In the city of the silent lie those who are dead. Their blood is like to dried dust; over their faces the rose bush blows.

Even thus do they lie.

Between the hills of the Mustagh Ata the camels pass—one by one like shadows passing into the night. The riders of the camels lift not their veils; they look not upon the right hand or the left.

They stoop not to the rose bush; nor do they eat when it is time. For they are the dead who have not died...

Even thus do they ride.

It was a fair day in the early Spring of the year of 1609 of the Christian era. And it was in the hills of northern Kashmir, on the outskirts of the empire of the Mogul, a day’s fast ride from Srinaggar, the City of the Sun.

Khlit had gone from his yurt to water his horse at the spring that lay in the valley through which ran the caravan track from Leh.

The site of his yurt had been carefully selected, being halfway up the mountain slope within the forest line. It enabled him to see down the caravan route and to observe who came and went from Srinaggar to Leh.

And not to be seen himself—a matter of some moment for one who was outlawed by Jahangir, the Lord of Lords, and King of Kings, the Shadow of God on Earth, his Majesty, the emperor of Hindustan.

The edict of Jahangir did not greatly trouble Khlit, who was accustomed to choose his own path in life and to ride alone. In this manner he had passed from the Cossack steppe to the Tatar steppe; from there to the mountains of Kashmir.

Yet a recent exchange of sword strokes with sundry Persians and Pathans had made the name of Khlit notorious about Srinaggar. Some called him the Wanderer, others the Curved Saber—in reference to the Cossack blade that was his favorite weapon.

Khlit’s hair was gray and his tall figure spare with age. Of recent years he had trusted more to shrewdness than to the sword— which he still wielded, however, with a master hand—to preserve his life from the enemies who beset the hills and caravan paths of Central Asia during the era of the Mogul.

In his felt yurt Khlit had had a companion other than his horse. It was the spirit of loneliness, bred of days of watching by the fire and nights of scanning the majestic slopes that thrust their splintered ice crests into the moonlight.

Even as the spirit of the sword had risen beside Khlit when a boy and driven him to saddle and to the open steppe, the pang of loneliness irked him.

Not that Khlit was eager for the companionship of the Kashmiris of Srinaggar. He had visited the court of Hindustan, and the ways of the Hindus were not his ways. He longed for sight of the men of the northern hills, who rode where they willed and slept under the stars.

It was a great hunger, this hunger that had come upon Khlit. It came of years of riding knee to knee and bridle to bridle with men of his own kind, who had no master, paid no tribute and owned no slaves. And it would not be denied.

Perhaps the season had something to do with it. The snow by Khlit’s yurt was melting and the freshets were breaking from the ice barrier. The sun shone warmly into the entrance of the felt shelter and the mountain ash and poplar were breaking into leaf. It was the season when the Cossacks were wont to be afoot with their comrades.

Khlit had been meditating and had walked slowly down through the pines, drawing his horse after him. As he came out upon the spring he halted abruptly.

A group of men were squatted on carpets by the spring, watering a score of horses. Khlit stared at them thoughtfully. He had

taken pains to observe—as was his custom—that no caravan was in view when he started down to the spring.

These men must have come down the valley swiftly if they had reached the watering place before him. Moreover, it was not a caravan.

Khlit wondered if they were horse thieves. But if the horses had been stolen they were going in the wrong direction for safety— being headed for Srinaggar.

Only a half-dozen of the animals were laden, and these with light packs. He noticed that the horses were Arabs and Turkoman beasts, of excellent breed. Then his own horse neighed before he could prevent, and the group at the spring glanced up hastily, leaping to their feet and laying hand to weapon.

Whereupon Khlit walked forward, having no mind to turn his back on the watchers. They eyed him in silence as he reached the spring, which was already muddied by the hoofs of the other beasts. Seeing this, Khlit hauled at a bridle of one, making room for his own thirsty horse to drink.

“Bismillah! Dog and gully jackal! Would you take what be-longs to others?”

The words were Turki, and sharply spoken. The speaker was a wiry Arab enveloped in a voluminous brown cloak, girded by a shawl in which were stuck an array of weapons, ranging from silver-chased Turkish pistols to a pair of Damascus scimitars— upon the jeweled hilt of one the Arab’s lean hand trembled.

Khlit gnawed at his mustache calmly, making no move to withdraw his horse.

“Back, dog of a caphar. Wretched son of many fathers, and eater of filth—back!”

The man stepped closer, his dark face flushed with anger.

“Your horse had finished,” remarked Khlit, speaking broken Turki. “And the clear spring was becoming muddied, even as this soil is defiled by your presence, O maker-of-lies.”

With a grunt the Arab snatched at a pistol—only to have it struck from his grip by a swift slash of Khlit’s sword. The mas-

ter of the curved saber had learned by experience never to draw without striking, and always to be the first to strike. Moreover he had acquired a trick of thrusting with the same movement that drew his blade from scabbard.

The pistol had fallen into the pool, and the angered Muslim snatched at a sword. Khlit’s blade flashed before his face and touched his turban, severing the folds over his forehead. The ends, dangling down, blinded the Arab, who stepped back.

“Peace!” said a harsh voice. “Peace, swallower of flames, and seeker after blood. Stay, Nasir Beg! The graybeard is your master.”

Nasir Beg fumbled at his weapon uncertainly, his thin lips drawn back in a snarl. Khlit glanced at the speaker and saw a little man huddled in fur robes, over which two alert black eyes peered at him.

“Am I one, Pir Kasim, to suffer a blow like a dog?” muttered Nasir Beg.

“Peace!” cried the little man again impatiently, and Khlit sheathed his weapon, seeing that Pir Kasim was master of the Arab.

Nevertheless, he did not cease to watch Nasir Beg, who was assuaging his injured feelings by muttered curses.

By his dirty turban, on which were strung valuable pearls, Khlit guessed Pir Kasim to be an Uzbek—probably a merchant and a man of some importance. The third of the group was a stout eunuch, richly garbed in silk. The two others who sat apart and watched were servants.

Khlit considered them without apparent interest yet with some curiosity. They were the first men he had spoken with in several moons. Moreover, Pir Kasim, who was undoubtedly a merchant, was traveling without goods, while the fat Ethiopian, who was a eunuch, had no women to guard.

In his days at the Mogul court Khlit had seen many strange assemblages, yet never before an Uzbek allied with an Arab and an Ethiopian.

Pir Kasim seemed to be owner of the horses, but these were not the kind ordinarily bought and sold in Kashmir, nor did the Uzbek appear to be a seller of horses.

Who were they? Whither were they bound? And what manner of goods did Pir Kasim have for sale?

Khlit’s horse had quenched its thirst by now, and he swung him-self into the saddle Cossack fashion without touching stirrup. Whereupon Pir Kasim combed at his thin beard and frowned.

Backing his horse slowly from the pool, Khlit eyed the merchant, and presently, as he had anticipated, the Uzbek lifted a crooked forefinger and spoke.

“A fair horse that, noble sir. You have him well to hand.”

“Aye,” grunted Khlit, “I have trained him. Ho, merchant, I would have a fellow to him. Sell me one of yonder beasts—I have gold mohars.”

“Nay—” Pir Kasim did not shift his scrutiny—“I now have need of them. We be desert men, by the face of the Prophet, and when did such sell their horses for gold?”

He traced patterns in the dust beside the carpet as if meditating. “Nay. What name bear you, and whence come you?”

“I have drawn my reins from the Mogul court,” responded Khlit grimly. “As for a name—is there not writing on my sword? Aye, for him who can read.”

Pir Kasim’s shrewd eyes blinked. Wrapped in his robes, from which his yellow face and claw-like hand protruded, he resembled a hawk meditating upon its nest.

“Your sword, noble sir? You use it well, as Nasir Beg can bear witness. Whither ride you?”

“Where goes the wind from the hill gorge?”

“Out upon the plain. Harken, warrior—” Pir Kasim, being somewhat at a loss as to Khlit’s race and rank, was cautious— “the thought has come to me, nay, it is but an idle thought, you may desire to draw your reins to the border. Away, perchance—

Allah is my witness that ’tis but an idle thought—from the tents and riders of the Mogul. Will you join us?”

Khlit considered, leaning on the peak of his saddle.

“Devil take it!” He growled. “Plain speech is best! You ride to Srinaggar, not to the border land.”

Pir Kasim rubbed his lean hands together and stretched them out to the sun as if to a fire. He smiled craftily.

“Nay, we will turn back from the City of the Sun—in the space of fifteen days. Aye, when we have that for which we come we ride to the hills of the Mustagh Ata, past Ladak to Yarkand, which is in the northern plain. You will have a double handful of gold at Yarkand.”

“A horse is more to my liking.”

“Aye, a horse if you wish—the pick of the herd,” assented Pir Kasim, adding hastily, “in place of the gold, noble sir.” “Does a fox run blindly with the wolfpack?”

Khlit made as if to turn away, but the merchant scrambled to his feet and was at the wanderer’s knee.

“Before Allah, good sir, my words are the very gems of truth. Nay—” he sighed— “I will grant you a copious handful of gold and a silver-chased saddle with the horse.”

“When did a merchant of Samarkand give much for little? What seek you of me?”

Pir Kasim glanced at Khlit reflectively and hazarded well.

“Sword strokes, noble sir. Verily, the path we tread from Srinaggar to Yarkand will be one of peril. It may be our fate to be pursued—for we have a rich burden. I have need of one who can wield well his sword.”

He could not have framed a speech that fell in better with the wishes of Khlit. The wanderer sought the northern steppe and wished companions. Here both were offered him.

“A good horse,” whispered Pir Kasim—“an Arab. And your share of the gold.”

“Hey, I have a mind to ride with you. Yet it is not wise for me to go to Srinaggar—”

“Excellent, noble sir,” purred the Uzbek. “Have we not all some petty place where we ride not? ’Tis easily contrived; meet me at the caravansary of the river Sindh, an hour’s ride west of Srinaggar at dusk on the fifteenth day. On the following dawn we shall mount for Yarkand.”

He smiled up at Khlit, caressing the silver ornaments of his bridle.

“Aye, noble warrior, that day we shall ride hard—and scatter the dust of our going upon these accursed hill villages of the unbelievers, and upon our pack animals we shall bear—spoil! Will you be one with us? The peril will be great—”

“It is well.”

Khlit spurred away, up the pine slope.

“Fail not!” cried Pir Kasim anxiously. “The Sindh caravansary —on the fifteenth evening—”

The rider of the black horse did not look back, and Pir Kasim returned to the group by the spring, rubbing his hands with the air of one who has made a good bargain

Nasir Beg swaggered in front of the merchant, scowling.

“Eh, one without wisdom!” the Arab sneered. “Will you number among us an unbeliever, a caphar—”

“Even so, windbag, and witless mouther of words! This unbeliever is Khlit, he of the curved saber.”

Nasir Beg glanced after the Cossack, trying not to show his surprise.

“The Curved Saber knows the paths through the Mustagh Ata. Aye, the tribesmen know him. His name will be a shield over the dust of our going, Nasir Beg.”

“Had I known it was he I would have struck more swiftly—” Pir Kasim laughed at the moody Arab.

“Eh, you are a brave figure with your tongue, Nasir Beg. But with a sword it is otherwise.”

With a grunt of anger Nasir Beg whipped out a dagger and clutched the shoulder of the merchant. Pir Kasim shivered.

“Nay, good Nasir Beg—it was but a test. Let not the cloud of vexation arise between us, good Nasir Beg. Verily, I would not mar with my breath the mirror of your bravery.”

He pushed back the threatening dagger and freed himself from the other’s hand.

“Likewise, Nasir Beg,” he pointed out, “those who know our purpose will not join with us because of the shadow of peril. Khlit will serve us well—”

“Think you he will come to the caravansary?”

“I doubt it not.”

Pir Kasim meditated swiftly, watching his comrade. “If you would cast the cloak of blood upon the fire of your quarrel with Khlit, let the matter rest until we reach Yarkand. Then, if you choose, deal with him shrewdly, and—his horse; nay, his own horse and that which I shall give him—will be yours, with half of his portion of gold.”

The Arab smiled grimly.

“So be it, Pir Kasim. Yet I will not share bread and salt with the unbeliever.”

II

Like the kites that fly over a battlefield and the ravens that follow a caravan are the hallal khors. Yet the hallal khors are not birds but men.

