The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  That gave her a view of what happened afterward. A third man carried something besides a pistol, a cloth bundle that trailed a hissing and plume of smoke . . .

  Dr. Chullunder Ghose recognized it as a bomb sooner than she. It was pitched to fall under the dolly; the explosion would shatter the metal and wood into lethal shrapnel and kill everyone within a dozen yards. He grabbed the parcel out of the air with the skill of the fast-bowling cricketer he’d been, and curled himself around it. Cassandra squeezed her eyes tight, but she could not shut out the horribly muffled thudump of the explosion, or the feel of what spattered her, or the smell.

  She forced her eyes open; there were still the men with revolvers—and men willing to set off bombs under their own feet would be horribly dangerous with firearms as well. There was one more shot, and something crashed and tinkled in the middle distance. Half the crowd was stampeding in terror, some trampling those ahead of them.

  The young Rajput prince she’d seen on the promenade deck of the Diana drew his blade and began a lunge, staggered as two lead slugs struck him, lunged again with his scimtare, a murderously sharp length of fine Jawahdapur steel. It rammed through coat and ribs to emerge dripping red from the gunman’s back. Lord Cherwell was a step behind him, big blue-veined hands outstretched.

  Then the four young men disappeared beneath a wave of men wielding swords, knives, walking sticks, fists and feet and a wrought-brass cuspidor stained with betel juice. Despite the nausea that clogged her throat, despite screams and cries and horror, Cassandra thought she saw brief bewilderment on the faces of the terrorists; and that puzzled her itself. What else would men of the martial castes do, when they saw a crowd attacked by assassins?

  After the explosion and the brief deadly scrimmage things moved by in a blur; doctors, one putting a pressure bandage on Patni’s wound and setting up a plasma drip, stretchers carrying away the wounded. Police came running up, men in blue-and-yellow uniforms with long lathi clubs. Hands helped her to the rim of a fountain, where she sat staring.

  “Memsahib.”

  The voice was firm; she looked up. A thirtyish man in plain crimson-and-green civilian clothes, but with two uniformed policemen behind him, a notebook in his hand and a pistol in a shoulder holster under his red jacket. He was too dark for a Kashmiri, with sharp, brown, clean-shaven features and weary eyes so black the pupil disappeared.

  “Detective-Captain Tanaji Malusre, memsahib,” he said gently—in good English but with a strong Marathi accent. “My apologies, but we must take statements before memories fade and change. Now—”

  During the questions someone thrust a mug of hot sweet tea into her hand. She lifted it, swallowed at the sight of what was drying on her hands, then forced the porcelain to her lips. A little strength returned, enough for her to ask in her turn:

  “Why? Captain Malusre, why? Who are these people?”

  “Subversives—Bengali secessionists—enemies of the Raj. We think we know who, but this group has never operated outside Bengal province before. One may live long enough to answer questions, if we are lucky. Very strange.”

  “But . . . but none of us are political people! Poor Dr. Ghose—” She squeezed her eyes shut again.

  I will not vomit. I am Cassandra Mary Effingham King of the Rexin Kings, and I am the sister and daughter and granddaughter of soldiers of the Empire. My ancestors rode with the Light Brigade and held Piper’s Fort. There is no such thing as fear!

  “Dr. Ghose was a very brave man,” the detective said, looking down at his notebook. “Without him, several others might have died.”

  Cassandra shivered again, barely conscious of the detective muttering to himself as he made quick shorthand notes: “Very strange . . . the pistols were foreign. Damascus armory cap-and-ball make; but the Caliph’s men are not so foolish, are they?”

  She burst out: “None of us are political people! We are scholars—scientists—why would anyone come all the way from Calcutta to attack us?”

  “I do not know, memsahib,” the policeman said, tucking his notes away. “But I would very much like to know.”

  Yasmini closed her eyes as the bitter, sweet-sour taste of the bhang lassi slid into her mouth. Her body recognized it, like a sudden dryness in the throat and tongue that increased even as she drank. Yogurt and ice water, sugar . . . and hemp resin and poppy juice and things less common. Slowly, she set the silver cup down on the rock beside her and sat on the flat cushion, cross-legged, with each foot resting sole up on the opposite knee, her hands resting on her thighs with index finger touching thumb. Breath and heartbeat slowed, matching the thudding of a distant drum.

