The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  “You go first,” King replied, and attacked again.

  That nearly left him dead on a stop-thrust. Ignatieff followed it up with a flurry of cuts, rocking the Lancer back on his heels, then spat into his eyes and flung the sword. King batted it out of the air with his, but that gave the Russian time enough to dodge out the door.

  With a wrenching effort of will, King stopped himself from following. Instead he wheeled, just in time to see Narayan Singh’s opponent spin away with half his face flayed off by a backhand cut.

  “Wa Guru-ji ko futteh!” the Sikh roared and lunged; his point tented out through the cloth on the man’s back. His foe’s long straight-bladed sword—it looked like a Nipponese katana save for the lack of curve—dropped from nerveless hands. Silence fell, echoing in ears still ringing with the discordant music of steel on steel.

  “Here,” a weak voice said.

  King knelt by Warburton’s side. The older man had a deep wound in the flank, rib deep or worse; a long shallow slash on his back, and enough bruises and cuts about the face and arms to concern a hospital. Both eyes were swelling shut, and half the fingernails were missing from his left hand, their places raw and oozing red.

  “Merciful Krishna!” King swore.

  Warburton managed a smile, although his eyes were wandering. “Tried to make me tell them . . . combination of the safe.” A shake of his head. “Nothing there since . . . couldn’t say that, or they’d have finished me.” Another shake, harder, and a wince. “Get us out—Allenby’ll see us dead . . . explain it all later, blame it on you or me or Ignatieff . . . quickly.”

  Narayan Singh limped up, and King raised his head in quick alarm.

  “Stab in the leg, sahib,” the Sikh said. “And I would not have thought a sword could be well wielded with two hands, so.”

  “Must get . . . out,” Warburton said again; he was gray, and his eyes wandered.

  There was noise growing in the street, men’s voices shouting. The Sikh crouched—carefully, for the cloth tied around his leg was sodden red—and gave the Political’s wounds rough field treatment. King ripped a scrap of black cloth off one of the dead men and cleaned his sword, sheathing it with a snap and a feeling of enormous frustration. The face beneath the mask was amber-colored, with slanted eyes.

  Oh, bloody hell, he thought, spilling the spent brass from his pistol round by round and reloading. Nipponese. Who’s next? Dom Pedro’s gaucho cavalry trying to run me down with bolas? How the hell did that Russian banchut get all these different badmashes on my trail?

  “Damn, I had the bugger,” he whispered savagely. Then: “Let’s be going then. Over the roofs, it’ll have to be. Until this devil’s mess is sorted out, we can—”

  “Sahib.” Narayan’s voice was flat. “Let there be no foolishness. I cannot run with this wound; in a few minutes it will stiffen, and I will not be able to stand. You can perhaps bear one wounded man along the way, if he be a small man and slight. You cannot bear me, who weighs more than you. Me they will not kill; I am merely a daffadar, an orderly who can say he followed orders. And if they do slay me, that is my karman; and more hangs on this matter than either of our lives—more even than revenge for our fathers. There is treason at work here, and traitors within the Raj. They must be rooted out. You know this as well as I, bhai. Go. Go now.”

  “Krishna, you have a bad habit of being right,” King said. His eyes fell on Yasmini. “You, woman. Take off that blasted tent. Are you coming, or not?”

  Because much as I’d like to make sure you’re properly questioned, I can’t carry you. Not if I’m going to fetch along this damned Political.

  “Yes.” A nod of the head. “I did not know the Master would be here. I did not see that—”

  “Get moving, you stupid bint!” To Narayan Singh: “Bhai, I swear that you’ll either be rescued, or avenged.”

  The Sikh nodded, managed a grim smile, and sank back into a chair. King bent, lifted the semiconscious Warburton over his shoulder, and headed out into the corridor with his pistol ready. Behind him, scarcely noticed, Yasmini followed.

  Chapter Twelve

  Narayan Singh limped over to the door that gave on the corridor and slammed it closed, bracing it with several pieces of furniture. He was grinning slightly by the time he finished; partly with pain, partly at satisfaction at having gotten the sahib and his precious cargo on their way. He looked around at the bodies.

