Bold Destiny

by Jane Feather

  The ensign saluted and tried not to look surprised. He knew, as did everyone, that the captain had an Afghan wench in his house; but who was Miss Spencer?

  The discussion in the general’s office was somewhat desultory as they all awaited the arrival of Captain Ralston’s lady. The Envoy contributed little, concentrating instead on reading and rereading Akbar Khan’s proposals. After about fifteen minutes, the door opened and Annabel was shown in.

  She stood in the doorway, only her eyes moving as the jade gaze ran around the room, seeming to assess the reaction on every face. Kit felt the power of her self-possession, a self-possession earned in a school harder than any around this table could imagine, and his heart jolted with love and a bone-deep sense of loss as he thought how in another time and place he and she could have enjoyed a lifetime’s happiness … if Destiny had chosen to play these pieces differently.

  “Annabel, let me introduce you.” He stood up with the rest of the men and held out his hand to her. She moved to stand beside him, acknowledged the introductions with a salaam that somehow seemed entirely appropriate, invested as the gesture was with her own grace and confidence. Then she took the seat next to Kit, hastily provided by the fascinated ensign.

  “I understand you have some personal knowledge of Akbar Khan,” the Envoy began.

  “I know him as well as any, I believe,” she replied simply.

  The Envoy coughed and there was a certain shuffling of chairs which Annabel appeared not to notice. She remained regarding Sir William attentively as he read to her the message from the emissaries. “Perhaps you would be good enough to give us the benefit of your opinion, Miss Spencer?” he said ponderously at the end, folding the paper and sitting back in his chair.

  “It’s a plot,” Annabel said calmly. “You will release Akbar Khan from any need to honor his obligations if you accept his offer of Ameenoolla’s head. He is aware of your machinations with Mohun Lal, and wishes simply to prove your perfidy.”

  “You accuse me of perfidy, miss?” Sir William sat up abruptly, glaring at her.

  Kit touched her foot beneath the table in an appeal for circumspection and she cast him a quick, almost amused, sideways glance.

  “I think, sir, that you would be foolish to compete with Akbar Khan when it comes to cunning,” she said. “He is a past master at such tactics.”

  “You are suggesting that we ignore these proposals?” The Envoy looked incredulous. “I have every intention of meeting with Akbar Khan in the morning.

  Annabel was about to retort that she could not, in that case, imagine why she had been summoned here, but Kit kicked her ankle imperatively and she swallowed instead. “Do not offer Akbar Khan money,” she advised. “He has no need of it, and he would never take a rupee from the feringhee dogs.”

  There was a sharp indrawing of breath around the table, and she realized that her voice had assumed the intonation of Akbar Khan’s.

  “It does smell of treachery, y’know, Sir William,” said Elphinstone.

  “I understand these things better than you,” snapped the Envoy, effectively closing the general’s mouth. “I will not agree to pay blood money, but I will suggest a plan whereby our troops will cooperate with Akbar Khan in the capture of Ameenoolla Khan. We will accede to all his other proposals.” He stood up briskly. “That closes the discussion, I believe. Captains Lawrence, Trevor, and Mackenzie will accompany me to the conference in the morning. Miss Spencer, I thank you for your contribution.” He bowed and left the office.

  Kit turned to Annabel, reluctant resignation on his lips. But she was looking across the table at Colin with a chilling intensity. “You must not go, Colin.” The injunction fell leaden into the despondent wake left by the Envoy’s departure.

  “You know I must, he said, half-smiling.

  She continued to look at him, long and hard, as if she would read his destiny in his face. Then she shook her head. “If you say you must, you must. But you walk into a trap.” She turned to Kit. “You have no further need of me?”

  He shook his head. “You said what you wanted to.”

  “I said what I had to,” she corrected quietly. “Even if it didn’t do much good.”

  His hands opened in a gesture of acceptance, then he gently eased her from the room. “Peace, Anna?” he questioned softly as they reached the street.

