horse and fired at last: he struck an escaping man fifty yards in the rear.
In the van of the Kazaks the yak’s tail banner tossed and waved. There was a piercing shout from below and the banner rushed forward, with fifty men behind it, charging for the dismounted men at the foot of the cliff. In a moment they had swept by the withering fire from the heights, and they were engaged in a battle at hand to hand, so close that the men above could not fire without hitting their own friends.
The Kokonor men were outnumbered more than two to one: the sheer cliff was behind them, and they could not fly.
‘Professor, stay here with Derrick and Chingiz. Pick off the Kazaks down the valley,’ said Sullivan, as he lowered himself over the side. Ross was already going down before him, and Olaf followed fast. On the far side the Kokonor Mongols were also climbing down. One fell, and rolled the whole length of the steep slope to a Kazak lance.
Ross was the first down, but Sullivan out-paced him to the fight. Two horsemen came at him, and running he missed his shot, but he leapt aside from the nearer lance and sprang for the horse’s head. He wrenched horse and rider to the ground, and the second man came down in the threshing legs. The Kazaks bounded free and came for him again, but before they could strike he hurled his rifle at them. He was within their guard, and in each hand he held a Kazak by the neck. With a crack like a rifle-shot he smashed their heads together: the helmets rang and fell, and the Tartars dropped senseless from his hands.
Sullivan gave a bellow like an angry bull and dashed into the fight. A horseman, wheeling, cut the shoulder off his coat: as the horse reared Sullivan gripped the rider by the leg and jerked him down. The Kazak fought like a wild-cat: Sullivan raised him, hurled him down on the rocks and then flung his body into the knot of swordsmen surrounding Hulagu. He followed right behind the hurled body, roaring and striking right and left.
The battle was more even now. Ross, using his rifle as a club, was over on the right, taking the Tartars from behind: Olaf was by his side, with a boulder in each great hand that converted his fists into two deadly maces. A rush of horsemen from the farther end was checked by the men above: the Professor had the hang of his weapon now, and now even Li Han could hardly miss. Only four men got through.
In the middle of a ring of Kazaks, Sullivan fought like a man possessed. He had no weapons, but he held a man by his feet, and whirling him round he drove the Kazaks before him. They scattered, and he threw the body with all his force, knocking three of them down. From one of the fallen men he snatched a sword, and for a moment he stood alone. It was a long blade, heavy and straight: he shifted it in his hand. It was a brave man who came against him, Attay Bogra, the son of the Altai Khan. The blades leapt in the sunlight, hissing against each other, hissing and clashing so that the noise was like the noise in a smithy when two men hammer on the iron. They went to and fro, and men fell back from either side of them. The red wound from a half-parried blow sprang open on Sullivan’s forearm, and the blood flowed fast. He gave back a step, but as he stepped the Tartar lunged, slipped in a pool of blood and almost fell. He straightened, saw Sullivan’s sword whip up in both hands to the height above him, and flung up his sword against the blow, but in vain: the sword flashed down, a blinding arc of light, and through helmet, skull and bone the sword bit to the ground. The Tartar fell, clean cut in two. There was a great cry, and a moment of sudden panic among the Kazaks. At this instant the Kokonor Mongols from the farther cliff reached the bottom – they had had a longer and a steeper climb, but now they flew into the fight.
Sullivan wiped the blood from his eyes and glanced around to find the thickest of the fray. There was none. The Kazaks were already horsed, and the survivors were racing down the gulley.
At the edge of the Takla Makan they met the old Khan of Kokonor. He was a little man with a straggling white beard and streaming white moustaches that flew out on each side of his helmet. Derrick thought he looked a curious figure to lead the fiercest horde in Mongolia, and he was surprised at the deference with which Ross and Sullivan greeted him. They dismounted before he did, and walked across the sand to shake his hand: the old Khan was ill at ease out of the saddle, and he waddled on his bowed legs as he advanced to meet them.
Everyone stood well aside in silence while the three talked. After a little while they parted: the Khan shook hands again, nodded to his sons, and was gone in a cloud of dust.
‘Was that funny little man the Khan Hulagu?’ asked Derrick.
His uncle was thinking of other things: he looked worried, and his face was dark. But after a moment he forced a smile and said, ‘That funny little man, as you call him, is the Khan. He has probably killed more men than you have ever spoken to in your life, merely in guarding his own lands: what he could do if he went on the loose, I hesitate to think. I wouldn’t call him a funny little man if I were you.’
Sullivan and Ross walked on to where the Professor stood: they drew him aside out of earshot, and Sullivan said, ‘I am afraid we have bad news. We cannot go on by the road we planned, and we cannot go back. The Kazaks have cut the roads to the Gobi, and they have defeated the Khan’s men north of the Takla Makan. He is very short of men just now, until he can get his scattered horde together, but he will give us a dozen men for a month to take us south of the Takla Makan to the Kirghiz country. We will be safe there. It is a quicker road than the one we proposed before, but it will give you no archaeology at all – it will be hard riding all the way.’
‘I am all for speed at this juncture,’ said the Professor, ‘and I feel that I would rather get the jade home than make any number of diggings, however exciting they might be. But will it be necessary to deprive this worthy man of so many of his followers?’
‘If you want to carry your head home as well as your jade,’ said Ross, ‘you will thank your stars that the Khan has made the offer. I wish that he could let us have ten times as many. Ever since this clumsy lubber Sullivan killed the Altai Khan’s son there has been a blood-feud between us and them, and they’ll be after us like a pack of wolves.’
‘Yes. That is the case,’ said Sullivan, shaking his head. ‘And that is not the only danger. The old Khan does not know exactly what has happened in the north, and there is the possibility – the very faint possibility, mind – that the Kazaks might come down through the middle of the Takla Makan and cut our road before we can get through.’ He drew a rough oval in the sand. ‘Here are we,’ he said, pointing to the narrow end of the egg, ‘and we have got to hurry along the southern edge. If they should come down thus’ – he drew a line through the middle of the egg – ‘and hit this southern edge by the Kunlun mountains before we have passed the point where they reach our path, why, then things might be very bad.’
‘Yes,’ said the Professor, gravely. ‘I quite see that.’
‘But,’ said Ross, ‘although they might be very bad, they would not be hopeless. There are some places where it is possible to get up through the Kunlun into Tibet – but we hardly need worry our heads about that. The chances of the Kazaks coming down through the desert are really very slight. Our chief aim must be to get along as fast as ever we can, and I think we should talk from our saddles, rather than wandering about like lambs waiting for the butcher.’
They stripped the column down to its bare necessities. Bale after bale they left standing in the sand, food, books and the Professor’s rubber bath: they changed all the camel-loads that could not be left behind on to horses, and by the light of the crescent moon alone they rode hard for the south. Yet fast though they went, the Mongols were not satisfied: they pushed on and on until Derrick slept in his saddle, and Li Han had to have his feet tied under his horse’s belly to keep him on. Twice young Hulagu made
