Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/293

 of Mahmoud's diversion in front of the tower. Women, boys, and old men, the Sayaks had come, summoned by Iskander during the hours of quiet after Donovan's warning, armed with whatever they could lay hand on and ready to die in the defense of their homes and the temple. And at their head the hadji had advanced.

So the men about Abbas felt in their hearts a greater fear than that of the mystery of Yakka Arik—the fear of righteously angered women and aged men led by a priest, of fathers and husbands who cared not for their own lives so long as the marauders were slain—and the struggling Aravang was unheeded until he rose, swaying above the body of his victim, the Kurd.

Just at that moment Abbas, standing above him on the wood, reached for his knife. And Aravang, seeing this, groped for Abbas with teeth agrin. A pawlike hand jerked the Alaman down, behind the pile, and the bloody face of the kul glared in his.

"Aid!" Abbas Abad screamed: "Aid—O my worthy friends—leave me not"

But down through the aperture came the ragged fusillade from the revolver of Edith Rand, and the followers of Abbas fled away from this new peril, crying that the place was bewitched and that there were spirits in the tower. Abbas felt on the stone floor for the knife which had dropped from his hand in his fall and saw that Aravang had set his foot on it. And he read his death in the savage eyes that flamed into his.

"Thou art the man," roared Aravang, "who would have burned my mistress. Taste then what thou hast stored up!"

Aravang had taken a small log in his free hand, and upon this the eyes of the merchant fastened while