Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  He and his fifty dubbed themselves the damage-doers — the destroyers. They exploded ammunition. They broke wagon-wheels. They smashed the mechanism of the field-guns. They set torches to the supply-wagons; and in the lurid blaze of those they saw opportunity — a very jest of Allah — red-ripe cataclysm asking to be touched off.

  Jammed in a gut of the pass, benighted, waiting for the pressure of the troops in front to yield before they tried to extricate themselves, was an ammunition detail — fifty wagons, some with broken wheels, all locked together in a blinding mist — mules foundered and the men made sullen by abuse. This side of them there lay a thousand camels with their loads beside them.

  There was a mob of men half-seen, half-seeing in the gray fog. There were execrations — yells — commands, all different, misunderstood, that only added to terror. Gup and his men burst by the mob like a blast of devils spat from hell’s throat, set fire to the nearest wagons, turned again and fled, with the camel-men and all their camels in full rout ahead of them. There were men, there were soldiers in the Afghan army. There was a frantic effort made by thirty or forty men to douse the fires, but they lacked water. They tried shoveled dust. They tried to rake the fire with poles — until suddenly the Khyber seemed to split apart in a spasm of blue-white fire, repeated and again repeated, and all that crowded narrow mile of pass became a cauldron of terror, men, camels, mules all surging away up-Khyber, sweeping along their officers who might as well have tried to stop the River Indus when the snows of the Roof of the World are fleeing seaward from the sun.

  It was a tidal wave. It surged until it hove itself against a moving mass of infantry — division by division hurrying to overtake the Amir’s van and burst on to the plains — breakfastless, impatient mountaineers commanded by a general whose pattern and inspiration was the ruthless Abdurrahman. Like his hero, he had no charity for cowards; and an obstacle between him and his goal was something to be met and overcome not subtly but with wrath — the wrath of Allah.

  “Smite them!” he commanded. “Lo, why cumber they the pass?”

  So there was slaughter until an overwhelming weight of numbers turned the tide again and the flow resumed down-Khyber. He was a man of parts, that general. He had a staff who knew his will and did it. He was soon told what had happened and he came down-Khyber like a hail-storm, ice-cold in his anger, thinking himself not deceived. He knew no Hillman army could have caught the Amir’s force in flank in sufficient strength to stay its southward march. It was only a foray; he would wipe it out — obliterate it — leave it dead behind him. Such a simple thing is war. Strip it to its essentials. Forward!

  But he reckoned without Gup — and Rahman — and the erstwhile Lottie Carstairs, who was not disposed to acquiesce in meek submission to Gup’s disposal of her as a mere non-combatant. Rahman had verged on the fringes of magic; he had tongue-lashed, bullied, mocked, encouraged, coaxed and stung the straggling lashkar until he reached the Khyber’s rim with foundered mules but plenty of ammunition — no food (he had dumped it all in order to force the men to march in quest of more) but nearly seven thousand hungry-fighting men who knew their only hope of dinner lay in plundering the Amir’s column. Lottie led those men into the Khyber, Rahman aiding; for it was as clear as daylight, now that the mist was rolling away before the northern wind, that Gup was caught between two horns of a dilemma.

  Word had gone down-Khyber to the Amir that his column was attacked in flank. He sent a brigade of cavalry and guns up-pass to make short work of what he supposed was a mere raid by local tribesmen. But the pass was blocked by his supply-train and by his south-bound troops, who misinterpreted the movement of that galloping brigade. A rumor leaped along ahead of it that the Amir’s front had suffered a reverse and was in full flight. British aeroplanes, flying as low as they dared, spread havoc with bombs and machine-gun fire. Shells from British mountain batteries that had worked their way to ledges that overlooked the pass added their toll. They were answered, but far from silenced by the Amir’s guns, whose shells fell short. A retreat began — no rout, but a retreat that might have grown into a rout if the rear-guard under a man with a reputation had not swept down-pass to meet it.

  Gup and his men were caught between those tides. The aeroplanes, totally unable to distinguish friend from foe, swooped, sprayed their hail and winged back to their base for bombs and fuel. Loaded down with loot Gup’s followers took to their heels to scramble to the heights and safety. They were met and swept into the pass again by Lottie, Rahman and the seven thousand.

