E. Hoffmann Price's Fables of Ismeddin MEGAPACK® Read online

  “Wallahi! Those drunken caravan guards are at it again!” exclaimed Nureddin as he seized a mallet and smote the brazen gong at his side. “You’d better leave the roof before the riot works its way over here.”

  Even as he spoke, a stray bullet spattered him with bits of stone from the parapet as it ricocheted and whined shrilly on its way. He turned to the orderly who approached in response to the clang of the gong.

  “Run over to the barracks, Abbas!” commanded Nureddin. “Tell the sarhang to turn out two or three companies and stop that riot.”

  But before the orderly could acknowledge the order, a captain stepped forward, halted, and saluted Nureddin.

  “Sidi,” he reported, “the sarhang commands me to tell your highness that three companies are on the way to quell the disturbance. There they go now, my lord.”

  The captain indicated the barracks at the opposite angle of the square that faced the palace. The first company broke up into detachments to facilitate their progress through the network of narrow alleys that led to the bazaar. The two following kept in solid formation, taking the longer route by way of a broad avenue.

  “Very good, captain,” acknowledged Nureddin. “They’ll clean up that mess in a hurry—Allah and again, by Allah! Where did that company come from?”

  “Probably a fourth company the sarhang sent out—” began the captain.

  “I take refuge from Satan!” gasped Nureddin. “They’re shooting at each other! Look! They’re joining the rioters! And those two companies are scattering. God, by God, by the very God!

  “And there’s Mamoun on horse, directing the attack. The whole guard is revolting.”

  By the ever-increasing glare of the flames they could see the ambushed troops from the barracks breaking under the hail of lead that poured in from every side. And then the roar and rattle of musketry died down as the fighting became hand to hand. The looters in the bazaar joined forces with those who had attacked the regulars from the flank, and foot by foot forced them back toward their barracks and the square before the palace.

  “Who’s that beside Mamoun?” demanded Nureddin. “He’s leading the attack. Look at him! Riding my uncle’s white horse.”

  A sudden gust of wind fanned the flames to the brightness of day.

  “Tell the sarhang to turn out every man in barracks!” commanded Nureddin. And then, as the captain turned to leave: “Ya Allah! Shams ud Din himself! Slaying mad, cutting them down like wheat. Satan fly away with that red-haired wench and her brilliant ideas! Shams ud Din loose and raging!”

  The regulars were falling back as fast as they could toward the palace and barracks. Their retreat was hampered by the remaining companies of the garrison, turned out too late to be of assistance in subduing the riot. The square was a milling confusion of slaughter. High above the clash of arms and the shouting came the great voice of Shams ud Din as he forced his white stallion, now red with blood, full into the pack, urging his motley rabble to the assault. And drunk with slaughter, fired by the presence of their leader, they pressed on his heels, slaying and shouting.

  A platoon of the retreating garrison had fallen back to the palace, and taken a position along the parapet.

  “A thousand tomans to the man who drops that fellow on the white horse!” shouted Nureddin.

  But their fire did more damage to their fellows in the square than to the frenzied slayers that followed the sultan and Mamoun.

  Numbers, however, in the end favored Nureddin’s troops, and, as they retreated, they resumed their formation in some semblance of order. The captains of the rear companies had appraised the situation, and were withdrawing behind the massive walls of the barracks, giving the survivors of the first wave a chance to make an orderly retreat to the palace, whose bullet-marked walls testified to its sturdiness as a citadel.

  “Ya Zenghi! Ya Zenghi!” shouted stout Mamoun, as he saw the odds shifting.

  Shams ud Din wheeled his red steed, hacked his way through the press, and joined his captain.

  “Crowd them, Mamoun! Whoever gets behind those walls is worth ten of us in the open. Push them, or we are lost—and what will be stranger than a cucumber stuffed with pearls?”

  “Look, sidi!” yelled Mamoun exultantly. “The day is ours! The Companions are returning!”

  By the full glare of the flames they saw Shaykh Ahmad, sword drawn, white beard streaming, charging through the Herati Gate. At his heels followed the Companions, hacked, battered, and dusty. As they cleared the gate, the column deployed into line and swept across the square. Their curved blades bloomed like red flowers of slaughter as they closed in with Nureddin’s troops.

