The Road to Samarcand

by Patrick O'Brian

  For a moment it seemed as if Shun Chi were going to have an apoplectic fit. The veins stood out on his forehead and he gasped for breath. But by a violent effort he mastered himself enough to scream for his guards and to rush out of the tent.

  The Russians were standing by the machine-guns, peering into their works. They started guiltily when they saw the Professor. If the rebel leader had not already been wholly convinced, he would have condemned them in that moment, for they looked like men detected in a crime. “Sons of pigs,” he shouted, “you are at it even now. You are dead men.” He screamed orders to his guards, and in spite of his greed for more tanks and guns his fury overcame him, and in a moment the Russians rolled headless on the ground.

  “This is a foretaste of victory,” said Shun Chi, with an evil smile. “Tomorrow I shall do the same to Hsien Lu and every prisoner we take, if only you can get the guns ready in time.”

  “Rest assured, Tu-chun: I shall have them fully prepared for you by the hour of the Rat,” said the Professor, “and the bombs, too.”

  “Well,” said Derrick. “I never thought it would come off quite like that.”

  “I was afraid it would,” said the Professor, seriously. “I did my best for them, but there was no help for it. It was their lives or ours.”

  They worked hard. They soon grew accustomed to the machine-guns, and by nightfall they had successfully wrecked every one of them. The Professor attended to the bombs by the light of a hurricane-lamp, and by midnight the serried racks of bombs were all set to explode as soon as their pins were pulled. The Professor put the last one in its place and got up to stretch. “I never hope to spend a more thoroughly uncomfortable evening,” he said. “It quite surprises me that I am still in one piece. Never again shall I permit myself to come into such a position that I am obliged to handle these infernal machines. They are utterly revolting in cause, effect and appearance.” With these words he lay down and tranquilly composed himself to sleep.

  Derrick listened to his even breathing and wondered how he could possibly sleep. He knew that he would never go off himself, and his mind ran busily over the possibilities of the coming day, the great number of things that could go wrong, and those which might go right. They were to keep to the extreme right of the gorge, he repeated: he must remember that.

  Yet somehow he must have gone to sleep, for there was the Professor shaking him awake. “It is the hour of the Rat,” he said.

  THE FIRST PART of the column was already moving off towards the hills when the Professor and Derrick came from their tent. Shun Chi was waiting for them with his staff. “You shall come with me,” said the Tu-chun, after greeting the Professor: he pointed to a light tank that stood drawn up immediately in front of a lorry containing all the rebel’s most valuable loot.

  Shun Chi was a firm believer in leading his army from the rear: he had no intention whatever of running into any danger that he could possibly avoid, and he offered this place in his tank to the Professor as the most valuable favour that he could devise.

  Derrick’s heart sank as he followed the Professor into the cramped and stuffy tank: he had thought of a great many possibilities, but not of this one. Now there would be the whole body of the army to get through if ever they were to reach their friends.

  The Professor, too, looked worried; but he could not refuse without arousing the war-lord’s suspicions, and he sat down with a calm, thoughtful expression.

  The tank jerked into motion with a roar: the whole column was in motion now; there was a vile smell of oil and of petrol fumes, and the infantry kicked up a cloud of dust so dense that it drifted thick through the slits and eye-pieces of the tank.

  Derrick sat awkwardly on a box on the floor of the tank, wondering just what would happen to them when the engine gave out and it became obvious that the machine-guns had been doctored. He noticed that one of the guns was in position on the tank, and that a rack of bombs stood close at hand and ready. “The moment anyone grabs one of those,” he thought, looking at the bombs, “it’s all up with us.”

  Very quickly, it seemed to Derrick, they drew nearer to the hills. He could see quite well out of one of the traverse slits, and long before he expected it he saw the opening of the valley of the Three Winds. This was where the road started to climb at a very steep angle, and this was where things ought to start to happen. The gorge came nearer and nearer. He heard one of the lorries farther up the line spluttering and backfiring. He looked apprehensively at the Professor, and passed his tongue over his dry lips. The Professor smiled back at him calmly, and then leant casually over to Shun Chi, pointing to the heavy revolver at his belt.