  They will tell of the fight that followed, until the Hills give up their dead and enemy meets enemy again on Judgment Day. Between the very walls of hell, along its steel-swept floor three human tides swayed to and fro for the mastery. A dragon hewn in two became two dragons deadlier than the first, that struggled to reunite — stabbing, blasting, belching death — the one half panic-ridden and the other lashed into a frenzy by a general who neither understood nor tolerated any ultimate save victory or death — a general to whom the slaughter of a hundred thousand men would only mean that they had answered Azrael’s summons. Forward! God alone is merciful. There is no mercy in the Khyber.

  “Din! Din!”

  And again the aeroplanes spraying their impartial hot hail — until a plane hit by an Afghan bullet spilled its fuel and came spiraling to earth not fifty feet from where Gup yelled in an attempt to rally men around him — yelled like a ghost in a hurricane — voiceless and unaware of it — only aware of the need to save the remnant of his men, and of Lottie dragging Rahman by the shoulders from beneath a heap of slain.

  They surged toward the fallen plane like wolves at the death of a hunted doe, but Gup was first, hard followed by his body-guard, their hearts and heads on fire with the honor of being living shields for such a chief as he was. He was Allah’s own. They loved him. He was good enough to storm the gates of heaven.

  It was Gup who dragged the pilot free — a cool young sprig named Percy Simkins, who stooped to make sure that his gunner was dead, not merely injured. He was limber on his feet; he leaped beside Gup to the rock where Lottie knelt trying to staunch Rahman’s wound. There he started to light a cigarette but decided not to.

  “Looks too stagey. What next? Who’s the lady?”

  “Lend her a hand, will you?”

  “All right. By the way, there was a message for you — unofficial — all that sort of thing. Fellow by the name of Trowbridge — middle-aged old codger — rather decent sort of rotter in the Public Works — crazy about Nelson of the Nile and all that kind of bishop — lots o’ gall, though, when he wants something. I flew low to look for you.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He’s a kind of a prophet. He said I’d crash, damn him.”

  “What else?”

  “Said he hoped I would — because I cheeked such an important person with a bald head as himself.”

  “Cheek me then. Get it over with. What’s the message?”

  “Not much — seemed to think you might be crying for applause. You’re doing what he said you would, or words to that effect. He’s all cock-a-hoop about it. So are three brass hats and a high commish. You’re invited to tea, I believe.”

  “To hell with them! No orders? No advice? No—”

  “I can give you the advice. Get out of here! Our planes mean business and so do the guns. They’re bringing up three heavy batteries to egg this section of the pass. Hell won’t be a thing to it.”

  A shell moaned overhead and burst within about three hundred yards. Gup did not wait for further conversation. He seized two men by the throat, shook them to bring them to their senses and sent them to spread the order to retire. But there was no need; every weary savage of them thought of his eternal hills before the second heavy shell came moaning overhead and no man waited to be told where safety lay. Loaded with loot they swarmed back to the heights, well peppered by the Afghan infantry. Gup did not stay to look at Rahman’s wound. He lifted him — carried him �
� climbed with Rahman’s weight upon his shoulders, swearing because Lotttie would not keep her distance — they were a much too easy target clambering up-hill in a group, with Percy Simkins dragging Lottie by the hand up the difficult places. However, they reached the summit unscathed.

  “They say war spoils women. Seems to me it’s the other way around,” said Percy Simkins. “May I smoke now?”

  Gup laid Rahman on a shelf of rock. The old Afghan’s teeth were clenched in agony but he managed to force himself to speak:

  “Water, for the love of God, Huzoor! I am hit in the belly.”

  “Then a drink would kill you, Rahman.”

  “I said water! This is my end. Shall I die dry for the sake of a book of rules?”

  It took time to find a full canteen but Gup found one at last and Lottie held up Rahman’s head while he drank from it. He drank deep.