  And partly at my own part, he thought, noting the bodies gashed by his saber or tiger claws. May God grant the pitaji hears of this! He had some hope of telling it himself, if not much.

  Heavy feet sounded on the staircase; booted feet, official feet. Having led parties after defaulters and rounded up men lost in the stews in Peshawar town often enough, he recognized the sound. The barking of orders was familiar enough as well, and then from the sudden oath there was someone outside who understood the smell of violent death.

  “You inside!” a voice bawled, in Punjabi-accented Hindi. “Open up, in the King-Emperor’s name!”

  “All honor to the Padishah,” Narayan bawled back. “And if you want us, you’ll have to come in and take us! Sahib, lie quiet or your wound will begin to bleed again! Woman, be silent!”

  He grinned again at that, the more so when he recognized Allenby’s voice raised in command. Let the traitor think he’d caught them all here. The Sikh limped over to the window, risked a quick glimpse outside. The street had emptied—it was amazing how the news of an official raid could spread—but there was a line of men cordoning off the entrance, men in blue uniforms armed with old-style Martini-Metford rifles . . . no, with a modified type that threw soft round balls. They handled them clumsily. Polis then, of the Delhi City force. More accustomed to clubs than firearms, and issued guns only in rare emergencies. One loosed off a shot at the movement in the window. The soft metal went wtinggg off the stone as he jerked his head back, and he heard an underofficer screaming abuse at the luckless konstabeel.

  Light brightened—they had brought floods, then. More tramping on the stairs, and several heavy shoulders thudded against the boards, repeating the process amid cries of pain and blasphemies and assurances to the Political Service agent sahib that the pox-ridden door was indeed both strong, and locked. Narayan Singh stifled a chuckle and limped to the desk to find water and drink it in great gulps, lest loss of blood make him light-headed. More shouts and clamor arose from outside in the street, and a ladder thudded against the window.

  He waited until trembles and jerks told him it was full of climbing polis, then crouched—wounded leg stiffly outstretched—put the point of his sword against the left-hand pole of the ladder, and pushed hard. Sideways, so as not to fight the weight of half a dozen men; the outside stonework of Metcalfe House was smooth. A chorus of yells ended in a crash and screaming; this time he chuckled aloud. He had been clubbed over the head once or twice by city polis, when seeking amusement outside the cantonment of Peshawar town.

  Next someone tried to fire a stink bomb through the window. Hopping agilely over, the Sikh scooped it up on a piece of broken board and threw it back out, bringing more yells. At last the sound of heavy panting came from the inner corridor, and a voice shouting:

  “As close as you can to this wall, brothers, then all together.”

  Ah, Narayan thought. A doorknocker.

  A billet of cast iron, with attached handles, and just the thing for breaking down doors—the Army used them occasionally; they were handy in street fighting. He thoughtfully turned up a lamp and waited in the center of the room, laying his saber at his feet. The door shuddered under the rhythmic hammer of the metal ram, although there could not be much room to swing it—only six feet or so between the outer panels of the door and the inner wall of the building. That was enough, with strong men and determination, but every moment was another for Captain King sahib to make his escape.

  When the hinges came loose there was another confused shoving, as men tried to push the furniture clear without expo
sing their hands to steel; they knew a dangerous Sikh and a saber were within, at the least, and they had seen the bodies and bullet marks without. When it fell down at last three men crowded through, all of them leveling guns. Those polis longarms were designed to be as nonlethal as a firearm could be, used mostly for guarding prisoners or occasionally to put down a riot between faiths or castes. Narayan Singh still didn’t care to be shot by several of them, if he could avoid it.

  “Do not shoot!” he said crisply. “I make no resistance to arrest!”

  The konstabeels fanned out to let more of their men into the room, looking about in awe at the tumbled destruction and dead black-clad bodies. One youngster with only the beginnings of a beard gulped noisily and turned to vomit—Narayan felt an abstract sympathy, for the polis were only obeying what they thought were lawful orders, and upholding the city’s peace. Allenby came through far from the first, with two men in plainclothes behind him—Narayan could sense that they were his men, not commandeered from the city force—and more police behind.

