

out Abdul Dost in the northern limits of Badakshan, “striking equally south and west, by the course of the sun, past the eastern end of Issyuk Kul, the Lake of the Clouds, and so up into the passes of the Hindu Kush—”

“Say to the leader of the Afghans that the Horde will join him within ten days. Before then he must not give battle. Return then up the course of the upper Oxus until you meet with us.”

The brown eyes of the young leader flashed. “It shall be done. A swift journey to the Horde!”

“Ahatou khan, temou chou! ”—Brother khan, dwell in peace!

Khlit watched the erect form of the warrior speed past the marching groups. Berang, he knew, could be relied on. And by now the followers of Abdul Dost must be in sore need.

Swiftly the black mass of the Horde, like the swarm of so many giant bees, spread over the green levels of the Ili Valley, where the sun was yet warm, and flowers were in the grass. Nor did they pause in crossing the river, for each warrior swam his horse into the bosom of the slow stream, tugging behind him the spare mount. And here were found herds of gazelle, to be shot down by youthful archers; likewise sheep, to be taken at will—the fat-tailed sheep of the Kirghiz.

By the Ili, Khlit halted for a day and a night to rest the horses, and the impatient Tatars grumbled thereat. Many khans who had not before this experienced the weight of Khlit’s hand talked among themselves of seizing the leadership—for it was the Tatar nature to be restless under a strange leader, or under any leader at all.

Being restless, they drank overmuch—the fare being rich for the day—of kumiss, and so lay drunk in their coats about the camp.

Khlit had slept long that day, and on awaking at sunset mounted and made the rounds of the camp. Groups of warriors followed him idly to where the drunken men lay, to see how he would deal with this happening.

If the Cossack should ignore the conduct of the revelers it would countenance feasting and drunkenness on the march. And this would have pleased the warriors—all but the wiser heads.

So, many hard eyes followed the Kha Khan as he reined in his horse by the empty kumiss casks and the prone figures. No one was with him.

Noting this, the old Cossack signed for the watchers to approach, as they did, afoot and unarmed.

“These be thirsty dogs.”

He pointed at the befuddled forms clustered about the casks.

“Give them to drink. Strip them and cast them into the river.”

For a space warrior looked at warrior appraisingly. They were in an idle mood, not altogether harmless—an idleness bred of the sun’s warmth and the long sleep on the grass. Some swore, others scowled. Khlit watched them silently.

“Blood of Natagai!” bellowed a reeling khan. “I and my brothers will die, for we cannot swim—thus.”

“Die then,” said Khlit coldly. “Those who have their wits will live.”

He swung savagely on the watchers.

“Ye heard me?”

They moved uncertainly. Then a broad-faced, flat-backed youngster laughed aloud.

“Ho—we will see if they can swim!”

Whereupon the mood of the crowd changed. They grinned and sought out the offenders. A struggle began, and as it waxed the good humor of the crowd increased. Clothing and armor were torn from the drunkards. Naked forms were carried to the river-bank and cast into the stream.

It became a game—a game such as the blunt natures of these men could understand. Many more ran up, and of the newcomers the kumiss-drinkers were singled out and plunged into the cold current.

Some sank to their death, but the majority were revived sufficiently to swim and made their way ashore, more or less sobered.

Word of the jest spread through the camp, and the kumiss casks were shunned perforce.

And another word was passed from clan to clan.

“Khlit, the Kha Khan, has spoken an order. The Horde is on the march, and while it is so, and he is our leader, death will be the lot of the man who drinks fermented spirits. Our leader was once ataman of the Kazak horde, and this was the law he learned.”

From this time forth the iron authority of the old Cossack was felt. Not for nothing had Khlit lived the greater number of years of his life in the war encampment of the Cossacks, where harsh discipline was visited upon the few for the welfare of the many.

Other things than this he had learned. When the Horde swarmed across the divide north of Issyuk Kul and the leather shoes of many ponies gave out on the rocks and the grit of sand-stone, Khlit ordered rough shoes fashioned of the hides of slain yaks. And on leaving the shores of the lake he had the men cut grass, chop it fine with their swords and put it into the capacious saddlebags with the rations of barley for the horses—rations gleaned from the Kirghiz and Turkoman villages by the lake.

“For when the ponies suffer from thirst in the mountain ravines, they will not eat of the barley without the grass,” he said.

And when in the passes of the upper Hindu Kush the Autumn hailstorms swept down upon their backs, and snow swirled about the giant peaks overhead, he cried to the minstrels to sing and would not halt.

“Sleep here is evil,” he warned.

The Tatars dozed as they rode. This time there were no complaints. When Chagan carried the choice hind quarter of a slain sheep to Khlit, he had it divided among the nearest followers, saying that the barley which sufficed his horse would do for him.

He was silent at these times, and thoughtful. While the Horde was making speed over almost continuous obstacles—torrents that must be bridged, slippery slopes that must be climbed, in the growing cold that numbed men and horses inexorably—Khlit

knew that as yet the warriors were not a whole, were not knit together.

But the Tatars themselves were now content. Endurance was bred in their natures, and they laughed from cracked lips at their sufferings.

“The Kha Khan is worthy,” they said. “We will follow him.” “He is a wise leader,” they said. “He has lost none of his old cunning.”

Their confidence soared, for they believed they were invincible as the host of Genghis Khan, of which the minstrels sang.

But Khlit knew that he was leading a mass of undisciplined horsemen, splendid fighters individually, yet armed only with bows and their heavy, curved swords against the coordinated whole of the Mogul’s array—elephants, cannon, foot and horse.

He looked back down the dark defiles where the ranks of horse-men trotted, heedless of suffering, intent only on winning for-ward under his guidance.

“O my brothers,” he muttered in his beard, “God grant I keep faith with you.”

Now as the Horde moved through the Hindu Kush, through the rock gates of the place that is called the Roof of the World, certain wandering Kirghiz huntsmen saw them from a distance and fled away, bearing a message of fear.

“In the mists of the passes spirits ride,” they said in the hill villages. “Their faces are black and they move with the speed of demons of the higher world. Crows and kites follow their course.”

“If birds follow,” observed villagers who had not seen the Horde, “they must be men.”

“But we have not seen the like of such men.”

And in the grass valleys of the upper pamirs—stretches of moss-like meadows above the timberline—shepherds ran in, crying.

“Surely there is fear and doom afoot. For we heard trumpets at sunrise, and the nacars, the cymbals of the Mongols, even as

our fathers heard the trumpets of Genghis Khan. And the tramp of a multitude sounded, where we could see no riders.”

Word of this passed from mouth to mouth, as such things do, and came at last to the ranks of the Mogul’s army.

XI

The Eye of the Mountain

Until daybreak, the night of the slaying of Geron, Hossein rode steadily along the trails that led to the heights of the Hindu Kush above the timberline.

Nur-Jahan, held across his stout knees, cried that she was the bride-to-be of the Mogul, and Hossein laughed.

“A pretty song, my Persian nightingale! So have other captives of my master Alacha twittered and wept. You do not weep.” “I am Nur-Jahan.”

The Turk threw back his massive head and roared with mirth.

“Aye, the Light of the World. Well, then the world will soon be dark. By Allah, would I had that necklace that lies about your beautiful throat, my khanum.”

His hairy hand felt appraisingly of the pearls under her veil, but he knew too well the moods of his master to deprive Alacha of such jewels. So Nur-Jahan sank into disturbed silence as they rode under pines and ever upward beside waterfalls.

With daybreak Hossein dismounted and bound his captive skillfully by the hands and feet, using his own girdle. Then he drank heavily of the water from the freshet they were following, called Ali to witness that his belly yearned, and straightaway fell asleep, sprawled near the prone woman, his mouth open and snores vibrating from his nose.

Then for the first time Nur-Jahan wept at the disgrace, struggling vainly to undo her bonds. Strangely enough she once fancied that a small, turbaned man drew near the sound of her lament and peered through a tangle of dying junipers. Blinded by her tears, she was not sure, and when she cried out, Hossein wakened with a curse.

In time came a servant of Alacha, who gave Hossein whispered instructions, with food; and when the sun was high the Turk ate the best of the provender—tossing her an oatmeal cake that she would not touch—and climbed upon his horse, forcing her to walk.

Slowly they passed onward along the trails, seeing at times fleeing Afghan shepherds and children driving cattle headlong into secret places. The scent of smoke drifted to them, and when at length they came out into a clearing on the mountainside, the Persian could make out on the great plain to their left scattered bodies of Afghan horse wheeling in flight, and dense masses of Rájput cavalry moving through burning villages.

“What means this?” she cried.

Hossein pointed to clouds of dust in the distance.

“The army advances and drives the ill-omened ones, like animals, into the wilds, my Persian lady,” he observed indifferently. “Come, Alacha has a nest just above here where he often spied out what passed on the plain. He bade us wait for him there at the eye of the mountain.”

Nur-Jahan looked longingly at the steep slope, almost a precipice, stretching down from her feet. She was very tired and Hossein had kept her hands bound and the end of the girdle in his own hand.

