The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  Athelstane King walked over from the other bubble. “There’s a likely-looking valley not too far ahead,” he said. “Good as anything we can reach.”

  Chapter Twenty-four

  “Chalo!” Athelstane King called. The remains of the Garuda had come to rest in a wide south-facing valley. To the north the ground humped itself up in rocky hillocks, then rose in real cliffs; dark patches hinted at caves. To the south . . .

  His mouth tightened. The two Afghan aircraft had circled in on a broad open patch, well upwind of any possible burning debris from the Garuda if the fugitives set the wreck on fire.

  Which we will; the engines are intact, and a prize beyond price to the wild men.

  His mind shuddered at the thought of the havoc they could wreak with craft capable of raiding far into the defenseless provinces beyond the hard shell of the Imperial frontier. They were looking entirely too competent as it was.

  Once safely distant, the Afghans had sent down ground parties along ropes, then used the same ropes to haul their blimps down and stake them out. More men swarmed out of them—not all that many, perhaps a hundred all told. Since the remnants of the Garuda’s crew totaled twenty fighting men—counting, for the present, the King-Emperor’s sister plus Yasmini and Cassandra—the results couldn’t really be in doubt for long.

  Perhaps Ignatieff was right, and his Peacock Angel is just toying with us, King thought, weariness surging through his body. Dangling the carrot of hope in front of us to keep us snapping.

  “Chalo!” he shouted again.

  Gurkhas and women jumped down—he smiled at Yasmini as she clambered past, three rifles in her arms—and pelted by him, heading for the cliffs, the hale helping the wounded. Others carried stretchers, or bundles of supplies. The remains of the airship bounced a little upward as weight dropped free.

  Charles III had been on the edge of jumping; with malignant precision, the wobble pitched him forward into empty space. King knew with angry certainty what would happen, and was rewarded with the sound of a stifled cry of pain; when the young ruler tried to stand, his foot wouldn’t support him.

  “Sprained,” he said. “I can hop, I’ll use this rifle as a crutch. Go ahead—”

  “Maharaj . . . shut up,” King said. “Chup!”

  Charles smiled and did. King began to lay down the ammuniton box that had been his burden; Narayan Singh dropped from the gallery edge, landed with a grunt and a competent flex of the knees, and trotted over to the ruler of half the globe.

  “Maharaj,” he said, more respectfully, and stooped to throw the smaller man over his shoulder. He rose easily under the weight, a great bundle of food and medical supplies tucked under his left arm, turned and trotted after the others.

  King followed him. “Bhai,” he gasped, as they panted up the slope—this was the highlands, and the air was as thin as most of the places the airship had taken them. “Why is it, when I am a captain, I find myself never commanding more than ten or twenty men? It is an offense against my dignity.”

  “Sahib,” the Sikh said, “what worries me is that we are become our fathers—trapped in the Afghan country, waiting for Warburton sahib to bring us rescue. That ended not well for them.”

  “At . . . least . . . we . . . aren’t . . . badly wounded,” King managed.

  “Yet. And sahib—save thy breath!”

  The first Afghan bullet kicked up dust at King’s heels as they dived into the cave; it was actually more of a crevasse, narrowing to a slit above them but never actually closing. The Lancer officer flung himself down, behind the rough rock sangar the Gurkhas had already started to build. More rocks clacked and rattled; stones were one thing you were rarely short of, in Afghan country.

  He put the Metford to his shoulder, peering through the backsight; the Afghans were deploying with their usual skill.

  You couldn’t just call them “Pathan bandits,” given the means of transportation. Hmmm. Sky raiders? Air pirates?

  Their dirty brown sheepskin jackets and dingy robes disappeared against the rock and stunted bushes and pale dirt of the valley floor as well as Imperial khaki would, or better. King licked dry lips, watching the tribesmen skirmish forward from rock to rock; already some with better rifles would be finding hiding spots within sniping range. The depressing truth of the matter was that this country bred the finest guerrilla-bandit-style fighting men in the world. Russia and the Empire had both tried their hand at invading the place off and on for centuries, and neither had had much joy of it.

