The Lost Valley of Iskander

The Lost Valley of Iskander by Robert E. Howard
Contents
I. The Oiled Silk Package
II. The Rescue of Bardylis of Attalus
III. The Sons of Iskander
IV. The Duel with Ptolemy the Kind
V. The Death of Hunyadi
The Lost Valley of Iskander
IT WAS THE stealthy clink of steel on stone that wakened Gordon. In
the dim starlight a shadowy bulk loomed over him and something
glinted in the lifted hand. Gordon went into action like a steel spring
uncoiling. His left hand checked the descending wrist with its curved
knife, and simultaneously he heaved upward and locked his right hand
savagely on a hairy throat.
A gurgling gasp was strangled in that throat and Gordon, resisting the
other's terrific plunges, hooked a leg about his knee and heaved him
over and underneath. There was no sound except the rasp and thud of
straining bodies. Gordon fought, as always, in grim silence. No sound
came from the straining lips of the man beneath. His right hand writhed
in Gordon's grip while his left tore futilely at the wrist whose iron
fingers drove deeper and deeper into the throat they grasped. That wrist
felt like a mass of woven steel wires to the weakening fingers that
clawed at it. Grimly Gordon maintained his position, driving all the
power of his compact shoulders and corded arms into his throttling
fingers. He knew it was his life or that of the man who had crept up to
stab him in the dark. In that unmapped corner of the Afghan mountains

all fights were to the death. The tearing fingers relaxed. A convulsive
shudder ran through the great body straining beneath the American. It
went limp.

I. The Oiled Silk Package
GORDON SLID OFF the corpse, in the deeper shadow of the great
rocks among which he had been sleeping. Instinctively he felt under his
arm to see if the precious package for which he had staked his life was
still safe. Yes, it was there, that flat bundle of papers wrapped in oiled
silk, that meant life or death to thousands. He listened. No sound broke
the stillness. About him the slopes with their ledges and boulders rose
gaunt and black in the starlight. It was the darkness before the dawn.
But he knew that men moved about him, out there among the rocks.
His ears, whetted by years in wild places, caught stealthy sounds—the
soft rasp of cloth over stones, the faint shuffle of sandalled feet. He
could not see them, and he knew they could not see him, among the
clustered boulders he had chosen for his sleeping site.
His left hand groped for his rifle, and he drew his revolver with his
right. That short, deadly fight had made no more noise than the silent
knifing of a sleeping man might have made. Doubtless his stalkers out
yonder were awaiting some signal from the man they had sent in to
murder their victim.
Gordon knew who these men were. He knew their leader was the man
who had dogged him for hundreds of miles, determined he should not
reach India with that silk-wrapped packet. Francis Xavier Gordon was
known by repute from Stamboul to the China Sea. The Muhammadans
called him El Borak, the Swift, and they feared and respected him. But
in Gustav Hunyadi, renegade and international adventurer, Gordon had
met his match. And he knew now that Hunyadi, out there in the night,
was lurking with his Turkish killers. They had ferreted him out, at last.
Gordon glided out from among the boulders as silently as a great cat.

No hillman, born and bred among those crags, could have avoided
loose stones more skillfully or picked his way more carefully. He
headed southward, because that was the direction in which lay his
ultimate goal. Doubtless he was completely surrounded.
His soft native sandals made no noise, and in his dark hillman's garb he
was all but invisible. In the pitch-black shadow of an overhanging cliff,
he suddenly sensed a human presence ahead of him. A voice hissed, a
European tongue framing the Turki words: "Ali! Is that you? Is the dog
dead? Why did you not call me?"
Gordon struck savagely in the direction of the voice. His pistol barrel
crunched glancingly against a human skull, and a man groaned and
crumpled. All about rose a sudden clamor of voices, the rasp of leather
on rock. A stentorian voice began shouting, with a note of panic.
Gordon cast stealth to the winds. With a bound he cleared the writhing
body before him, and sped off down the slope. Behind him rose a
chorus of yells as the men in hiding glimpsed his shadowy figure racing
through the starlight. Jets of orange cut the darkness, but the bullets