  “So. In the name of the Prophet, I die gladly. Listen: he who commands those infantry down there is Sirdar Faiz Abdullah. He is some one. He is not a man with weak knees. Watch him — he will be worse to deal with than a wounded bear. So — now I die.” But he did not, he only fainted. Gup found men to carry him, on blankets stretched between two tent-poles (Rahman had brought a tent for Lottie, even though he threw away the food.) The Khyber was now full of the din of bursting shells. Gup’s leg-weary men lay watching, waiting for new strength with which to carry off their loot — some of them nursing wounds — some dying. None but had something to show for his pains, if it were only a rifle and an Afghan uniform. They were almost dead from weariness and lack of sleep, but they, too, saw what Gup did.

  Sirdar Faiz Abdullah, being, as Rahman had said, not a man with weak knees, set to work to storm the heights with the twofold purpose of retaliating and of saving his men from slaughter by the heavy guns. His infantry, as much afraid of him as of any conceivable enemy, — stung, too, by an irritating rifle-fire from Gup’s men, who were in no mood to be deprived of their hard-won loot and were too tired to flee with it, — clambered with a vengeance. Gup decided to look for some place more impregnable where he could hold the Afghans in check but at the same time rest his ragged lashkar. He hoped to rest them and then, perhaps, to strike again; it might be possible to swoop like a blast of wind down some ravine upon the Amir’s rear. But that hope faded as he strove to rally the lashkar into something like military formation. Discipline was gone. No officer dared to attempt to control his men. Gup seized a big Afridi who was staggering under a load of looted blankets.

  “Where is water?” he demanded. “Lots of it?”

  The man gestured vaguely. Percy Simkins nodded: “There’s a cascade somewhere over there, about a mile away — maybe two miles — shows from the air like a crooked streak of snow.”

  Water was the key to the situation. Gup tied the Afridi’s hands behind him:

  “I’ll put salt in your mouth unless you lead me straight to water!”

  He threw a heap of looted rifles and miscellaneous plunder from the back of a starved, leg-weary mule and mounted Lottie on the animal.

  “Your turn,” he said, “you lead ’em now. Lead ’em to water and rally ’em there. I’ll hold the rear if I can. Simkins, put your pistol in the guide’s ribs. Lead on, Lottie.”

  Then the miracle — the ultimate test of a leader — spiritual alchemy — the transformation of a rabble thinking only of its weariness and of its plunder into a fighting rear-guard that disputed with the advancing Afghans every slowly yielded yard of the rock-strewn ledges, while men slew mules and served the meat in raw strips to the bitterly retiring riflemen and others carried doubled loads of plunder, piling them up and returning for more.

  No man, and least of all Gup could have told how he did it. The Afghan general pursued with vigor; word had reached him that the Amir was in full retreat, so he squandered energy to protect his master’s flank by making a second raid into the pass impossible; he attacked as if he were deploying all the Amir’s rearguard and reserves to pour along parallel lines on to India’s plains. He brought machine-guns into play. He squandered men as if they were mere munitions poured from an inexhaustible storehouse; and he almost drove the attack home in the end, near four o’clock that afternoon, when Gup’s men heard the splashing tumult of the cascade and took to their heels like parched cattle that smell water.

  But the cascade was screened by a sharp ridge, flanked by an escarpment on the left and by a tumulus of broken boulders on the right that rested on the edge of a sheer ravine. Lottie, Percy Simkins, Pepul Das and half a dozen others stirred enough men from their fitful sleep to hold that ridge until Gup could get his force reorganized; and there the Afghan general was satisfied to hold them at bay until the Amir’s army could retire up-Khyber. It was stalemate. No force could seize that ridge without artillery, or without reserves to make a tremendous circuit and assault it from the rear.

  “But if we stay here long enough the kites will have us all,” said Rahman. He was suffering from disappointment more than from pain in his belly. Death from a wound in battle had been welcome; he felt robbed of his rights — almost of his dignity. “I say: retreat to the caverns. Though we have lost a kingdom, let us keep them! Of thirty thousand men we have perhaps a sixth remaining. Insh’allah, when another day dawns we shall have a sixth of these and they will tell us we are not good leaders. Little they care that we drove a lance into the Amir’s liver. What they ask to see is the gates of Kabul or Peshawar open to them.

  I say: make a night march.”