  Behind him, he could hear Charles’s voice, tight with pain, thanking someone.

  “You’re welcome,” King’s sister said. “And Charles . . . remember that night at the dance, on the terrace? I’m sorry I told you no. Imperial mistress doesn’t look so bad, right now.”

  Even then, King’s eyebrows rose. Well, well, well!

  Down in the open, the remains of the Garuda took flame; a small bird of Agni at first, then breaking out in half a dozen places as fuses burned down, then a great soft whump of blue flame as the remaining hydrogen caught. An infuriated chorus of howls came from the Afghans, watching precious loot going up before their eyes. Their yelping cries had held a cruel good nature before—all the Imperials had done was kill some of them.

  Now they were angry.

  The new master of the Lion Throne gave a breathless chuckle as Cassandra eased off his boot. “No. I’m not sorry. The position wasn’t worthy of you. Only Queen-Empress would be—and to hell with convention. In Delhi or Oxford. And that is my—Our—Imperial will.”

  Cassandra was silent; King looked back to see her kiss the injured man gently on the lips. “I will never forget that,” she said softly.

  Then she stood and threw a coil of rope over her shoulder bandoleer-style. He looked a question, and she pointed to the back of the cave slit.

  “I can go up that like a rock chimney,” she said, tracing the route with a finger. “Then work my way forward—there’s a ledge on the front face, nearly over our heads here, it’ll give me a good vantage point. The rope is to haul up a rifle and ammunition.” Softly: “Don’t worry, Charles, Athelstane. They won’t take me alive.”

  King nodded, and again when her eyes sought Sita and Yasmini, and a lady-in-waiting with a broken leg, the only female survivor of the court party—the explosion on the bridge had been worst among the sleeping cabins above it.

  King tried not to look as his sister climbed; since that last duel with Ignatieff on the dorsal spine of the airship, he found he minded heights a little more. He watched the Afghans instead; they were being very cautious.

  A Gurkha licked his thumb, wet the fore-sight of his rifle, aimed, fired. An enemy tribesmen pitched over and began crawling slowly toward cover, leaking, while all his friends and relatives disappeared into the landscape.

  “And they’re right to be cautious,” he muttered, waiting. A few seconds later he saw a flash of movement and snap-shot, swung the rifle and fired again, again.

  Narayan Singh came up with a large rock, slung it from behind cover, then crawled forward to push it into the breastwork with his feet.

  “They will come in full dark, after moonset,” he said, settling in on King’s left. “Ah, good—the sangar will be chest-high, soon. I shoot better kneeling than prone.”

  Yasmini leopard-crawled up on his other side, dragging a cloth wrapped around cartridges. King pulled back the bolt of his rifle and thumbed rounds down into the magazine; a Metford held eight .40 in the box and one in the chamber. After that it was nearly as quick to load individually, if you were lying flat like this with loose rounds to hand. Idly, he wondered if there wasn’t some faster way. Yasmini smiled at him, and he forgot weapons specifications for a moment.

  “That is what the Tuareg would do,” Henri said. “Keep us pinned down, then come in the night.”

  He was a little distance away, leaning back against a cave wall with his rifle between his knees, chewing from one of a selection of pastries someone had thrown in
to a sack. Whimsically, it occurred to King that they were probably going to be the best-fed isolated garrison in history, with food taken from the pantries of an Imperial yacht. There were even a couple of bottles of brandy; useful medicine, as well as nice to have around for a swallow or two when it got really cold, which it would shortly, after sundown. Winter in this country was no joke, even by Kashmiri standards. He frowned at the thin gauzy garments of the women, glad his sister had thought to take a few blankets up with her.

  King turned on his back to study the defensive arrangements instead. No way to come over the cliff at them—it had an overhang that curled like a frozen stone wave. More cover than was comfortable in front of them, and that would be a problem in the dark; they’d have to have half the men awake, and watch them like hawks—thank Krishna the moon was nearly full.

  But—

  “How long . . . can we hold out?” Charles asked.