  “That is an unusual pattern,” he remarked. “May I look at it?”

  “Certainly.” The war-lord handed it over. “I took it from the body of Tzu Mo. I have shot seventy-three men with it, and fourteen women.” He smirked with pride; but he did not mention that of the seventy-three, sixty-nine had had their hands tied behind their back.

  The Professor turned it over in his hands, and released the safety-catch. The front of the column was well into the gorge: Derrick heard several motors misfire and stop. One exploded, and in the silence that followed he heard the sharp crack of a rifle.

  “Seventy-three men and fourteen women,” repeated the Professor. “Indeed?” Then, without any change in his voice, he said, “I shall kill you, you evilly minded scoundrel, if you make the slightest movement. Put your hands up in the air at once. Derrick, take away the disgusting fellow’s weapons.”

  The driver looked round to say that the engine was misfiring, and he looked straight down the barrel of the automatic that the Professor was holding in his other hand. “Stop the engine,” said the Professor, “and come in here.” The man obeyed, and the Professor made him creep low between himself and the war-lord to the far end, where Derrick disarmed him and tied his hands behind his back. The driver lay with his face to the ground, and there only remained the man in the turret. “Pull him by the leg,” said the Professor. But when Derrick pulled there was no reply. He pulled again, harder, and the man slid gently down into the body of the tank: he had already received a bullet between the eyes.

  The sound of firing was general now. All along the column the machine-guns crackled into action: each fired three or four rounds and then jammed. More than one blew up, and soon nearly all the firing was coming from the other side. A solid iron cannon-ball came trundling briskly down the line and bumped heavily into the tank: Hsien Lu’s artillery was finding the range. A spatter of rifle bullets ricochetted off the tank, making a din like a gong.

  Several more bullets hit the tank, and there was a deafening bang as one whipped in and flattened itself behind Derrick’s head. Some marksman at close range was finding the slits and eye-holes.

  “I think we would be prudent to leave this place,” said the Professor, mildly. “Can you see any reasonable shelter outside, Derrick?”

  “Yes, there’s a rock jutting out about twenty yards away, sir, and there is a path leading up to where Hsien Lu’s men are firing from.”

  Another bullet made the inside metal ring. “Perhaps we had better hurry,” said the Professor. “It would be intolerably vexing to be hit by our friends at this juncture.” Derrick fumbled at the screw handles of the steel door. “You know,” said the Professor. “I have half a mind to shoot this loathsome fellow before we leave. I have taken a prodigious dislike to him.”

  “You aren’t going to, are you, sir? He’s unarmed.”

  “No. I am not. But it would be a taste of his own medicine, and one so rarely has the opportunity of expressing one’s dislike so forcibly. It makes one feel quite bloodthirsty, you know.” A hail of bullets struck the tank: the din was unceasing now.

  “I’ve got the door open,” said Derrick.

  “It would be rash to go out now,” said the Professor, shouting above the racket. “Perhaps you had better wave something out of the turret, as a sign.”

  The noise of battle increase
d farther up the gorge, as the men of Hsien Lu’s army who had no rifles—the majority—put down their umbrellas, put on their hideous masks, drew their swords and rushed down the slope, shrieking out bloodcurdling threats: but in the immediate neighbourhood of the tank the fire diminished. When no bullets had hit the tank for some minutes, the Professor reluctantly abandoned the idea of shooting Shun Chi and backed out of the steel door. He slammed it, and they raced for the shelter of the rock. The next moment the door flew open, and Shun Chi appeared with a bomb in his hand. He grinned savagely. They were within easy range: he was sure of them. He ripped the pin out with his teeth and flung up his arm. Instantly there was a blinding flash, a shattering explosion, and the tank lurched over in a cloud of acrid smoke. Derrick and the Professor were flung to the ground by the blast, and when they looked round the tank had already caught fire. From the shelter of the rock they looked again, but they saw no sign of Shun Chi, for there was not a square inch of the Tu-chun left.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE BATTLE was soon over. The decimated rebel army fled in the wildest confusion and Hsien Lu was left the victor, with hardly a man wounded and the richest booty that he had ever won.

