The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  Cassandra made a choking sound. “Someone’s been trying to kill off the whole family, for generations, and we didn’t need to know!” Her voice took on a rising note, more of anger than of fear.

  “Control yourself, dear,” her mother said sharply.

  “Sorry.”

  “Very well. No, we don’t know that. Your father suspected it, from things his father said and wrote. It’s not as if assassins were waiting around every corner. And . . . there’s the matter of Elias. He’s been the King man of business in the capital since your grandfather’s time.”

  They both nodded; it was customary for any zamindari family to have an agent in Delhi, and convenient in any number of ways.

  “And Elias’s father was our agent in your great-grandfather’s time. Evidently Eric”—a faint shadow of pain flitted over the calm of her face—“consulted with him in this matter, just before he died. Elias disclaims any knowledge of it to me, of course . . . but there is the tessera. Presumably your father instructed him to speak only to you, and Elias, I gather, is a gentleman of an exceedingly literal turn of mind.”

  “The question is, what should we do about it?” King said. “Attempts on both our lives in the space of two weeks—that’s da . . . er, dashed unlikely to be coincidence. Nor is Sir Manfred turning up again—now that I know he was involved with Father, as well.”

  “Well, as head of the family, you’ll be the one to make any decision, of course,” Aedelia said.

  Ha, Athelstane thought. Ha.

  And was that a slight snort of incredulity from his sister as well? His mother went on briskly:

  “But the first thing you must do is stay here and celebrate Diwali. The people”—by which she meant the inhabitants of the estate, high and low—“have a right to see you, and that wound has had entirely too much activity. You’ll be better for a few weeks’ rest. Then, I think, it would be best if you were to travel to Delhi, as Sir Manfred suggested, but . . . incognito. You as well, Cassandra.”

  Cassandra blinked in surprise. “In disguise? How on earth . . . I can scarcely pass myself off as a wandering sannyassin, Mother.”

  Athelstane grinned, the first expression of honest enjoyment he’d had since listening to the tale told in Ranjit Singh’s stables. Imagining his haughty, bluestocking sister with a shaven head, rags, staff, and begging bowl, meditating on some mountaintop or trudging along dusty roadsides in search of enlightenment . . .

  “No, that wouldn’t do, Cassandra,” their mother said. “But what point is there in being wellborn, or going to Cheltenham Ladies College as a girl, if you can’t rely on your connections?”

  She smiled indulgently at Cassandra’s bewilderment. Perhaps it went with a scientific education, but her offspring had a touching faith in official channels as opposed to the subterranean network of kin and friendship and clientage that meant as much or more.

  “Connections at court, daughter of mine. You’ll find them a good deal more useful than a fellowship in the Royal Society, in this matter at least.”

  And it’s the best I can do. You had to keep up a brave face before the children, of course—before the world, if it came to that. That didn’t make the cold trickle of fear in her stomach go away, worse than the gnawing worry she’d known when Athelstane took up his commission and the regiment was posted to active duty. That was a worry a gentlewoman had to learn to live with, or go mad. This . . .

  For twenty years, worry meant wondering whether a ryot’s roof needed replacing, or if I should buy that damned motortruck, or getting a scholarship for some village lad, or if Cassandra would ever marry, or . . . Now I have real worries again. It’s something I haven’t missed.

  “I find the whole business . . . irritating,” Cassandra King said. “Profoundly. A dikhdari, an annoyance. These—these people are interfering with my work.”

  She and her brother walked in the gardens in back of the manor. They were less mannered than the formal area in front of the building; less likely to be seen by guests, of course. There was a broad stretch of lawn, green with that peculiar brightness that comes just before frost; an ancient gardener moved in slow motion, raking up leaves that fluttered down dull gold from the oaks above, and they nodded polite response to his salaam. A low brick wall overgrown with rambling rose and a line of poplars marked the rear; single-story brick buildings showed beyond it, stables and sheds.

  There were swings dangling from the branches of a few of the trees, gravel walks, flower beds now mostly mulch and bound-up vines, their younger sisters and a few servants’ children playing with a dog. Wisteria over-grew the rear of the house, with trunks thick as peach trees and branches writhing over the stone.