  King nodded at him with sober respect; Warburton had described what he’d gone through in the corridor. He knew it took more courage than he had to obey an order like that, and from his own father. All of the Gurkhas would have died, if Charles hadn’t ordered them out of the area above the bridge and refused to go in himself.

  “Well, Maharaj, it all depends on—”

  Two of the guardsmen came back from their examination of the back part of the cleft. Narayan Singh went back with them, and returned himself.

  “No, sahib,” he said.

  At the motion of King’s eyes, the Sikh turned to Charles, smiling in the dimness and making the salaam.

  “Maharaj, as for weapons and ammunition, we could hold them for many days, provided they don’t overrun us tonight. This position is strong, and these Gurkhas might almost be Sikhs as fighting men. But we have no water here, only what is in our canteens, and these banchuts of Afghans know it, while they have their store of water and all food and supplies from their airships; also there may be wells near here. They will wait for thirst to do their work for them—they wish to paddle their paws in our goods, not shed their blood. They will wait, and test us, and then when we are weakened, and it is very dark—”

  The massive shoulders shrugged. “We will not be an easy nut to crack, Maharaj. They will remember the price of their loot.”

  A silence fell on the chamber then, broken only by an occasional moan from the wounded, and the clatter of rocks as the jawans of the Guard built up the sangar in front of them. A murmur of voices caught King’s attention after a while; Henri and Sita, sitting close. Then he blinked surprise; she swung one of her injured hands in an open-palmed slap across his face. He made no attempt to dodge the blow, merely turning his head and seizing her wrist.

  “Chérie, you will hurt your hand,” he said, gazing up into her wrathful face. “And why are you so angry? Because I did not tell you earlier who I really was?”

  “No, because you think I’m an idiot! I figured out who you really were within a week!”

  With that she collapsed against his chest, sobbing; he cradled her against himself, whistling a jaunty-sounding song. King felt pieces connect in his head, like a rusty clock mechanism.

  Oh, he thought, stroking Yasmini’s hair where she lay beside him. Well, the kunwari may not be an idiot, but I am. Then again, she had more motivation and more time around the “vicomte.” No wonder she wasn’t kicking up a fuss the way Cass says she did at first.

  Mind you, the whole question had become rather moot now.

  Yasmini put her rifle into position, carefully adjusting the rocks, then handed him a chapati smeared with some sort of meat paste. It was excellent, but salty; he took a small, careful sip of water afterward, holding it in his mouth until it had leached the salt off his tongue before swallowing.

  “Well,” he said, looking over at those astonishing blue-green eyes. “Since everyone else is making declarations—”

  “Oh, that is no matter,” Yasmini said. “I knew you would ask me to be your woman . . . wife, you say.”

  “You did?” He blinked. “You mean you can still, ah . . .”

  “No. But I have watched you in dreams many times, and I have come to know you a little in the flesh.” She gave an impish smile. “Better than I know any other man.”

  Cassandra King came awake. She felt chilled, though no worse than she often had before on an overnight climbing trip. For a moment, she wondered where she was—why was she sleeping sitting up in a narrow ledge, with blankets around her, rather than in a proper mountaineer’s bedroll?

  The sound came again. It was hard to pick out among the soughing of the cold wind through the cleft in the rock beside her, and the small noises of the mountain night; also, her face was numb. Only long experience told her; it was the rasp of a rope running through fingers and over cloth. Someone coming down a rope with a half hitch around one leg, at a guess.

  Sleep blinked out of her mind in a rush of cold fear at the thought of an Afghan here in this narrow space of stone with her. She jerked up the rifle and rolled onto her back and fired, heedless of the danger of a ricochet.

  Crack, and she frantically ripped back the bolt of the Metford and slapped it forward.

  The recoil punished her shoulder, trapped against the stone beneath, but the bright stab of light showed her the dark figure just above, coming down a rope that hung from the overhang far above. Steel glinted in his hand as he dropped the remaining distance, landing astride her own feet and lunging forward with a hand reaching for her face. Automatic reflex brought the rifle down toward him, and she jerked the trigger. This time the weapon wasn’t at her shoulder at all, but between arm and flank; that didn’t matter, since he struck the muzzle with his chest.