The place he spoke of was around a bend in the trail they had been following—a nest of rocks overlooking the narrow ribbon of the upper Oxus. A cave of sorts afforded some protection. Here Hossein turned the horse loose to graze as best it might among ferns and thorns and thrust her into the cave, squatting in front of it sleepily.

Under the lofty sandstone roof of the cave there was no sun, and the chill of the place, where water dripped unseen down the walls, struck through the thin garments of the Persian. She sat passive upon the cold rock floor, mind and body alike numbed by hunger. As time passed she became conscious of a tumult on the plain below, of distant cries and the occasional clash of steel.

Anxiously she went to the cave entrance and inquired of Hossein what was happening.

The Turk, irritated by the lack of food and wine in the plentiful measure to which he was accustomed, muttered at her savagely.

“Back into your darkness, Light of the World! What cares a light-of-love such as you what passes on the field of battle?”

“A battle!” Nur-Jahan sighed. “Are the armies engaged?”

“Aye, yonder fools on both sides cut each other up as a Gulf Arab slices fish for a stinking bazaar. They sprinkle foul carcasses hither and yon, food for the kites. ’Tis but a skirmish in which the accursed Pathans seem to have the upper hand—yet I scent a wile of my master, Alacha. Heaven grant he come soon, with eatables and drinkables.”

Whereupon he thrust her back and watched suspiciously until the evening, when the tumult below died out as the shadows lengthened from the mountains across the broad valley of Badakshan, and Alacha came jauntily riding a nimble Kabuli mare and clad in all his elegance.

He glanced sharply at the prostrate Hossein and ordered him to leave the cave entrance.

“A bite of food for your slave,” mumbled the Turk, and Alacha impatiently waved him away.

“There be berries among the thorns, dog, and roots for such as thou.”

Whereupon Hossein departed, scowling, and Alacha stood at the entrance to the cavern. Nur-Jahan faced him at once.

“A dog you called yonder cutthroat, yet what word will suffice for you, my lord?” she said softly. “When Jahangir learns that you have laid hand upon his bride?”

The Turkoman rested a slim hand against the rock and peered at her, smiling, in the gloom.

“Nur-Jahan? Verily she is at the court for all I know. You name yourself falsely, my beautiful Persian, christening—as do the Christian infidels—yourself with lofty lineage. Ohai, do you think to make me believe that you are the Light of the World?”

“When you slew Geron basely, you believed.”

“The slave was a Christian caphar—unbeliever. His death has earned Hossein a niche in the Prophet’s paradise, or purgatory—I care not which. Only fools pay obeisance to a god, and death is often the reward of folly. Yet you are wise, my lady. You have learned somewhat of my power—”

“Have you done this?”

The woman pointed down at the mist-covered expanse of the valley where campfires, numerous as the stars, sparkled from the hillside under their feet to the distant Hindu Kush.

“Against my warning and advice have you entered upon battle with the Afghans at this limit of their land?”

Alacha surveyed her in silence, noting how the shadows dwelt in her dark hair, and how fair her forehead was over the veil. Her voice, he thought, was chill as the sandstone cliff that towered overhead.

“Evil will come of this, my lord,” she said softly. “Death will walk among your ranks in the valley, for cornered men fight like beasts—”

“And like beasts will we slay them,” he nodded. “The Afghan blight will be cleansed from the border of the empire; we will wipe clean the blotch of treachery with the blood of punishment—”

“So that honor and gold will be paid to you and Paluwan Khan,” she hissed.

“To me, yes; to the Northern Lord, perhaps. Verily, it was my doing, my lady. A spy of mine, a wretched shaman of the Turkoman race, Gutchluk, who once had the immeasurable distinction of explaining his beggarly faith to me—Gutchluk, I say, rode to my tent full of some tale of a Mongol Horde, hither bound. He mouthed big words, yet I know the northern passes and fear no Tatars.

“This Gutchluk I used. I sent him, pretending he was envoy from the Mongol chief, Khlit, to Abdul Dost—”

“And this false priest advised the Afghan to give battle?” “Ah, you are clever, my beautiful courtesan.”

Nur-Jahan stiffened in the insult.

“Aye, that was his tale. Who may pen the waters when the dam is burst? Abdul Dost’s soul—does a man of slow wit possess a soul?—was harassed by continued retreat. His followers were nagging him to let them cast their bodies against the chained cannon and the musket balls of the Mogul’s men. So did he draw up his wild clans for battle, and some few horsemen of his—”

“Were permitted to score a false victory?”

“To smite off a few heads of opium-besotted Rájputs. This, like strong wine, will go to the heads of the Afghans, and on the morrow or the next day—Gutchluk will contrive to steal back to me here this night and report the hour chosen by Abdul Dost for the final assault—these same Afghans will go heedless to their bell, like masterless sheep before the storm.”

“Most wise Alacha! Have you thought of your fate?”

“To be beloved by the fairest flower of the Persian garden—a fair fate, and to my liking.”

His soft voice became musical, and he bent nearer to the woman, who stood like a slender lily, outlined against the face of the rock. Over their heads a moon was rising, and its glow pierced the cavern mouth. The dark eyes of Nur-Jahan were raised to its light.

Alacha reached forth and tore the veil from her head, drawing a quick breath as he gazed upon the dim features of the Persian girl whose beauty had made a slave of a monarch.

“Fair, most fair.” he mused. “Soon the moon will be higher, and then will I drink of your loveliness closer, my lady. Ah, the Master Potter to whom men pray under one name or another, never fashioned with greater artistry the clay of a human form. Aye, the Master Weaver who knits the threads of human fate has given you to me. Will you not sit and drink of the rare wine I have carried hither, and the sweetmeats?”

“Aye,” said the woman suddenly, “I will.”

So, watched closely by the Turkoman, Nur-Jahan fetched a clean linen cloth and twin gold cups, with a small wine jar and

dishes of rice, fruit and sugared dates, from his saddlebags. These she spread before the mouth of the cavern and seated herself upon a stone, partaking a little of the rice and dates and pretending to drink.

No opportunity offered for her to escape. Down the path up which Alacha had come she perceived the bulk of Hossein, and in the thicket beside the face of the rock she fancied that the form of another watcher was visible. Overhead the cliff rose almost sheer; below there was a gradual slope covered by an impenetrable tangle of thorns.

True, the upper trail was clear. But Nur-Jahan’s dainty feet and slippers were not fashioned for running, nor could she hope to outdistance the Turkoman.

Alacha poured a slight oblation upon the turf.

“To kismet, by whatever name suits best.”

His voice had become gentle. He reminded the woman that no one except Hossein knew of her coming to the camp, and Hossein was his man. Paluwan Khan knew a little, but the Northern Lord might well be slain in the coming battle.

Victory, thanks to the good offices of Gutchluk, was certain. What tribes could stand against the Mogul’s ranks?

The victory would make Alacha an ameer, a mighty noble. India from the Indus to the Oxus would be under his rule. He would be wealthy as a caliph.

Nur-Jahan would find her lot as mistress in one of his castles a pleasant one. Willingly or not, this would be her fate. Better willingly. Was it not pleasanter than her lot as a wanderer in Persia?

“So this,” she replied quietly, “is the way you serve your lord?”

Alacha found her calmness a trifle disconcerting; nevertheless, her pride satisfied his vanity. He tasted of the sugared fruit and smiled, thin-lipped.

“Jahangir—he who was to be your potent husband, my khanum—Jahangir has said, ‘Kingship knows no kinship.’ Thus do I say, ‘Service knows no mastery.’ Myself alone I serve. I cannot

win to greatness save through the Mogul, so—I cannot risk that he should know what has passed here.”

“And I?”

“You are a precious pearl, beyond price. You are the fairest woman of two lands. Like the essence of the poppy is your beauty—intoxicating, poisonous, deadly.”

Nur-Jahan had lifted the cup to her full lips, dissembling to drink there from. Some drops escaping the cup as her hand trembled, fell dark upon the linen.

As Alacha leaned nearer, seeking words to express the passion that swelled at his heart, she slipped a small hand forward along the cloth. Her fingers rose toward his belt.

Smiling, Alacha caught her hand away from his dagger-hilt. “A dangerous plaything—steel—my fair flower. Was it for this you drank with me?”

He gripped her other wrist, drawing her toward him, his eyes seeking hers, which flew desperately to cliff and thorn-patch— then riveted to stillness.

“I would drink the charm of your eyes,” he whispered, breathing quickly through parted lips.

It was Alacha’s moment of triumph, when success and mastery over a matchless woman were his.

It was but a brief moment. With a sharp exclamation he released her wrists, staring at the thing that Nur-Jahan had been watching over his shoulder. A rider in armor sat a horse at the bend of the trail by the cavern, and neither horse nor rider moved.

By now the moon had come up into the sky and shed a clear light upon the grassy terrace before the cave. In its dancing glow— for moonlight has the quality of a transparent veil cast over the objects of earth—Alacha saw that the horseman was strange in seeming.