  “You may be merely irritated,” Athelstane began, and paused, holding up one finger.

  Oddly enough, I believe you, he thought in the same instant, serious beneath the banter. Cassandra had always been bossy; back when they were both tots, she’d always been the general or raja in the children’s games. She was more likely to react with outraged indignation than fear.

  He went on aloud, using the finger to tap himself on the chest.

  “I, on the other hand, am bloody terrified.”

  She had her hands tucked through the crook of his left arm. He worked his right a bit as they walked. The stab wound was only a faint catch now; he was lucky enough to have quick-healing flesh. It ran in the family on his father’s side, from what he’d heard, along with a talent for horses and languages—all assets for a soldier.

  “I thought,” Cassandra said, “that whoever attacked us—the university people—must somehow want to destroy the Project. But then, why would they attack you? You are, ah—”

  “Just another brainless cavalry officer?” Athelstane said, with a chuckle in his voice.

  There was a joke nearly as old as the Raj about an intellectually inclined artillery lieutenant who’d named his tomcat Imperial Cavalry, because all it did was sleep, drink, eat, groom itself, play games, and fornicate.

  “No, of course not,” she said. “You could have made an academic career, if you wanted to . . . but in the arts, to be sure. Still, it’s puzzling. Attacking me; attacking the Project; trying to kill you. There’s no pattern to it. That’s irritating, too.”

  “There’s a pattern,” Athelstane said. “Perhaps even Sir Manfred doesn’t see it all. But someone does.”

  “Ah, yes,” Cassandra said, her brows drawing together. “Sir Manfred. I have a few more questions I’d like to ask him—in light of what you’ve told me.”

  “After me, sister dear, after me,” Athelstane said.

  Cassandra’s head jerked up in slight surprise at the tone and expression; then she squeezed his arm. “Perhaps I will let you go first,” she said.

  “I’ll soften him up,” Athelstane said. “You can finish him off, Cass.”

  He was surprised at how pleasant it was to see Cassandra again. They’d been affectionate enough siblings, but not what you’d call extremely close, not since they passed thirteen at least. Perhaps it was the news about the attack; he still had to throttle down a reflex of cold fury when he thought about that. People trying to kill him—well, that went with the uniform, even if this was unorthodox. People trying to kill his sister, that was a violation of what he wore the uniform for.

  And Hasamurti. I haven’t forgotten her either. He wished he could forget how her parents had sat in stunned grief.

  Because there was no point in thinking about that—not right now, at least—he nodded ahead to where the setting sun was staining the peaks crimson.

  “About time,” he said.

  They walked around the last wing of the rambling E-shaped manor, and under an open colonnade covered with dormant rosebushes. That connected the main building to a summerhouse, where the family often ate in June or July—though only beneath netting. Kashmir’s climate might seem perfect right now; for about six months of the year it was perfect, or longer if you liked cold and snow. In high summer it could be insuff
erably muggy and bug-ridden.

  The last light faded from the mountaintops as they came down the steps. At once they were in the midst of a laughing, chattering crowd—the mood at Diwali was always good, not least because it was settling-up day, and traditionally any small arrears of rent were forgiven. The two Kings dug into their pockets for the also-traditional small candies and distributed them to squealing children; Diwali was devoted to the worship of Laxmi, consort of Vishnu, among many other things, and she was goddess of wealth and prosperity. Eager hands were hanging lines of lanterns covered in colored paper along walls and in windows, and from the boughs of trees; others were set atop the clipped tops of hedges all the way down to the village, twinkling up into a sea of stars crimson and blue and yellow to mark cottage and shop. The air carried a tang of the fruity odor of lamp oil and jasmine-scented candles.

  “About time,” their mother said.

  She handed a small brush and a pot of pigment to Cassandra. Athelstane bent forward, and felt the brief momentary coolness as she painted the tikal between his brows—always done by a sister on this day of the festival, if you had one. A cheer went up as he turned and showed it; now the Kings would walk down to the village square, to preside at the play, where a local boy would act out the appropriate deeds of Krishna as he battled the demon lord Ravana. Then he’d start the fireworks display. It always felt a little odd doing this himself; one of his few memories of his father was of Eric King bending to light the first touch-paper and a rocket soaring up.

