BARA MIYAN, HIGH PRIEST
The crash of six machine-guns clattered into a chattering tumult, muzzles pointed high over the heads of the Jannati Shahr men. Up into the still, hot air jetted vicious spurts of flame.
The Legion's answer lasted but a minute. As the trays of blanks became empty, the tumult ceased.
Silence fell, strangely heavy after all that uproar. This silence lengthened impressively, with the massed horsemen on one side, the Legionaries on the other. Between them stretched a clear green space of turf. Behind loomed the vast bulk of Nissr, scarred, battle-worn, but powerful. Away in the distance, the glinting golden walls shimmered across the plain; and over all the Arabian sun glowed down as if a-wonder at this scene surpassing strange.
Forward stepped the Master, with a word to Leclair to follow him but to stand a little in the rear. The old Sheik dismounted; and followed by another graybeard, likewise advanced. When the distance was but about eight feet between them, both halted. Silence continued, broken only by the dull drone of one engine still running on board the ship, by the creaking of saddle-leather, the whinny of a barb.
Lithe, powerful, alert, with his cap held over his heart, the Master stood there peering from under his thick, dark brows at the aged Sheik. A lean-faced old man the Sheik was, heavily bearded with white, his brows snowy, his eyes a hawk's, and the fine aquilinity of his nose the hallmark of pure Arab blood.
Hard as iron he looked, gravely observing, unabashed in face of these white strangers and of this mysterious flying house. The very spirit of the Arabian sun seemed to have been caught in his gleaming eyes, to glitter there, to reflect its pride, its ardor. He reminded one of a falcon, untamed, untamable. And his dress, its colors distinguishing him from the mass of his followers, still further proclaimed the rank he occupied.
His cherchia of jade-green silk was bound with a ukal, or fillet of camel's-hair; his burnous, also silk, showed tenderest shades of lavender and rose. Under its open folds could be seen a violet jacket with buttons of filigree ivory. He had handed his gun to the man behind him, and now was unarmed save for a gadaymi, or semicircular knife, thrust into his silk sash of crimson, with frayed edges.
A leather bandolier, wonderfully tooled and filled with cartridges, passed over his right shoulder to his left hip. His feet, high-arched and fine of line, were naked save for silk-embroidered babooshes.
The Master realized, as he gazed on this extraordinary old man, whose dignity was such that even the bizarre mélange of colors could not detract from it, that he was beholding a very different type of Arab from any he yet had come in contact with.
The aged Sheik salaamed. The Master returned the salutation, then covered himself and saluted smartly. In a deep, grave voice the old man said:
"A'hla wasá'halan!" (Be ye welcome!)
"Bikum!" (I give thee thanks!) replied the Master.
"In Allah's name, who are ye?"
"Franks," the Master said, vastly relieved at this unexpected amity.
Strange contrast with the violent hostility heretofore experienced!
What might it mean? What might be hidden beneath this quiet surface?
Relief and anxiety mingled in the Master's mind. If treachery were intended, in just this manner would it speak.
"Men of Feringistan?" asked the aged Sheik. "And what do ye here?"
"We be fighting-men, all," replied the Master. He had already noted, with a thrill of admiration, the wondrous purity of the old man's Arabic. His use of final vowels after the noun, and his rejection of the pronoun, which apocope in the Arabic verb renders necessary in the everyday speech of the people, told the Master he was listening to some archaic, uncorrupted form of the language. Here indeed was nobility of blood, breed, speech, if anywhere!
"Fighting-men, all," the Master repeated, while Leclair listened with keen enjoyment and the Legion stood attentive, with the white-burnoused horsemen giving ear to every word—astonished, no doubt, to hear Arabic speech from the lips of an unbeliever. "We have traveled far, from the Lands of the Books. Is it not meritorious, O Sheik? Doth not thy Prophet himself say: 'Voyaging is victory, and he who journeyeth not is both ignorant and blind?"'
The old man pondered a moment, then fell to stroking his beard. The act was friendly, and of good portent. He murmured:
"I see, O Frank, that thou hast read the Strong Book. Thou dost know our law, even though thou be from Feringistan. What is thy name?"
"Men know me only as The Master. And thine?"
"Bara Miyan (The Great Sir), nothing more."
"Dost thou wish us well?" the Master put a leading question.