  As the shock of the assault spent itself on the freshly formed line of the enemy, and the charge broke up into individual engagements, Shaykh Ahmad slashed his way along the ragged line and reined in his horse at the sultan’s side.

  “You have saved the day, ya Shaykh!” yelled Shams ud Din above the clamor of men and crackle of musketry. “Reform your men, and drive through! Once more and we’ll have them!”

  “There is no God but God!” gasped Shaykh Ahmad. “We are dead men, and we came back to die with you!”

  “What? What’s this?” demanded Shams ud Din. “Dead men?”

  “Aywah!” assented the old man. “A regiment of Yakoub Khan’s troops has been on our heels ever since we crossed the border. We barely got out of an ambush. We returned to warn you. Listen, sidi—”

  Above the clash and roar of battle, they heard the steady drumming of horses’ hoofs.

  “They’ll be here in a few minutes, my lord,” continued Shaykh Ahmad. “And we will die with you.”

  “No man can meet his doom until it pleases Allah!” retorted Shams ud Din. “Charge again, ya Shaykh! Ho, there, Mamoun! Halt your rabble, tear up paving-blocks and throw up barricades. Ayyub, take six men to the guard house and round up all the ammunition you can. Quick about it, Shaytan blacken you!”

  And Shams ud Din, blade in hand, rode up and down the line, urging the surviving handful of the guard into line with the Companions, while the liberated prisoners, caravan guards, and riffraff of the wine-shops threw up a barricade.

  The thunder of horses’ hoofs shook the ground beneath their feet. And then came the roll of kettle-drums. A column of horsemen was galloping through the Herati Gate, and a second through Dervâzeh-i-Suleimani. They were converging on the fire and steel swept square.

  Shams ud Din turned to Mamoun, who was herding his rabble into the assault again.

  “Wallahi!” growled the sultan, “I’ll at least not die by the hands of the executioner! And here come Yakoub Khan’s troops, summoned over my own seal—”

  Shams ud Din reeled in his saddle.

  “Just a scratch, Mamoun—there’s no throne like a saddle.”

  He wheeled his horse, saying as he did so, “Let’s charge them, Mamoun, you and I. The Old Tiger my father would have done so.”

  From the parapet of the palace came the deep brazen clang of a gong. Mamoun seized the sultan’s reins.

  “Steady there, sidi!” he yelled. “Those fellows aren’t going to charge. And Nureddin is calling for a parley.”

  Yakoub Khan’s troops had reined their horses in to a walk.

  As Mamoun spoke, the gong rolled again; and as its sonorous note died, Nureddin appeared on the parapet of the palace.

  “Men of Bir el Asad, a madman has led you against your lord the sultan, Shams ud Din,” he began. “Deliver him into my hands before he leads you to your death. Lay down your arms, and let me deal with him, while you leave unharmed.”

  “Son of a pig!” yelled one of the Companions. “Let Shams ud Din appear beside you, and we will believe.”

  “Shams ud Din is with us, O Father of the Double Tongue!” shouted another.

  The g
roup of officers behind Nureddin parted, and into the full glare of the burning quarter stepped Mahjoub the Darwish, resplendent and glittering.

  “Here is Shams ud Din, the Sultan, madmen!” resumed Nureddin. “See him and believe. You are outnumbered and surrounded. At the best you can only die with that crack-brain you call Shams ud Din. Him you can not save. Save yourselves—”

  “Shaytan rip you open!” roared Shaykh Ahmad from among the Companions. “Our chief is Shams ud Din, and we will ride with him to the finish.”

  “He is our father and our grandfather!” shouted another.

  Shams ud Din spurred his horse forward.

  “I am the son of Zenghi, the son of the Tiger, and that impostor beside you is a devil who has taken my form. Nureddin, Allah curse you, I will surrender if you swear that these men of mine go safe and harmless.”

  He wheeled his horse about and faced his men.