  “I have never wished to be at war,” she replied as softly. “But I felt this overpowering need to offer what I could. And you would deny me.”

  “I wished only to protect you.”

  “From death? From Akbar Khan’s vengeance?” She smiled, but there was no mockery. “My love, I need no protection from anything less than those things … and from those there is no protection.” She looked up at the sky. “It is going to snow, Kit.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Akbar Khan sat his horse atop a small hill sloping down to the bank of the Kabul river. He was looking across the snow-covered plain toward the cantonment. The men around him, accustomed to his silence and stillness, made no attempt to intrude on his contemplation as they waited for the British contingent to come out to meet them.

  Just where behind those ramparts was Ayesha? Akbar Khan pondered. And what was she doing at this moment? He wondered if she were afraid, knowing as she must the inevitable outcome of this struggle. If she knew of Macnaghten’s clumsy attempt at treachery, then she would know how Akbar Khan would react. She would know that the Envoy was walking into a snare carefully spread for him. How could he possibly be foolish enough to imagine that Akbar Khan would sell himself and his honor to the feringhee dogs? That he would cooperate with them, as the Envoy had suggested in his return proposals, in betraying one of his own confederate chiefs? Just the thought that the Envoy did believe it was enough to bring a savage fury bubbling in the sirdar’s veins, to pierce his meditative calm.

  It was time to bring an end to this business, to drive the invader from his land once and for all … and it was time to reclaim Ayesha from Christopher Ralston. What changes had been wrought by her sojourn with the feringhee? How long would it take him to eradicate those changes? And how should he accomplish that? Akbar Khan had not yet decided what he was going to do with his Ayesha when he reclaimed her, and he was content for the moment to let that decision rest upon what he found in her.

  “They are coming,” one of his companions said softly, indicating with his whip the small party riding out from the cantonment.

  Akbar Khan dismissed thoughts of Ayesha and concentrated his mental energies with a cold ferocity on the man who was coming to this conference with his head full of treachery and the conviction that Akbar Khan would betray his fellow Afghans for a British stipend. He watched as the escort of soldiers drew rein some way from the hill, as had been agreed, and four gentlemen dismounted, advancing on foot upward to the meeting place.

  Akbar Khan dismounted, as did the other sirdars, and they stood waiting under the snow-laden sky, with the gray river below them, and the jagged snowcapped mountain peaks as backdrop. This was their land and its innate unfriendliness was one of the strongest weapons in their armory.

  Colin Mackenzie tried to control his unease as they approached the group of Afghans, all of whom were armed to the teeth. Akbar Khan stood slightly to the forefront, his fur-trimmed cloak open despite the cold to reveal a brocade tunic, loose trousers tucked into the tops of his riding boots. A saber was thrust into the sash at his waist. From beneath his fur hat, his blue eyes stared with a frightening impassivity and there was not the slightest hint of softness about his mouth.

  This was the man with whom Annabel had grown to maturity, Colin thought. On the rare occasions that he had heard her mention him, she spoke always with a mixture of awe and genuine liking, although she freely admitted that she had lived on the edge of terror for much of those years, in the contemplation and understanding of the absolute power wielded by one of such a passionate and capricious temper. There was nothing about the man to reassure this morning. A
nd there was nothing about the crowd of warriors massed upon the hill to reassure either. Just why did Akbar Khan have an armed escort, when the political officer and his staff of three military officers came alone? Not a comfortable question.

  Macnaghten had been brought to admit the danger of their present enterprise, but he had dismissed the threat with a lofty impatience. “Let the loss be what it may, I would rather die a hundred deaths than live the last six weeks over again.” Now, as the armed hillmen moved almost imperceptibly to encircle the four British officers, Colin felt his sense of foreboding blossom into full-blooded certainty of imminent peril. His hand went to his pistol butt and remained there.

  “Are you ready to carry out the proposals as agreed last night, Macnaghten, huzoor?” Akbar Khan spoke in flat, expressionless Persian.

  “Why not?” responded the Envoy shortly.