"Kull'am antum bil khair!" (May ye be well, every year!) said the old Sheik. The Master sensed a huge relief. Undoubtedly—hard as this was to understand, and much as it contradicted Rrisa's prediction—the attitude of these Jannati Shahr folk was friendly. Unless, indeed, all this meant ambush. But to look into those grave, deep eyes, to see that furrowed countenance of noble, straight-forward uprightness, seemed to negative any such suspicion.
"We have come to bring ye wondrous gifts," the Master volunteered, wanting to strike while the iron was hot.
"That is well," assented Bara Miyan. "But never before have the Franks come to this center of the Empty Abodes."
"Even Allah had to say 'Be!' before anything was!" (i.e., there must be a first time for everything).
This answer, pat from a favorite verse of the Koran, greatly pleased
Bara Miyan. He smiled gravely, and nodded.
"Allah made all men," he affirmed. "Mayhap the Franks and we be brothers. Have ye come by way of Mecca?"
"Yea. And sorry brotherhood did the Mecca men offer us, O Sheik! So, too, the men of Beni Harb. Together, they slew five of us. But we be fighting-men, Bara Miyan. We took a great vengeance. All that tribe of Beni Harb we brushed with the wing of Azraël, save only the Great Apostate. And from the men of the 'Navel of the World'—Mecca—we exacted greater tribute than even death!"
The Master's voice held a quiet menace that by no means escaped Bara Miyan. Level-eyed, he gazed at the white man. Then he advanced two paces, and in a low voice demanded:
"Abd el Rahman still lives?"
"He lives, Bara Miyan."
"Where is the Great Apostate?"
"In our flying house, a prisoner."
"Bismillah! Deliver him unto me, and thy people and mine shall be as brothers!"
"First let us share the salt!"
Speaking, the Master slid his hand into the same pocket that contained the Great Pearl Star, and took out a small bag of salt. This he opened, and held out. Bara Miyan likewise felt in a recess of his many-hued burnous. For a moment he hesitated as if about to bring out something. But he only shook his head.
"The salt—not yet, O White Sheik!" said he.
"We have brought thy people precious gifts," began the Master, again. Behind him he heard an impatient whisper—the major's voice, quivering with eagerness:
"Ask him if this place is really all gold! Faith, if I could only talk their lingo! Ask him!"
"I shall place you under arrest, if you interfere again," the Master retorted, without turning round.
"What saith the White Sheik?" asked Bara Miyan, hearing the strange words of a language his ears never before had listened to.
"Only prayer in my own tongue, Bara Miyan. A prayer that thine and mine may become akhawat"[1]
[Footnote 1: Friends bound by an oath to an offensive and defensive alliance.]
"Deliver unto me Abd el Rahman, and let thine imams (priests) work stronger magic than mine," said the old Sheik with great deliberation, "and I will accept thy gifts and we will say: 'Nahnu malihin!' (We have eaten salt together!) And I will make thee gifts greater than thy gifts to me, O White Sheik. Then thou and thine can fly away to thine own country, and bear witness that there be Arabs who do not love to slay the Feringi, but count all men as brethren.
"But if thou wilt not deliver Abd el Rahman to me, or test thy magic against my magic, then depart now, in peace, before the setting of the sun. I have spoken!"
"Take him at his word, my Captain!" murmured Leclair. "We can get no better terms. Even these are a miracle!"
"My opinion, exactly," replied the Master, still facing Bara-Miyan, who had now stepped back a few paces and was flanked by two huge Arabs, in robes hardly less chromatic, who had silently advanced.
"I accept," decided the Master. He turned, ordered Enemark and L'Heureux to fetch out the Apostate, and then remained quietly waiting. Silence fell on both sides, for a few minutes. The Arabs, for the most part, remained staring at Nissr, to them no doubt the greatest miracle imaginable. Still, minds trained to believe in the magic carpet of Sulayman and quite virgin of any knowledge of machinery, could easily account for the airship's flying by means of jinnee concealed in its entrails.
As for the Legionaries, their attention was divided between the strange white host, still sitting astride those high-necked, slim-barreled Nedj horses, and the luring glimmer of the golden walls. In a few minutes, however, all attention on both sides was sharply drawn by the return of the two Legionaries with the Apostate.
