Hawk of the Hills | Page 4

brown rocks that frowned about them. The one exception
was Suleiman, a Punjabi Moslem, ostensibly his servant, actually a
valuable member of the English secret service.
Willoughby himself was not a member of that service. His status was
unique; he was one of those ubiquitous Englishmen who steadily build
the empire, moving obscurely behind the scenes, and letting other men
take the credit--men in bemedaled uniforms, or loud-voiced men with
top hats and titles.

Few knew just what Willoughby's commission was, or what niche he
filled in the official structure; but the epitome of the man and his career
was once embodied in the request of a harried deputy commissioner:
"Hell on the border; send Willoughby!" Because of his unadvertised
activities, troops did not march and cannons did not boom on more
occasions than the general public ever realized. So it was not really
surprising--except to those die-hards who refuse to believe that
maintaining peace on the Afghan Border is fundamentally different
from keeping order in Trafalgar Square--that Willoughby should be
riding forth in the company of hairy cutthroats to arbitrate a bloody hill
feud at the request of an Oriental despot.
Willoughby was of medium height and stockily, almost chubbily, built,
though there were unexpected muscles under his ruddy skin. His hair
was taffy-colored, his eyes blue, wide and deceptively ingenuous. He
wore civilian khakis and a huge sun helmet. If he was armed the fact
was not apparent. His frank, faintly freckled face was not unpleasant,
but it displayed little evidence of the razor-sharp brain that worked
behind it.
He jogged along as placidly as if he were ambling down a lane in his
native Suffolk, and he was more at ease than the ruffians who
accompanied him--four wild-looking, ragged tribesmen under the
command of a patriarch whose stately carriage and gray-shot pointed
beard did not conceal the innate savagery reflected in his truculent
visage. Baber Ali, uncle of Afdal Khan, was old, but his back was
straight as a trooper's, and his gaunt frame was wolfishly hard. He was
his nephew's right-hand man, possessing all Afdal Khan's ferocity, but
little of his subtlety and cunning.
They were following a trail that looped down a steep slope which fell
away for a thousand feet into a labyrinth of gorges. In a valley a mile to
the south, Willoughby sighted a huddle of charred and blackened ruins.
"A village, Baber?" he asked.
Baber snarled like an old wolf.

"Aye! That was Khuttak! El Borak and his devils burned it and slew
every man able to bear arms."
Willoughby looked with new interest. It was such things as that he had
come to stop, and it was El Borak he was now riding to see.
"El Borak is a son of Shaitan," growled old Baber.
"Not a village of Afdal Khan's remains unburned save only Khoruk
itself. And of the outlying towers, only my sangar remains, which lies
between this spot and Khoruk. Now he has seized the cavern called
Akbar's Castle, and that is in Orakzai territory. By Allah, for an hour
we have been riding in country claimed by us Orakzai, but now it has
become a no man's land, a border strewn with corpses and burned
villages, where no man's life is safe. At any moment we may be fired
upon."
"Gordon has given his word," reminded Willoughby.
"His word is not wind," admitted the old ruffian grudgingly.
They had dropped down from the heights and were traversing a narrow
plateau that broke into a series of gorges at the other end. Willoughby
thought of the letter in his pocket, which had come to him by devious
ways. He had memorized it, recognizing its dramatic value as a
historical document.
Geoffrey Willoughby,
Ghazrael Fort:
If you want to parley, come to Shaitan's Minaret, alone. Let your escort
stop outside the mouth of the gorge. They won't be molested, but if any
Orakzai follows you into the gorge, he'll be shot.
Francis X. Gordon.
Concise and to the point. Parley, eh? The man had assumed the role of
a general carrying on a regular war, and left no doubt that he

considered Willoughby, not a disinterested arbiter, but a diplomat
working in the interests of the opposing side.
"We should be near the Gorge of the Minaret," said Willoughby.
Baber Ali pointed. "There is its mouth."
"Await me here."
Suleiman dismounted and eased his steed's girths. The Pathans climbed
down uneasily, hugging their rifles and scanning the escarpments.
Somewhere down that winding gorge Gordon was lurking with his
vengeful warriors. The Orakzai were afraid. They were miles from
Khoruk, in the midst of a region that had become a bloody debatable
ground through slaughter on both sides. They instinctively looked
toward the southwest where, miles away, lay the crag-built village of