A squat, erect body appeared to melt into the outlines of a shaggy pony. Where a fur cloak parted over broad shoulders the moonlight glinted on mail. Above a square, dark face as expres?

sionless as an obelisk, a thin feather projected fantastically. To the rider’s knee clung a curving sword that was fashioned by no smith of Persia, India, or Khorassan.

“Who comes?” cried Alacha, stumbling to his feet. “By the heart of Satan—what man are you?”

Startled, his quick nerves never of the steadiest, Alacha fancied that the uncouth form was truly one of the Ghils of the heights that descended upon humankind. The silence of the rider stirred his fear the more.

“Hossein!” he cried shrilly. “Hossein! Fat whelp—aid me!”

To this cry also there came no answer. But the rider paced his horse forward, and stood, with a single movement, upon the earth within reach of Alacha. No move he made to draw weapon, but stared curiously from the woman to the Turkoman.

Then Nur-Jahan laughed, although unsteadily. “My lord Alacha,” she cried, “a Mongol has come to Badakshan.”

“A spirit of evil,” he muttered, drawing back. “Hossein, good Hossein, a hundred gold mohars if you slay me this evil one.”

The Mongol warrior had caught but one word of Nur-Jahan’s speaking.

“I am Berang Khan,” his deep voice growled.

The words rolled gutturally from his chest.

“In the mists along the river I lost my way. To this height I came, to see the better. Who is this prince?”

He nodded his broad head at Alacha, and Nur-Jahan, who had picked up some fragments of the Tatar tongue in her early wandering through the northern lands, made quick, albeit broken reply.

“A noble of Ind.”

Berang took a step forward to peer with childlike interest at the first foeman who had crossed his path.

Alacha waited for no more, sensing the menace in the fearless approach of the Khan. Berang in fact would have slain him the next moment had not the Turkoman drawn his knife and struck like a flash, reaching for his scimitar simultaneously.

The Slayer had moved with feline quickness, but had made no allowance for Berang’s mode of fighting. A born swordsman, the khan did not grasp his weapon hurriedly, but stepped back a short pace that brought Alacha’s dagger-point down upon his broad chest instead of his throat.

The slim blade snapped against the heavy mail, and when Alacha’s scimitar slashed at his foeman’s neck, Berang’s short, heavy sword, curved like a crescent moon but square at the end, knocked the stroke aside as a bear sweeps down a deer’s horn with a blow of the paw.

Berang swung his weapon in a glittering circle of steel that knocked Alacha to earth, with crushed ribs and chest cut half in two under the severed Damascus mail. Under impact of such a blow the Slayer rolled over twice on the grass and lay while air whistled through the cut in his side from the pierced lung.

Then the khan wheeled alertly, seeing two figures glide into the moonlight. He checked the sweep of his sword as he saw them to be a turbaned cripple bearing a bow without arrows, and at his side a young girl.

“Hossein,” observed Chan to Nur-Jahan, “will not come. For once the stomach of the Turk is filled—with arrows.”

He stared at Berang eagerly. “You are from the Horde?” he cried. “What do you seek?”

“A khan of the Afghans. Abdul Dost.”

Chan turned to Tala, with whom he had waited for a day and a night, until the coming of Alacha. The Afghan girl was bending over the dying Turkoman, holding his head close to hers by the hair.

“Now, O Slayer,” cried Chan, “look upon Death!”

And in very truth it must have seemed to the dying Turkoman that he looked upon one who was dead, for the aspect of Tala’s face and dress was like that of the woman who had died under his hand.

“I swore an oath,” nodded the minstrel, “that Alacha should die, yet it has come to pass at another hand than mine.”

Abruptly he ceased as Berang caught his shoulder, asking gruffly where he might find Abdul Dost. To the Tatar the death of a foe was a slight thing. But to the three others a tyrant had crumbled into dust, and Tala and Chan stared wide-eyed, even in their triumph.

The minstrel pointed to the dark blotches of groves beyond the river, and to the distant summits of rolling hillocks half-veiled in the shimmering moonlight.

“Yonder lie the Afghan lines,” he said. “Stay—I will guide you; two horses have I seized, that I might ride—”

He had the gift of tongue, and Berang understood readily. He asked the position of the Mogul’s lines, but Chan knew little of this. As they talked, Nur-Jahan stepped to the side of the dead noble, wondering slightly at the swift course of fate that had driven the ambitious, the ready-witted Alacha down into the shadows. His handsome face was turned up to the sky, the full mouth twisted in pain.

“Tamam shud,” she murmured—“that is finished.”

The thought came to her to escape while the others talked, yet on the instant the Mongol gripped her shoulder.

“I will take the woman of the prince,” he growled, “to tell us what secrets she may. If she will not, torture will loose her tongue.”

Whereupon without glancing at the cold beauty of Nur-Jahan he swung her upon one of the horses brought thither by Tala. The girl and the minstrel mounted the other and led the way along the path, Berang bringing up impatiently in the rear.

When they had passed beyond the turn in the trail, the terrace before the cavern was very quiet for a space. An owl hooted in the scrub trees nearby, and suddenly there was a rush of wings, a dart of powerful talons, and the feathered assassin of the night descended upon the face of the dead man.

The talons struck and tore, yet the great bird sprang away, its pallid eyes gleaming. It had felt the rending of flesh under its

claws, yet it flew away, knowing that the dead thing had been a man.

And straightaway there was a rustle on the lower path; the bushes parted, and Gutchluk peered about the glade. Seeing Alacha, the shaman ran forward, looking cautiously over his shoulder. He knelt, muttering:

“Exalted lord, harken to the message of thine humble servitor. I have run but now from the camp of thy foes. At dawn, the dawn after tomorrow, will Abdul Dost attack with all his force—My lord, harken—”

Gutchluk bent closer, thinking that Alacha slept, and so gained full sight of the cold face, streaked with dark talon marks, of the sightless eyes staring up at him.

With a gasp that ended in a muttering cry, the spy of Alacha scrambled to his feet, looked down wildly, and fled away along the trail, his dark robe clinging to outstretched arms.

Very much like a huge bat he seemed, winging its way upon the earth.

So the Slayer lay dead on the turf of the place where he had come, as to the eye of the mountain. Yet the plot that he had be-gun, the deceit he had formulated, the treachery he had fostered— all these lived.

Because of Alacha the mission of Nur-Jahan to make peace between the hereditary foes was fruitless. Abdul Dost had been tricked.

In the books of wisdom of the Muslims it is written that the dark ferrash strikes and a sultan dies, passing like as a drop of water from the surface of the desert. But the fruits of the tree of evil do not pass away.

Because of Alacha the prophecy of the blind Muhammad Asad was to come to pass, and the valley of Badakshan was to be filled with the bones of men.

All Berang’s haste could not undo the harm that had been done. He found the Afghan camp astir with preparation. Sentries chal?

lenged sharply at every goat-path of the upper plain, bodies of horse moved slowly into position beside the river or occupied villages.

Foot soldiers—the mass of the Afghan force—furbished shields and scimitars and watched for dawn. Wounded men bandaged their hurts. Women and children, thronging in from the nearby hills, brought milk and mealcakes.

The Afghans had tasted battle. They were entering battle at the side of their families and remaining flocks, camped in a large village, almost under the Hindu Kush.

Abdul Dost was silent, hearing the tale of the deceit that had been practiced upon him—for Berang quickly identified himself as the true messenger sent by Khlit. His forehead flushed hotly.

“Draw back your men, Afghan,” advised Berang brusquely. “The wisdom of the Kha Khan must be obeyed. He may not reach here before a night and a day and another night and day.”

The mansabdar looked around at the circle of his leaders’ faces, glowing in the firelight before his tent, and shook his head. Every face was exultant, for the news of Berang’s coming had been passed through the ranks swiftly.

“The Mongols near the end of the passes,” the tidings had gone forth. “The Horde has come from the steppe.”

“I cannot hold back my men—now,” said Abdul Dost harshly to Berang.

“Did ye not believe the word of the Kha Khan that he would come?”

“I believed. Yet for the space of thrice ten days have my men seen the smoke of their houses, and their flocks slain, to fester in the fields, their children coursed down and their women taken to the lust of the Mogul’s soldiery.”

Berang swore roundly under his shaggy mustache. Implicitly he trusted Khlit, and to have the Kha Khan’s advice set aside on whatever grounds was blasting.

Abdul Dost thrust his lean, scarred face close to the Mongol. “Eh, Tatar,” he growled. “I and my Afghans will hold the ranks of the Mogul in battle so long as may be. Get you hence, to Khlit.

Tell him what you have learned and say that by the ninety and nine holy names of Allah I thank him—I and my men, for his coming. Bid him make what speed he may to the battle—”

He broke off, resuming his seat by the fire. Abdul Dost was too experienced a warrior to share the unthinking exultation of his men, and he knew well the true strength of the imperial army.

He knew likewise that it was hopeless for him to try to post-pone the conflict further. Not only would it dishearten his men and perhaps scatter them to abandon the last position they had taken, but an attempt to do so would be useless. The Afghans had made their last ablutions before battle.

So Berang spat upon the earth and sprang to horse. An Afghan caught at his bridle rein.

“Warrior of the Horde,” he cried, “in which quarter will the Kha Khan strike when he comes? What is his plan, of which you speak?”