In the round window overlooking the fountain of the seraglio knelt Yasmi Khanim. She lay curled upon the cushions on the tiled floor—a slim girl whose form bespoke youthfulness. Her attar-scented black hair fell about her slight shoulders. Her kohl-darkened eyebrows matched her eyes, which gleamed in the twilight like soft pansies.

“Eyes like a gazelle—hair blacker than the storm wind— a mouth like the seal of Suleiman—teeth finer than matched pearls—her form like a willow, a slender willow.”

So had said the Persian merchant who sold Yasmi Khanim to Raja Ram-Dar adding, “Aye, lord of exalted mercy, Yasmi

Khanim, the Persian singing girl, is a rose from the gardens of Isphahan, a diamond-sheen of the gems of Kuhistan!”

Well-content was the raja with his new purchase, for the girl’s face was fair as a Hindu woman of the higher caste, and her voice sweet. Yet only once did he hear her sing.

A great sickness had come upon the raja, such a sickness as the fresh water and cold of Kashmir served to heal not. Nor did the sacred water of the Ganges—the river that flows from the feet of the gods—cure him, although brought by the Brahmans themselves.

On the night before, Raja Ram-Dar drank plentifully of the Ganges water and thereupon died.

Upon this matter and other things Yasmi meditated. From without the silent seraglio came the moaning cry of women’s voices. This, Yasmi knew, was the cry of the mourners, of Darayshi Krisna and the other wives, of the slaves and the women who had been hired to wail.

For the funeral of the raja was to be that night. And fitting honor was to be paid the dead.

Our lord has gone before us to the halls of the Bhanuloka! Ai! He has set the seal of Yama on his brow. Ai! Our lord has bent his royal head at the footstools of the gods!

The chant echoed ceaselessly. Yasmi wondered if the women were tearing their garments and letting their hair fall about their faces. So did the Muslim women of Persia.

But the Hindu women were strange. Yasmi wondered at the fierce exultation of the chant, which was led by the shrill voice of Darayshi Krisna, the favorite wife of the raja.

Yasmi herself was a Muslim, being from the hills of Kuhistan in northern Persia. She was a child of fifteen Summers, raised in a hill village on the Afghan border—an onlooker at the mysteries of life, such as the splendor of a Hindu funeral.

From the burial place came the high plaint of music. Fiddles and guitars were sounding the ragim bhairabi, the music of the fire spirits.

Yasmi stirred uneasily and snuggled down on her cushions. She had chanted the death song at the grave of her father’s father, who had been laid in the earth in a clean winding sheet with his face toward Mecca, as was the law. But her song had not been like this.

Yasmi closed her eyes uncomfortably, then opened them alertly to watch a band of white-robed, shaven Brahmans pass through the courtyard toward the burial place. The Persian girl was oppressed by a vague foreboding, bred of the silence in the woman’s court and the shrill music without. She had heard of the burial of the sun worshipers, who were infidels, such as the Hindus. The sun worshipers had burned the bodies; perhaps these people did likewise.

Snuggling her feet into their slippers and drawing her velvet bodice closer about her waist—for the evening grew chill—Yasmi waited, looking very much like a brown fawn peering from its nest.

Hurried footsteps sounded in the corridors behind her, and she wriggled farther into the cushion, not wishing to be seen. “Ho, base-born and shameless!”

The harsh voice of Sasethra, mistress of the slaves, assailed her.

“Wench without honor! Wouldst thou hide when the all-potent lord, thy master, is placed upon the ghat? Come!”

Sasethra clutched the girl’s arm and jerked her to her feet, staring at her.

“How is this? Thine ornaments—necklaces—pearls! Where are they?”

The mistress of the slaves hurried Yasmi to her chamber and hastily arrayed her in bangles upon wrist and ankle, in silverbroidered cap that fitted over her splendid hair. She thrust jade earrings rudely into her ears, inspected her slim hands to see if they were henna-stained, and coiled a pearl necklace over her throat and breast.

“Ignorant sparrow!” she scolded. “So thou wouldst hide? Ai— is this not the night of nights?”

“Verily,” protested the girl, “I had a fear—”

“A fear?”

The woman screamed with sudden laughter.

“Nay, the Persian songstress trills of fear? Knowest not, wan-ton, there are those who will see that thou treadest the path of honor—”

She broke off at a new note in the chant without.

“Come! Already we are late.”

Despite her words she fingered the bracelets covetously. “Ho, these be rare stones—”

“My father’s gift—”

“Speak not, shameless one, of thy father on this night when thy lord ascends to a thrice-purified life. Aye, the jade earrings will fetch a good price. And the pearls—”

Her eyes glinted evilly in the dim light, and she urged the child abruptly into a corridor leading to the garden. From there Sasethra sought a small gate which conducted them through the wall of the woman’s courtyard out to the glen by the Sindh bank. Seeing many people, men among them, standing about, Yasmi would have drawn her veil over her face but the woman jerked it rudely back.

The river bank and the glen were lined with watchers who faced a large pit. This pit had been nearly filled by a pile of brush and logs, neatly arranged.

By the light of the numerous torches Yasmi could see the body of the raja on the pile, resting on a couch covered with costly satins. At the head of the body a small hut had been built of brush.

And within the hut at the end of the couch sat Darayshi Krisna. The favorite wife of the dead man sat erect and silent, holding her lord’s head on her knees.

Beside the ghat squatted musicians. And Brahmans came and went through the assembly, instructing the slaves how to pour oils and ghee upon the brush. Not far from the pit the women rocked, wailing.

Yasmi thought that it was to be a burial like that of the sun-worshipers. And even more ceremonious. Darayshi Krisna, she meditated, must have loved the dead raja with a great love since she waited until the last minute before tearing herself from her lord.

Beyond the pit and the watchers the broad current of the Sindh swept under the willows. A sharp wind from the mountain summits that Yasmi could vaguely see against the stars caused the torches to flicker.

She caught the scent of musk and ambergris. Truly this was to be a lordly burial!

But why Sasethra had dragged her there she did not know. For she could not sing the music that the fiddlers played.

“Honor to the son of Ayodyha and Ram! May he live again as a prince of princes, a king of kings. Ai! May he be purified by the sacred water and the thrice-sacred fire.”

So chanted the women, their voices rising over the sound of the instruments. Then the music changed. Tambourines and cymbals clashed harshly, drowning all other noises.

“The hour of thy lord is at hand, Persian,” whispered Sasethra. “Behold, the high Brahmans have come from Srinaggar, that all due honor shall be paid him by those who were the dust under his exalted feet.”

Yasmi did not reply, for Darayshi Krisna had taken the torch that one of the priests handed her. The wife of Raja Ram-Dar thrust the torch into the brush of the wall of the hut at her side. At once the Brahmans scurried about the pyre, lighting the wood in a dozen places.

“Aie!” cried Yasmi, “she does not move. She will be harmed!”

An angry hiss from the mistress of the slaves silenced her. Then she saw in the light from the growing blaze Darayshi Krisna clad in all her ornaments, with unbound hair, remain tranquilly at the head of her lord.

“Twice, and the blessed five!”* cried a priest, raising his arms.

Others echoed the speech. But Darayshi Krisna did not see them. She was smiling, although the walls of the hut were crack-ling and blazing. She did not move when the perspiration poured from her set face and the fire caught her loose hair.

“Blessed is Darayshi Krisna!” cried the priest again in a loud voice.

Yasmi shivered and clasped her hands to her throat. She could no longer see the form of the woman who was burning herself on the pyre. The body of the raja was still visible, his sword on his hands.

By now the fire had filled the whole pit, soaring upward in swirling flames that illumined every person in the glen. The women had ceased their mourning and joined hands. They were running about the pit, crying out something that Yasmi did not hear.

Darayshi Krisna, she thought, wondering, had uttered no sound.

Several Brahmans stood as close to the flames as the heat would permit, leaning on long poles. Yasmi had begun to realize the significance of the poles, and she shuddered, whereupon Sasethra tightened her grip.

Just behind the priests were several men in armor, cloaked. Yasmi noted them only fleetingly, for Sasethra suddenly began to run toward the pit, drawing the girl after her.

Then Yasmi saw that the fire had caught the garment of one of the women—a slave, who straightaway cast herself into the fire. A faint cry echoed above the roar of the flames—a cry that was drowned at once in the blast of noise from tambourines and cymbals.

“High honor shall be paid thy lord!” whispered Sasethra, harshly. “The low-born slave felt the fierce kiss of the fire,

* Reincarnation. If she should die twice again in this manner—so the Hindu doctrine maintained—it would complete the five deaths which would win blessed immortality.

and her spirit was weak—but the music overbore her plaint. Come!”

“Aie!” cried the girl in sudden terror “Nay, Sasethra—I am one—”

“Thy lord is dead. Join thy spirit to his!”

Saying this, the mistress of the slaves stripped a costly bracelet from the arm of the trembling singer and thrust the bangle into her own girdle.

Terror-stricken, Yasmi saw one of the armed watchers seize and speak to a woman who danced about the fire. The slave tore herself from the man’s grip and plunged into the pyre.

“Pity, Sasethra!” Yasmi implored. “Think, Sasethra—I am not a follower of the Hindu gods.”

“Thy place is with thy lord, shameless one.”

The stout woman tugged at the girl, who recoiled weeping from the heat of the fire.

“Ho, servants of Ram-Dar,” shrilled Sasethra, “cast me this faithless one after the others! Shall a slave outlive her lord?”

Several of the onlookers caught the girl, tearing the pearls from her throat and the jade from her ears. Yasmi whimpered, helpless in their grasp.

“The seal of death is set in her forehead!” screamed Sasethra, who had taken the pick of the girl’s jewels. At the words a priest poured scented oil from a jar over her abundant hair.

“See, she feels the kiss of Yama!”

Then a hand gripped Yasmi, and a voice whispered to her in

Turki.

“Life! Would you have life, little slave? Speak!”

The last of the dancing-women had vanished and already the fire had taken on a ruddier tinge, as the flames died. But Yasmi quivered with the heat that struck through her thin garments.

“Life—by Allah—grant me life!” she cried.

She felt the pole of the priest thrust at her back and heard the complaisant tones of Sasethra: “’Tis done. The holy Brahman has anointed her for death.”

Then the pole was thrust aside and Yasmi was picked up bodily. The arms that gripped her were mail-clad. Two cloaked figures joined the man who held her as he turned back from the flames.

In sheer surprise the priests and the watchers gave back before the group of men who had seized the girl. Availing themselves of this, they moved hastily toward the edge of the glen.

“Ai!” shrilled the voice of Sasethra. “The hallal khors! Oh, the robbers of the ghat! Oh, the wretched scavengers of the dead!”

A command from one of the priests silenced the strident woman. Yasmi saw an emaciated form appear before them, a figure turbanless, with unkempt beard and hair, who lifted lean arms.

“Back!” commanded the form with calm authority. “No man may take her on whom is the seal of death and live.”

One of the warriors with an oath struck down the yogi and a wail went up from the priests and the unarmed watchers. Some ran toward the group, but drew back at the flash of ready weapons.

Swiftly Yasmi was borne to where horses waited in the shadow of a grove, and the man who held her mounted and wheeled his horse away along a path through the trees, throwing her carelessly over the peak of his saddle.

“A rare jewel we have plucked this night, Pir Kasim,” he said.

For some time the horsemen rode at a rapid pace, and Yasmi Khanim believed that they went in the direction of Srinaggar. They slowed down among some huts, and at the bank of a canal she could see that the others of the party rode off, leaving her with the man who had first addressed her.

He sought for a space among the rushes of the canal and drew in a small skiff, which he bade her enter. He rowed out into the canal, and then more cautiously down the shadow of the bank under a bridge until he paused at what seemed a small gate in the steep slope of the bank.

Yasmi could make out the roofs and towers of the Srinaggar streets rising against the stars. She lay quiet in the boat, watching the man.

He stepped ashore and bent over the wooden door. This was opened presently from within and a gleam of light showed. “Haste!” grunted the warrior. “And step softly.”

She passed through the narrow door, which smelled strongly of mud and foul weeds. A hand gripped her shoulder and pushed her, stumbling, up a flight of steps. The passageway led toward the light, and Yasmi passed through a poorly walled cellar into a room where the air was stale in spite of the heavy scent of sandal-paste.

