There were crisscross trails, where low-hung clouds swept curtainwise
to make the compass seem like a lie-begotten trick. There were gorges,
hewn when the Titans needed dirt to build the awful Himalayas--
shadow-darkened--sheer as the edge of Nemesis. Long-reaching, pile
on pile, the over-lapping spurs leaned over them. The wind blew
through them amid silence that swallowed and made nothing of the din
which rides with armed men.
But, with eyes that were made for hunting, on horses that seemed part
of them, they tracked and trailed--and viewed at last. Their shout
gave Khumel Khan his notice that the price of a hundred murders was
overdue, and he chose to make payment where a V-shaped cliff enclosed a
small, flat plateau and not more than a dozen could ride at him at a
time. His companions scattered much as a charge of shrapnel shrieks
through the rocks, but Khumel Khan knew well enough that he was the
quarry--his was the head that by no conceivable chance would be
allowed to plan fresh villainies. He might have run yet a little way,
but he saw the uselessness, and stood.
The troop, lined out knee to knee, could come within a hundred paces of
him without breaking; it formed a base, then, to a triangle from which
the man at bay could no more escape than a fire-ringed scorpion.
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