“The tulughma—the Mongol swoop,” Berang made answer. “And no one save the Kha Khan knows in what quarter it will come.”

So he galloped away, muttering to keep his rendezvous with Khlit, and with him went Chan as guide, and Tala with Chan. The minstrel still kept Nur-Jahan at his side watchfully. Tala, yielding to the plea of the Persian, who shrank from having her face exposed to the gaze of the soldiery, had procured for her fellow Muslim a veil. Thus the presence of Nur-Jahan was unnoticed and unsuspected in the excitement.

She rode through the darkness, the bridle of her horse in Tala’s hand, and slept as she rode.

XII

The Lord Thunder-Thrower Laughs

Shortly after morning prayers on the next day a mounted messenger from the Mogul bearing a jeweled sword to Paluwan Khan and another to Raja Man Singh—as presents on the eve of battle— passed swiftly through the village of Anderab, which served as the base of supplies for the army of the ameers.

Here mobs of porters, dak-runners, wrestlers and palanquin bearers gathered to gaze on the imperial messenger. Painted women, followers of the army, peered out from behind the screens of upper balconies; drivers of beasts looked up from the pens by the road indifferently.

Caravaneers, striding in the dust behind lines of long-haired camels, cursed him under their breath, bending their heads abjectly the while, or springing aside to escape his horse’s hoofs. Hangers-on, conjurers, astrologers, blacksmiths—all came to the opening of their booths or huts to gaze.

“The battle is on,” they said. “Soon the Afghan army will be no more.”

The emissary made haste during the forenoon along the road to Talikan, the headquarters of the ameers. Soon he began to pass powder-trains, idle camels of the falcon-gun artillery, and guard posts. Camps of irregular horse, waiting until the crisis of the battle be past before venturing on the field, lined the road.

The streets of Talikan were filled with bands of captives, roped, laboring at carrying supplies and water-sacks, with troops of sick men clustered under awnings, with slaves and the idle horses of the Rájput cavalry which formed the third line of battle.

The messenger passed the Rájput warriors, galloping into their clans, streaking their faces with turmeric, drinking, singing and laughing.

Here the ground was tilled fields, trampled by thousands of hoofs, and a mass of mud by the riverbank. The tents had been struck and sent to the rear. Squadrons of horse, mailed and fully armed, waited in the fields.

An arrow’s flight ahead of them stretched the long line of foot-men, pikemen, and household troops: Uzbeks, Turks, and Punjabis facing north: also the Portuguese mercenaries, matchlock-men, in solid ranks.

They faced the foremost line—the cannon. Here the Lord Thunder-Thrower had stationed carts and piles of baggage in

squares, between which were stakes driven into the ground and from the stakes to the carts long leather bands, with iron chains, at the height of a man’s waist above ground.

At intervals along the chains were the f eringha, the heavy brass artillery that was the joy of the Lord Thunder-Thrower. In the carts and grouped on the flanks were the lighter pieces.

One flank—the left—rested upon a mass of hillocks, rocky, broken ground, and the other—the right—upon the river.

So in two days had the ameers of Jahangir arrayed them-selves for battle. They received the messenger at the foremost tent just behind the infantry, where the elephants were placed— huge beasts, armored on head and fore quarters, their howdahs bristling with archers. Paluwan Khan girded on the new sword with his old one, and smiled.

“Tarry, honored sir,” he bellowed at the messenger, “and you will see the Afghan host go to —— by way of the flashing scimitar. Alacha, who has vanished like a dream of the night, was to tell us the time of the rebels’ onset, but we are ready mustered, and await but the hour.”

Raja Man Singh pointed to the clouds of Afghan riders clustered not more than a gunshot away and urged an attack by his cavalry. The Lord Thunder-Thrower threw back his head and laughed long.

“Stay, my gentle scion of Marwar! Let these agile riders taste of my feringha balls and iron chains, cleverly hidden by sheaves of wheat, and of the rockets and blast of the falcon pieces—then may you cut them up as a sharp sword cuts a trussed sheep.”

This was roughly the plan of the ameers. Their numbers were somewhat more than those of the Afghans—about twelve thou-sand as opposed to nine thousand. More potent by far than numbers was the advantage in weapons, in cannon and in discipline.

Throughout that day the ameers feasted the envoy and listened to reports of skirmishes between the lines. Raja Man Singh fretted when the Afghans rode before the Mogul position, crying challenges. Paluwan Khan smiled.

“Would you loose the prisoned wolf from the pen, Raja? Alacha has tricked the ill-omened ones into a decision to attack and then. . .” He broke off with a scowl. “In the name of Allah the All-wise, where is the Slayer? After some woman, it is likely—”

He shrugged his shoulders and arranged to assume command of the Turkoman’s followers himself. This caused some necessary confusion and had its effect later.

During that day and night the length and breadth of the camp was searched for Alacha without result. At dawn Paluwan Khan and Raja Man Singh were in sole command of the Mogul’s forces.

And at dawn the first ranks of Afghans threw themselves against the foe.

Almost Ra’dandaz Khan, the Lord Thunder-Thrower, master cannoneer, was taken by surprise. There was barely light enough to make out the dark groups of hillmen advancing over the fields.

Paluwan Khan’s outposts were driven in swiftly, and at first silently—for the Afghans crept up on the sentries and slew them. Shouts resounded, kettledrums were beaten, and steel weapons dashed.

Running swiftly, the Afghans surrounded and cut down mounted pickets of the ameers and rushed upon the staked line of the Thunder-Thrower. Here and there a falcon gun bellowed and flashed in the half-light of early morning.

The Afghan van, picked from the tribes by Abdul Dost for this desperate venture, never reached the line of stakes. The leather ropes and steel chains were lowered at certain points and squadrons of irregular horse under the lieutenants of Paluwan Khan issued forth, checking the clamorous Afghans and cutting them up.

Whereupon the Lord Thunder-Thrower swore a pleased oath and hastened to his guns, flaming match in hand. The imperial standard was raised in front of the tents of the ameers, and Raja Man Singh ran from his pavilion in time to see the solid mass of

Afghan cavalry led by Abdul Dost follow forward upon the heels of the broken infantry screen.

The Mogul’s irregulars, their task half-performed, scattered— some to the wings and some back through the breaks in the staked line, which were fast being closed. Scimitars flashing and cloaks flying, the Afghans charged, crying shrilly:

“Allah akbar! Ho—Allah-ho!”

The roaring of the feringha answered them as the Lord Thunder-Thrower and his cannoneers touched matches to the bronze breeches of the heavy artillery. Fiery rockets charged with powder were flung high into the air by the Mogul’s men, to fall among the horses of the attacking ranks. Pikemen dressed their weapons behind the chains.

Wide gaps were opened among the Afghans by the blast of the feringha, and the rockets set horses to plunging. Yet the Afghans cared not whether their lines be ordered; they swept onward, slaying the few irregulars who had tarried too long to plunder the fallen.

Horses screamed in pain as they were thrown against the pikes that stretched behind the chains; cloaked figures sprang from saddle and across the chains, weapon in hand. Here and there the impact of mounted riders snapped the cords of bulls’ hide, and horsemen rode through shouting and smiting.

And as they did so there came the steady reports of the weapons of the Portuguese matchlock-men stationed behind the guns, their pieces resting upon wooden supports. Matchlock balls pierced through mail shirt and quilted corselet, sending riders here and there plunging to earth.

“Now will the Rájput clans mount for attack,” cried Raja Man Singh, fingering his drawn weapon.

Ra’dandaz Khan, striding through the confusion, gripped his arm. The Turk’s broad face was smoke-blackened, but his smile was as wide as ever.

“My men will deal with these dogs,” he shouted. “Save your sword for a second brood. Abdul Dost has more in store.”

And as he had guessed the Afghans withdrew from the staked line slowly, their strength sadly broken by the cannon and the pikes. For a space quiet held the bank of the Oxus—a quiet broken by the moans of the wounded. At noon Abdul Dost knelt on his prayer carpet, his men doing likewise. It was the hour of midday prayer.

“God is great,” they chanted, lifting burning eyes to the dear sky. “There is no God but God—”

Straightaway they launched their main attack—first mounted archers that wheeled and sent arrow flights speeding among the men behind the staked line, then a solid mass of five thousand Afghans, mad with the lust of conflict.

“Alacha has contrived well,” muttered Paluwan Khan, picking up his shield and signing to Raja Man Singh.

The sweep of the Afghans carried them through and over the cannon, casting the feringha to earth after one bellow—for these giant pieces could be loaded and discharged but once during the attack. They slew the defenders of the bullock carts and surrounded the Lord Thunder-Thrower’s men—that official having prudently retired behind the cavalry, his task performed.

And now the watchers on the housetops of Talikan saw the dark forms of the armored elephants move forward, sun glinting upon the arrows that sped from the howdahs. These beasts, veritable moving castles, advanced among the Afghans, who engaged them desperately, the warriors dismounting and attacking the bellies of the elephants with knives and hacking at the flailing trunks with their scimitars.