Here the hand on her shoulder wheeled her around, and she faced a stout eunuch who eyed her with a grin.

“Here is a pretty pearl, Nasir Beg. Her mouth too wide, perhaps. Ho, a shapely parrot, taken from the grip of the hawks.”

“A necklace-string stripped of jewels,” grunted the Arab. “The accursed women took even her earrings.”

Yasmi glanced at him gratefully and fell on her knees.

“May Allah reward you,” she cried in Turki, as they had spoken. “May you find honor and live forever in the sun of prosperity. Happy am I to be among true believers.”

She had spoken impulsively, but there was pride in her voice— and the tone of one more accustomed to command than to obey. The eunuch grinned the more while Nasir Beg scanned her in surprise.

“A Muslim wench, Mustafa,” he observed. “Verily, she is not the less handsome for that. And I heard those who said at the fire that she is a singer with a voice like to the Persian nightingale. Your name?”

“Yasmi Khanim, warrior.”

The girl flung back her dark hair, resentful at the Arab’s tone. “My father is Sheikh Ibrahim of Kuhistan, master of a hundred swords.”

“The sheikh has a fair daughter,” responded Mustafa.

“He has gold, and his hand is generous,” said Yasmi in sudden misgiving. “He will reward well one who brings his daughter to the hills of Kuhistan.”

The Arab yawned, and Mustafa shook his head.

“Kuhistan is many days’ ride, little sparrow. Tune your voice to a sweeter note and Mustafa will find you a silken nest.”

“Nay, I must ride to Kuhistan. A Persian merchant—may he be forever without honor—seized me at the border of my father’s land.”

“Bismillah!” The eunuch spread out his plump hands. “He had an eye to a comely face, Yasmi. Aye, it is fate. And who can outrun the shadow of fate?” His expression hardened. “Do not weary Nasir Beg with your whine but join the others.”

He pointed to an alcove in the cellar. There Yasmi saw for the first time some four women seated on a ragged carpet. By their dress she knew them to be Hindus. All were young possibly, but haggard as if from sickness. They did not look at her.

“Nay—” Nasir Beg ceased yawning and stared at the girl speculatively—“I would hear her sing. If it is true that she is skilled it will increase her value. The wretched Faizuli Anim owns—besides his wine jars—a lute. She can come to the tavern safely.”

“Have a care, Nasir Beg,” warned the eunuch. “Pir Kasim would not thank you if you take the wench before the eyes of men. If our abiding-place be found—”

“There will be slit throats and molten silver poured into the eyes of the hallal khors, Mustafa!” amended Nasir Beg grimly. “Nay, cease your whine. Fain would I hear the voice of the song-bird. In the tavern of Faizuli Anim none come but Muslims. Eh— is she not also a follower of the Prophet? Who will suspect?”

Yasmi’s pale cheeks burned. She made as if to protest, then, on second thought, followed the Arab passively. Nasir Beg motioned her to a flight of steps leading upward from the cellar.

The steps terminated in what seemed a small and odorous chamber. It was, actually, a huge empty wine vat. Nasir Beg kicked impatiently at the wooden side of the cask, and it opened.

Mustafa accompanied the twain, muttering angrily.

III

Singing gently to himself, beating time complacently with a plump, bejeweled hand, Shir Mujir ibn Khojas of Baghdad, the hafiz—reciter of poems—wended his way importantly through the back alleys of Srinaggar.

His gait resembled that of a crab, inasmuch as when a belated group of Kashmir nobles passed down the streets intersecting the alleys, accompanied by armed guards and link-bearers, the hafiz scuttled sidewise into the shadows, but when he encountered a cortege of slaves he lifted the skirts of his tunic and placed a scarf, musk-scented, before his broad nostrils, crying loudly:

“Passage-way for the deputy of the Lion of Persia! Back, scourings of the offal-pot! Scrapings of the mud! Infinitely foul! Ditch-born, gully jackals!”

Luckily for the fat Khojas, Turki was not readily understood by the Kashmir slaves. In this manner did Mujir ibn Khojas, who was slightly the better—or the worse—for numerous potations, thread his way from the bazaar quarter to the riverfront at an hour so late that even the bazaar stalls of the Muslims, who were celebrating the feast of Bairam, were closed.

But the hafiz was in no mind for sleep since he had repeated lengthy versions of the Shah Namah at the board of wealthy merchants and was consequently the richer for silver and gold coins, both dinars and shekels.

“Nay, the night air is soft—soft as maidens’ tresses and fragrant—fragrant as the essence of roses on the brow of a sultan’s favorite,” he muttered uncertainly, lurching over a heap of refuse which was far from sweet, “and I, the golden-tongued Mujir, peer of reciters, bedfellow, nay, boon-fellow, of princes; I, the diamond

in the tiara of Allah, the flower i’ the mantle of the Shah—may he bellow, or is’t mellow, i’ his grave? I, the hafiz of the chosen of Allah, the Commander of the Faithful, the Caliph who is the very substance of blessedness, the essence of divine light, and the spotless robe of honor—I am also a gleam of radiance and a pearl of precious substance. Where lies that accursed hovel of Faizuli Anim?”

Pursuing the uneven tenor of his way, the hafiz halted to beat at a closed door only to be confronted by the emaciated figure of a Kashmiri child.

“Verily,” he cried, “by the beard of the Prophet! Faizuli Anim has shrunken most strangely in form, for he was once handsomely fat, even as I—although not quite so handsome or so fat. Ho—oho, Faizuli Anim! Nay, what is’t?”

The boy had been snatched back and a hag, on whose wrists clinked the chains of bondage, faced him. In a trembling hand she held a knife and cursed fearfully from a mouth that was toothless and sore-ridden from disease,

“Nay,” meditated the worthy hafiz, “now is Faizuli Anim in the shape of a vixen, a toothless vixen. Here is the work of evil magic and no place for the high-born Mujir. Farewell, shade of Faizuli. Farewell, hag, whose tooth hangs from her hand like the fang of a wolf—”

He aimed an unsteady kick at the twain and passed on until he reached the carpet-hung entrance of the Muslim tavern which overhung the riverbank.

The light from a solitary candle showed him Faizuli Anim seated on a carpet within. Mujir jerked off his leather shoes and replaced them, not without difficulty, with a pair of slippers.

“By the mole on the face of Mohammed,” chanted the hafiz, “I have found you at last, worthy Faizuli Anim—after a struggle with an evil angel who was all but toothless, and that one tooth a thing of ill omen! Ho, good keeper of the blessed wines—a goblet of snow-chilled Shiraz!

“Verily I have a thirst that is a mighty thirst, wherein all the sands of Khorassan do itch in my throat. Aye, how runs the verse—

Leave’t to others to cant and to repine

When You and I embrace our life—the vine.

“Nay, methinks the verse is mine. ’Tis excellently attuned. Ho—I will sit in the inner chamber—”

Despite the tavern keeper’s remonstrance Mujir stepped grace-fully over the prone forms of slumbering camelmen in the outer stall and pushed through the curtains that veiled a separate compartment of the inn.

Here he salaamed before a seated figure and slumped down heavily on the carpet. The other glanced at him once sharply, then looked away indifferently. Not so Mujir.

“Come, brother in wine and watcher of the night, let us tickle our throats with that which Mohammed scorns but I do not.”

The seated figure made no response. Struck by a new fancy, the hafiz unrolled his prayer-carpet from his waist and hung it with drunken seriousness over the opening in the curtain—after Faizuli Anim had brought him his jar of wine and left.

“Thus,” he explained, stroking his dyed beard, “do I veil the aspect of our delightful sin as a radiant damsel shrouds the beauty of her face. Come, brother! My eyes tell me you are a soldier, and your rich armor and jeweled ornaments bespeak rank and prowess.

“When did the wild ass keep his muzzle from the fresh grass, or a warrior his lips from wine—or the wine of a woman’s mouth for that matter?”

The stranger made no response. He was a straight-backed man, wearing travel-stained mail, nearly concealed by a cloak of rich texture. His cotton trousers were clean and his red morocco shoes costly. The hilt of his scimitar was a mass of jewels, and a blue diamond shone from his turban crest.

These things the hafiz had noticed. But he had not observed the dark face under the turban with the scar on one cheek from

chin to brow, the thin, hooked nose, and the hard eyes which moved slowly from object to object with a purposeful stare.

By face and form the stranger was an Afghan of a northern tribe, by dress a follower of the Mogul, and one of rank, who had prospered in war.

But the hafiz was in a mellow mood.

“Nay, have I not earned a kiss from the grape, O warrior?” he appealed. “’Twas a rare feat to thread the streets of the City of the Sun this night.

“Patrols of cursed unbelievers, godless Hindus and their like, search the bazaars and alleys for certain evil-doers. ’Tis said in the bazaars that a woman of the dead raja was snatched from the ghat, and the evil Brahmans are astir like a nest of angered bees.”

This time the soldier looked up.

“Eh—why do they search in Srinaggar?”

“Because—so ’tis said—the woman was carried hither. Nay, I would she had been burned to a crisp on the ghat for the trouble she has made me. When the shaven priests have anointed a woman for death what else is she fitted for? Ho—the wine is cool!”

Whereupon he quaffed deep and lay back upon the carpet with a watery sigh, his plump limbs lax, and the Afghan regarded him with disfavor.

“Would they had burned—shriven—her, for by Allah she was a dainty morsel; verily the fire would wrap her limbs, licking them with ardent tongues, and she would have cried out.”

So mumbled the hafiz, and the warrior’s eyes narrowed while he bit at his beard.

“Methinks, aye, verily I think—sweet thought, choice as a pearl in a goblet of wine, red as blood—she would be reshriven, nay reshaped, into a houri fair as a blown rose, for she was Muslim. Aigh—”

Mujir groaned from the capacious depths of his stomach and would have sat up, but his palsied muscles refused their office. The flat of the warrior’s scabbard had descended with no lit-

tle force on the highest point of the wine-bibber’s outstretched form—which was also his tenderest point.

“Toad, evil mouther, andworm!”

The Afghan spoke with slow decision.

“Stand!”

“Nay—akh, by Allah! I am death-smitten—”

“Verily, such will be your fate if you obey not. Stand!”

There was the sharp ring of anger in the soldier’s abrupt command, and Mujir, who had scanned him with a rolling eye, clambered to his feet wide-eyed, holding his round belly tenderly in both hands.

“Now what mean you, warrior?” he panted. “Nay, are we not both servants of the pr—”

“My rank is mansabdar of Jahangir the Mogul. My title from the lips of such as you is lord.”

“Nay, you are graceless—”

Mujir’s words ended in a squeal, for the Afghan’s sword flashed in his face. Twice the weapon struck as the soldier gained his feet and the right and left edges of the hafiz’s cherished red-dyed beard fell to the floor. He stared at the wisps of hair blindly, then abruptly his stout knees began to shake.

“Harken, reader of poems and guzzler of forbidden wine.” The Afghan scowled at him and spat in disgust. “Shall one without honor claim mercy? Shall swine taken in sin be treated as men? Put down your prayer rug on the floor.”

In silence Mujir did so. In a moment he had become half-sober. “It is near the hour of dawn, Mujir. Can your evil lips frame a prayer?”

“Aye—lord. O excellent guardian of the faith—”

“Speak not of faith. Is there faith in a body such as yours? I think not. Pray!”

The hafiz choked, but could not take his blinking eyes from the harsh face of the mansabdar.

“Lord, and fountain of all the virtues, shield of the faithful, favored of Mohammed. Harken to your slave. ’Tis in truth the feast of Bairam. And I—”

“Perform your ablutions.”

With that the soldier snatched up the heavy wine-goblet and placed it gently at his feet.

“By your favor, Abdul Dost,” came the servile voice of Faizuli Anim from the door. “Here is one Nasir Beg with the slave Yasmi who would hear the music of her golden throat. Knowing that Mujir ibn Khojas was skilled in such things, I ventured to bring the twain here that the hafiz might render judgment on the voice of the maiden.

“The hafiz,” growled Abdul Dost, “is at his ablutions.”

Behind the stout form of the tavern keeper he caught sight of a slender woman, held firmly by a lean Arab. Mujir also had seen the newcomers and his jaw dropped.

Abdul Dost considered, then seated himself on his heels, nod-ding to Faizuli Anim.

“Let the girl enter,” he commanded. “And the hafiz render judgment.”