  The bullet punched through his breastbone and out through his shattered spine, and he fell straight down; blood and fragments spattered across her torso and into her face, horribly salty. Only the leverage of the rifle swung the body sideways instead of straight down on her; it landed beside her on the very lip of the ledge, open eyes staring into hers from six inches away, blood running down into his beard. Then it toppled over, down into the area behind the sangar.

  Voices were already shouting there. Cassandra reloaded with shaking fingers, trying to look upward to the cliff top and down and out over the stretch toward the besieger’s campfires at the same time.

  “Oh, bugger,” she whispered.

  The lumpy rugged ground before the sangar wall was coming alive with dimly seen figures. But none of them clear enough for a decent shot—she was an occasional hunter, not a soldier—

  From below her, she heard her brother’s voice yell out—oddly enough, something like: “Thank you, David bar-Elias!”

  Then a sputtering spot of light sprang into being, out among the attackers.

  Magnesium, she thought, dazed, recognizing the peculiar brilliance from the laboratory. But what could magnesium be doing here?

  That didn’t stop the way her hands swung the Metford around to line up on the backlit figures.

  Crack.

  “Thank you, David bar-Elias!” King shouted, snapping the bundle down on the rock before him and half-rising to give it a cricket bowler’s overarm throw. “And thank you, Cass!”

  Even with Border service he was shocked at how close the Afghans had gotten. They seemed to freeze for a moment as the light revealed them, then charged in a wave. Jezails stuttered at the Imperials, lead slugs whickering by or peening off the rocks of the sangar, or caroming away in deadly-dangerous ricochets down the cleft cave behind him.

  King snap-shot, his second finger on the trigger and the index beneath the Metford’s bolt. Shoot, flip the bolt up with your finger, slap it home with your palm, repeat. He had time to thrust one rifle behind him and snatch another and empty it—the surviving servants from the air yacht were loading and passing the extra rifles forward. The Afghans must be taking gruesome losses, caught packed together in the narrow space before the cliff-cleft.

  “Allahu Akbar!” from a hundred throats, like the yelpi
ng of wolves.

  Then the Afghans were on them, dark shapes looming through a fogbank of powder smoke turned opalescent by the juddering light of the flare. King clubbed his rifle as the first flung himself up the rough surface of the sangar, smashing the man’s knees with a sweeping stroke, then breaking the stock as he brought the butt down on his head. The body toppled backward, giving him time to draw sword and revolver; beside him Narayan Singh sank his bayonet through the sheepskin-clad belly of an Afghan and slung him completely over his back with a pitchfork motion, like a countryman throwing hay.

  “Rung ho! Wa Guru-ji ko futteh!” and “Ayo Gorkhali!” rang out over the Afghan shrieks and the cries of the wounded, the clang of blade on blade, the grunts of men in desperate effort.

  King caught a tulwar on his, shot the man in the chest with the pistol in his left hand, turned and cut down another who was stumbling and yelping—Yasmini was very sensibly staying below the lip of the rough stone wall, slicing at ankles and calves with her dagger as they loomed above. For a moment there was an enormous noise and confusion among the huge leaping shadows, and then like a storm wave recoiling from a beach the Afghans were in retreat, dragging their wounded with them. The flare was dying down, but King saw two more fall as they fled, and heard a steady methodical fire from above.

  “Shabash, Cass!” he called up. “Are you all right?”

  Her voice answered him: “I’m not hurt, but I’m . . . feeling rather ill.”

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “That always happens, until you’re used to it.”

  “I have no desire to become used to this!”

  King snorted softly to himself and shook his head. Women, he thought.

  “Shabash, Cassandra!” another voice said.

  Sounding right royal, King thought with amused admiration, as he turned to look at Charles III. With a broken left shoulder and his right ankle not functioning, the King-Emperor wasn’t in much shape to fight. There was nothing wrong with his eyesight, though. Or his judgment. We’d have been hard-pressed without Cass up there.