Paluwan Khan, sitting within a swaying howdah, gazed forth upon a struggling mass of men and horses, stretched from the river to the distant hillocks, and caused his standard to be lifted as a signal for Raja Man Singh to attack with the Rájputs.

A shout resounded above the tumult, and the fluttering garments of the Rájput clans appeared charging upon the flanks and center of the embattled ranks.

Whereupon there was a glad clamor of trumpet and cymbals from the onlookers at Talikan, and the camp followers began to run forward to seek the spoil for which they had been waiting.

Slowly, inexorably, the elephants plowed forward as the Afghan riders gave back. The fresh troops of Raja Man Singh cleared the flanks of foemen, and the Lord Thunder-Thrower turned to the imperial envoy who watched at his side—a safe distance from the fighting.

“Speed with word to Jahangir, my lord,” cried Ra’dandaz Khan. “Say that by Allah’s aid the servants of the World-Gripper are driving the evil ones of dark fortunes to death and captivity, and by nightfall a mound of skulls will be erected to the glory of the Monarch of the Earth. Speed!”

And the envoy, nothing loath, mounted, knowing that a truly regal gift would be his for the bringing of such tidings.

In this manner is the message inscribed in the annals of Jahangir. Yet of what followed in the battle of Badakshan naught is said. Perhaps this is because of those who saw the battle some said one thing, some another, and still others, being dead, had naught to say. Yet chiefly is it because the Mogul wrote down only those things which added to the glory of his reign, and, being outwardly a follower of the Prophet, would not give belief to the tale that powers other than human fought against his ameers that day.

For into the ranks of the Afghans spurred a huge figure, clad in rough sheepskins, smiting aside those of the imperial riders who opposed him with a sword as great as a man’s thigh.

Seeking out Abdul Dost, sitting grim-eyed upon his horse in the center of his men, this stranger cried:

“Word to the Afghan leader from his ally. Give back! Seek

safety. Draw back to the mountains, Afghan, and give place to the Mongol.”

Quickened hope caused Abdul Dost to turn and gaze back at the fields and woods in his rear, at the scattered villages through which bodies of horsemen fought, Rájput and Afghan alike, to the valleys that led down from the mountains to the North. Yet he saw no others than his own men, and the slain that sprinkled the fields.

“Come you from Khlit?” he asked harshly.

“Aye, the Kha Khan.”

“He has passed the mountain barrier? He comes to the battle?”

“Aye. He grants the Horde a space to breathe deep and eat. He has seen the course of the battle from the mountainside, and he bids you draw back if you have faith in him, for he cannot leave his men to come to you.”

The Tatar rider glanced around at the tumult.

“Ho, Afghan, give place to the Mongol!”

Crying his war shout, the warrior spurred his horse into the struggling groups before him, hewing mightily with his sword, and was lost to view among the enemy.

And Abdul Dost, fighting doggedly, drew back to his own camp in the Afghan village. Here his men gathered together the whole of their remaining strength, and, with women and boys in the ranks, resisted the advance of the Rájputs, refusing to retreat farther and determined to die if need be upon the field.

The mansabdar remained with his men, who were soon surrounded in the village by the forces under Raja Man Singh.

Thus the intrigue of Alacha and the strategy of Paluwan Khan had overcome the Afghans. To drive home the victory, Raja Man Singh prepared to administer the last blow, sure of himself and the strength at his command.

“What care I for new foes?” he laughed when warned of the appearance of a Mongol among the Afghans. “The field is in our hands, and the spirit heroes, nay, the gods themselves, could not drive our army back from its conquest.”

XIII

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

As Khlit brought the last of his men through the lower passes of the Hindu Kush, after sunrise of the day of the battle, above the plain of Badakshan and overlooking the winding course of the Oxus, they rode through a flurry of snow and hail and passed from under storm clouds.

For the last day and night the Horde had not halted to rest or to sleep. Those who still had extra horses rode these until they dropped, saving the better ones as best they might. Under Khlit’s driving the Tatars had made the journey of a hundred miles over the ravines in twenty-four hours. Now at the place where Berang waited, Khlit commanded that they dismount and kill such spare horses as remained in order that they might eat.

From the broad valley underfoot came the rumble of cannon and the dull murmur that told the veteran warriors a battle was on, although they could see nothing of the field itself, being deep in the pine forest at the headwaters of the Oxus.

Berang, however, had climbed a tree farther down the valley and had made out much of the conflict, especially what had taken place by the river which ran directly down from the pass, being but a slender stream at that point.

“We must hasten,” he growled to Khlit, “for good sword strokes are dealt yonder, and it is my thought that the Afghans ride to defeat, for their ranks are broken.”

“The men must eat,” Khlit answered, and the Tatars stretched themselves on the ground under the pines, while some kindled fires.

The faces of all were blackened by exposure and lined with fatigue. The bleared eyes were dull, and the thick-set, powerful bodies swayed as they moved afoot, for they had lived in the saddle during the greater part of a week, and the cessation of continued motion bewildered them.

Yet they chuckled, staring at each other and their leader. They had come over the passes where Genghis Khan had been before them, and they were looking down upon India.

Some scooped up handfuls of the snow for themselves, but carefully led their shaggy beasts—the steppe ponies, possessed of the iron-like endurance of their masters—to the streams that ran into the Oxus to drink.

Khlit leaned upon his saddle-peak, his brown face the color of the saddle itself, his sheepskin coat bound close to his body. While Berang talked, he listened intently.

Savagely he shook his head, hearing of the first assault of the Afghans and their repulse. He knew the strength of the Mogul’s army, and its manner of fighting.

“We are late, late,” he murmured. “Would I could see Abdul Dost. Ha, Berang, tell me the lie of the land.”

The khan sought out Chan, and the minstrel, who knew the plain of Badakshan like a book, described it to the Cossack, who memorized every detail with painstaking care, glancing the while at his men, who ate wolfishly by the fires, and, having eaten, fell instantly into sleep.

“Talikan!” broke in Khlit. “The rearmost village—there be captives therein? The spare horse-herds of the Rájputs?”

“I have heard talk of Afghan prisoners laboring there, my lord,” responded the boy, then looked up brightly. “We also have a captive my lord—a noblewoman—and she may be made to tell you what you would know.”

At the Cossack’s impatient nod he hurried back among the trees and presently appeared with Tala, leading the horse whereon sat the veiled Nur-Jahan.

The Persian held herself proudly erect, gazing mutely at the masses of uncouth warriors moving hither and thither among their horses. She was very pale, and her dark eyes were bright. Khlit barely glanced at her, not recognizing the empress-to-be in the lone woman dressed in the woolen robes of a commoner.

“How many Afghan prisoners are in Talikan?” he barked. “How many guards?”

“I know not.”

Something in her voice caused the old warrior to look at her sharply.

“Ha, woman, fail not to speak!”

“I know not.”

“You have seen the numbers of the Mogul’s army—what numbers?”

“As many as the head leaves underfoot, or the stones in the riverbed.”

At this Berang muttered an oath and drew sword. He stepped to Nur-Jahan’s side and grasped her hair in a mighty hand. “Speak or die.”

The form of the woman stiffened and her eyelids fluttered. She lowered her eyes, keeping silence.

“What name bears she?” Khlit turned to Chan.

“Lord, we know not. Because of her, Berang, your man, slew Alacha. I heard her say that she was called the Light of the World; but that surely was madness.”

“Lord,” Tala put in, bending her dark head, “I know not if it be madness, for this princess is of Isphahan, and she said to me in the Mogul camp that she would contrive peace between Afghan and Mogul. Then Alacha had her carried away. Not once but many times she spoke as Nur-Jahan, and great is her pride.”

The keen eye of the Afghan girl had read much truth in the unveiled features of Nur-Jahan. Khlit reined his horse forward until his shaggy head was close to the eyes of the captive woman.

“Speak, witless one,” he growled. “Tell the numbers that Raja Man Singh holds as reserve. Where lie they? In Talikan? With the prisoners?”

When the Persian remained silent he snatched the veil from her head, and muttered in his beard.

“Aye, you are Nur-Jahan. Once I carried you safely from Khoten to Kashmir, to your lord, the Mogul. And now, forgetting that, he has put a price upon my head. Speak, for here it matters not whether you be Nur-Jahan or slave.”

The woman shook her head mutely. But now Tala and Chan pressed forward, eyes agleam.

“O Kha Khan, know you the prize that you hold? Threaten her with the torture; send word to Raja Man Singh that Nur-Jahan will suffer for the wrongs of Badakshan—”

“Little Afghan—” Khlit spoke impatiently—“said you not that the Light of the World sought to bring about peace between your people and the Mogul—and failed? How may she succeed now, when the battle is on? The ameers will have no thought for a woman. They follow their own path—” he nodded toward the plain below—“and twice ten thousand warriors are deaf to words.”

“Then,” cried Berang and others of the khans, “let her suffer until she voices the tidings you would know.”

He bent back the fair head of the captive with a twist of his wrist, and the others muttered hoarse approval. Khlit glanced once searchingly into the strained face of the Persian and caught Berang’s arm, thrusting it aside.