Yasmi stepped within the curtain wearily, a lute in her hand. Nasir Beg squatted down at her side, eyeing the kneeling teller of poems with some curiosity. At Abdul Dost also the Arab glanced twice, then turned moodily upon the girl.

The tavern keeper had left them. But a moment later the curtains parted slightly, and a black, round face peered through the aperture.

Mustafa was keeping watch over his charge.

“Sing!” growled Nasir Beg. “Must I lose sleep because of such as you? Yet it was the command of him who owns you that trial be made of your voice. Haste, for I am weary.”

By the faint light of the bronze lantern overhead Yasmi scanned the two beside her. She looked indifferently at Mujir over her veil, and long at Abdul Dost. She was worn with the hardships of the night, and tears trembled in her dark eyes. But Nasir Beg was impatient.

She bent her head over the lute, striking the strings feebly. Her slender shoulders shook with a brief sob.

“Haste, wanton,” growled the Arab. “Must I summon Mustafa with his lash?”

He clutched at her shoulder, but the girl drew away swiftly. She lifted her head in sudden decision and to Nasir Beg’s surprise let fall her veil.

Mujir sucked in his breath with admiration at sight of the delicate face framed in dark hair and glanced apprehensively at Abdul Dost, who was watching the girl closely.

A quick flush came into the cheeks of Yasmi, and she looked up at the lamp, a half-smile at the edge of her lips.

Then she sang, striking the lute softly, the song of the hill-tribes of Khorassan, the song that begins:

Where is the falcon’s nest?

And the nest of his mate. . . Where,

save in the wind! And the wind is the breath of the hill.

Mujir hardly listened. He marked the trembling of the girl’s lips, the rise and fall of her breast under the veil, and her slight hands upon the cords of the instrument. And he sighed noisily.

Nasir Beg lent an attentive ear, for he had the Arab’s natural love of melody. Yet the song was not to his liking, and—seeing the goblet—he drank.

Behind the curtain Faizuli Anim crept to Mustafa’s side to hear the better. Only Abdul Dost seemed not to listen.

But the Afghan was strongly moved by the song. He had heard it formerly in the tents of the hillmen of Khorassan, in the camps of the riders of Badakshan. It brought before his memory the time, long past, when he had tended horses for the lords of Afghanistan, now dead or servants of the Mogul.

Yet, being what he was, Abdul Dost allowed nothing of this to show in his scarred face. Indeed he resolutely put from him the impulse of memory that had been born of the girl’s song.

Yasmi did not reach the end of the song. Her voice quivered and she dropped the lute, throwing herself on the carpet before Abdul Dost.

“Pity, lord; have pity!” she cried quickly. “By your dress you are of the Afghan hills. Verily the heavy hand of wrongdoing has taken me from the tent—”

“Peace, wench!” Nasir Beg struck her savagely across the

shoulders. “Would you turn from those to whom you owe life?” “Aye.” The girl faced him resolutely. “For I am free born.” “No longer such,” responded the Arab grimly, his hand on her

arm. “Have you not sold your body to us?”

Yasmi cast the lute from her.

“I knew not what I did,” she pleaded. “I thought you were— friends.”

She touched the foot of Abdul Dost. “Lord, will you believe? By Allah and the face of the Prophet, this is naught but the truth. I am no slave, yet would this man and his kind hold me—”

“Faithless, and teller of lies!” snarled the Arab. “Come, hafiz, the song is ended. Speak—is her voice worth silver, gold, much?”

Mujir glanced apprehensively at Abdul Dost, who seemed lost in thought. Then he waved his plump hand doubtfully.

“’Tis true I am a rare judge of such matters, excellent sir. The sound of the woman’s song is like the nightingale.

“Yet it would be well to teach her what best pleases her masters. Now if it is your will to sell her in the Baghdad market she should trill naught save the soft and amorous Persian airs—”

“Nay,” grunted Nasir Beg, “she is to be sold to the wealthy mandarins of China, the men of Han, at the Yarkand mart. They pay well—”

“Ai!” moaned Yasmi. “Shall a Muslim be sent to the worshipers of the lotus-eyed god?”

She had appealed to Abdul Dost. The Afghan bent forward, searching her face earnestly, then looked long at Nasir Beg. “She is yours?” he questioned sharply.

“My master’s. We have risked our throats that she should live. She has given her body to us. Bismillah! We will not yield her

up.

Nasir Beg spoke decisively. Abdul Dost frowned. If the girl was truly the property of the Arab it would be a delicate if not hazardous matter to interfere on her behalf. Moreover, Abdul Dost had no use for a slave, even such a one as Yasmi.

He had marked the movement of the curtains and suspected that Nasir Beg was not alone in his guardianship of the singer. Still—the song had touched his memory.

“Did she yield herself as a slave, Arab?”

“As a slave.”

“A lie!” exclaimed Yasmi defiantly.

Abdul Dost considered, then spoke coldly to Nasir Beg.

“What price will she bring in the Yarkand slave-bazaar?”

Nasir Beg calculated shrewdly. “Eh, she has a face like a rose, and her form is rounded. Eh, you who have heard know that she graces the necklace of beauty with the pearl of song. Mujir ibn Khojas, who is a judge, has said that her voice is like to a nightingale. At Yarkand she will fetch twelve—nay fourteen—gold mohars.”

Yasmi sighed and drew her veil about her face. Her glance was still fixed hungrily on Abdul Dost.

“That is her price?” inquired that warrior.

“Aye.”

Abdul Dost put his hand to his girdle. “I have a whim, Arab.” He opened his band over the carpet. Gold coins tumbled to the floor and rolled about.

“There be mohars—gold. Count seventeen, and take them. The girl’s song pleased me, and—she is a free-born Muslim. Shall a falcon of the hills die in a foul cage?”

Wild hope leaped into the eyes of the singer. Mujir stared, licking his lips. Verily, he thought, this was a great lord who could shower gold like copper coins and let another count the tally.

But Nasir Beg drew back with a smile. He bowed and stroked his beard craftily.

“Seventeen? Nay, the generosity of the lord is like to the light of the sun. Yet—” he smiled again—“at Yarkand gold is worth more than here. At the market of the Han slave-merchants Yasmi would fetch twenty such coins.”

“Count then the twenty, and be gone,” Abdul Dost snarled, and the mask of indifference fell from his face.

Nasir Beg still smiled. Without consulting Pir Kasim he did not dare sell the girl. Besides, if she were sold to Abdul Dost it would be known. She would be recognized as the singer who had been stolen from the raja’s ghat, and search would be made for those who had taken her from the priests.

The Arab was no coward, yet he knew how closely the Hindus had ransacked the byways of Srinaggar for his party, and he suspected that the yogi he had struck down in their flight had been badly injured.

The fate of the hallal khors, if discovered, was a thing not to be lightly contemplated. And if in addition they had slain a priest death by torture would be the least thing in store for them.

“Nay,” he announced. “My master will not sell Yasmi.”

Abdul Dost rose to his feet, hand idly at his belt. Yasmi followed his every movement with anxious eyes, scarcely breathing while she harkened to the argument between the two.

“Arab,” said the Afghan slowly, “here is the price you named— and more. Take it or be false to your word.”

“Nay.” Nasir Beg still smiled. “The thought came to me that you jested, so I also made a jest.”

“I do not jest. Twenty-two gold mohars lie on the carpet. Take them!”

The Arab rose lithely, drawing slightly back and glancing at the curtain. But then the voluble hafiz gave tongue.

“O lord and ocean of the nectar of kindness, and mountain of holy righteousness, I, the teller of poems, the faithful Mujir,

will tear the veil of blindness from your exalted eyes. O leader of the faithful—” the hafiz saw in a flash, or thought that he did, a chance to redeem himself with Abdul Dost—“talk not of paying such a sum for this worthless one. O noble warrior, she is worth not one silver dinar.”

He paused, pleased at the attention he was receiving—though Abdul Dost was watching the Arab more closely than the speaker. Yasmi tried to take the soldier’s hand.

“With my eyes I saw it, lord,” resumed Mujir. “This very night. By chance, it was verily by mere chance, I came upon the ghat. Nay, I knew naught of what was to come to pass, but some worth-less beggar had whispered that women were to be burned—not that I believed, lord.

“Nay, by chance I watched—that is, I could not help but see— this very woman led to the ghat and anointed by the priest for death. And then snatched by force—”

For the first time Abdul Dost glanced down at the hafiz angrily. As he did so, Nasir Beg smote the lamp with the flat of his sword. The chamber was in darkness.

A cry from Yasmi—hurried footsteps. An oath from Abdul Dost, who had groped for the girl and finding her not, had sprung for the curtains, drawing sword as he went. His foot struck against something that quivered, jelly-like, and he rolled to the floor over the prostrate form of Mujir.

He was up immediately. But the curtains were cast loosely over his head. He felt the impact of a dagger against his mail shirt and jerked free of the entangling cloth. Then he halted perforce to listen for footsteps, as the tavern was in darkness.

No sound rewarded his seeking. Only the pale light of the new day outlined a window faintly.

“Lord,” muttered a suppliant voice, “have I not saved your—”

Abdul Dost was lean, but there was great strength in his arms—the deceptive strength that had made him one of the finest swordsmen of northern Hindustan.

He caught the hafiz by girdle and collar and dragged him to the tavern door. Outside the dawn marked the riverbank, high above the water at this point.

“Harken, hafiz,” said Abdul Dost. “I swear an oath on the faith of my fathers that I shall seek the girl Yasmi until she is free or Nasir Beg is dead.

“It is time,” added Abdul Dost grimly, “that you performed your ablutions.”

Whereupon he raised the struggling man to his shoulder and flung him outward, watching with satisfaction the resulting splash. He was content when the fat bulk of the hafiz failed to climb from the current.

Running footsteps sounded and two armed men hastened up. “Sluggards!” snarled the mansabdar. “Ahmed—Rasoumi! Heard you not the struggle?”

“Lord,” panted one, “we slept, being weary. Has hurt come to the favored of Allah?”

“Nay. Search me the tavern. Come.”

But their efforts ended in the cellar filled with giant wine-casks. None were visible save the snoring and drunken camel-men.

Abdul Dost passed through the empty rooms, noting grimly by light of the torches his men had kindled that the gold coins were gone from the carpet. Either Mujir or Faizuli Anim had made good use of his time.

But he did unearth the cowering tavern keeper in the rear of a wine vat.

“Speak the truth, or follow Mujir into the river,” he informed the man. “Who is that Arab Nasir Beg? Who was his master? Whither went they?”

By degrees Faizuli revealed the secret of the passage behind the wine cask. But when the Afghan entered it cautiously the lower cellars were bare and the door to the riverbank open. No boat was to be seen.

“Lord, and mountain of mercy,” wailed the tavern keeper, “I know naught of them save that they planned to depart eastward

and north along the Sindh caravan route, and they are many. They ride to the Darband Pass in the Ladak border.”

“Thither we also will ride,” said Abdul Dost.

So it happened that the mansabdar and his two men without waiting for further preparation set out along the Sindh trail in the early morning of the day after the feast of Bairam.

And when they had departed a woeful figure, mud-coated and gasping, dragged itself from the reeds by the river and lay cursing the day that Abdul Dost was born of his mother, the day that he had come to Srinaggar, and his father and his father’s father, even to all his forebears.

IV

The lightning strikes down a tall tree, but it does not linger to be seen. Not otherwise strikes the sword of a skilled warrior.

Kashmiri proverb

Khlit was glad to be in the saddle again. He was well content to turn his back upon the City of the Sun and journey into the mountain passes. And the rapid pace that the caravan struck satisfied him.

In truth he saw no need for haste. Yet Pir Kasim, who led the cavalcade, pressed the horses to their limit.

No stop was made during the day. Only after dusk did the caravan halt, in a valley near the highway where water was to be had. And Khlit, who was well versed in such matters, noted that the merchant posted sentries. Also that the fires were put out after the dinner had been cooked.

He saw too that they avoided the villages. Once, when they passed through the outskirts of a collection of huts, ragged Kashmiris ran forth and stoned them. A sally by Nasir Beg and two of his men drove back the villagers, but not before blood had been shed.

Another thing struck Khlit. It was when they met a group of three Hindu riders going in the opposite direction. The men drew back from the trail, scanning the caravan and scowling. Weapons were drawn and Nasir Beg summoned Khlit to his side to wait

with their attendants until the horses of Pir Kasim had all passed the spot.