  Colin wondered if he had imagined the tongue of fury flickering in the khan’s bright blue gaze, it was extinguished so swiftly. Captain Lawrence stepped forward, indicating the fiercely armed circle surrounding them, suggesting mildly that it did not give the impression of friendly negotiations. Two of the confederate chiefs made vaguely dismissive gestures with their whips toward the bristling hillmen, who took no notice.

  “It does not matter,” Akbar Khan said, apparently casual. “They are all in the secret so there is nothing to fear.”

  What happened next was so sudden it was much later before Colin could properly piece together the sequence of events.

  Akbar Khan was transformed. But perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps the calm, casual man of the last few minutes was the act and the near-diabolical ferocity he now evinced was the real man. His voice rang through the frigid morning air. “Begeer! Begeer!” Obeying his own command, he grasped the Envoy’s left hand. Sultan Jan followed the order to seize Sir William and held him fast by the right hand.

  The three staff officers stood stunned for a second as the Envoy was dragged, bent double, down the hill. They could hear Sir William’s voice in astonished plea, calling upon God, “Az barae Khooda,” and caught a glimpse of his expression of horrified bewilderment. Then they leaped, forward, swords in hand, only to be engulfed by the circle of hillmen.

  Colin struck out with his sword, hearing the steel ring off the blades of khyber knives and scimitars as the ferocious horde pressed closer. He saw Trevor struggling desperately to break through the circle and reach the Envoy, then Trevor went down beneath his attackers, lost to all help as knives slashed and a dreadful gurgling cry came from the melee. Screams and yells filled the air with fearful menace, and the two staff officers left standing fought for their lives, knowing even as they did so that they could not hope to break free from their attackers, and it was but a matter of minutes before they too would go down, to be hacked to pieces on the snow-carpeted plain.

  They fought with the ferocity and savagery of those facing certain death, but Colin could feel his strength ebbing just as a huge black charger reared through the press. The Dourani chief upon his back leaned down, bellowing an urgent instruction at Colin, who reacted blindly, grabbing the hand and leaping upward out of the fray, seeing in a blur the flashing teeth, savage eyes, slashing knives fall away as the charger leaped out of the circle. Behind him, he was aware that another mounted chief had offered Lawrence the same means of escape. As they pounded across the hilltop, he looked down the far side, to where Macnaghten had been dragged. He could see only a pushing, thrusting mass centered on one spot on the ground. It required no imagination to guess what was happening, and he felt a nut of nausea lodge in his throat even as he wondered what his own fate was about to be. Had he been inexplicably rescued, or was this simply a temporary reprieve before fresh horrors?

  The escort, left too far away to intervene in timely fashion in the abrupt violence erupting on the hill, streamed back to the cantonment, pursued in somewhat desultory fashion by a troop of Ghazi fanatics. They brought a confused tale of the wholesale slaughter of the four British negotiators, and Colin’s friends in the cantonment listened and grieved for his loss.

  “I don’t know why Akbar Khan would have murdered them all,” Annabel said, huddling over the meager fire, cold and empty with loss and the sense of futility at such a pointless and demeaning death.

  “But you said it was a trap,” Kit pointed out. “You warned Colin not to go.”

  “I know. I knew there was danger, but it does not make sense that Akbar would have them massacred. I believed that he would take them hostage, perhaps, and use them as leverage to force the withdrawal here, but he gains nothing by their blood … unless …” She shivered.

  “Unless—” Bob prompted gently.

  “Unless he decided he was due vengeance. He would not have plotted the murders in cold deliberation—he is too cunning for such simple violence to offer solution—but if he was suddenly swept with fury, then—” She shrugged. “He is a man of great passions, as I have said. And occasionally they will rule his head.” She looked bleakly at Kit, and he returned the look with grim comprehension.

  But Colin and Lawrence were for the moment safe under the friendly roof of Mahoomed Zemaun Khan in Kabul. They watched in sick disgust from a window as the wildly excited throng paraded the mutilated bodies of Macnaghten and Trevor through the streets, finally hanging them from butcher’s hooks in the great bazaar.