“She is Nur-Jahan, and she will not speak. Brothers, khans, are ye dotards and fools to wage war upon the body of one woman?”

He looked from man to man, his gray eyes hard under the shaggy brows.

They scowled at each other and fingered their weapons.

“Content you, Kha Khan,” they barked. “We follow where you lead. Take us therefore to this horde of India—minions of the false prince sired by the great Genghis.”

Khlit glanced briefly a last time at Nur-Jahan.

“Ha, woman of the Mogul, you shall bear the tidings to your lord. Say that the Tatars yield you back to him—unharmed. Tell him of the Mongol swoop, and the events that come to pass this day.”

So speaking, he gave Nur-Jahan into the care of Chagan, the mighty sword-bearer, bidding Chan also ride with her until she should be given over safely into the care of some Mogul noble. This done, he looked hastily at the sun, noting likewise that the

tumult on the plain below seemed to have died out somewhat— for Abdul Dost had drawn back from his first charge, and ordered the kettledrums sounded for assembly.

Throughout the forest in the gorge, swarthy Tatars sprang up, cursing stiffened limbs, and mounted. The khans lifted their standards and rode forward, striking aside those in their way, until they reached Khlit’s side.

The Cossack signed for them to follow and led the way forward for some distance until the gorge fell away and a wide stream appeared at their feet. Berang pointed out the hillock whence he had observed the opening of the battle, and on this spot Khlit faced his khans.

He indicated the course of the stream, widening to a small, shallow river down by the battlefield to the South, and pointed to the distance on the right, where some five miles away miniature groups of men moved slowly about the plain and the smoke of burning huts rose into the air. Faintly they could make out the dark line that was the Mogul’s front, against the river bank.

“There we must be with utmost speed, brothers, khans,” he said quietly. “How?”

“Let us ride to the Afghan horde,” muttered Berang. “They be sore-pressed. Aye, what else?”

Khlit looked at him impassively.

“We be but one against five of the Mogul’s men. Our Horde is thinned by death in the passes. Already you have said the Afghans are beaten back, having men to three times our number. By joining the Afghans we would swell their number—true—but avail nothing more.”

“Let us then ride forward alone against the Mogul,” bellowed an old Tatar, his thin, white mustache hanging to his naked chest, blackened by the sun. “Aye, to slay mightily, as is fitting—”

“Then would we be but one against five, and five that are facing us, ready for an onset—”

“The flank, then,” cried another, pointing to the right. “There the ground is too rough for horses.”

Khlit lifted his hand.

“Hear me, brothers, khans. A way there is to double our numbers and to charge over fair ground and to strike where we are not looked for. We will ride in the tulughma, the Mongol swoop.”

“Ho, that is good hearing,” nodded the khans, their fierce eyes gleaming. “Aye, that is good.”

“By inspiring fear, brothers, khans, we will make greater our numbers. And we will be feared when we strike where no foe is looked for.”

Khlit still held them with his eyes.

“Yet by so doing we will cut ourselves off from escape—verily, there will be no hope if we fail. Mightily will we slay, yet death will follow us fast. Will you come with me?”

As one man the Tatars made answer.

“Lead, by Natagai’s blood—lead. By the hide of the gods, lead us on, Kha Khan. We be wearied of talk.”

Just a little Khlit smiled under his mustache, glancing calmly at the ring of faces. It was a moment of pride for the old warrior. Three thousand men and more had followed him over half a thousand miles of mountain land, enduring the while hardships that no army of India, Russia, Persia or China would have faced. He had done what the ameers of the Mogul, as Chan had related, had said that no man could do—and what the Afghans had feared could not be done. And now, without sight of friend or foe, the survivors of these men would follow him blindly into what seemed to him to be certain death for the most part, if not for all.

Then it was that Khlit sent the warrior—him of the bare shoulders and white hair—headlong to Abdul Dost, bearing the command to draw back from the battle to where the Afghan forces would be safe and leave the field to the Tatars.

Thus Khlit hoped to make good his promise to Abdul Dost. He was under no illusions as to what his own fate might be.

“Yet,” he muttered to himself as he led the van of his riders across the stream to the farther bank, opposite the plain of battle, and turned swiftly to the South down a shallow valley pointed

out by Chan, “when my sword is broken and my men are wearied or slain, the army of Jahangir will be an army no more.”

In the scattered hamlets along the left bank of the river, the villagers, old men, and the women and children who had been staring across the shallow bosom of the Oxus—the watchers turned in amazement, perceiving that dark masses of horsemen rode down the valley behind them to the South. They heard a steady thunder of hoofs, and saw harsh faces and the glint of steel through clouds of dust.

“Ai!” they cried. “The tales of the hillmen were true. Verily there are spirits of the heights afoot.”

Being frightened and superstitious, they thought this—having seen no men like the Tatars.

The Horde passed steadily athwart the battle lines on the farther side of the Oxus, and children in the fields, bending in the midday prayer wherein they besought aid for the Afghans, stared round-eyed as the riders trampled through wheat fields burned by Alacha’s men, and behind thickets of willows, cypress and tamarisk that screened them from observation by the Mogul’s forces.

Chan, called forward by Khlit, served as guide. Here and there they encountered the skirmishing parties flung out across the river by Paluwan Khan, and engulfed them. It was ever the way of the Horde to strike so swiftly that no news of their coming reached ahead.

They heard the distant roar of conflict as Abdul Dost flung his men forward in the noon charge, before Khlit’s messenger could find him in the affray.

Khlit looked up somewhat anxiously at this. But his lean face was tranquil. He smelled once more the smoke of battle, heard the impact of charging ranks. A great peace held his mind, and he smiled.

His thoughts went back to the steppes, to the Ukraine and Tartary, where he had gone forward like this, but at the head of

shouting Cossacks against the Turk and the Pole. Like this he had passed down the bank of the Volga, the Dneiper—aye, and the Kerulon, in the homeland of the Tatars.

He wondered how the old chiefs of Cossackdom had fared during the years after he had left the war encampments. He would have liked to see their faces again, hear their oaths and see the glitter of their swords. Yet he knew his old companions were dead.

So likewise had the elder khans of Tartary passed from his life, Chepé Buga and the others—their souls loosed from their bodies in the swift tide of battle.

Only Abdul Dost remained.

Khlit’s life had been long and full. He had chosen the open plains and the hard fortunes of war instead of the peace of cities and the honors of the courts. No comfort had he won out of life, nor had he gained anything to serve him except his sword. He had seen the coming of a new era, of wide-flung empires and far-venturing ships, and his friends had been the last of a warrior race—in Cossackdom and Tartary. . .

“Kha Khan—” Chan broke into his thoughts—“we come to the ford that leads to Talikan.”

“Lift high the yak-tail standard,” shouted Khlit, rising in his stirrups. “Sound the nacars—Berang, take the Torgots across the river; Chagan, abide with me; brothers, khans, assemble your men into the clans and let each one look to me for orders. Draw your swords, brothers, khans.”

In silence, until they gained midway across the stream, the Torgot clan rode. Debouching from twin clumps of willows, they were not noticed at first by the Mogul’s forces holding the village, who had heard that the Afghans were driven back. And even when espied the Tatars were at first taken for some fresh body of imperial cavalry.

Not until the strange aspect of Berang’s men was noted did the scattered troops in Talikan take alarm. By then the Tatars were riding through the streets.

Without difficulty they drove the ill-armed and unprepared detachments in Talikan before them, striking down all who bore arms. The tide of the Horde swept across the river, trampled down the riverbank bazaars, sending the wondering inhabitants scurrying indoors.

So suddenly had they appeared that rumors began to fly toward the rearmost lines of the ameers.

“Demons out of purgatory have sprung from the ground. . . Men came out of the river and laid waste Talikan . . . They are like to wild beasts and no man may face them.”

Thus the message came to Paluwan Khan, sitting his elephant in the midst of his scattered foot soldiery, and to Raja Man Singh, who pressed the attack on all sides against the Afghan camp where Abdul Dost had rallied his men.

At Talikan Khlit remounted half his followers from the spare horses of the Rájputs. Seeking out the Afghan prisoners and scattering their guards, he ordered them to mount the horses discarded by the Tatars and to arm themselves from weapons cast upon the ground by fugitives and from the stores of the ameers. The village itself he fired, and a giant column of smoke soon rose against the sky, causing the imperial forces on the field of battle to glance back and wonder.

Reforming his clans at the remount camp of the Rájputs, now emptied of guards, Khlit gave his men only scant breathing space before leading them forward.

This time he altered his column into a fan-shaped formation, the standard in the center. Before advancing he summoned a Rájput noble, wounded, who had been spared by Berang. Pointing out the still figure of Nur-Jahan, he bade the man escort her out of the conflict.

“Take her to Jahangir, Raja,” he said grimly. “Say to the World-Gripper that his empress has a braver heart than he—and is more faithful to a friend.”

He did not even watch the noble take the bridle of Nur-Jahan’s horse and lead it back through the village, stumbling onward in

mute amazement. Yet his words were afterward to prove true. Nur-Jahan was the heart and the brains Jahangir’s reign.