  “See. See the Path.” Ignatieff’s voice boomed out like a brazen radong-trumpet, echoing on stone and down the corridors that burrowed more deeply into the earth. “Tell. Tell us the Path.”

  Her master spoke Hindi for the benefit of the men who knelt ranked before her. It was damp and chilly in the chambers beneath the ancient temple; great roots wove through the stone of the walls, writhing like snakes. Voices chanted in the background, a deep rumble that echoed off stone like the flickering light of the ghee-fed lamps that cast yellow highlights. It made the faint, faded images painted on the walls seem to move of themselves, whirling around the great room in a sinuous dance.

  The drug was not needful, for ordinary purposes—for sensing where a patrol would turn, or what would come of taking one pass and not the next. When she slept, eventually, she would pay for the drink in a torrent of unasked, unsought vision. For the present, it opened the gates of the mind, letting the trained will range farther, and faster.

  Her eyelids drooped over the blue-rimmed green of her eyes. Lips opened. Sight blurred, but not as an ordinary woman’s might. Here the outlines shifted as she saw the if; this man might be here, or there, might lean forward or sit straight. He might not be here at all, or might be slightly different . . . now she saw Ignatieff with eyes of the same color and no patch, now with a steel hook in the place of a hand. Now an Ignatieff who did not command, but smiled a reptile’s smile, while she answered with the same expression . . . that one was very bad, and she wrenched her mind away.

  “See! Speak!”

  Might-be frayed out in either direction, to pasts and futures, being and not-being all at once. A present in which buildings stood impossibly tall, sheathed in mirror; one in which nothing lived save insects and grass and only shaped stones remained of humanity; one in which dark soldiers with strange, powerful weapons and crawling metal fortresses fought here in the Vale of Kashmir.

  “I see . . . I see . . .”

  Forward, a part of the fan of might-be collapsed into a knot. She recognized it. A thing twisting in space, its dark pitted bulk rolling ponderous against the stars—there was no reference point to show its size, but she sensed a hugeness about it, an utter cold, a metallic tang as of iron. Like a mountain of frozen steel, falling from forever. Then a blue curve marked with the shapes of continents beneath drifting cloud; a flash of fire, night darker than night, a blizzard that blew ice like swords over seas frozen from pole to pole, a last emaciated body crouching in a ruin gnawing at a human skull.

  “It comes . . . closer.” The fingers of her mind stroked the webs of might-be and if. “The one slain. His death brings it closer.” A small brown man’s hands, reaching for a bag that twisted in the air. “Closer. But the—”

  She stifled a shriek. “Their faces! I see their faces!” A man and a woman’s much alike. Young. That is the Anglichani soldier I saw before. The one I must not see, but the Master commands—

  “They are the ones! With them dead, death comes!”

  A murmur went through the watching men, and their eyes glittered like wolves watching around a campfire at the edge of sight. Their clothes were of many kinds—saffron yellow robes and caste marks, hairy jackets, silk—but their eyes were the same.

  “Kali Yuga!” one whispered. The others took it up with a hissing sibilance. “Kali Yuga! Kali Yuga! Kali Yuga!”r />
  Kali Yuga: Age of Darkness. The dance of the death goddess; the triumph of Ignatieff’s Peacock Angel.

  Chapter Four

  The dining room of the Peshawar Club dated from the Old Empire. There were many clubs in the city, down to the ones where the chi-chi foremen of the Indian Railways Administration gathered, but only one was the Peshawar Club to anyone who mattered. Dark and cool and elegant; modernization in recent years had brought newfangled overhead fans rather than punkhas. Plus a ghastly antique Georgian-era statue of St. Disraeli near the entrance, in the style of a century ago, with a look of ruptured nobility and his hand raised as if to call a waiter about a fly in his soup.