  They marched on to the city of Hai Lin, the capital of Hsien Lu’s province of Liao-Meng. The rebel garrison yielded without a blow, and from the Tu-chun’s palace Sullivan sent word to Olaf and the Mongols to join them: within a few days the Professor’s archaeological expedition was re-formed and stood ready to continue its peaceful and scientific progress. Olaf brought Chang with him. The poor dog was a bag of skin and bone: he had been trying to find Derrick for days and days, and in all that time he had not eaten; it was only by the greatest good fortune that he had returned to Chien Wu the evening before Olaf set out. Chang welcomed Derrick with boundless delight, and within a few days he began to fill out again to something like his former sturdiness.

  The Professor was his former academic self again; he had got over his transient thirst for blood, and he was eager to continue with his journey. But he had reckoned without Hsien Lu. The war-lord would by no means allow them to depart until he had shown his gratitude. Every day they sat down to immense banquets, rich with the strangest and most sought-after delicacies. In time Derrick grew weary even of the nests of sea-swallows; he was tired of eating, and he never wished to see another meal again. Li Han, however, was in his element: for years he had cooked for others, and now others were cooking for him; he had acquired a great deal of face, and he sat among the lesser officials, growing almost as stout as a mandarin. They gave him the nick-name of Jelly-Belly Wary—Jelly-Belly for his rapidly increasing girth, and Wary for his caution in war.

  Olaf, too, ate like a starving man, day after day. “Ay reckon you can’t never have too much to eat,” he said greasily. “Ay ban so long at sea, Ay ban right sick of hard tack. Fill up against the next long voyage, Ay say: there ain’t no telling when you’ll have the next chance.” He sighed with repletion and looked enviously at a pile of crimson prawns. “Ay t’ink,” he said thoughtfully, “that Ay could manage one more.”

  Derrick watched him demolishing the heap of prawns. “You’ll surely burst if you go on,” he said.

  “Well, Ay reckon that ban a hero’s death,” replied Olaf, skewering another prawn. “You make a long arm, now, and sling along the fried noodles.”

  Chingiz and his brothers scorned the endless feasting. They preferred horse-flesh and koumiss; but they were deeply interested in the weapons that had been captured from Shun Chi.

  The tanks did not interest them: they thought them greatly inferior to horses; but they spent many hours with the machine-guns before regretfully deciding that they were no use on horseback. They were charmed with the bombs, but Sullivan would not let them have any.

  “These Mongols,” he said, “are good enough at murdering one another as it is, without giving them the power to wipe out whole tribes at a time. They must forgo the advantages of modern civilisation.”

  At length Hsien Lu could no longer keep them from the road. He loaded them with presents and sent them on their way with an escort large enough to guard the ransom of a king. He gave them many things, and he would have given them more if Sullivan had not pointed out that they could not cross the Gobi with seven enormous wagons. The Professor had three brass Buddhas, made in Birmingham, a cuckoo-clock and some bronzes. As he was showing them to the others he observed, “These four bronzes are recent forgeries; these here are also forgeries, but they were made in the Sung dynasty to represent Han bronzes. Think of that: well over a thousand years ago they were already forging antiquities when our kings could hardly read and write, and went about knocking people on the head.”

  “As for knocking people on the head, Professor,” said Ross, who was suffering badly from indigestion, and was feeling somewhat liverish and argumentative, “you have shown a very pretty talent for that. And as for forging antiquities, that does not seem to me a very creditable sign of civilisation.”