And now came youths and old men running from houses here and there, crying:

“Allah be praised! Aid is come for the Afghans. We will go with the Tatar Horde.”

These Khlit ordered curtly back, but took the freed prisoners with him, some running at the stirrups of his men. Broken by torture and fatigue, the Afghans ran on, silently, nursing their longing for revenge.

Within the space of a few moments the Horde had reached the main camp of the Mogul’s forces and cleared it of defenders. The fugitives ran to Paluwan Khan, crying that the Mongols were upon them, and their coming added to the general confusion that had ensued upon the heels of the temporary victory of the ameers.

But Paluwan Khan, cursing mightily, formed his battalions to face the rear and sent a rider speeding to Raja Man Singh with urgent summons to draw back to aid him. The movements of the Tatars had been so swift and their change of mounts so quickly accomplished that the tale of their numbers had grown.

“Fetch back your cannon!” roared Paluwan Khan at the Thunder-Thrower. “Where are your pikemen? Send me the leader of the Portuguese infidels! In the name of Allah, form your ranks!”

Before this could be done the Horde was among the main array of the ameers. The Tatars hitherto had met but the scourings of the camp, the bazaar hangers-on, servants, slaves and camp followers. Now they gave a great shout at sight of the line of footmen drawn up behind pikes.

Chagan carried the yak-tail standard into the front of the attack, followed closely by Khlit, and a thousand horsemen— hewing, slashing, and mad with the intoxication of battle—had broken into the ranks of Paluwan Khan.

Short, broad swords smote the steel heads from pikes; flights of arrows sped over the foremost riders to fall thick among the men of Paluwan Khan. The imperial lines, disconcerted, broken, began to give back.

A second line of Tatars came forward, driving into the melee just as the elephants, or those that could be brought up from the engagement at the Afghan camp, came plodding forward, their howdahs a-bristle with archers.

Until now Khlit had made full use of the advantage gained by the tulughma—the encircling movement that was the favorite stratagem of Genghis Khan, who sent his cavalry from the rear of his own lines clear into the rear of the enemy.

He had reasoned that he would find the forces of the ameers scattered and in part disorganized after the affray with the Afghans. In advancing as he did into the heart of the Mogul’s army, he foresaw that he would meet with different detachments separately. Yet now he realized that the strength of the enemy had been barely touched by the reckless assaults of Abdul Dost upon a prepared defense.

And the huge elephants were veritable citadels of strength.

“Bid the clans,” he shouted to the nearest warriors, “fight clear of the elephants—all but the beast bearing the standard of Paluwan Khan.”

He pointed to the howdah of the Northern Lord, glittering with its costly trimmings.

“Chagan, take a score of followers and slay me that chief.”

By now the arrows from the howdahs were flying among the Tatar riders, and their own arrows were deflected off the armored coverings of the beasts. Khlit rose to a standing position in his saddle and surveyed the masses of fighting men. He rode swiftly from clan to clan, bidding them draw away from the riverbank. In so doing they passed near the elephant of Paluwan Khan.

Chagan had driven his horse at the head of the giant beast, clearing a path for himself with his sword. He swung at the black trunk that swayed above him, missed his stroke, and went down as his horse fell with an arrow in its throat.

“Bid your elephant kneel, cowardly lord,” he bellowed, springing to his feet and avoiding the impact of the great tusks, “and fight as a man should!”

His companions being for the most part slain, Chagan seized a fresh mount that went by riderless and rode against the elephant’s side. Gripping the canopy that overhung the elephant’s back, with teeth and clutching fingers he drew himself up, heedless of blows delivered upon his steel headpiece and mailed chest.

“Ho!” he cried from between set teeth. “I will come to you, Northern Lord!”

An arrow seared his cheek and a knife in the hand of an archer bit into the muscles of a massive arm. Chagan’s free hand seized the mahout and jerked him from behind the ears of the elephant as ripe fruit is plucked from a tree. At this the beast swayed and shivered, and for an instant the occupants of the howdah were flung back upon themselves and Chagan was nearly cast to earth.

Kneeling, holding on the howdah-edge with a bleeding hand, he smote twice with his heavy sword, smashing the skull of an archer and knocking another to the ground. The remaining native thrust his shield before Paluwan Khan.

But the Northern Lord, no coward, pushed his servant aside and sprang at Chagan, scimitar in hand.

The Tatar sword-bearer, kneeling, wounded, was at a disadvantage. Swiftly he let fall his own weapon and closed with Paluwan Khan, taking the latter’s stroke upon his shoulder. A clutching hand gripped the throat of the Northern Lord above the mail and Chagan roared in triumph.

Pulling his foe free of the howdah, the Tatar lifted Paluwan Khan to his shoulder and leaped from the back of the elephant.

The two mailed bodies struck the earth heavily, Paluwan Khan underneath, and it was a long moment before Chagan rose, reeling. In his bleeding hand he clasped the head of the Northern Lord. And, reeling, he made his way to Khlit, through the watchers who had halted to view the struggle upon the elephant.

“Kha Khan, look upon your foe!”

And Chagan tossed the head aside, to run, staggering, at Khlit’s stirrup as the Tatars swept athwart the Mogul’s line, away from the river.

Under cover of arrow flights discharged from horseback, the Tatar clans fell in behind their leaders, riding slowly, being reluctant to leave their foe.

“We have not quelled them, lord,” panted a one-eyed warrior at young Berang Khan. “Aye, more ride up. Why do we not stay them?”

“Peace!” roared Berang. “Still your clamorous tongues, dogs, and await your time.”

Grumbling and glancing often back, the Tatars drew clear of the Mogul’s main array, drawing ever to the hillocks, away from the riverbank. Khlit, watching shrewdly the movements of the fighting men, had seen that detachments of Rájputs were coming up from the beleaguered Afghans.

Moreover, the elephants were causing his Tatars sore hurt, and his men were wearied. So he led the Horde, once again assembled in its hive-like entirety, to what had been the left flank of Paluwan Khan, behind the broken, rocky ground, out into the plain. And here he bade his men dress their wounds and wait, under cover of the rising ground.

As they did so, from the grove and field of grain, from nullah and waterbed came groups of Afghan men and women who had concealed themselves during the battle, and these bore milk and goatskins of water to allay the thirst of the Tatars.

And more—groups of armed riders galloped up, leaderless, having been separated from the Afghans in the camp of Abdul Dost. Frightened herds of cattle were rushing about the fields behind the Tatars.

Khlit, standing on the uppermost rocks, the sun behind his back, was now facing the river. After passing through Talikan, the Mogul camp, and charging the rear of the main line of Paluwan Khan, he had turned aside and brought his men to the extreme flank of the enemy.

“Gather your men into their clans,” he said briefly to the khans. “See that each one has arrows and a sword. Send riders

to head those herds—” he pointed at the trampling cattle on the plain—“this way. Make haste.”

Carefully he studied the forces of the Mogul a pistol-shot away. He saw that they were moving about, forming a new line to face him. Cannon were being brought up on camel back. Some men tried to cut down the stout leather ropes bound to the stakes that now divided their own position—as Khlit was on their flank.

He saw mounted Rájputs riding through the multitude, and companies of mercenaries marching first here, then there.

“It is well,” he smiled. “They have no leaders.”

What had happened was this. Paluwan Khan until his death had commanded Alacha’s men as well as his own. With both ameers lost, only the mansabdars and company leaders remained, with the exception of the Thunder-Thrower, who was swearing in his endeavor to make his pieces bear on the new position of the Tatars.

Khlit saw that some six thousand fighting men faced his own horsemen, who did not now number two thousand. And the elephants remained.

Though he longed to do so, he could not ride on to where the Afghans still fought Raja Man Singh, on his left, to the North be-hind several gullies and groves. For the ground there was broken, and he could not leave six thousand men, and elephants, close in his rear, to ride farther to the North.

But he smiled, seeing the masses of cattle driven up, and turned to Berang. “If the Mogul’s men had advanced upon us here among the rocks the battle would be theirs,” he growled. “Yet, having no leader, they held back. Now will we charge.”

He cast a last glance to the North, wondering how Abdul Dost fared. Then he seized the standard from Chagan’s weakened hand, shouting for the riders to head the cattle forward, toward the enemy and the river.

“Nay, lord,” groaned the sword—bearer. “That is my task—to hold the standard—”

“Give back, Chagan,” Khlit urged, “for you are half-slain.”

But the sword-bearer spurred after him, reeling in the saddle. The Horde followed after the standard, their eyes fastened on the flying yak-tails, a mighty shout rumbling from their throats.

And before them went the frightened cattle.

Crash, and again crash came the blast of the zam zan, the cannon of the Lord Thunder-Thrower, and many cattle and some Tatars were blown to earth. Urging on their spent horses, rising high in their stirrups, sending arrows swiftly from their short bows—so that the sun glinted upon them as upon drops of rain— the Tatars charged home, riding in among the cattle, sweeping first to one side, then the other with their strange swords, hacking, wheeling, shouting.