Then they rode after the caravan. But Khlit, looking back, saw the three sitting in their saddles and watching. As long as the caravan was in view the riders watched.

Directly afterward Pir Kasim turned aside from the main high-way and led his troop through an unfrequented pass, where the cold—even in early Summer—was great, and the women suffered.

Khlit had noticed with some surprise that the merchandise of Pir Kasim was women. He had met the caravan on his way to the rendezvous at the Sindh road. And the women had been with it then. They rode heavily veiled and closely watched by Mustafa.

For some time Khlit paid no heed to the women. He supposed —since neither Pir Kasim nor Nasir Beg spoke of the matter—that they were slaves.

He did not at first connect the anger displayed against the caravan in the villages with the women. For Khlit cared little for the female sex, slaves or otherwise. He was only annoyed that they were with the caravan, since he knew the cold of the higher passes in the Himalayas would cause them to complain.

Khlit did not even try to understand what was to be done with the women at Yarkand. Presuming them slaves, he thought vaguely that they would be sold and dismissed the matter from his mind.

Not so an event of the first night after they left the main caravan track. This was two days’ fast ride up from Srinaggar, due east along the bank of the Sindh, at the Zodjila Pass.

Pir Kasim’s change of course had brought them into waste rock ravines through which the tired beasts wound slowly. Twilight found them without food other than some oaten cakes.

Khlit had his own stock of provisions in his saddlebag—dried horseflesh and milk curds—for he disliked to eat with Mustafa, who shared the merchant’s board.

They had come upon two donkeymen who had pitched their yurt in a hollow and were stretched beside the fire on their sheep-

skin cloaks. Besides the donkeys the men had several sheep of the thick-haired Kashmir species.

Pir Kasim halted the cavalcade and descended with Nasir Beg to bargain with the peasants for mutton. Khlit had dismounted to look to the leather shoes of his black pony—he had become attached to the strong horse during their Winter companionship, and the rocky going had caused the beast to limp.

So he did not see the merchants barter. He looked down, how-ever, at sound of raised voices. Nasir Beg had flown into a rage, while the Kashmiris were protesting.

“Eh, will you not give food to women who hunger?” snarled the Arab.

“Aye, lord,” remonstrated a ragged bhikra—beggar. “Yet that our women should have meat, and so yield milk to their babies, we must have a price for the two sheep you ask—”

“Wretch!”

Nasir Beg spurred upon the two donkeymen. Khlit saw that the Kashmiris had made no move to draw weapons, yet the Arab struck one down with his scimitar. It was a shrewd blow at the base of the throat, and the man lay dying where he had fallen.

The other turned and ran up the gorge. Pir Kasim dismounted and drew a Turkish pistol from his girdle. This he leveled across the saddle of his pony. Khlit heard the roar of the report and saw the Kashmiri stagger and fall to his knees.

Then Nasir Beg trotted up to the wounded man and returned presently, to wipe his blooded blade upon the garments of the first Kashmiri.

“Eh,” he called to Khlit, “we shall eat well tonight, and the donkeys will serve us well in the hill paths where the horses are apt to fall.”

Khlit turned back to his own horse in silence. He had been surprised at the uncalled-for slaying. Perhaps—although he had heard it not—the Kashmiris had given cause.

Still, why should Pir Kasim have shot down the wretched beg-gar who was fleeing? He could not have harmed them overnight.

Pir Kasim, however, set two men to cover the bodies with stones. “By the tracks of blood is the path of the wolf known,” he grinned at Khlit. “And we must leave no trace.”

The Cossack did not share the mutton.

That night they felt the full force of the wind down the gorge. As usual there was no fire. Khlit did not mind it, for he was accustomed to cold and his khalat was well lined.

The three caravaneers managed to sleep among the packs of stores. Pir Kasim had his yurt of hides, which he shared with Mustafa.

But Nasir Beg roused Khlit from a light sleep, and his dark face was blue with chilled blood, in the light of a small torch he had kindled on returning from his watch.

“Be not angered, Khlit,” the Arab said, civilly for him. “My eyes are heavy with sleep, for it is the third watch, and the blood in my limbs is turned to ice. The caravan rascals are too wearied to be trusted. Will you keep watch until dawn?”

Khlit yawned and cursed forcibly.

“Are we hunted antelope, Nasir Beg, that we should stand guard in the darkness? What fear you?”

Nasir Beg was urgent, and took pains to be plausible.

“There be robber folk in the passes, Khlit. Lawless Kirghiz, and without doubt outcast Kashmiris. Pir Kasim, who is wary as a steppe fox, believes they have scented the caravan. ’Tis but three hours to dawn.”

Khlit rose silently, taking his khalat with him and stamping warmth into his feet. He drew on his boots, tightened his belt and strode off to the point where Nasir Beg had stood.

“By Allah, Pir Kasim will thank you,” the Arab called after him softly. “Beyond the rock on the farther side is a nook where you can see up and down the pass and be sheltered from this accursed wind.”

Khlit grunted and wrapped his sheepskin robe over his high shoulders. He did not intend that Nasir Beg should occupy the

warm nest where he had been sleeping. Beyond the line of tethered horses he halted to see where the Arab would seek refuge.

He had not long to wait. As soon as his tall frame had passed beyond the torchlight Nasir Beg threw the burning brand to the ground. By its failing light the Cossack saw Nasir Beg slip off his outer cloak and the long white robe that he wore and pass swiftly into one of the yurts occupied by the women.

There were six women, and they slept—or tried to—two in each shelter. The one the Arab had chosen had been pitched by Mustafa for the youngest of the women—one wearing Persian dress as Khlit had noted—and a slender Hindustani whose ankles and wrists were heavy with bracelets.

As Khlit turned away to his lookout he fancied he heard a cry from the yurt. He reflected grimly that the post Nasir Beg had mentioned was behind the rocks and out of sight of the camp.

Here he sat and watched the sky change in the East from crimson to saffron and gold. He saw the giant peaks overhead take shape against the dawn, first black, then silver, and finally white.

High overhead an eagle rose from a nest of pines and circled against the blue of the sky. He heard the horses stumble to their feet. Even before the sun’s rays struck down the pass he heard the caravaneers grumble as they kindled the fire, and caught the pungent scent of green wood.

From the camp his glance wandered to the rock piles that marked the graves of the Kashmiris, and to the donkeys, standing passively in their tethers awaiting their morning meal of dried grass, indifferent as to who their master might be. And he scowled moodily.

He was no longer content with his surroundings. Well as he liked to be in the highlands of the Himalayas, he had begun to meditate upon the character of his companions and the nature of the caravan.

When Pir Kasim called him to the simmering pot of mutton, Khlit replied gruffly and ate where he sat of his own dried meat.

That day the march was harder than before. Pir Kasim had ordered the packs to be placed on the donkeys; this gave them extra mounts, but they made slow progress along the winding trail that threaded the surface of the cliff, over the gorge a thousand feet below.

The merchant posted Khlit in the rear of the caravan and bade him keep a keen watch over the path behind them. So it happened that the Cossack knew they were followed.

He could see black dots moving along the face of the cliff a mile in the rear. What their pursuers were he could not tell. He counted three dots and so reported to Pir Kasim, who alternately cursed and called upon Allah to hasten their progress.

It was unwise to hurry over the evil footing, where a sheer drop fell to the rocks below, beside a freshet that roared down the cleft of the gorge, sending up a steam of spray in which the sun formed the splendid arch of a rainbow. Once a led horse stumbled and vanished over the brink with a shrill neigh of terror. But Pir Kasim did not slow their gait.

Khlit was riding in the rear of the women. He saw how they shivered at sight of the unfortunate horse. The altitude was affecting them, and they sat miserably in their saddles, hunched under their robes.

Once the rearmost of the group threw back her cloak. Khlit saw her lift her veil and recognized her as the Hindustani of the bracelets. For a moment she stared back at him, her beautiful face wan, and circles under the dark eyes.

Then she jerked the rein of her horse. Khlit saw the beast stumble, rear, and plunge headlong from the path.

A wail from the women and an oath from Pir Kasim. Khlit himself stiffened in his saddle with surprise. The woman had done the thing deliberately.

“Akh, the cloud of madness gripped her spirit,” mourned the merchant. “Yet why was it written that she should be the one to fall? Allah knows she wore the costliest bracelets.

“Akh—I let her keep the ornaments, for she had been the wife of the Maharaja of Guzerat. And this is the reward of my mercy. Verily, it is an evil fate!”

Complaining querulously, Pir Kasim halted the caravan and ordered one of the caravaneers to climb down a cleft in the cliff—a perilous path—and recover the gems the woman wore.

Nasir Beg protested, but the merchant did not cease to wail about his loss.

“Oh, evil hour!” he cried, twisting his beard. “Oh, verily the dust of ill fortune strews my path! A horse! One of the fairest of the women!

“And then, by the beard of the Prophet—the gems. Such gems! Gifts from the dead monarch himself. A fool of fools was I to let her keep them when she begged that they should rest on her limbs—”

“Verily,” swore Nasir Beg loudly, “you are witless to linger here when riders follow along the path. If it be the Muslim—”

“Peace!” Pir Kasim glanced sharply from the Arab to Khlit. Then more calmly: “The lawless ones will not attack where the path admits of but one man.”

He left Nasir Beg to watch the trail with Khlit while he peered eagerly down the cleft, marking the difficult progress of the man he had sent after the jewels.

It was long before the caravaneer returned to the ledge. Pir Kasim seized the jewels avidly and examined them, mourning when he saw a dent or break in the gold made by the fall.

“Wretch! Scorpion!” he cried. “All are not here. There was a diamond—a blue diamond set in jade that she wore about her throat. Faithless dog—”

“Nay, master,” said the man stoutly. “Even as I took them from the body they are here.”

The merchant counted over the bloodied trinkets and insisted that the diamond brooch was missing. But the caravaneer obstinately denied having it. Khlit, who was watching keenly, saw Nasir Beg’s hand go to his throat and fumble at the opening of

his cloak, then steal to his girdle. The Arab had taken something from his neck and placed it in a pouch at his waist.

And Khlit knew that the caravaneer had not found the brooch upon the body of the woman.

The dispute delayed them, and it was late afternoon before they reached a plateau where the trail widened to a ledge, upon which certain caverns faced, spacious enough to shelter the party.

So great was the cold that night that Nasir Beg was obliged to keep the fire going in spite of the scarcity of fuel, which they had been forced to bring on the donkeys.

Khlit had taken the first watch, and sat slightly down the cliff path between two rocks where he was in shadow.

He had seen no more of the three who followed in the path of the caravan. Perhaps they had turned aside. Yet, he thought, there was no other trail.

Unless they had turned back, the horsemen were still close in their rear. Khlit did not doubt that they sought the caravan. Otherwise they would hardly have taken the hazardous way around the Zodjila Pass, which Nasir Beg had contemptuously dubbed a “goat path.”

Moreover, if their purpose had been friendly the three would have ridden up to the caravan when it halted. Khlit wondered briefly whether they had paused to go down the cleft to examine the body of the woman.

He wondered who the three were. Surely they were bold, for they were but three and there were six armed men—not counting Mustafa—in the caravan.

He sat up alertly at a slight sound—a light footstep. It came slowly over the rocks, from what quarter he could not decide. He half-drew his sword, then slipped it back into its scabbard with a grunt. He saw the slim figure of the Mohammedan girl—she who had been tentmate with the Hindu—standing before him in the glow from the firelight.

Her veil was back and she seemed to peer eagerly into the darkness down the trail. She looked back over her shoulder at the

fire, and Khlit saw that horror was mirrored in her tense face—the face of an anxious girl, fearful and yet wistful.

She crouched as if afraid of being seen and began to move slowly past him. Khlit could hear her quick breathing.

She did not see him, as he was in deep shadow. But she seemed to be looking anxiously to mark his position. Evidently she was aware that a guard was posted near her but did not know the spot.

Then at the sound of heavy, hurried footsteps she sank to the ground. Mustafa appeared, framed against the firelight, staring out along the trail.

It was some time before he saw the girl; then he gave a shrill exclamation of pleasure.

“Evil wench! Wanton!” cried Mustafa. “So you would steal off as if on indoor slippers like a slave sneaking away to henna-nights! So you would leave me—Mustafa.”

The sound of a blow accompanied the name. The girl did not cry out.

