Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  and be sure my death would leave nothing to be desired

  by the spectators. At present he does not suspect me.

  “Be assured, however, that not to betray me to him is

  to leave me free to serve my government and well able

  to do so.

  “I invite you to return to India with me, bearing news

  that the mullah Muhammad Anim and his men are bottled

  in Khinjan Caves, and to plan with me to that end.

  “If you will, then write an answer to Muhammad Anim,

  not in Urdu, but in a language he can understand; seem

  to surrender to him. But to me send a verbal message,

  either by the bearer of this or by some trustier messenger.

  “India can profit yet by your service if you will. And

  in that case I pledge my word to direct the government’s

  attention only to your good service in the matter. It is

  not yet too late to choose. It is not impertinent in me

  to urge you.

  “Nor can I say how gladly I would subscribe myself your

  grateful and loyal servant.”

  The mullah pounced on the finished letter, pretended to read it, and watched him seal it up, smudging the hot wax with his own great gnarled thumb. Then he shouted for the Orakzai Pathan, who came striding in, all grins and swagger.

  “There — take it! Make speed!” he ordered, and with his rifle at the “ready” and the letter tucked inside his shirt, the Pathan favored King with a farewell grin and obeyed.

  “Get out!” the mullah snarled then immediately. “See to the sick. Tell them I sent thee. Bid them be grateful!”

  King went. He recognized the almost madness that constituted the mullah’s driving power. It is contagious, that madness, until it destroys itself. It had made several thousand men follow him and believe in him, but it had once given Yasmini a chance to fool him and defeat him, and now it gave King his chance. He let the mullah think himself obeyed implicitly.

  He became the busiest man in all the “Hills.” While the mullah glowered over the camp from the cave mouth or fulminated from the Quran or fought with other mullahs with words for weapons and abuse for argument, he bandaged and lanced and poulticed and physicked until his head swam with weariness.

  The sick swarmed so around him that he had to have a body-guard to keep them at bay; so he chose twenty of the least sick from among those who had talked with him after sunrise.

  And because each of those men had friends, and it is only human to wish one’s friend in the same boat, especially when the sea, so to speak, is rough, the progress through the camp became a current of missionary zeal and the virtues of the Anglo-Indian raj were better spoken of than the “Hills” had heard for years.

  Not that there was any effort made to convert the camp en masse. Far from it. But the likely few were pounced on and were told of a chance to enlist for a bounty in India. And what with winter not so far ahead, and what with experience of former fighting against the British army, the choosing was none so difficult. From the day when the lad first feels soft down upon his face until the old man’s beard turns white and his teeth shake out, the Hillman would rather fight than eat; but he prefers to fight on the winning side if he may, and he likes good treatment.

  Before if was dark that night there were thirty men sworn to hold their tongues and to wait for the word to hurry down the Khyber for the purpose of enlisting in some British-Indian regiment. Some even began to urge the hakim not to wait for the Orakzai Pathan, but to start with what he had.

  “Shall I leave my brother in the lurch?” the hakim asked them; and though they murmured, they thought better of him for it.

  Well for him that he had plenty of Epsom salts in his kit, for in the “Hills” physic should taste evil and show very quick results to be believed in. He found a dozen diseases of which he did not so much as know the name, but half of the sufferers swore they were cured after the first dose. They would have dubbed him faquir and have foisted him to a pillar of holiness had he cared to let them.

  Muhammad Anim slept most of the day, like a great animal that scorns to live by rule. But at evening he came to the cave mouth and fulminated such a sermon as set the whole camp to roaring. He showed his power then. The jihad he preached would have tempted dead men from their graves to come and share the plunder, and the curses he called down on cowards and laggards and unbelievers were enough to have frightened the dead away again.

  In twenty minutes he had undone all King’s missionary work. And then in ten more, feeling his power and their response, and being at heart a fool as all rogues are, he built it up again.

  He began to make promises too definite. He wanted Khinjan Caves. More, he needed them. So he promised them they should all be free of Khinjan Caves within a day or two, to come and go and live there at their pleasure. He promised them they should leave their wives and children and belongings safe in the Caves while they themselves went down to plunder India. He overlooked the fact that Khinjan Caves for centuries had been a secret to be spoken of in whispers, and that prospect of its violation came to them as a shock.

  Half of them did not believe him. Such a thing was impossible, and if he were lying as to one point, why not as to all the others, too?

  And the army veterans, who had been converted by King’s talk of pardons, and almost reconverted by the sermon, shook their heads at the talk of taking Khinjan. Why waste time trying to do what never had been done, with her to reckon against, when a place in the sun was waiting for them down in India, to say nothing of the hope of pardons and clean living for a while? They shook their heads and combed their beards and eyed one another sidewise in a way the “Hills” understand.

  That night, while the mullah glowered over the camp like a great old owl, with leaping firelight reflected in his eyes, the thousands under the skin tents argued, so that the night was all noise. But King slept.

  All of another day and part of another night he toiled among the sick, wondering when a message would come back. It was nearly midnight when he bandaged his last patient and came out into the starlight to bend his back straight and yawn and pick his way reeling with weariness back to the mullah’s cave. He had given his bag of medicines and implements to a man to carry ahead of him and had gone perhaps ten paces into the dark when a strong hand gripped him by the wrist.