The Portuguese mercenaries discharged their pieces and caught up their short swords fearfully; the men of the Lord Thunder-Thrower had time for but one blast of their light pieces, for the feringha could not be moved to face the Tatars; the imperial archers found their shafts fruitless against the swift, short bows of the Mongols.

“Allah turned his face from us,” said a cannoneer of the Thunder-Thrower that night, speaking of the charge, “and the spirits of the air fought against us; since we had slain our foe and they had passed from our sight, yet they came again to be slain, and the cannon balls did not check them. Aye, they were like to the spirits of the dead, like to the Horde of Genghis, the Terrible.”

He had seen Chagan cut half in two by a sweep of a pike, yet strike down the man who held the pike, and grapple with a matchlock-man who had turned to flee.

“We cannot slay them!” cried an archer of the household troops, flinging down his bow. “Our shafts pass through them, but they do not fall. Woe—woe!”

“They be spirits of the air!” shrieked a wounded Punjabi, his turban falling over his bloody face. “The gods fight against us— the many-armed gods!”

Whereupon a cursing Rájput struck him down and rode for-ward at the Tatar standard until Berang spurred against him and he too went headlong to death, but valorously.

“Flee, flee!” cried a small, cloaked figure, running about among the horses’ legs.

It was a shriveled man in a dirty purple cloak, fear blazoned on his black face. Gutchluk had sought safety in the Mogul’s ranks, yet found it not.

“Flee!” bellowed a brawny Turk, flinging down his scimitar and rushing toward the river.

Now after the Tatar charge came a curious array. Horseless Afghans, wearied and bloody, stumbled on; old men caught up weapons from the trampled fields; stripling youths shrilled their war shout, plying bows and dashing nimbly among the embattled host—Chan the minstrel riding at their head and singing as he rode.

Khlit and the bodyguard of the Tatars were fighting grimly about the standard when these new, strange friends slipped among the horses to their aid. The Cossack had chosen the moment well. He had not given the enemy time to form into orderly ranks; he had charged with the sun at his back and the river at the rear of the foe. He pressed on, his curved sword red, his eyes alert. And with the standard came the swarm of the Horde.

That stout Turk, the Thunder-Thrower, had forsaken his can-non in judicious foretaste of what was coming. Halting two slaves with him at his scimitar point, he beat a ponderous retreat and arrived panting at the muddy bank of the river.

Rushing into the water, he scrambled up, upon the shoulders of his slaves, grasping their hair.

“Now bear me across the water, jackals, or you die!” he muttered.

One man slipped and the Lord Thunder-Thrower subsided into the brown current of the Oxus gasping, impregnating the water with a smell of musk. Seeing this the other native, eyes agleam, caught at him, wrenching the pearls from throat and turban.

“Aid me to swim, in the name of God!” roared the Turk.

But his follower had gone, swimming away among the other fugitives.

Then did the stout Thunder-Thrower espy a goatskin filled with air, floating upon the current—such a skin as the common natives used to ferry them from bank to bank—and upon this was a water-soaked, brown man, shriveled of face, his purple robe clinging to shrunken shoulders.

Gutchluk had fled before the Turk. In a moment the bulky master cannoneer had struck the shaman heavily on the side of the head, and Gutchluk sank back into the brown water, his fingers still clutching at the life-giving skin. The Thunder-Thrower wrenched away the groping hands and spurned Gutchluk with his foot, as the shaman disappeared under the surface.

The Mogul ranks had been broken. Panic had seized the men of the Mogul. They cast away their arms and ran back to the riverbank. Here some tried to flee north and south in the mud, to be cut down by the Tatar horsemen. Others swam across the river—mainly horsemen.

Mailed Turks gathered into groups and rode desperately south into Talikan. Only the elephants and scattered Rájputs held the field, for the footmen had been the first to flee.

Against the elephants Khlit ordered huge fagots, torn from the defenses of the Thunder-Thrower, to be carried, flaming. The Tatar archers shot arrows into the necks of the huge beasts, and soon the elephants were retreating trumpeting, into the river, or running amuck south to Talikan.

The sun was now setting, and the fight had become a shambles.

Talikan and the Mogul camp were burning. Khlit sounded the nacars and assembled a remnant of his men, others joining him as he advanced forward again, north along the river toward the Afghan camp. His men reeled in their saddles from weariness; some slept as they rode; no one shouted or sang, save the Afghan boys and men who had aided them.

“On to Abdul Dost!” they cried.

In the smoky twilight the array of the Horde drew near the Afghan village, where Raja Man Singh saw them and gathered his Rájputs about him. Some three thousand good men he had, of the Marwar clan, of Oudipur and Sindh. The Rájput code of honor would not permit him to withdraw from the field.

And then the sun sank, plunging the plain of Badakshan with its hideous carpet of dead, the dark flood of the river Oxus, and the overhanging hills into gloom—save for where flames soared into the sky from the bazaars of Talikan and the tents of the Mogul; and in the light of the fires Afghan children and wounded Tatars plundered the riches of the ameers.

In the deepening twilight the Afghans issued from their lines— the lines they still held at the village—and joined the Tatars. United, they sought the Rájputs in the dark.

Here was no orderly charge of mounted ranks, but a hand-to-hand struggle, fierce and silent, except for the clash of steel and the cry of the stricken. Men moved numbly over the plain, and oftentimes foemen stared at each other in the gloom, too wearied to strike. But always the Rájputs were pressed away from the river and the Afghan village, into the plain, fighting until they could fight no more.

By moonrise the battlefield was cleared, and dark bodies of riders passed far afield into the plain, some fleeing, some pursuing. Raja Man Singh was carried away bodily by two servants, his sword lost and he himself wounded. It was many days before the Rájput clans reformed their ranks, broken by the Tatars.

“Lord of the World, Monarch of the Universe,” the Lord Thunder-Thrower made plaint subsequently to the Mogul, “I did assemble some forces beyond the river, but demons pursued us through the night, and Ghils shrieked at us in the moonlight. They followed, nor could we lose them.”

“The gods walked the earth again that night,” chattered a native soldier.

“Nay,” said another, “I heard the trumpets of Genghis Khan, and the tramp of his host in the air.”

Thus was the battle won and lost in Badakshan. And the broken army of the Mogul withdrew from Badakshan, leaving the Afghans free. Some said that forces more than human had fought against the Mogul; others, that intrigue and treachery had planted the fear of the coming of the Horde in the breast of the Mogul’s men, and that they heard and saw naught but the image of their own fears in the moonlight. The mullahs of the North declared that the sins of the ameers had worked their undoing.

For how otherwise, asked the mullahs, could the imperial army be routed by a small band of Tatars who came from nowhere and who went—nowhere?

Yet no one knew that a master of cavalry tactics had outgeneraled the ameers of the Mogul by a maneuver as old as the campaigns of Genghis, and had outfought six times his numbers with men who had not their match upon horses.

Khlit had drawn back from the pursuit at moonrise to seek for Abdul Dost in the Afghan camp. He walked a spent horse alone into the rows of fallen tents from fire to fire, holding a broken sword clasped in his hand.

He did not go far alone. Men and women who had thronged to the camp fell in behind his horse. Chan rode up, singing, followed by a group of Afghan youths chanting their victory.

“Where is Abdul Dost?” asked Khlit.

At this the singing was silenced. Torches came, and the gathering throng passed with him to the center of the Afghan lines, where the torches grouped themselves about a figure in armor prone on the ground—the armor slashed and bloodied, and the lean, dark face very harsh in the moonlight. The Afghan khans and their women and children looked on as Khlit dismounted stiffly, for he also was wounded.

By the side of Abdul Dost squatted a white-robed figure in a clean turban, bearing a staff in his hand, and by his knee was a slim boy. Muhammad Asad stared up into the sky from his blind

eyes, his lips murmuring gentle prayers, but the boy whispered something into the ear of Abdul Dost.

The mansabdar glanced up and smiled.

“It was a good fight. I shall not see another like it.”

He tried to lift one arm, and Khlit saw that his hand was mangled, and heard men whisper behind his back that the ribs of Abdul Dost were broken about his heart and that he would be a cripple henceforth. Khlit barely heard. He let the hilt of his broken sword fall to the earth, and took the other hand of his friend in his for a moment.

“Leave us,” he said harshly to the onlookers.

He sat down by Abdul Dost, his dust-stained, weary face alight with gratitude and relief. Abdul Dost would live.

In the silence came the faint mutter of prayer from the bearded lips of Muhammad Asad—“Allah akbar—Allah il allah! ”—and presently the blind man turned his face toward Khlit.

“O Kha Khan,” he whispered, “you have saved my people. How may we do you fitting honor?”

He reached out a questioning hand, but the boy at his side spoke softly, saying that Khlit was asleep.

On the morrow, as swiftly as it came, the remnant of the Horde drifted away to the northern passes before snow should close the way. And because of the speed of their departure many tales arose in the Afghan land and the hill country—tales of spirits that had fought in Badakshan. To these stories Muhammad Asad, who became kwajah of the Afghans and leader of his people, made reply—

“Not by spirits, nor by the strength of warriors, was the Mogul defeated—but by the fellowship of two men.”