“Eh—ungrateful one! You had a thought to follow your mate. Darisi bashine—may her millet fall on thy head. Have a care lest her fate is yours—Bismillah!”

He cringed and stared as Khlit’s tall form loomed over him. Then, seeing who it was, he made as if to strike the girl again. But this time under his nose was the glint of steel, and he felt a keen blade touch his throat.

“Enough, Mustafa!” growled the Cossack.

The eunuch peered at him angrily. “Will you come between me and my duty? Am I a slave to be commanded by such as you— a hired swordsman—”

“Yet a swordsman, Mustafa, and not a beater of women. Is it enough, or will you prove my words?”

At this the eunuch retreated backward and sought the fire. Yasmi did not follow. She took Khlit’s hand in both hers.

“Aie, baba-ji—father-lord! I have a fear. It is a great fear. Nasir Beg has looked upon me with an evil light in his eyes.

“Last night he came to our tent, and this day Rani Kayastha is dead. Now his glance follows me.

“Aie—he took a jewel from Rani Kayastha, who was the wife of a king. But I have no jewels—”

Silently Khlit returned to his nook and sat upon his stone. Yasmi crept after and curled at his feet, much like a dog who fears to be spurned. Khlit rather expected that Mustafa would return with Pir Kasim to claim the girl. But though he glimpsed a shadow moving near him and suspected that someone kept watch upon them, he was not molested.

“Yasmi,” he said slowly, “what manner of women are the wives of nobles, yet the property of such as Pir Kasim?”

“Baba-ji,” she responded softly, “they are the dead.”

For an instant Khlit was disturbed, thinking of the wan face and the dark eyes that had looked into his for an instant before Rani Kayastha died. Then he laughed. “Nay, you know not what you say, little sparrow. For you are one of them, and you are— living.”

But Yasmi did not laugh.

“It is true,” she whispered, “that my lot is not quite so evil as theirs. For I am not of their faith and I have not—as they have— broken the law that they must not break.

“But they are truly the dead; and I am like to them. We cannot look into the face of the people of Hindustan; where we go we are stoned. The village dogs are higher caste than we. The souls of those—” she pointed back to the camp—“are shriveled. They cannot live. They are the dead.”

Khlit recollected the stones that had been cast at them when passing through the Kashmiri village, and the strange conduct of the two riders, and grunted.

“Yasmi,” he observed presently, “I have a thought that you know those who follow. You are a Muslim, and Nasir Beg named them Muslims. Likewise you crept down the path tonight seeking someone. Is not this the truth?”

The girl would not answer. And after a time Khlit saw that she was shivering with cold. Whereupon he threw his khalat over her as she sat by his feet.

Yasmi slept, but Khlit did not close his eyes. The girl’s words had stirred his curiosity, and after his fashion he pondered them.

The next day, and the next, Yasmi kept close to Khlit. His rough touch of kindness—giving her his khal at—had been the first she had received for many months and Yasmi was grateful. She kept her pony at the side of the black horse where the narrow track permitted, and at other times in front of Khlit.

On the second day at the noon halt Mustafa approached the two and with him Pir Kasim. Khlit, according to his custom, was preparing his own food, which Yasmi chose to share. Poor as the Cossack’s fare was, the caravan fare was worse, now that the mutton was about gone.

Khlit did not look up when the shadows of the two men fell across his feet. He felt the girl draw closer to him.

“Ho, Khlit,” began the merchant in a friendly tone, “we make good progress, and by the will of Allah tomorrow will see us through the Darband Pass, and out on the open ground leading to Yarkand. It is well, therefore, that the women be kept together lest one escape.”

Khlit continued to toast the strips of meat in the flames with-out response.

“Mustafa waxes anxious for the girl Yasmi,” continued Pir Kasim. “He fears she may fall from the trail.”

“Nay,” protested the girl, “my pony does not stumble.” Pir Kasim scowled at her.

“Nevertheless, you shall stay under the eye of Mustafa.” “I will not!”

The merchant, angered, caught her arm. She struggled, striking at his face, until Mustafa came to his aid. Then she ceased her efforts, glancing imploringly at Khlit.

The Cossack regarded a portion of meat with a favorable eye and proceeded to eat. Seeing this, Mustafa ventured a furtive blow upon the girl’s back.

The eunuch had been reared to safeguard women for his master. It was his one duty, and after his kind he was faithful to it. But he also had the cruelty that was part of his office.

“Pir Kasim,” observed Khlit thoughtfully, “would you lay hand on the blue diamond that Rani Kayastha wore?”

The merchant stiffened as a hunting dog at scent of game. His black eyes snapped, and he stepped closer to the sitting man, fairly quivering with eagerness.

“The blue diamond? Aye, the one that was set in rare jade. ’Tis said the maharaja paid for it the price of twenty fine horses.” He stared at Khlit uncertainly, yet covetously. “Then it was not lost with the woman—may her soul never see paradise? Aye, it was a fine stone. You have seen it, Khlit?”

The Cossack chewed slowly on his meat, wiping his beard with his sleeve.

“Perchance you hold it, Khlit?” Pir Kasim affected a friendly laugh. “Nay, ’tis well. You thought to keep the stone safe for me. By the beard of the Prophet, I bear no ill will. Eh—but it would be safer in my hands.”

Khlit nodded. Pir Kasim stretched out a claw that trembled with eagerness. He had completely forgotten the girl.

“Ask Nasir Beg for it,” said Khlit.

Pir Kasim blinked. Then with an angry cry he hurried off to seek the Arab. Khlit looked up at Mustafa under shaggy brows, and the eunuch made as if to haul Yasmi away.

“Mustafa!” said Khlit. “Look behind you.”

The eunuch glanced over his shoulder hastily.

“What see you?” asked Khlit, reaching for more meat. “Naught. Save the precipice.”

“Nay. Your eyes are dull. I have seen two things in the gorge below.”

Mustafa glanced at the Cossack dubiously. Then, still holding Yasmi, he stepped nearer the edge to peer down. The invisible pursuers who had been barely noticed during the last two days had got upon the nerves of the men of the caravan.

“Nay, there is naught,” he snarled. “I see only rocks.”

“And the kites,” amended Khlit. “The rocks and kites—there are the two things of which I thought. It is dark down in the yar; perhaps the bones of dead horses lie among the rocks, and the place is a feasting-place for the kites.”

Mustafa drew back from the cliffside with some alacrity. “Look, Mustafa, upon your hand!”

The eunuch did so uncertainly. He had a plump hand, generously adorned with rings. After considering this member of his person, he glared at Khlit.

“Your tongue jests,” he cried shrilly.

“Nay, Mustafa, when did you know me to jest?” Whereupon Khlit took his sword from scabbard and laid it across his knees, stroking the blade meditatively against one leather boot.

“Harken, O Purified One,” continued Khlit, addressing the eunuch by his actual name. “Consider those three things—and a fourth. Consider the rocks a bow-shot beneath, the kites and the tenderness of your skin. Mark it well.”

Mustafa still glared but was silent. Yasmi laughed softly. “And then the fourth thing, Mustafa. You said that I jest. It is a lie.”

The eunuch loosed his hold upon Yasmi abruptly. Whereupon she slipped to Khlit’s side, her dark eyes dancing at the discomfiture of her guardian. Mustafa would have left them to go after Pir Kasim, but a glance from Khlit staved him.

“Kukuria—little dog,” the Cossack growled, “you would like to run whining to your master—”

“Pir Kasim will see that you suffer—”

“Nay, Mustafa. Consider yet another thing. Tomorrow Pir Kasim plans to attack those who follow us. I am—as you once said—a swordsman, and valuable to him. You are a servant.”

The eunuch bit his thumb and scowled.

“Then, Mustafa, meditate upon these four—these five— things. But chiefly upon the rocks and the kites and your—hide, Mustaf a.”

Khlit rose, towering over the stout Ethiopian.

“A fitting place to meditate, O Purified One, is the precipice edge. Seek it!”

Not until Mustafa was enthroned upon the brink of the cliff, his legs hanging over the edge—to the wonder of the caravaneers —did Khlit leave him and return to his interrupted repast.

Yasmi’s merriment at the plight of her master vanished swiftly, and she gazed moodily into the flames, chin upon her hand. Khlit also was silent.

He had felt when he first saw the women in the caravan that they would breed trouble. Now it was coming to pass even as he had foreseen. But the hardships inflicted on Yasmi stirred his anger.

Khlit glanced around. The others were resting on their robes, wearied by the hard marches and the poor food. Pir Kasim and Nasir Beg were not to be seen, although their angry voices echoed somewhere behind the rocks where the Arab was on watch. Mustafa, although eyeing them, was beyond hearing.

“My heart is heavy, baba-ji,” mused Yasmi. “I have a fore-boding. Last night the jackals howled in the gorge, and the kites screamed at dawn, and the sky was red as blood.

“Smoke came from the arrow Nasir Beg shot fruitlessly at a mountain goat. I dreamed that headless men walked toward us from the hill passes.”

She sighed, twisting her fingers in the mass of her black hair. And she glanced involuntarily back along the cliff—a look which Khlit did not fail to notice. He put his gnarled hand on her slim one.

“Yasmi,” he growled, “you are a sparrow; nay, a singing bird. Aye, the talons of the hawks are near to you. Speak, then, before it is too late.

“There is one thing I would know. Who are they that follow us?”

The girl searched Khlit’s lined face with a woman’s intentness. What she saw must have satisfied her, for she told him what had passed at the tavern in Srinaggar.

Khlit listened closely.

“Say you this Afghan warrior paid Nasir Beg the price he asked?”

“Nasir Beg made an excuse and did not take the gold.” “What did the Afghan?”

“The mask of anger fell upon his face, baba-ji, but then Nasir Beg thrust the lamp to the floor, and Mustafa, reaching from be-hind the curtains, seized me. I kicked and bit his arm.

“Yet he stifled me with a cloth, and bore me down into the cellar. Whereupon Nasir Beg kicked the women and bade them prepare to leave the cellar. He rowed us away in the boat. I looked back and saw the Afghan running from the door, and his sword was drawn.”

She sighed, looking up at Khlit. “I think it is he who follows. He was very angry, and—he liked my song. He was a tall man—as tall as you—and his armor was very costly.”

“Aye. He was a Muslim?”

“Even so, my lord. Methinks he was faithful to the law of Mohammed, as was father.”

“These women—” Khlit nodded toward the group—“what is their faith?”

“They are unbelievers, who bow down before Vishnu and Shiva. Yet they are not godless. Their sorrow is great. The heat of the flames affrighted them, baba-ji, and they drew back from death—and so fell into the hand of the hallal khors.”

“They do not wish to be sold at Yarkand?”

“Nay, my lord. They are of high caste, and their grief is like a cloud over the sun. But how could they escape Pir Kasim? Even like to theirs will my fate be.”

Khlit did not answer. Presently, seeing the bustle of the caravan men, he arose and went to the eunuch, telling him that he had meditated sufficiently for the nonce.

Mustafa made off promptly, muttering.

Khlit smiled grimly when Pir Kasim directed the order of march and placed him with Yasmi in the center of the line, giving the rear to Nasir Beg. He noticed also that the servants kept watch on him.

Pir Kasim, however, made a great show of cordiality toward the Cossack. He rode at the warrior’s side, explaining that he had recovered the gem from Nasir Beg—at a price.

“Tomorrow, Khlit,” he vouchsafed, “will the path widen into the plateau of the Darband. ’Tis a wide, level expanse of stone, open to the eye. At the farther end, however, a swift stream rushes. Beyond the stream are many great rocks of sandstone.”

He smiled, combing his beard.

“In those rocks we will lie in wait—you and I and Nasir Beg with the caravaneers. Only at one point—where the trail crosses—can the stream be forded. When the three unbelievers appear, we will see, and when they urge their horses into the cur-rent we will let fly arrows and pistol balls, aimed at the horses.

“Then—may Allah will it so—we shall ride forth and smite down those who live. Thus we shall be free of the robbers. It is a good plan.”

The project was well-conceived, as Khlit saw. But his voice was gruff as he answered the merchant, “Have you seen those who follow us—near at hand?”

“Nay. You know they have kept shrewdly beyond view.” “How know you then they are—robbers?”

Pir Kasim stared, then laughed. “What else should they be, Cossack? Were they honest folk they would not lurk behind the rocks.”