  “I should say that that remark showed a very superficial reflection,” said the Professor, who was also a little liverish, “if it might not be thought ill-mannered. I shall content myself with observing that the forgery of antiquities proves the existence of a widely spread appreciation of them. I would further add, sir, that I have seen Han forgeries of Chow ritual vessels, made, I repeat, at a time when we were painted blue and ran about howling like a pack of savages. Confucius takes notice of this in the seventh chapter of——”

  “But, Professor,” interrupted Sullivan, “if they appreciate art so much, how do you account for these horrible brass Buddhas?”

  “Well, there I must admit that you puzzle me. The cuckoo-clock can easily be accounted for as a Western curiosity, but I confess that I am surprised by these deplorable brass objects. It is strange that even a soldier, a man of violence,” he said, with a sideways look at Ross, “should be so wanting in artistic taste. It puzzles me, particularly when I look at these remaining bronzes, these three incense-burners on the right, which are certainly Han, genuine Han, beautiful things, every day of two thousand years old.” As he contemplated the incense-burners his good humour came back, and he said, “With the exception of one bronze that I saw in Moscow when I was a young man, and another in a private collection in America, those are the finest I have ever seen. Quite apart from their beauty, their inscriptions are of extraordinary interest.”

  “It is odd,” said Sullivan, who was still looking at the Buddhas, “because Hsien Lu is no fool. No sort of a fool at all. I noticed that when he gave them to you he said that in spite of their appearance you would find in time that they had a certain inner value.”

  “True. He was referring, no doubt, to their religious significance. But to return to these bronzes, I will stake my reputation that they are genuine. This version of the familiar extract from the Great Wisdom, for example, runs . . .”

  The Professor would have gone on indefinitely, but he was interrupted by the arrival of the carpenter who had come to make special cases to fit the incense-burners, and while the Professor was giving his instructions the others escaped. The Professor had each of the bronzes swathed in silk before they were packed: he did the same for the Buddhas, in order not to hurt the Tu-chun’s feelings, and he had them all loaded on one particular camel, where he could keep his eye on them.

  After one last gargantuan banquet which lasted all night the expedition set out. They were bloated and weary—Chang was so fat that he could hardly run—but the new and excellent horses and pack animals that Hsien Lu had given them covered the ground at a great pace, and even on the first day they travelled a long stage. A little before nightfall a galloping messenger caught them up with a letter from the war-lord to say that he had caused the Professor’s enormous stelae to be uprooted and that they would be sent down to the nearest port to be shipped off as a trifling token of his esteem.

  The next evening a second messenger pursued them with several jars of ginger and medicinal rhubarb,
in case they should need it on their journey. And on the day after that no less than five arrived with presents of fur-lined clothing, as the Tu-chun thought they might take cold on the high plateau. Silk, weapons, antique porcelain, ivory, wonder-working pills, felt boots, remedies against old age, tooth-ache and jaundice, small patent stoves, charcoal burners and a catalogue of the Army and Navy Stores (which Hsien Lu believed to be in verse) raced after them over the high and dusty roads of Liao-Meng, until their spare baggage animals were loaded down to the ground, and every evening they would scan the horizon apprehensively for the cloud of dust that would herald the coming of a new alarm-clock or an incredibly fragile set of Imperial egg-shell china.

  They rode for day after day through Liao-Meng, and at last the fields thinned out, the vegetation grew more sparse, they passed no more trees, and finally they left the last dwelling behind them. They entered upon a vast plain, covered thinly with brown grass and extending to the rim of the horizon all round the uninterrupted bowl of the sky.

  Three times, as they crossed this huge expanse, armed bands appeared in the distance: once the advance guard of their escort had a brush with the bandits, and once they passed a heap of bones, among which still blew the torn remnants of plundered bales of merchandise, fluttering in the desolate wind; but they were not seriously molested, although they were travelling through a district infested by all manner of disbanded soldiers from broken armies, brigands and embryonic war-lords trying out their hands on stray passersby or caravans that were weakly armed and irresolute.