  “Hush!” said a voice that seemed familiar.

  He turned swiftly and looked straight into the eyes of the Rangar Rewa Gunga!

  “How did you get here?” he asked in English.

  “Any fool could learn the password into this camp! Come over here, sahib. I bring word from her.”

  The ground was criss-crossed like a man’s palm by the shadows of tent-ropes. The Rangar led him to where the tents were forty feet apart and none was likely to overhear them. There he turned like a flash.

  “She sends you this!” he hissed.

  In that same instant King was fighting for his life.

  In another second they were down together among the tent-pegs, King holding the Rangar’s wrist with both hands and struggling to break it, and the Rangar striving for another stroke. The dagger he held had missed King’s ribs by so little that his skin yet tingled from its touch. It was a dagger with bronze blade and a gold hilt — her dagger. It was her perfume in the air.

  They rolled over and over, breathing hard. King wanted to think before he gave an alarm, and he could not think with that scent in his nostrils and creeping into his lungs. Even in the stress of fighting be wondered how the Rangar’s clothes and turban had come to be drenched in it. He admitted to himself afterward that it was nothing else than jealousy that suggested to him to make the Rangar prisoner and hand him over to the mullah.

  That would have been a ridiculous thing to do, for it would have forced his own betrayal to the mullah. But as if the Rangar had read his mind he suddenly redoubled his efforts and King, weary to the point of si
ckness, had to redouble his own or die. Perhaps the jealousy helped put venom in his effort, for his strength came back to him as a madman’s does. The Rangar gave a moan and let the knife fall.

  And because jealousy is poison King did the wrong thing then. He pounced on the knife instead of on the Rangar. He could have questioned him — knelt on him and perhaps forced explanations from him. But with a sudden swift effort like a snake’s the Rangar freed himself and was up and gone before King could struggle to his feet — gone like a shadow among shadows.

  King got up and felt himself all over, for they had fought on stony ground and he was bruised. But bruises faded into nothing, and weariness as well, as his mind began to dwell on the new complication to his problem.

  It was plain that the moment he had returned from his message to the Khyber the Rangar had been sent on this new murderous mission. If Yasmini had told the truth a letter had gone into India describing him, King, as a traitor, and from her point of view that might be supposed to cut the very ground away from under his feet.

  Then why so much trouble to have him killed? Either Rewa Gunga had never taken the first letter, or — and this seemed more probable — Yashiini had never believed the letter would be treated seriously by the authorities, and had only sent it in the hope of fooling him and undermining his determination. In that case, especially supposing her to have received his ultimatum on the mullah’s behalf before sending Rewa Gunga with the dagger, she must consider him at least dangerous. Could she be afraid? If so her game was lost already!

  Perhaps she saw her own peril. Perhaps she contemplated — gosh! what a contingency! — perhaps she contemplated bolting into India with a story of her own, and leaving the mullah to his own devices! In such a case, before going she would very likely try to have the one man stabbed who could give her away most completely. In fact, would she dare escape into India and leave himself alive behind her?

  He rather thought she would dare do anything. And that thought brought reassurance. She would dare, and being what she was she almost surely would seek vengeance on the mullah before doing anything else.

  Then why the dagger for himself? She must believe him in league with the mullah against her. She might believe that with him out of the way the mullah would prove an easier prey for her. And that belief might be justifiable, but as an explanation it failed to satisfy.

  There was an alternative, the very thought of which made him fearfully uneasy, and yet brought a thrill with it. In all eastern lands, love scorned takes to the dagger. He had half believed her when she swore she loved him! The man who could imagine himself loved by Yasmini and not be thrilled to his core would be inhuman, whatever reason and caution and caste and creed might whisper in imagination’s wake.

  Reeling from fatigue (he felt like a man who had been racked, for the Rangar’s strength was nearly unbelievable), he started toward where the mullah sat glowering in the cave mouth. He found the man who had carried his bag asleep at the foot of the ramp, and taking the bag away from him, let him lie there. And it took him five minutes to drag his hurt weary bones up the ramp, for the fight had taken more out of him than he had guessed at first.

  The mullah glared at him but let him by without a word. It was by the fire at the back of the cave, where he stooped to dip water from the mullah’s enormous crock that the next disturbing factor came to light. He kicked a brand into the fire and the flame leaped. Its light shone on a yard and a half of exquisitely fine hair, like spun gold, that caressed his shoulder and descended down one arm. One thread of hair that conjured up a million thoughts, and in a second upset every argument!

  If Rewa Gunga had been near enough to her and intimate enough with her not only to become scented with her unmistakable perfume but even to get her hair on his person, then gone was all imagination of her love for himself! Then she had lied from first to last! Then she had tried to make him love her that she might use him, and finding she had failed, she had sent her true love with the dagger to make an end!

  In a moment he imagined a whole picture, as it might have been in a crystal, of himself trapped and made to don the Roman’s armor and forced to pose to the savage ‘Hills’ — or fooled into posing to them — as her lover, while Rewa Gunga lurked behind the scenes and waited for the harvest in the end. And what kind of harvest?