  “Lay down your arms, O crack-brains who would ride to your death with me. It is vain for you to die with the forgotten of God. I will not have your blood on my head, you white-haired bandits who served my father.”

  Shams ud Din turned in the saddle, slumped, then sat erect.

  “Nureddin, swear thrice by the great name of Allah that these men go safe and harmless, then do with me as you please.”

  The silence was broken only by the crackling flames of the bazaar.

  Shams ud Din’s men had cooled from the frenzy of battle. The ring of steel that surrounded them gleamed thirstily in the red glow of the fire. They had fought in vain. Their chief, blood-drenched, broken, and slashed with a score of swords, had resigned himself to the will of Allah. They flinched before the rifle muzzles that stared at them from the parapet of the palace, and from the enemy holding the barracks. They edged to one side to avoid the volley that was ordained for Shams ud Din.

  The sultan flung his red blade clattering to the paving, dismounted, and turned to face Nureddin.

  “Swear, O Nureddin, that they will go in peace, and do with me as you please.” And then to Mamoun, who had advanced to his side, “Thou too, thou hungry wolf, go and think of cucumbers stuffed with pearls! Abandon the forgotten of Allah.”

  Nureddin advanced a pace, and began solemnly to intone the triple oath:

  “Wa-llahi-l-azeem! Wa-llahi-l-azeem! Wa—”

  A woman’s shrill cry interrupted the sonorous oath that was about to attest for the third time the greatness of Allah. A veiled woman had dashed out from a side door of the palace and halted before Shams ud Din.

  “Fools!” she screamed, tearing aside her veil and long cloak. “Which of the two is most a king?”

  Her hair gleamed with a red-gold fire in the glare of the blazing quarter, and her jeweled bracelets and tall curious head-dress flashed in the lurid glow. Those on the wall and those drawn up in the square stared at the loveliness of Lailat, whose white limbs and shapely form smiled warmly through the gauze that curled about her like a wisp of smoke.

  “Men of Yakoub Khan,” she said, addressing the officers at the head of the column, “which of these is a king?”

  She pointed toward Mahjoub on the parapet.

  “Would Shams ud Din hide in his house and let another direct the defense? Who is reddest with the blood of battle, that impostor on the wall, or this man hacked from head to foot?”

  A murmuring and a muttering rose from all sides. Steel flashed. The commander of Yakoub Khan’s troops was advancing toward Shams ud Din.

  One move, and only one, for Nureddin.

  “Fire!” he commanded. “Fire, and Shaytan take the wench!”

  But instead of firing, the soldiers along the parapet leaped to their feet.

  “Ya Zenghi! Ya Zenghi!” they yelled.

  Above the roar of acclamation, Shams ud Din shouted, “Take him alive, and that impostor also!”

  Then, to the red-haired girl, “Lailat, you should hate me instead—”

  “Allah blacken you, Shams ud Din,” replied the girl as she folded her cloak about her, and raised her veil. “I hate you to the death.”

  Shams ud Din smiled, and turned to the commander of Yakoub Khan’s troops.

  “The peace upon you, ya sarhang! It seems that I won’t need your services after all.” And then, “Ho, there, Mamoun! Round up this rabble and lead them to the audience hall.”

  * * * *

  Shams ud Din sat once more in the throne room he had never expected to see again. Clustered about the dais were the white-bearded Companions, and the survivors of Mamoun’s guard, and rabble and scum of the town that had fought shoulder to shoulder with their sultan.

  A detachment of soldiers escorted three prisoners into the presence: Nureddin, followed by Mahjoub the Darwish, and the red-haired girl from Tcherkess.

  Nureddin knew full well the futility of begging mercy of that iron man, his uncle.

  “Do with me as you please, ya malik,” he said defiantly. “That red-haired wench from Tcherkess used me to spite you, and then she delivered me into your hands. And I have become as a bird without feathers.”

  “Used you to spite me, Nureddin?” murmured the sultan, smiling whimsically. “Son of my worthless brother, did she ask you to do anything you had never before dreamed of doing? I might have your hide peeled from your body, here and now. I might feed you molten lead, or have you skillfully torn asunder so that you would be days in dying. But I exalt the great name of Allah, and bear you no malice…”

  The sultan made a gesture.