Khlit did not laugh. He pointed to the women who followed them, hunched miserably in their saddles.

“What manner of women be these?”

“Slaves.”

“Then, Pir Kasim, have you paid the full value of their slavery?”

The merchant was too surprised to respond quickly. He had not thought that Khlit was interested in the caravan. Before he could answer Khlit turned on him, his teeth gleaming through his gray mustache and his eyes hard.

“Can you say, Pir Kasim, that you are less a thief than those who follow—”

He scowled moodily and struck his fist on the saddlepeak so that the black pony jumped. “Yasmi has a foreboding, Pir Kasim. Nay, I know naught of omens. But take care lest the evil fortune she has foretold comes to pass.”

With that he spurred on to the head of the caravan, leaving the merchant sunk in thought. Pir Kasim dropped back until he was abreast of Nasir Beg.

“The wretched Yasmi has been using her tongue upon Khlit,” he whispered. “The Cossack waxes insolent, Nasir Beg.

“What think you? If he rides to Yarkand he may breed evil for us. Yet we need him to deal with the Muslims.”

“When the hour comes I shall strike the Cossack. Then the name of Khlit will be no more than the writing on sand when the wind has passed over.”

Pir Kasim nodded shrewdly.

“Bethink you, Nasir Beg. There will be much confusion when we ride upon the Muslims. Perhaps it is written that Khlit should die by the hand of the unbelievers.

“If not—” he measured his words slowly “it may even then come to pass. A blow in the back—Khlit wears no armor—or an arrow at the base of the brain. The Cossack is a foolhardy dog—he will be in the front of the fight, eh, Nasir Beg?”

The Arab’s eyes gleamed.

“Bismillah! I have a mind to his black horse and the curved sword. Yet—I have heard tales of Khlit. A price should be paid for such a deed—a good price. The blue diamond of the rani.”

Pir Kasim squealed angrily.

“Nay, by the beard of the Prophet!”

He considered a moment, glancing sidewise at his companion.

“Yet I am generous, Nasir Beg. Methinks there is a thing other than jewels you have a mind to. If Khlit dies at the Darband you shall have—Yasmi.”

“So be it,” agreed the Arab.

There was a good reason why Pir Kasim had not seen Abdul Dost near at hand for some time. The Afghan was not there to be seen.

From the night at the Srinaggar tavern Abdul Dost had pressed the pursuit closely. He had soon ascertained that Pir Kasim had taken the Sindh caravan route. He had traced the merchant through the village where the caravan had been stoned, and was close upon them when Pir Kasim turned aside by the Zodjila Pass.

This move had checked the Afghans. They soon discovered that Pir Kasim had not continued along the Sindh, but it was the better part of a day before Abdul Dost, chafing under the delay, learned from a shepherd that the caravan had been seen ascending the Zodjila.

When they came into view of those they sought, the caravan was threading the path along the cliff. Abdul Dost, despite his impatience, was too experienced a soldier to venture to attack in such a location. He ordered his men to fall back and keep Pir Kasim in view.

Until the day when Khlit had sat Mustafa on the cliff ledge. Then Abdul Dost went back a space along the trail to a ravine which led to the gorge below and to the broken body of a woman. Down the ravine they had led their horses, and throughout that night they rode quietly along the valley bed until they had passed the caravan, which was encamped on the mountainside above.

At dawn Abdul Dost halted only long enough to water his horses. Then, munching their graincakes and dates as they rode, they struck through the pine forest that would lead—as one of the

soldiers informed him—to the trail Pir Kasim was taking, ahead of the Darband Pass.

“Then will we ride back,” explained Abdul Dost grimly, “and come upon them at the ford in the Darband.”

But to do this he was forced to cross the stream below the pass, and at that season it was swollen with the melted snows from the heights above. The two men halted, staring at the rush of water and marking the rocks underneath.

“Those who pass here say it cannot be crossed, save at the Darband ford,” they told the mansabdar.

Abdul Dost glanced up at the sun which was slanting through the pines and smiled.

“Then,” he laughed, “it will be told how the Darband stream has been crossed.”

He did not laugh as he forced his horse into the stream and saw how the beast drifted down with the current. The two men hesitated, then plunged in after him. The bad footing and the strength of the current soon forced the horses to swim.

Three men and two horses crossed the stream. The third beast floundered in the current with a broken leg until its rider drew his knife and ended its pain; then this man swam ashore, holding to the tail of another horse. Abdul Dost waited, for the two remaining mounts were badly winded.

Before noon he was again in his saddle. The dismounted warrior girded his tunic about his loins and ran, clinging to the stirrup of his comrade. For Abdul Dost had said they must hasten if they would reach the Darband in time.

“Eh, my children,” smiled Abdul Dost, “I have sworn an oath. Shall I not keep my word?”

“We are your men, Lord of Badakshan,” spoke up one, “and our swords are yours that your word may be kept. We will pray that our strength be increased.”

So they spurred forward. But the sun was high when they neared the caravan track beyond the Darband Pass.

V

Only for the space of a moment can a warrior say, “I am the slayer and he the slain.”

He hears the joy cries of the women at his wedding feast, and his dull ears harken to the lamentations at his deathbed. Always the voices of the women cry out. Nay, are they not the handmaid-ens of Life and Death?

Kashmiri proverb

The sun filled the Darband Pass with a red light—red because it was reflected from an expanse of sandstone that made the bed of the pass level as the court of a palace.

High in the Himalayas was the Darband Pass, walled by slopes of brown sand that were in turn surmounted by crumbling brown cliffs, beyond which glittered the blue expanse of the glaciers that filled the ravines descending from the rock peaks.

No grass grew in the Darband Pass; nor did pine trees fringe the sand slopes. The only life was that of the kites and rooks who circled overhead, following the course of the caravan. In and about the Darband was the great silence of the heights, broken only at the farther end where the stream rushed down through the rocks.

The ford at this point was shallow; the opposite side, strewn with sandstone ledges and gullies, was steep. Pir Kasim marked this with a satisfied eye. He urged the women and the laden beasts hastily over the stream.

Mustafa, sensing the need of haste so that they should be in their hiding places before the pursuers appeared, cried angrily at the women, striking one with his hand when her horse delayed in the stream to snatch a mouthful of water.

“Get you hence, wanton,” he commanded, and did not see the glint of hatred intensified by terror in the Hindu’s eyes.

Yasmi he did not strike, contenting himself with a mocking whisper.

“Tale-bearer and infidel, soon you will have a new lord and then you will feel the hand of Mustafa.”

She passed by in silence—unusual for her—and glanced back at Khlit. Her eyes met the glance of the Cossack and he nodded as if approvingly. Whereupon she urged her horse up the steep slope.

Here were the sandstone gullies, a honeycomb of fissures and grotesque summits of the weather-worn stone. Yasmi fancied that each ledge bore upon it the semblance of a face—some leering evilly, some grinning. Some resembled animals.

It was as if the gigantic creatures of a long dead race had here been frozen into immobility. They stood watching the passing of the beasts and men of the caravans—so Yasmi fancied.

But Pir Kasim was well content. In the sandstone gullies were hiding places aplenty. The merchant disposed of the caravan swiftly and with much shrewdness.

On the top of the rise he placed the horses and donkeys in a ravine, the steep sides of which afforded exit at only one point. He commanded the women to remain here and at the entrance to the gully posted a caravaneer armed with a bow as guard.

Pir Kasim cared to take no chances with Khlit, so he had selected the place with care—a depression into which the sun shone fully, where the guard could watch both women and horses with-out moving.

“Because, Nasir Beg,” he whispered to the Arab, “it is said the Cossack is like an evil magician with the black horse between his legs. Aye, like to a conjurer who can summon the powers of darkness, and the horse his djinnee. But here he will be afoot among the rocks.”

Not less craftily did the merchant arrange his men. He chose the rocks just where the trail rose to the summit of the slope by the riverbank. Here they were a scant fifty paces from the horses—which were of course out of sight—and even less from the edge of the stream. They could see down the length of the Darband and watch their enemies as the latter rode up to the ford—as Pir Kasim believed they must do.

“Then, Khlit,” he smiled, rubbing his hands together, “a volley of arrows—a shot from Nasir Beg’s Turkish pistol—and all is done. Save the slaying of the wounded. It is a good plan.”

“Aye,” admitted Khlit.

“And you—” Pir Kasim’s keen eyes were fastened on the Cossack’s girdle—“where are your pistols? Eh—there were two fine weapons that you are wont to wear—”

“I have them not today,” explained Khlit indifferently. “The sword, the curved sword, is the better weapon.”

“Good!”

Pir Kasim had reason to be satisfied. Without his pistols Khlit would be an easy victim, he reasoned. The Cossack wore no armor, not even a quilted surcoat. Even if he should suspect treachery and try to defend himself he would be one against six—and Nasir Beg and the caravaneers had shirts of Damascus mail.

Pir Kasim was shrewd enough to perceive that Khlit was distrustful of him. The Cossack’s words of the day before had served to put the merchant on his guard. He counted on the fact that Khlit would be stirred by the attack on their pursuers and would be taken unawares.

“If not,” he confided to Nasir Beg, “he will be afoot, and crafty though he be at swordplay, my two men have orders to strike him down with their arrows. What avails a sword against arrows? Nay, he was a fool to put aside the Turkish pistols!”

“Even thus,” suggested Nasir Beg, “it would be well to find those two weapons and take them in your hand.”

Pir Kasim scurried off to ransack the saddlebags of Khlit’s horse, leaving the Cossack surrounded by his men. His hasty search was unsuccessful, yet it gave him opportunity to see that all was well by the horses.

The women sat muffled in their robes at the feet of the guard— Yasmi among them, as Pir Kasim was careful to note. The horses were tethered securely. The caravaneer stood at the break in the sandstone ridge, which was the only entrance to the gully.

Fearful lest his enemies appear while he was absent, Pir Kasim ran back to the ambush over the riverbank. Khlit had not moved.

The Cossack sat idly on a rock where he was concealed from view from the ford, Nasir Beg within arm’s reach on one side, the Arab’s hand near the pistol in his belt. Mustafa leaned nearby, holding a sharp knife.

Within five paces of the three the caravaneers kept watch over the ford, their bows strung and their quivers ready to hand. Pir Kasim, like the eunuch, was armed with a knife. The merchant chuckled silently.

“Akh,” he muttered in his beard, “the dolt! The tall fool of the steppe! The fox that is blind! The wolf that has seen many fights, who is heedless of peril thereby! Akh, another hour, and the three who follow will lie dead in the ford and Khlit will be overmastered. Then—I shall repeat the namaz gar—the evening prayer. For Allah favors me this day.”

He surveyed the scene again before joining Nasir Beg. So well had he planned that a thrill of self-satisfaction chased up his bent spine. After all, Pir Kasim was an artist in his way—a master of treachery.

“Another hour, my lord,” he smiled at Khlit, “and the way to Yarkand will be clear. Their rich gold will be ours from the women.”

“Aye,” said Khlit.

Pir Kasim nodded, thinking that Yasmi had foretold truly when she said that she had beheld evil omens. He watched Khlit contentedly.

The Cossack was stroking his bare blade back and forth over his boot top, and polishing the shining steel with his neckcloth. He was fingering the chasing in the blade with evident pride, his long legs sprawled before him, his sheepskin hat well to the back of his gray head.

And at this hour the sun was near its highest point. Then Yasmi began her song.

It came clearly down to the waiting men. It echoed melodiously among the rocks of the Darband. And it was echoed back from the farther side of the ford—each word distinct:

Oh, where is the falcon’s nest.. . .

Save in the wind...

The song swelled forth with the full power of the girl’s throat. And it seemed to mock the men, as if Yasmi sang with the lilt of laughter. At the same time there was a murmur as if the women were stirring.

“Bismillah!” swore Pir Kasim. “Has the caravaneer taken leave of his wits that he lets Yasmi sing? Mustafa, go you and choke the song in the vixen’s throat! Fail not, for there must be silence at the ford.”

The eunuch needed no second bidding. Clutching his dagger, he stole off up to the gully where the women were.

Pir Kasim scowled at Khlit, wondering if the Cossack had had a hand in the girl’s singing. Yasmi, he reflected suspiciously, might have intended to warn their pursuers of the ambush.

But Khlit sat passively gazing at his feet and stroking his weapon. Perhaps a trace of a smile twitched at his gray mustache.