  “Not a pleasant sight, is it, gentlemen?” A soft voice spoke from the doorway of the room where they had been confined. Akbar Khan entered the room, followed by two servants bearing trays of food and a bowl of honeyed sherbet. “I much regret this morning’s violence,” the khan said calmly, dismissing the servants once they had shed their burdens. “The death of Macnaghten, huzoor, was most regrettable.”

  “You had not intended the murder?” Colin asked, an eyebrow raised incredulously.

  “Goodness, no,” Akbar Khan said, stroking his beard. “Please, eat, drink … you are my guests. No,” he continued, “I had not intended the death of the Envoy. I wished merely to lay hands upon his person; but he was a very foolish man to dabble in treachery, and one might say was deserving of his death. There was little I could do to control the tribesmen, once their blood was fired. The Afghan, sirs, does not take kindly to bad faith.”

  Colin bit back the retort that in Afghanistan the likes of Macnaghten had had good teachers when it came to treachery. Somehow, he didn’t think Akbar Khan would appreciate the statement, any more than he would appreciate skepticism at his stated inability to control the bloody fervor of the tribesmen.

  The khan had seated himself before the food and was looking expectantly at the officers. Colin and Lawrence sat down, both ashamed of how their mouths were watering at the rich aromas coming from the covered dishes. But their empty bellies yearned for decent and plentiful nourishment, the first in weeks, and the horrors of the day seemed not to have the least inhibiting effect.

  Akbar Khan maintained a gentle flow of civilized conversation throughout the meal, but his sharp scrutiny never dropped. “It was fortune, indeed, that we were able to bring you safe from the mob,” he commented, belching with formal satisfaction at the meal’s close. “You will convey my deepest regrets to General Elphinstone and my desire that we should reopen negotiations without delay?” Despite the questioning intonation in his voice, his audience was in no doubt that it was simply form. They would, of course, convey whatever message Akbar Khan wished.

  Colin indicated their agreement and then waited. There was something about the way their host was frowning and stroking his beard that seemed to suggest he had not concluded his business with them.

  “You are, of course, acquainted with Christopher Ralston,” Akbar Khan said finally.

  Annabel, Colin thought. “Yes, he is a good friend of mine,” he said neutrally.

  “Ah … then, doubtless, you are aware he has a guest.”

  Colin met the bright blue gaze steadily. “Yes, I am aware of that, sirdar.”

  “Then you will not, I t
rust, object to being my messenger in one further matter.” The khan rose and left the room. When he returned in a very few minutes, he held a small carved rosewood box. This he placed upon the table, opened, and drew forth two identical bracelets of elaborately chased beaten silver. The clasps were intricately worked and as the two men watched he took a tiny key from the box and unlocked the clasps. He then replaced the key in the box.

  “Would you be good enough to present these to Ayesha?” he said calmly. “Do not close them. As you see, they can only be opened again with the key, and the key remains in my possession.” A thin smile touched the incisive mouth. “There is no further message. Ayesha will understand perfectly.”

  Colin felt a cold finger march up his spine. There was something almost barbarous about the bracelets … something primitive and forbidden, it seemed to him. They seemed to speak of a different culture and different rules, to give off an aura of illicit promise both exciting and sinister. He raised his eyes from the bracelets and looked directly at the khan, who met the questioning gaze with the hint of a comprehending smile.

  “We all have our customs,” he said softly. “The feringhee does not easily understand those of my people. I am certain Ayesha will explain it to you.” Then he became all brisk business. “You will leave now with an escort to the cantonment. I will await a response from General Elphinstone, which I trust will not be long delayed.”

  An hour later, Lawrence and Mackenzie arrived at the gate of the cantonment with an escort of silent, well-armed Ghilzais. The guards at the gate greeted them with expressions of astonishment and relief, but it was nothing to the joyful reception they received at headquarters, where their friends had been maintaining a dismal vigil, listening to the sounds of riotous disturbance carrying from the city.