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Updated: June 1, 2025
There were only a few lines, written in Arabic, which all mullahs are supposed to be able to read, and they were signed with a strange scrawl that might have meant anything. But the paper smelt strongly of her perfume. "Come, then. Bring all your men, and I will let you and them enter Khinjan Caves. We will strike a bargain in the Cavern of Earth's Drink."
King shuddered again, this time without an effort. He could imagine the thousands watching grimly while the flayer used his knife. "I have men in Khinjan! I have as many as she! On the day I march there will be a revolt within. She would better agree to terms!" King lay looking at him, like a prisoner on the rack undergoing examination. He did not answer. "Write thou a letter.
"Who are ye?" howled a human being, whose voice was so like a wolf's that the words at first had no meaning. He peered over the parapet, a hundred feet above, with his head so swathed in dirty linen that he looked like a bandaged corpse. "What will ye? Who comes uninvited into Khinjan?" King bethought him of Yasmini's talisman. He, held it up, and the gold band glinted in the sun.
They were too impressed by the seriousness of what they undertook, and in their hearts too much afraid. The noise was bravado. At last Khinjan Gate opened and the mullah led in. The gate did not shut after the last man, King noted that. "Let us go now!" shouted fifty voices, and every man of King's party showed himself and stretched. "Let us go! Why wait?" But King would not go.
"Who shall find a hundred?" somebody demanded, and there was a chorus of denial. "We be all in this camp who ate the salt." It was plain, though, that his daring to hold out only gave them the more confidence in him. "But Khinjan," he objected. The crimes of the Khinjan men were not to the point. Time had to be gained. "Aye," they agreed. "There be many in Khinjan!"
And all that while Ismail watched him with carefully disguised concern, but undisguised interest. And King understood. Enlightenment comes to a man swiftly, when it does come, as a rule. He recalled that Yasmini had not done much to make his first entry into Khinjan easy.
"The mullah will march on Khinjan!" They murmured and wondered and backed away from him to give him room. Ismail watched him with dropped jaw and wild eye. "Spread it through the camp that we march on Khinjan! Shout it! Bid them strike the tents!" Somebody behind took up the shout and it went across the camp in leaps, as men toss a ball.
Four thousand men with women and children and baggage do not move so swiftly as one man or a dozen, especially in the "Hills," where discipline is reckoned beneath a proud man's honor. There were many miles to go before Khinjan when night fell and the mullah bade them camp. He bade them camp because they would have done it otherwise in any case.
They swung along into the darkness under low-hung stars, trailing behind King's horse, with only half a dozen of them a hundred yards or so ahead as an advance guard, and all of them expecting to see Khinjan loom above each next valley, for distances and darkness are deceptive in the "Hills," even to trained eyes. Suddenly the advance guard halted, but did not shoot.
Will you test my authority, Muhammad Anim?" The mullah sat down, and hundreds of men laughed at him, but not all of the men by any means. "It is the law that none goes out of Khinjan Cave alive who breaks the law of the Caves. But he broke no very big law. And he spoke truth. Think Ye! If that head had only fallen into Muhammad Anim's lap, the mullah might have smuggled in another man with it!"
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