  For just an instant Nureddin stood unflinching to face the whirlwind of steel that the gesture had loosed; only an instant, for the white-haired Companions leaped as they drew their swords, and struck as they leaped. And then they retreated, wiping their scimitars.

  The girl from Tcherkess suddenly eluded her escort, and stopping short of what a moment ago had been Nureddin, threw aside her veil.

  “Lailat,” said the sultan, smiling again, “you sold me into the hands of my brother’s son. And then you stepped between me and the firing-squad to save me. Why?”

  The girl met his smile with a smile.

  “Old gray wolf,” she said, “you gave me to be the slave of a slave. But when you offered your life for the lives of those old hounds of the hills, and that scum of the bazaar, my spite failed me, and I spoke. Let them do to me as they did to Nureddin.”

  The sultan looked past Lailat, and at Mahjoub the Darwish. Then he regarded those who had thrown him into prison, and saw that they wondered which of the two they had flogged as a madman.

  “Darwish,” said Shams ud Din at last, “it pleased Allah that we two should be as alike as two drops of rain. The Old Tiger my father looted and sacked many cities, and their women served his pleasure: and thus it may be that you and I are brothers, both sons of the Tiger. Therefore take oath never to enter the city again. And also take my blessing, a thousand tomans, and an escort to the border.”

  The darwish bowed, but before he could withdraw from the Presence, the sultan spoke again, this time to Lailat: “Since you think so little of the house of Zenghi as to sell my nephew and me into each other’s hands, go with this darwish, and be that your reward and your punishment.”

  The ancient Companions stared enviously at Mahjoub as he left the throne room, followed by Lailat. And Shams ud Din sat on his throne, sourly smiling his challenge to the survivors of that grasping, plotting clan of Zenghi.

  ONE ARABIAN NIGHT

  Originally published in Spicy-Adventure Stories, November 1934.

  The breeze that swept out from the Arabian Desert wafted a whiff of even hotter fumes from the now silent engines of the great tri-motored plane and assured Glenn Farrell that it was not a dream. Petrol and hot lube and exhaust gases were never that vivid in any mirage.

  Farrell was lean, broad of shoul
der, craggy jawed, and at home from Surabaya to Timbuktu; yet his gray eyes were wide and the stern lines of his rugged face had dissolved in wonder. He had landed in a lost city whose very existence had for some twenty-eight dusty centuries been no more than a legend: the capital from which Balkis, Queen of Sheba, had set out to visit King Solomon.

  And it was inhabited. Bronzed, bearded men were emerging from the purple shadows of colossal palaces and terraced ziggurats that rose dizzily up and into the red glow of the setting sun. Slender, shapely women with olive hued bodies peered through transparent veils that were not intended to conceal their scarlet lips and kohl darkened eyelids.

  The natives halted. Their guttural murmuring subsided; but Glenn Farrell had heard enough to know that the language which they spoke was similar to Arabic in the way that the English of Chaucer’s time resembles the language of our day. Without turning to his two companions, he said, in a low voice that was unsteady with wonder, “Talk to their leader, Ismeddin.”

  The old, white bearded Arab who had followed Farrell from Mekinez to Boukhara advanced and greeted the stern faced amir who had stepped from the silent but ever thickening throng of natives. They were armed with curved scimitars; but a few carried silver mounted, long barreled jezails, and flintlock pistols—weapons which they must have bought from wandering Bedouins who had ventured into the terrific Rub’ al-Khali.

  Farrell knew that Ismeddin’s parley would decide the fate of the party. He turned to his friend, Colonel Pierre d’Artois, on leave from the French Air Service to pilot Farrell’s plane to Africa.

  “If we have to take it on the run, do you think you can lift her out of this plaza and clear of the walls?”

  The grim faced old soldier shrugged, twisted his waxed moustache to a finer point and said, “Mondieu! Trying is the only way to find out. Though if that girl near the chief doesn’t quit eyeing you that way, mon ami, there will be some of that hell popping.”