  The smells made King’s mustache twitch as he walked quickly through the lounge outside, reminding him that he was damned sharp-set; luncheon had been a handful of chilies and some chapatis and ghee by the side of the road, with his charger’s reins looped through his belt as he sat on his heels to eat. The Club’s chicken vindaloo and Khara Masala lamb were almost as good as the versions that came out of his mother’s kitchen. He’d been fighting in the cause of civilization, and his stomach reminded him that he deserved some of its fruits.

  “Sir Manfred?” King said, as a man stubbed out a thin cigar and rose from a divan in the waiting room. A companion stood behind him. The Lancer officer pressed palms together before his face and bowed with a formal:

  “Namaste—ram-ram.”

  The man was a baronet, after all, and from the sound of things an eminence in the shadowy realm of the Political Service. King didn’t think he was the sort to truckle, even for the chance of advancement, but a little courtesy never hurt. Being too disobliging might be the first step to a posting in some godsforsaken outpost on the Tibetan border, or to Singapore or even—merciful Krishna avert!—to a garrison in England.

  “The same,” the Political said, then extended a hand for the less punctilious greeting between equals. “Captain King, I presume, of Rexin in Kashmir and the Peshawar Lancers? Good of you to sacrifice time on leave.”

  And courteous of you to pretend I had a choice, King thought, studying the other man. He was slim and a few inches shorter than King’s six-two, middle-aged, with a thin, pale face and gray showing in a close-clipped yellow mustache and the hair under the edge of his pugaree-turban. That was dazzling white, like the rest of his outfit save for black half boots. The blue eyes were sharp and appraising, and the hand in his was soft-skinned but strong.

  “My apologies for the delay,” King said. “Your card caught me in media res, as it were, Sir Manfred.” Bulling away with Hasamurti’s legs wrapped around my arse, actually.

  “Koi bat naheen, not a problem, my dear chap. Allow me to present a friend,” the Political went on.

  The stranger bowed with a courtly gesture before offering his hand in turn. King’s brow rose slightly. Not an Imperial, he decided at once, although in nondescript tunic-jacket and trousers and sash. A white man, but on the darker edge; black-eyed, olive-skinned, with raven-dark shoulder-length hair; clean-shaven, but with slightly paler patches to his face that suggested mustaches and a chin-beard not long ago. In his late twenties, a little older than King. He made a quick guess . . .

  “Enchanté, monsieur,” he said, and continued in French. “Welcome to the Empire—the British Empire, that is.”

  The stranger’s eyebrows rose. “A man of acute perception,” he said, with a glance and shrug at Sir Manfred, in fairly good English with a slightly archaic book-learned flavor.

  “May I present Colonel Henri de Vascogne, Vicomte of El Oudienne in the Duchy of Tunis, Chevalier of the Order of the Mahgreb, currently on detached duty, in the service of His Imperial Majesty Napoleon VI of Algiers and France.”

  “Monsieur le Vicomte,” King said, and bowed. Another Political, he thought. But a man of his hands as well.

  He recognized the signs, broad shoulders and thick swordsman’s wrists, and a rim of callus around the index finger and thumb of the right hand. And the way he moved, light and alert, with a circle of awareness about him. Département Secret or Deuxième Bureau without a doubt; uncooperative Berber chieftains assassinated, nests of Moorish pirates on the Andalusian coasts identified, Caliphate spies tracked down on request.

  “An honor,” replied the Frenchman, a charming smile lighting his ugly-handsome Mediterranean face.

  A silent waiter conducted them to their table; King noted that it was in a corner and far enough from any other that even the sharpest ears would have trouble picking up a conversation. De Vascogne raised his brows again as the wine was uncorked, paying tribute to an excellent Swat Valley red.

  King let Sir Manfred lead casual talk while he did justice to the garlic nan, vindaloo, stuffed eggplant, cauliflower and okra cooked in aromatic yogurt with chilies, cinnamon, peppercorns, and cumin.

  “I see our ancient tales about English food are not of a certainty true,” de Vascogne said, eyeing the plates with the air of a pious man who had just taken the Sacrament.

  “We’re scarcely English,” Sir Manfred said. “British, of course, by descent.”

  Well, mostly, King thought.