  Before the Angrezi traitor could speak, Narayan said in a loud, carrying voice:

  “I am Daffadar Narayan Singh, Second Squadron, Peshawar Lancers—a soldier of the Raj! I demand that I be taken to the military prison in the Red Fort for examination by the Imperial Army’s own police. You civil konstabeels have no jurisdiction over me!”

  There was nobody of the polis here higher in rank than a noncommissioned man that he could see. Head-butting—what in English they called a pissing match—between the civil and military police was an old story in any town with a substantial garrison, and nowhere more so than in Delhi, from what he had heard. The policemen would hesitate to get involved in such, without orders.

  Unfortunately, Allenby had thought of that—and they would be even less likely to defy orders from a sahib of the Political Service.

  “This man is a spy and a traitor,” he snapped, drawing his pistol.

  He didn’t train it at the Sikh, but Narayan could sense a trembling willingness to kill, even before witnesses. He narrowed his eyes: Was it worthwhile to court that, to discredit the traitor? Not quite. There is the E-rus, and he may have more tools within the Raj. I must live as long as I can.

  “Take him,” Allenby went on.

  The two men in plainclothes grabbed Narayan’s hands and twisted them behind him for the lockbars as Allenby’s eyes checked over the room.

  “Where is King, and the girl?” he snapped.

  “Where is the E-rus spy who is your master?” Narayan said in response—and loudly.

  Allenby did strike then; a skillful blow alongside the head with the butt of his pistol, aiming below the turban that would have cushioned a clumsy strike. Narayan sagged as the world went gray; he was barely conscious as he was hustled outside into a closed gharri—two-wheeled horse cart—and the hooves clopped away on the pavement.

  Warburton was still mumbling as King jogged up the stairs to the fourth floor and the flat roof; trying to tell him important details, the Lancer supposed, but it was a bloody nuisance. The Russian woman was staggering a bit now, despite being free of the burqua; underneath it she wore a perfectly ordinary shalwar qamiz, tunic-and-pjamy-trousers suit, like a third of the women in Delhi. She’d retained the hood and face veil though, merely wrapping them tighter and taking a turn of the fabric around her neck. When she leaned close to help him with the trapdoor he caught a glimpse of eyes pale green rimmed in silver-gilt blue . . . and a green, musky scent he recognized.

  Bhang lassi, potent and only marginally legal—slipping it onto the menu and then robbing the blissfully helpless customer was a standard trick of the shadier establishments in the red-light district.

  Merciful Krishna, he thought. She’s drugged to the gills!

  No wonder she staggered now and then . . . although he’d never known bhang in any form to improve the user’s shooting.

  The worst of it was that Warburton was still bleeding, and gray with shock. King had seen far too many badly wounded men to doubt that the Political would die unless he had expert care soon; the baronet wasn’t a young man, either. That left exactly one choice. He looked up at the moon reflexively, then at the silhouette of the buildings to the west. That left only one matter unsettled—

  He crept to the edge of the roof, where the low parapet gave him a bit of shelter. Yes, the polis, behind the game as usual, he thought; constables were pushing their way through the throng. There he carefully cleared his throat, filled his chest, and made a sound between his teeth that Ranjit Singh had taught him—one the old Sikh had learned on the frontier, long ago. Not loud, more of a sigh than a whistle; the sort of sound a nightjar might make, settling down to rest in a nest of cypress trees by a spring. It wasn’t a sound that belonged here in Delhi, with the crowds and the glare of the gaslight, but it still carried. Not as far as it would have amid the crags and dry nullahs and stony slopes of the Border, under the bright frosting of mountain stars, but far enough; Ibrahim Khan was only a hundred yards away.

  King saw a pugaree-clad head rise from where the Pathan squatted next to the horses by the mouth of an ally. Then it dropped again, and he looked away. A second later the same moaning sigh came drifting up to him; one of the handy things about the signal was that you could make it without seeming to move your lips, and pitch your voice so that it didn’t sound as if it came from anywhere near you. If you had the knack; he’d never mastered that particular trick himself, but he knew about it.