  And what kind of man must Rewa Gunga be who could lightly let go all the prejudices of the East and submit to what only the West has endured hitherto with any complacency — a “tertium quid”?

  Yet what a fool he, King, had been not to appreciate at once that Rewa Gunga must be her lover. Why should he not be? Were they not alike as cousins? And the East does not love its contrary, but its complement, being older in love than the West, and wiser in its ways in all but the material. He had been blind. He had overlooked the obvious — that from first to last her plan had been to set herself and this Rewa Gunga on the throne of India!

  He washed and went through the mummery of muslim prayers for the watchful mullah’s sake, and climbed on to his bed. But sleep seemed out of the question. He lay and tossed for an hour, his mind as busy as a terrier in hay. And when he did fall asleep at last it was so to dream and mutter that the mullah came and shook him and preached him a half-hour sermon against the mortal sins that rob men of peaceful slumber by giving them a foretaste of the hell to come.

  All that seemed kinder and more refreshing than King’s own thoughts had been, for when the mullah had done at last and had gone striding back to the cave mouth, he really did fall sound asleep, and it was after dawn when he awoke. The mullah’s voice, not untuneful was rousing all the valley echoes in the call to prayer.

  Allah is Almighty! Allah is Almighty!

  I declare there is no God but Allah!

  I declare Muhammad is his prophet!

  Hie ye to prayer!

  Hie ye to salvation!

  Prayer is better than sleep!

  Prayer is better than sleep!

  There is no God but Allah!

  And while King knelt behind the mullah and the whole camp faced Mecca in forehead-in-the-dust abasement there came a strange procession down the midst — not strange to the “Hills,” where such sights are common, but strange to that camp and hour. Somebody rose and struck them, and they knelt like the rest; but when prayer was over and cooking had begun and the camp became a place of savory smell, they came on again — seven blind men.

  They were weary, ragged, lean — seven very tatter-demalions — and the front man led them, tapping the ground with a long stick. The others clung to him in line, one behind the other. He was the only clean-shaven one, and he was the tallest. He looked as if he had not been blind so long, for his physical health was better. All seven men yelled at the utmost of their lungs, but he yelled the loudest.

  “Oh, the hakim — the good hakim!” they wailed. “Where is the famous hakim? We be blind men — blind we be — blind — blind! Oh, pity us! Is any kismet worse than ours? Oh, show us to the hakim! Show us the way to him! Lead us to him! Oh, the famous, great, good hakim who can heal men’s eyes!”

  The mullah looked down on them like a vulture waiting to see them die, and seeing they did not die, turned his back and went into his cave. Close to the ramp they stopped, and the front man, cocking his head to one side as only birds and the newly blind do, gave voice again in nasal singsong.

  “Will none tell me where is the great, good, wise hakim Kurram Khan?”

  “I am he,” said King, and he stepped down toward him, calling to an assistant to come and bring him water and a sponge. The blind man’s face looked strangely familiar, though it was partly disguised by some gummy stuff stuck all about the eyes. Taking it in both hands be tilted the eyes to the light and opened one eye with his thumb. There was nothing whatever the matter with it. He opened the other.

  “Rub me an ointment on!” the man urged him, and he stared at the face again.

  “Ismail!” he said. “You?”

  “Aye! Father o
f cleverness! Make play of healing my eyes!”

  So King dipped a sponge in water and sent back for his bag and made a great show of rubbing on ointment. In a minute Ismail, looking almost like a young man without his great beard, was dancing like a lunatic with both fists in the air, and yelling as if wasps had stung him.

  “Aieee — aieee — aieee!” he yelled. “I see again! I see! My eyes have light in them! Allah! Oh, Allah heap riches on the great wise hakfim who can heal men’s eyes! Allah reward him richly, for I am a beggar and have no goods!”

  The other six blind men came struggling to be next, and while King rubbed ointment on their eyes and saw that there was nothing there he could cure the whole camp began to surge toward him to see the miracle, and his chosen body-guard rushed up to drive them back.

  “Find your way down the Khyber and ask for the Wilayti dakitar. He will finish the cure.”

  The six blind men, half-resentful, half-believing, turned away, mainly because Ismail drove them with words and blows. And as they went a tall Afridi came striding down the camp with a letter for the mullah held out in a cleft stick in front of him.

  “Her answer!” said Ismail with a wicked grin.

  “What is her word? Where is the Orakzai Pathan?”

  But Ismail laughed and would not answer him. It seemed to King that he scented climax. So did his near-fifty and their thirty friends. He chose to take the arrival of the blind men as a hint from Providence and to “go it blind” on the strength of what he had hoped might happen. Also he chose in that instant to force the mullah’s hand, on the principle that hurried buffaloes will blunder.

  “To Khinjan!” he shouted to the nearest man. “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. There was a surge toward the tents, but King called to his deserters and they clustered back to him. He had to cement their allegiance now or fail altogether, and he would not be able to do it by ordinary argument or by pleading; he had to fire their imagination. And he did.