Without ado, the lean, wild man of the Sahara was led, in wrinkled burnous, with disheveled hair, wild eyes, and an expression of helpless despair, to where the Master stood. At sight of the massed horsemen, the grassy plain—a sight never yet beheld by him—and the distant golden, glimmering walls, a look of desperation flashed into his triple-scarred face.
The whole experience of the past days had been a Jehannum of incomprehensible terrors. Now that the climax was at hand, strength nearly deserted him even to stand. But the proud Arab blood in him flared up again as he was thrust forward, confronting Bara Miyan. His head snapped up, his eyes glittered like a caged eagle's, the fine, high nostrils dilated; and there he stood, captive but unbeaten, proud even in this hour of death.
Bara Miyan made no great speaking. All he asked was:
"Art thou, indeed, that Shaytan called Abd el Rahman, the Reviler?"
The desert Sheik nodded with arrogant admission.
Bara Miyan turned and clapped his hands. Out from among the horsemen two gigantic black fellows advanced. Neither one was Arab, though no doubt they spoke the tongue. Their features were Negroid, of an East African type.
The dress they wore distinguished them from all the others. They had neither tarboosh nor burnous, but simply red fezes; tight sleeveless shirts of striped stuff, and trousers of Turkish cut. Their feet were bare.
Strange enough figures they made, black as coal, muscled like Hercules, and towering well toward seven feet, with arms and hands in which the sinews stood out like living welts. Their faces expressed neither intelligence nor much ferocity. Submission to Bara Miyan's will marked their whole attitude.
"Sa'ad," commanded Bara Miyan, "seest thou this dog?"
"Master, I see," answered one of the gigantic blacks, speaking with a strange, thick accent.
"Lead him away, thou and Musa. He was brought us by these zawwar (visitors). Thy hands and Musa's are strong. Remember, no drop of blood must be shed in El Barr.[1] But let not the dog see another sun. I have spoken."
[Footnote 1: Literally "The Plain." This name, no doubt, originally applied only to the vast inner space surrounded by the Iron Mountains, seems to have come to be that of Jannati Shahr itself, when spoken of by its inhabitants. El Barr is probably the secret name that Rrisa would not divulge.]
The gigantic executioner—the strangler—named Sa'ad, seized Abd el Rahman by the right arm. Musa, his tar-hued companion, gripped him by the left. Never a word uttered the Apostate as he was led away through the horsemen. But he gave one backward look, piercing and strange, at the Master who had thus delivered him to death—a look that, for all the White Sheik's aplomb, strangely oppressed him.
Then the horsemen closed about the two Maghrabi, or East Africans, and about their victim. Abd el Rahman, the Great Apostate, as a living man, had forever passed from the sight of the Flying Legion.
His departure, in so abrupt and deadly simple a manner, gave the Master some highly conflicting thoughts. The fact that no blood was ever to be shed in this city had reassuring aspects. On the other hand, how many of these Maghrabi stranglers did Bara Miyan keep as a standing army? A Praetorian guard of men with gorilla-hands like the two already seen might, in a close corner, prove more formidable than men armed with the archaic firearms of the place or with cold steel.
A sensation of considerable uneasiness crept over the Master as he pondered the huge strength and docility of these two executioners. It was only by reflecting that the renegade Sheik would gladly have murdered the whole Legion, and that now (by a kind of poetic justice) he had been delivered back into the hands of the Sunnites he had so long defied and outraged, that the Master could smooth his conscience for having done this thing.
The direct, efficient way, however, in which Bara Miyan dealt with one held as an enemy, urged the Master to press forward the ceremony of giving and taking salt.
At all hazards, safeguards against attack must be taken. Once more the
Master addressed Bara Miyan:
"Effendi! Our gifts are great to thee and thine. Great, also, is our magic. Let thine imams do their magic, and we ours. If the magic of El Barr exceeds ours, we will depart without exchange of gifts. If ours exceeds thine, then let the salt be in our stomachs, all for all, and let the gifts be exchanged!
"Thy magic against our magic! Say, O Sheik, dost thou dare accept that challenge?"
The old man's head came up sharply. His eyes gleamed with intense pride and confidence.
"The magic of the unbelievers against that of the People of the Garment!" (Moslems!) cried he. "Bismillah! To the testing of the magic!"