The House of the Falcon
flashes. All the firing seemed to be directed at Mahmoud.
"Not much good bombarding the landscape at night," he shouted to Edith cheerfully. "It excites the men and makes a lot of smoke. I've seen it before this."
She pressed trembling hands to her ears, wondering whether his words were not intended merely to hearten her.
"What is … happening?" she cried. "And Mahmoud?"
"Some mummery of the hakim … always means something…. Wait."
His disjointed sentences barely reached her. Then he gripped her arm and bent forward.
New sounds were adrift in the courtyard. Horses neighed—hoofs beat upon stone. Men shouted and cursed. To Edith, struggling with wavering senses, the Kurgan and the plain alike were an ocean in which shapes darted and a flood of plunging forms swept under the tower. She heard Donovan cry:
"The horses are loosed."
In the smoky murk she could see nothing clearly. A horrid sound rose from the further end of the Kurgan—a man's scream. It seemed to her that new forms, white and gray, pressed past the base of the tower, on the broken roof of the hold, and swept over the distant wall to the north.
Surely she caught the gleam of bare steel, against the flash of a rifle. The shooting dwindled, but voices growled and roared.
"Sayak!" And again: "Sayak!"
Then came the words, clearly to the girl:
"Tahir el kadr." And again: "Dono-van Khan—ho!—Dono-van Khan!"
270