  One of his great-grandmothers had been a Rajput noblewoman ; he had a vague half memory of reading somewhere that there was an Afghan princess in the Warburtons’ background—one of his ancestors had been a notable Political Officer in these parts right after the Fall. And Ganesha knew enough foreigners had been swept up in the mad three-year-long scramble to escape from the frozen charnel house of Europe. They hadn’t been picky about who arrived in Bombay or Karachi in the generation of the Exodus, provided they could work, breed, and be relied on to fight on the right side.

  Sir Manfred went on: “These days?” A shrug. “We’re the sahib-log”—ruling folk—“of the Angrezi Raj; although it’s a social distinction rather than a legal one, strictly speaking.”

  King nodded, recognizing an academic’s precision; in strict law, the Raj didn’t recognize caste—but nobody could rule India for a month if they didn’t do so in fact. Much less live there for a century and a half.

  It was still the British Raj, although usually you simply said the Empire; that was like referring to the Club in Peshawar, with no need for further qualification. Technically there was a mort of empires in today’s world; the East Asian colossus that Akahito ruled from Peking as Mikado and Son of Heaven; the Czar’s hell-born cesspit in Central Asia; the shadowy dominion centered on Rio de Janeiro that was reigned over by Dom Pedro and ruled by the caudillo of the month; Napoleon VI’s own Algiers-centered imperium around the western Mediterranean. There was also the Caliph in Damascus, of course; he did rule from the Danube to Baluchistan, even if he was a wog. Kali alone knew what titles savage chiefs in the interiors of barbarian Europe and the Americas and Africa used.

  But it was the Raj governed from Delhi that mattered; and John II, King-Emperor, Padishah, and Kaisar-i-Hind, his House of Lords and Commons and prime minister.

  And His Royal and Imperial Majesty’s Army and Navy and Political Service, King thought.

  Warburton turned toward him. “How’s Colonel Dammit?” he asked.

  A snort of laughter forced its way through King’s lips, before he schooled his expression. “You know Colonel Claiborne, sir?” he inquired.

  Warburton smiled, a tight, controlled curve of the lips. “We were at school together,” he said. “United Services. And I served under him in the Second Siamese War, when we had that touch-up with the Mikado’s men. He was Captain Dammit then, of course.”

  King nodded respectfully. That had been as close to a major war as the Empire had had in the past two generations; closer to a draw than was pleasant to contemplate, if you read beneath the schoolbook histories. Quite disconcerting, fighting Asiatics—the Raj wasn’t accustomed to enemies nearly as advanced as itself. There had been clashes since, and someday there would be another war.

  “In fact, I knew your father in Siam,” Warburton went on. “And later.” He cleared his th
roat. “Monsieur de Vascogne is here to consult about the Canal project. Formally, at least.”

  King nodded, wary. Delhi and Algiers had both been talking about dredging out the old Suez Canal since the dying years of the twentieth century. Neither had done anything concrete; it would be devilish expensive—impossibly so for France-outre-mer, she being much smaller than the Empire and several generations behind in technique. And while the Sultanate of Egypt was a rich prize ripe for the plucking, for either to conquer it would offend the other. Not to mention the possibility of war with the Caliphate of Damascus, which would be genuinely unpleasant even from Delhi’s perspective and a life-and-death struggle from that of Algiers.

  “The prime minister is serious, then?”

  “Quite,” Sir Manfred said, flicking open a silver case and offering it to his guests. “Lord Somersby generally means what he says, even during an election. You’re a Whig yourself, I suppose, Captain?”

  The younger man nodded cautiously as he selected a cigarillo with a murmur of thanks; the Whigs were the King family political tradition, from Old Empire times.

  “I was happy to hear that Lord Somersby would ‘kiss hands,’ ” Athelstane said. “He’ll make an excellent PM, even if he isn’t a second Disraeli or Lord Salisbury or Churchill. Not that Majors and the Tories did so very badly, but the Small Tenants Rights Act was overdue for passage—should have been put through in my father’s day. A quarter of the crop and two days labor-service a week is all that a good zamindar should expect from his ryots.”

  He paused for an instant. “And any zamindar or yeoman-tenant who needs a debt-bond to keep his laborers from moving away to the cities isn’t fit for authority. With the way the population’s growing, a decent man doesn’t have problems finding workers.”