  Mother and sister brought a fold of their saris up over their heads against the evening chill. Athelstane offered an arm to each, and the whole assemblage moved off down the hill.

  “The Sikh with the big feet is gone,” a man whispered in the bush ahead. “The idolaters are about their festival and notice nothing.”

  “It is time indeed, brother,” another answered.

  Ibrahim Khan smiled as he listened to the voices whispering in his own tongue. With a different accent, of course; Maxdan Pathans, from the upper valley of the Kabul River. Utmanazi sept, and probably Bihzad Khel, to judge by the embroidered skullcaps they wore in place of turbans and the golden hoop earrings one sported. At a guess, they were Kabulis by residence, townsmen—the Maxdan were the Emir’s tribe, and many of them dwelt in the houses about his fort. The way they moved off through the shrubs beside the laneway in the wake of the gora-log family was an indication; not bad, he doubted any of the locals would spot them, but they didn’t have quite the ease in moving about the countryside at night he would have expected from his own people. And neither of them showed the least awareness of the countryman ghosting along at their back.

  True, this wasn’t like his tribe’s home territory or theirs; much more thickly grown than anything in the Border hills. It smelled wrong, too green and rank, full of chirps and clicks and small rustling sounds. Still, if you kept keenly aware of your surroundings and made no hasty move, you couldn’t go far wrong. He moved after them at a leopard’s stalking pace, leisurely and certain but not slow.

  Once he let them draw a little ahead; enough to let Ibrahim safely grab a small boy running about with some sparkling firework and growl a message in his ear.

  One thing he couldn’t fault the Kabulis on was patience. They marked their target’s movement and waited with commendable lack of motion in the shadow of a grain store; waited until the night grew cold and the last revelers—or the devotees in the little temple and the church—had gone home. The brown of their sheepskin coats and baggy trousers blended into the shadows along the side of a house as they crossed the laneway. A few lanterns still guttered from windows and walls, and the moon was three-quarters full in a sky only half cloud; plenty of light for him to mark their weapons. He followed as they vaulted a wooden fence and went through a cottager’s farmyard at the edge of the village.

  Sheep baaed sleepily in a pen; not even a watchdog barked, though. Hay was rustling in the shed ahead—more than the two cows tethered inside could account for—and he heard a rhythmic feminine squeal. Then silence, and then a woman came out, pulling the skirts of her sari back down over the sleek curve of her hips and smiling over her shoulder as she tucked in her blouse and rearranged the upper folds of the wraparound garment.

  Ibrahim grinned at the sight, with half appreciation—she was a plump moon-breasted beauty, one worth the trouble of stealing as they said back home—and half envy; he’d had no luck here in that line himself, despite the notorious looseness of women in lands ruled by the gora-log. Athelstane King came out behind her, brushing straw off his jacket and giving her a swat on the rump.

  “Run along home, oh daughter of delight, before anyone notices you’re not in bed yet,” he said. “I wouldn’t want to return trouble for the transports of Paradise.”

  The girl giggled and snuggled up against him, murmuring something about one of the gods of the idolaters; Krishna, he thought, and the milkmaids he was supposed to have sported with. Just then there was a slight click-chack from behind the water trough that stood ten yards from the shed door.

  Ibrahim blinked, impressed: He’d rarely seen a man move as swiftly as King did then, although it was a waste of time to sling the girl squawking backward into the hay. Still, the sword was out and the man moving like a charging tiger before the hidden assassin had the double-barreled shotgun halfway to his shoulder. Whether that would have been swift enough only the Most High could say, because Ibrahim took three paces forward and slammed the point of his chora through the gunman’s liver. The Khyber knife pinned him writhing to the ground, his shriek strangled as he bit the packed earth of the farmyard in uncontrollable reflex. Ibrahim twisted the blade with professional competence as he withdrew it, and the body went slack almost instantly; there were many large blood vessels in a man’s liver.

