must slay!”
“Why, then--”
Shirkuh laughed, and as he laughed, he struck. His motion was as quick as the blurring stroke of a cobra. In one movement he whipped the dagger from his girdle and struck upward under the captain’s bearded chin. The Afghan had no opportunity to defend himself, no chance to lift rifle or draw sword. Before he realized Shirkuh’s intention, he was down, his life gushing out of his sliced jugular.
An instant of stunned silence was broken by wild yells of laughter from the lookers-on and the men of the troop. It was just such a devilish jest as the bloodthirsty hill natures appreciated. There is humor in the hills, but it is a fiendish humor. The strange youth had shown a glint of the hard wolfish sophistication that underlay his apparent callowness.
But the other guardsmen cried out angrily and surged forward, with a sharp rattle of rifle bolts. Shirkuh sprang back and tore his rifle from its saddle scabbard. Muhammad and his men looked on cynically. It was none of their affair. They had enjoyed Shirkuh’s grim and bitter jest; they would equally enjoy the sight of him being shot down by his victim’s comrades.
But before a finger could crook on a trigger, the man on the white mare rode forward, beating down the rifles of the guards with a riding whip.
“Stop!” he commanded. “The Kurd is in the right. He slew according to the law. The man’s weapons were in his hands, and he was a tried warrior.”
“But he was taken unaware!” they clamored.
“The more fool he!” was the callous retort. “The law makes no point of that. I speak for the Kurd. And I am Alafdal Khan, once of Waziristan.”
“Nay, we know you, my lord!” The guardsmen salaamed profoundly.
Muhammad ez Zahir gathered up his reins and spoke to Shirkuh.
“You luck still holds, Kurd!”
“Allah loves brave men!” Shirkuh laughed, swinging into the saddle.
Muhammad ez Zahir rode under the arch, and the troop streamed after him, their captive in their midst. They traversed a short narrow street, winding between walls of mud and wood, where overhanging balconies almost touched each other over the crooked way. Brent saw women staring at them through the lattices. The cavalcade emerged into a square much like that of any other hill town. Open shops and stalls lined it, and it was thronged by a colorful crowd. But there was a difference. The crowd was too heterogeneous, for one thing; then there was too much wealth in sight. The town was prosperous, but with a sinister, unnatural prosperity. Gold and silk gleamed on barefooted ruffians whose proper garb was rags, and the goods displayed in the shops seemed mute evidence of murder and pillage. This was in truth a city of thieves.
The throng was lawless and turbulent, its temper set on a hair trigger. There were human skulls nailed above the gate, and in an iron cage made fast to the wall Brent saw a human skeleton. Vultures perched on the bars. Brent felt cold sweat bead his flesh. That might well be his own fate--to starve slowly in an iron cage hung above the heads of the jeering crowd. A sick abhorrence and a fierce hatred of this vile city swept over him.
As they rode into the city, Alafdal Khan drew his mare alongside Shirkuh’s stallion. The Waziri was a bull-shouldered man with a bushy purple-stained beard and wide, ox-like eyes.
“I like you, Kurd,” he announced. “You are in truth a mountain lion. Take service with me. A masterless man is a broken blade in Rub el Harami.”
“I thought Abd el Khafid was master of Rub el Harami,” said Shirkuh.
“Aye! But the city is divided into factions, and each man who is wise follows one chief or the other. Only picked men with long years of service behind them are chosen for Abd el Khafid’s house troops. The others follow various lords, who are each responsible to the emir.”
“I am my own man!” boasted Shirkuh. “But you spoke for me at the gate. What devil’s custom is this, when a stranger must kill a man to enter?”
“In old times it was meant to test a stranger’s valor, and make sure that each man who came into Rub el Harami was a tried warrior,” said Alafdal. “For generations, however, it has become merely an excuse to murder strangers. Few come uninvited. You should have secured the patronage of some chief of the clan before you came. Then you could have entered the city