Presently Yasmi’s voice faltered in the midst of a word. Silence followed, broken by a faint murmur of voices in their rear. Pir Kasim peered across the ford and noted with satisfaction that the three riders were not yet in view.

“Mustafa has stilled the songbird,” he whispered to Nasir Beg, “and doubtless bound and gagged her as she deserved—”

He broke off in sheer surprise. Yasmi had resumed her song at the point where she had ceased. Even louder than before, the girl’s voice floated down from the rocks above them.

“By the ninety-nine holy names of Allah!” swore the Arab. “Will you let the wanton betray our abiding place?”

Khlit alone of the men at the ford seemed not surprised at the song of Yasmi. He pulled his sheepskin hat over one ear and glanced up solemnly at the sun.

Pir Kasim fidgeted in an agony of impatience. Their enemies, he knew, might even then be within hearing.

Yasmi must be silenced. He looked once more across the ford, and at Khlit basking his tall frame in the sun; then he stole off to the rear toward the women.

Nasir Beg looked after him, scowling. What had become of Mustafa and the guard, that they let Yasmi sing? He did not understand.

There was something uncanny in the note of the song. And Yasmi—“The Muslim girl is an evil enchantress,” he growled to Khlit. “Bismillah! She has laid a spell with her song on the caravaneer and Mustafa.”

Khlit responded quietly, leaning closer to the Arab.

“Aye, a spell, Nasir Beg. A spell of steel and powder. Yasmi has one of my brace of Turkish pistols. The mate to the weapon is in the hand of a Hindu woman—the same Mustafa struck in the ford.”

“Ha!”

Nasir Beg looked up keenly and rose to his feet.

“A potent spell, Nasir Beg. Doubtless it has rendered the caravaneer and the dog of a eunuch powerless, each in turn, while the women bound them. And—doubtless—Pir Kasim has come under the spell. Did not Yasmi sing that he might hear?”

The two caravaneers gaped. Nasir Beg fingered his weapon. Khlit had neither moved nor looked at him.

“Pistols have their use, Nasir Beg,” he mused calmly. “Aye, Yasmi uses them boldly. But for my hand, Nasir Beg—the curved sword.”

He drew the cloth along the shining blade carefully. The three men watched him as if fascinated.

“The sword, Nasir Beg,” said Khlit, “that you covet—with the black pony—after you had slain the Cossack who is called the Curved Saber. Aye, so Yasmi told me, and her ears are keen to hear—”

Nasir Beg caught at the pistol in his belt. Then, just in time, he snatched out his sword instead.

Khlit had struck without rising from his seat. Leaning toward the Arab, his long arm flew out. Though Nasir Beg partly parried the blow a crimson cut showed above the man’s brow where Khlit’s sword had touched—no more than touched—the skin.

And even as the wound in the Arab’s forehead was the weakness that seized upon his heart. A crafty and experienced swordsman, Nasir Beg fought best when the odds were in his favor. Now, in the eyes that burned into his from under gray brows, he read— death.

So he gave back swiftly, parrying desperately. And as he gave back Khlit was upon him, the curved saber slashing at his throat above the armor.

“So, Nasir Beg,” Khlit growled softly, “you coveted the sword? Nay, have it then. So the girl Yasmi was to be your slave? Nay, the steel is your reward, for treachery, Nasir Beg.”

And Khlit’s weapon flashed before his eyes. Nasir Beg cursed, giving ground again. Then, feeling the blood stream down into his eyes, the fear that had clutched at his heart overmastered him.

“Let fly, dolts!” he screamed to the staring caravaneers. “An arrow in his back—”

The cry ended in a grunt which changed to a gasp that shrilled and broke midway. Khlit had smitten down the Arab’s guard and poised his sword for the death stroke. An arrow whizzed and tore through the Cossack’s boot below the knee.

Khlit shifted his weight silently to the other foot, placing him-self so that the Arab was between him and the archers, feinted at Nasir Beg’s head and struck him savagely across the knees. The Arab staggered, cursing. The next instant he threw his arms wide, his skull split between the eyes nearly to the chin.

Khlit wheeled alertly, hearing stealthy steps behind him. A caravaneer had crept within arm’s reach, dagger uplifted.

The Cossack, who was fighting with the cool intentness that was peculiar to him, had expected such a move, and the man

fell back. His neck had been half-severed by a short stroke of the curved saber. Khlit reached behind him and pulled the sinking body of Nasir Beg between him and the second caravaneer. And the arrow the man aimed embedded itself in the form of the Arab.

Holding Nasir Beg in one arm—his sword arm—Khlit felt for and found the pistol in the Arab’s girdle. Before the archer could fit another arrow to bow, the pistol bellowed in his face, sending its heavy ball through his brain.

Khlit cast down the smoking weapon, watching the man reel to the earth. A shrill cry from Yasmi came to his ears. He caught the arrow that had pierced his lower leg, broke it and limped upward through the rocks.

He heard a shout, the beat of hoofs. A horse plunged forward into view, sweating and sobbing with weariness—plunged and fell. A mailed form sprang clear, casting aside a flying cloak that glittered with jewels.

The newcomer alighted on his feet, gained his balance deftly and sprang at Khlit with uplifted scimitar.

Khlit caught a fleeting glimpse of a small, jeweled turban, a silvery coat of mail, and a dark, scarred face, dust-stained and alight with the joy of battle. He saw white teeth bared in a smile, and black eyes that bored into his.

“Hai—hai—look to yourself, graybeard! Stealer of women and seller of the death anointed! Ho—graybeard—Pir Kasim! The thread of your life is thin. Look upon the angel of death, Pir Kasim—”

The whirlwind attack of the warrior left Khlit no time to consider or to speak. The next instant he was fighting for his life, his saber crossing a blade that had an arm of steel behind it.

Many times and often had Khlit fought with the swordsmen of Tartary and Hindustan, but now he was faced by a master of the scimitar and one who fought as recklessly as Khlit himself.

The two retainers who had scrambled down over the rocks, panting, looked upon the combat and paused, observing the play of the blades with eagerness, and staring one upon the other in wonder.

“Hai—hai—” Khlit’s hat had been struck from his head and his fur khalat slashed by a glancing blow—“I have trimmed your scalp, graybeard; look to your beard.”

A blow of the scimitar nearly found Khlit’s throat.

“Does Abdul Dost keep his pledge!”

For several moments the two swords held in never-ceasing play.

And ever Khlit grew weaker, his knees trembling with fatigue. No chance was afforded him for a trick of the sword, nor any respite.

The lean muscles of the Cossack’s long arm were quivering, and his vision blurred. Still the scimitar flashed almost in his eyes.

He did not give ground. Nor did he speak. He smiled upon Abdul Dost.

Then the two watchers saw a strange thing. They saw Khlit exhausted and at the point of death. They noted that Abdul Dost was panting, fighting with savage intentness. And they saw the man whose strength had ebbed gather himself together, limping, his weight upon one leg.

And Khlit sprang at Abdul Dost with the curved saber gripped in both hands, hacking and hewing, beating down the other’s weapon, slashing at his mail so that the sparks flew from the steel. Then Abdul Dost sprang back.

The two watchers saw Khlit sink upon his knees and the saber fall from his hand and his head fall upon his chest. The last effort of the Cossack had exhausted the remnant of his strength and had blinded him.

Abdul Dost surveyed his foe, panting and half -stunned by the unexpected attack.

Then a small figure rushed upon the Muslim, and Yasmi cast her arms around him.

“Ai, lord—stay your hand!” she cried. “This is not Pir Kasim. The dog of a merchant has fled afoot up the mountain. Nay, this is he who took my quarrel upon him, my baba-ji—father-lord.”

Abdul Dost was quick of wit. He sheathed his weapon. Then he stared around, marking the bodies of Nasir Beg and the caravaneers. He wiped the sweat from his brow and seated himself wearily upon a stone.

One of his men approached.

“The eunuch will watch no more women, Lord of Badakshan,” he informed Abdul Dost grimly. “He was in the hands of the women and—the hatred of the high-born is not akin to mercy.”

Abdul Dost stirred the form of the Arab with his foot and glanced up at Yasmi, who was watching him fearfully.

“Rightly have they named this the caravan of the dead, little Yasmi. My eyes tell me the truth of this and what I have seen I have seen.”

Abdul dost rose, not oversteadily, and stared at Khlit, who still rested on his knees, drawing gulping breaths.

“Did the hand of this warrior slay these three?” he asked. Yasmi looked around with a shiver.

“Aye, my lord.”

“What name bears he?”

“He is Khlit, who has come from very far. It is said he was once Kha Khan of the Jungar, and leader of the Tatar horde. He it was who brought Nur-Jahan, wife of the Mogul, from China. He is my baba-ji.”

Abdul Dost leaned over Khlit and lifted him to his feet. He noted the arrow in the Cossack’s leg and swore under his breath.

Then he helped Khlit to a seat on the stone where he had been resting. Yasmi noticed the Cossack’s sword lying on the earth and would have picked it up, but a sharp command from the Muslim stayed her.

Motioning the girl aside, Abdul Dost picked up Khlit’s weapon, wiped it clean, weighed it curiously in his hand and laid it across the other’s knees. Khlit glanced up at this, for the stupor of weariness had passed from his sight.

“Hey—it was a good fight, warrior,” the Cossack said.

His head sank once more between his shoulders. He lifted a lean hand and gazed wonderingly upon its trembling.

“I have met many swordsmen in Hindustan and in Badakshan,” responded Abdul Dost gruffly, “but none equal to you. Aye, it was rare swordplay. Yet was the fault mine, for I—in armor—set upon you unknowing—”

Khlit shook his head indifferently. The lines of his harsh face had deepened within the hour. Then he sought to take his sword but could not, for his strength was gone.

His head sank again, near to his knee. He lifted it with an effort.

“I shall not wield sword again, warrior,” he said, breathing heavily. “The strength that was once mine is gone. My arm is weak. Something that was here—is sped.”

He touched his chest.

“You—overmastered me. It is my last fight.”

Abdul Dost would have spoken but checked himself. He turned aside, musing.

“The blame is mine,” he said to Yasmi. “I would that I had known.”

He ascended the rocks, for there was much to be done. In an hour he had arranged for Yasmi and the other women to be con-ducted back to the territory of her father, the Sheikh of Kuhistan, by way of the northern passes, and had mounted them under escort of his two followers, for food was lacking in the caravan and their departure was pressing.

“None will molest my men, who will go by the route through Badakshan,” he told Yasmi. “And in the camp of your people these women may have peace.”

“Aye, my lord,” assented Yasmi.

When she would have knelt and poured forth her thanks, the mansabdar stayed her gruffly.

“Go—and sing among your hills, little Yasmi,” he bade her. “Here is but an evil spot for such as you. In Kuhistan young warriors will give you their love, doubtless.”

Khlit raised his head as the caravan moved off. He saw that his horse was not among those that went. Then he fell again into meditation, for he was very weary and his wound pained him.

He wondered why Abdul Dost had not gone with the caravan. Then he saw the mansabdar approach with his cloak again on his shoulders.

Khlit lifted his hand. He was not troubled at being left alone, but he was very tired and he wondered—without being con cerned—whether Abdul Dost had thought to leave him food.

“Farewell, warrior,” he said gruffly. “Ho—it was indeed a good fight.”

Abdul Dost did not reply. He was carrying an armful of wood. This he laid on the ground and presently kindled into flames by use of his flint and tinder. Then he approached the Cossack and drew off his boot.

He cleansed and washed Khlit’s wound with water from the ford after drawing the arrowhead, which Khlit suffered him to do silently. This accomplished, he bound the leg with some strips of cloth tightly.

By now the fire was blazing. Abdul Dost returned and presently came back carrying many things.

He laid Khlit’s sheepskin robe on the ground near the fire, and his own beside it. He drew some meat from his saddlebags and began to toast it on a stick in the flames.

By now it was twilight, and the Darband was in deep shadow. Abdul Dost helped Khlit to lie on his sheepskin.

“Eh, Khlit,” he said, “the horses are fed, and it is now our turn.”

Not until then did the Cossack understand that Abdul Dost would not leave him. He looked at the Muslim in surprise. Never before had another tended him in this manner, or given him such comfort.

Neither man spoke. But Khlit was strangely content.

He had found a friend, and he who had been named the wanderer was no longer alone.