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"I have you in a vise, Ali el Ghazi," he announced without preamble. "But for that Waziri dog who crouches behind you, I would have cut your throat at moonrise last night. You are all dead men, but this siege work grows tiresome, and I am willing to forgo half my advantage. I am generous. As reward of victory I demand either your guns or your horses. Your horses I have already, but you shall have them back, if you wish. Throw down your weapons and you may ride out of Khuruk. Or, if you wish, I will keep the horses, and you may march out on foot with your rifles. What is your answer?"

O'Donnell spat toward him with a typically Kurdish gesture. "Are we fools, to be hoodwinked by a dog with scarlet whiskers?" he snarled. "When Afzal Khan keeps his sworn word, the Indus will flow backward. Shall we ride out, unarmed, for you to cut us down in the passes, or shall we march forth on foot, for you to shoot us from ambush in the hills?

"You lie when you say you have our horses. Ten of your men have died trying to take them for you. You lie when you say you have us in the vise. It is you who are in the vise! You have neither food nor water; there is no other well in the valley but this. You have few cartridges, because most of your ammunition is stored in the tower, and we hold that."

The fury in Afzal Khan's countenance told O'Donnell that he had scored with that shot.

"If you had us helpless you would not be offering terms," O'Donnell sneered. "You would be cutting our throats, instead of trying to gull us into the open."

"Sons of sixty dogs!" swore Afzal Khan, plucking at his beard. "I will flay you all alive! I will keep you hemmed here until you die!"

"If we cannot leave the fortress, you cannot enter it," O'Donnell retorted. "Moreover you have drawn all your men but a handful from the passes, and the Khurukzai will steal upon you and cut off your heads. They are waiting, up in the hills."

Afzal Khan's involuntarily wry face told O'Donnell that the Afghan's plight was more desperate than he had hoped.

"It is a deadlock, Afzal Khan," said O'Donnell suddenly. "There is but one way to break it." He lifted his voice, seeing that the Pathans under the protection of the truce were leaving their coverts and drawing within earshot. "Meet me there in the open space, man to man, and decide the feud between us two, with cold steel. If I win, we ride out of Khuruk unmolested. If you win, my warriors are at your mercy."

"The mercy of a wolf!" muttered Yar Muhammad.

O'Donnell did not reply. It was a desperate chance, but the only one. Afzal Khan hesitated and cast a searching glance at his men; that scowling hairy horde was muttering among itself. The warriors seemed ill-content, and they stared meaningly at their leader.

The inference was plain; they were weary of the fighting at which they were at a disadvantage, and they wished Afzal Khan to accept O'Donnell's challenge. They feared a return of the Khurukzai might catch them in the open with empty cartridge pouches. After all, if their chief lost to the Kurd, they would only lose the loot they had expected to win. Afzal Khan understood this attitude, and his beard bristled to the upsurging of his ready passion.

"Agreed!" he roared, tearing out his tulwar and throwing away the scabbard. He made the bright broad steel thrum about his head. "Come over the wall and die, thou slayer of infidels!"

"Hold your men where they are!" O'Donnell ordered and vaulted the parapet.

At a bellowed order the Pathans had halted, and the wall was lined with kalpaks as the Turkomans watched tensely, muzzles turned upward but fingers still crooked on the triggers. Yar Muhammad followed O'Donnell over the wall, but did not advance from it; he crouched against it like a bearded ghoul, fingering his knife.

O'Donnell wasted no time. Scimitar in one hand and kindhjal in the other, he ran lightly toward the burly figure advancing to meet him. O'Donnell was slightly above medium height, but Afzal Khan towered half a head above him. The Afghan's bull-like shoulders and muscular bulk contrasted with the rangy figure of the false Kurd; but O'Donnell's sinews were like steel wires. His Arab scimitar, though neither so broad nor so heavy as the tulwar, was fully as long, and the blade was of unbreakable Damascus steel.

The men seemed scarcely within arm's reach when the fight opened with a dazzling crackle and flash of steel. Blow followed blow so swiftly that the men watching, trained to arms since birth, could scarcely follow the strokes. Afzal Khan roared, his eyes blazing, his beard bristling, and wielding the heavy tulwar as one might wield a camel wand, he flailed away in a frenzy.