  Ibrahim Khan rose casually, spat, scratched himself, and set about tightening the girths on the horses’ saddles before he ambled off—the picture of some saisgroom on a harmless errand.

  “Quickly,” Yasmini said, steady again but with that otherworldly note still in her voice. “Quickly; they come. The men from Nippon. They must not see us, nor the armsmen of your Czar.”

  That was easier said than done, especially with a bleeding, semiconscious man dressed in white draped over your shoulder. King checked the width; doable, but only just. Easy by himself, but he wasn’t alone. He backed up, carefully blanked every thought from his mind—thoughts of whether the police or the Nipponese whatever-they-were would get to Narayan Singh first—controlled his breathing. Now.

  He ran lightly despite the weight of a middle-sized man draped across his back; Athelstane King had been awarded half a dozen ribbons for track and field at United Services, and he mentally blessed Ranjit Singh and those detested fifty-pound sacks of wet sand he’d borne on his back as he ran up mountainsides. Faster, faster—throw your weight forward, like a swinging ball on a chain out across the chasm. And leap.

  In the air, Warburton seemed to turn to a boneless bag of lead shot, crushing him down. The penalty for failing the long jump at school hadn’t been a four-story fall and a broken spine, either. For a long moment he hung suspended in the darkness over the alleyway, and then the opposite roof was rushing at him. His feet touched; for a long second he was certain the load on his back was going to throw him backward to his death, and then his crouch brought the weight back over the balls of his feet. He hopped down from the parapet, thanking the Gods that it was too late in the year for people to be sleeping on their roofs, and laid the Political down.

  Now, we see whether the Woman of Mystery can jump even in the midst of hempen bliss, King thought grimly. He owed her a debt—but there were still far too many questions.

  “The first of which is whether she gets here or strikes the pavement with a wet smacking sound,” he muttered, turning and bracing himself against the parapet with one knee. That way he could reach a hand far out and grab—

  Yasmini was a blur of taupe fabric against the blackness of Metcalfe House’s roof. Then she ran toward him. Moving fairly quickly, but she’s small—those short legs—

  His hand stretched out over the dark abyss of the alley. Yasmini flew straight past it, checked herself on the parapet with a cat-light touch of the feet, then rolled forward and to her feet. King blinked.

 
; “My master wished me to be able to accompany him in hard places,” she whispered. “Being valuable to him, you see. So I was trained. This way.”

  King nodded numbly, took up his burden, and followed. The other side of this building proved to have an iron staircase down to the alleyway. King followed Yasmini down it, and found her swaying and wide-eyed again at the exit.

  “Right,” he said. The way she was porpoising in and out of full consciousness meant they had to use another trick to get to refuge.

  King removed his turban. His own hair was cropped, but not to the inch-length fuzz of Warburton’s, and he wasn’t blond—that was rare enough even among sahib-log to attract at least casual attention. He put the length of tight-wound cotton on the smaller man’s head, tugged at it artistically to give it an air of sleazy disarray, and then pulled out a flask from a hip pocket.

  “Got to get the smell right,” he muttered, and poured a generous slug over the older man’s head and shoulders. “You . . . Yasmini, isn’t it? Get on his other side and help prop him up.”

  Warburton woke a little at the sting of the liquor. Yasmini put his left arm over her shoulders, but the slight man was still so much taller than she that it was her own arm around his waist that helped with the weight. King led them out into the nighttime crowd, singing a love ballad in a slurred voice. The trio drew stares as they staggered down the sidewalk, but those eyes were amused or disapproving; most were too casual to notice the state of Warburton’s face, the more so as his head hung down limply. Night helped, and the flickering of the gas lamps, and the fact that they had only a block and a half to go.

  Still, the darkness of the alleyway was like a wash of relief—rather like getting into the gateway of a fort, when you were being sniped at from the hills around. The safety might be illusory—he’d seen a commanding officer go down with a slug in the brain while saluting the flag as the trumpets sounded evening retreat on a parade ground—but the feeling was real.