  Narayan Singh charged in from the far side of the farmyard in the same instant that Ibrahim drew his blade. As the other assassin had said, he had big feet; Ibrahim frowned at the amount of noise he made. And he nearly collided with King, as the zamindar leapt the water trough. The second Afghan was already coiling up from the ground, his own blade out and striking upward toward the Angrezi landowner’s belly with the sudden licking viciousness of a striking cobra. That was where a chora was more useful than a saber, at close quarters. King met it with a slamming punch of his sword’s brass guard, striking at the Afghan’s wrist rather than the steel.

  Ibrahim giggled in delight at the crunch of bone. Shabash! he thought in delight—it would have been a blow upon his honor, if the one he’d sworn to wasn’t a good man of his hands as well. Narayan was carrying a three-foot oak cudgel. He cracked it across the Afghan’s other elbow, smashing it; then rammed the blunt point under his ribs and kicked the legs from beneath him in the same motion. One heavy-booted foot came down to pin the injured man to the dirt.

  “There never was a Maxdan worth the powder and ball it took to blow him home to Shaitan,” Ibrahim said with satisfaction, going through the clothes of both men with practiced skill and slicing the gold rings out of the dead man’s ears with a double flick of his chora’s point. “Bazaar bullies, not real warriors.”

  Several good knives, a length of fine chain with a spiked weight on the end in one man’s sleeve, fastened to his wrist with a leather bracer—Kabuli bazaar rufflers for certain—and two fat purses that held gold as well as silver from the weight. Reluctantly, he flipped one of those to the Sikh and tucked the other into his sash. To King he handed a folded sheet of paper, twin to the one he’d had from the fakir-who-was-not.

  “More seeking the two hundred mohurs,” he said cheerfully. “Although these had not the manhood to do it alone.” He spat into the glaring hawk-nosed bearded face of the man beneath Narayan Singh’s boot. “And even for the Maxdan, the Utmanazi are the worst of a bad lot—sons of noseless whores and fifty fathers each.”

  “Do you wish to question him, sahib?” Narayan asked.

  King shook his head, bending to examine the weapo
n the dead man had been planning to kill him with. The Sikh grunted satisfaction, transferred his boot to the living Afghan’s neck, reached down to grab a fistful of beard, heaved sharply upward. There was a sound like a green branch snapping, the man’s legs flailed once to drum on the ground, and then he went limp.

  “Look,” King said. “This shotgun is a hunter’s weapon; see, the Sirkar’s licensing stamp and the serial number. They must have bought it in the black bazaar, or more likely killed the owner and stole it.”

  “Men of some resource, then,” Ibrahim said. “Still, for that much gold even a Maxdan will show spirit, I suppose.”

  Narayan snorted. “Their horses were where Ibrahim said, sahib. Two horses. Good ones—Kashmir breed, geldings.”

  “And why didn’t you tell me a bit earlier that I had them sniffing on my trail?” King said sharply, looking at the Pathan. “Or Narayan?”

  “You would not have thanked me for interrupting your sport, huzoor,” Ibrahim pointed out reasonably. “The Sikh? He is a good enough fighter, but he has big feet.”

  The Lancer officer didn’t look convinced. King was not a bad master, but inclined to be . . . what was the Angrezi phrase? Ah: picky. The Afghan went on:

  “And it was a small matter.”

  Narayan snorted again. “A small matter among the Border hills, child of misbelief,” he said. “Not here in the lands of law.”

  “You folk of the Raj talk much of law, idolater,” Ibrahim said. “So far, I don’t see much in it.”

  “From your own mouth,” Narayan said dryly. “Note well: I did not call thee fool.” He looked at King. “Shall we call the chowdikar, sahib?”

  The Lancer officer shook his head. “This is not a matter for the polis; certainly not for a village constable.” He paused, thinking for a long moment. “It is time that I became Kiram Shaw once again. To remain here longer would be to endanger our people. Two horses, you said?”

  “Geldings; four years and six, by their teeth,” the Sikh confirmed.