  But the limit of exhaustion had been reached and there was nothing for it but to hold that ridge and listen to the drumfire in the Khyber. Gup sent scouts over the almost impassable intervening ridges, some of whom returned and told him that the Amir’s army was in full retreat. But he was helpless; Sirdar Faiz Abdullah kept him all that night on the defensive, snatching sleep between feverish rounds of visiting his outposts and encouraging his men.

  It was shortly after dawn when Tom O’Hara came. He was bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, on muleback, followed by a dozen men who seemed to think he was a holy mystery incarnate to be followed to the world’s end if he demanded it. Sitting his famished mule like a huge owl meditating on the mystery of mice, he rode up to the notch where Gup and Lottie sat on either side of Rahman’s litter.

  “Gup,” he remarked, “you’ve fixed ut. It was touch and go all yesterday, but the Amir’s flummoxed. He’s on the run. You did ut. What now?”

  “If I can get these fellows on their feet I’ll follow Sirdar Faiz Abdullah soon as he starts to retreat,” said Gup. “Another raid into the Khyber—”

  “Ostrich! Leave that to the aeroplanes. Send up a scout to the top o’ you peak — he’ll tell you. Faiz Abdullah fell away at midnight or soon after. He’s just left a screen o’ men to hold you here and warn him if you leave cover. Your bolt’s shot. You shot ut good.”

  “All right,” said Lottie. “Back then to the caverns!”

  “Not you! Take my tip and come with me to Copenhagen. Gup ‘ud like ut.”

  “By my beard,” said Rahman, “I smell treachery!”

  “Not you. If you can smell ut you’ve a long nose. You’re down on the list at G. H. Q. as slated for some sort o’ title — Sirdar, prob’ly. Me — I did ut — told ’em in a letter how you played a damn’ good game.”

  “Why not the caverns?” Lottie asked him.

  “Blew ’em up. I did ut.”

  “Tom O’Hara — why?”

  “Flummoxed the Amir. Gup left dynamite and powder in the tunnels. I exploded ut and let the roof fall in.”

  “But the wounded—”

  “Sent ’em to Peshawar. That Sikh doctor ought to stand for parliamunt. He’s hot stuff. He evacuated ’em in one hour, each man with a label on um.”

  “But the guards?”

  “Hell! Didn’t the wounded need an escort? Didn’t I tell ’em you were taken prisoner by a British aeroplane. Didn’t I let ’em carry all your money with ’em, so the Amir shouldn�
�t get ut. Didn’t I promise ’em half of ut? And didn’t they scoot with all of ut, ten miles this side of the border?”

  “And all my treasures?”

  “Jewelry went with the women. It’s in Peshawar. The rest o’ the junk — forget ut. They’ll be diggun for ut for a hundred years to come.”

  “But why — why did you blow up the caverns?”

  “Had to. Jonesey and Harriet Dover and Bibi Marwarid had the guard all fixed. They’d doubled back and done more talking than ten bishops.”

  “You mean, they returned there after we left?” Lottie asked.

  “Hell, no. They were in there before you came away. No one had told the guard not to admit ’em.

  They’d a plan all set to admit the Amir’s men; and Jonesey had tipped the Amir’s scouts to a path by which he could send all the men he could spare from somewhere near the south end o’ the Khyber. He’d have had ut if I hadn’t actud. I was nobbut in the nick o’ time.”

  “Where are Harriet and Jonesey and Marwarid?”

  “Oh, I told the guard to take ’em to Peshawar. The guard bolted, but the doctor took ’em. Don’t worry about ’em — they’ll get short shrift — Andaman Islands for the women — rope for Jonesey.”

  “I won’t have that!” Lottie answered.

  “Lump ut! Maybe you can save ’em, though. Gup’s on velvut. So are you. I said you’ll marry um and get to hell out of India. I wrote ut. Am I right? You two leave India with passports O. K. and a clean bill o’ health in writing if you want ut — saving and except that you agree to pay for the care o’ the wounded that the Sikh took to Peshawar — and et cetera — you pay your own bills. I don’t know how rich you are, but they do, and I told ’em you’ll act handsome. Glint is on his way home — caught with the goods — I doubt he’ll rate a pension — caught him trafficking and proved ut on him. He was corresponding with the Amir — crazy as a coot — offering to arrange terms that ‘ud stop the fighting — can you beat ut? He’s as crazy as the Amir.”