The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  He found Ibrahim Khan there, too, snarling and with his chora half-drawn as he argued with someone behind a stout door with a small grilled opening and a tiny silver scroll mounted on the wall beside it. The Pathan wheeled as King and Yasmini came up, his eyes going wide in the gloom.

  “The Sikh?” he said.

  “Taken,” King answered shortly. A brief flicker of dismay went across the Muslim’s face, to be hidden by a shrug. “And so we will be, if we do not find shelter soon.”

  “These Sons of Mortality will not open,” Ibrahim said. “I should break down the door, and show the dogs and sons of owls how the Dongala Khel repay discourtesy!”

  “Peace,” King said. Then to the door: “I am Captain Athelstane King; this Pathan is my follower. I have an injured man here, and I am pursued. Will Elias bar-Binyamin give me shelter, or not?”

  The Lancer could see a flicker of movement behind the door, and a beam of light stabbed out, for an instant bright enough to hurt eyes that had adapted to the alleyway’s murk. Then he heard a bar being shot back and breathed a silent sigh of relief. The light dimmed, and the door swung open.

  “Quickly,” a backlit figure said.

  I’m getting a little sick of being told to do things quickly, King thought, with a hint of whimsical amusement. Although this was a man’s voice, in Hindi with a trace of an odd nasal accent.

  “Quickly,” the figure repeated. “My man will take the horses. In!”

  A figure darted out of the door as King edged in, scooping Warburton up again. Yasmini and Ibrahim Khan followed, the Pathan looking about him with interest and taking in the woman out of the corner of his eye. The light turned up again as the door thunked shut and a hand shot the bar home again.

  King raised a brow in surprise. The man confronting him was no more than middle-aged, burly and thick-shouldered in an expensive striped kaftan, with a skull-cap on the back of his balding head and side curls framing a square-cut beard of black with gray streaks running down from the corners of his mouth. One hand held a kerosene lantern. The other had a heavy pistol, held with a practiced steadiness on King’s midriff. Ibrahim’s hand flashed toward his hilt, then froze as he saw two other men step out of the shadows—younger, and with double-barreled shotguns in their hands, but with a strong family resemblance to the man with the lamp.

  That one held the light high, then nodded slowly. “You are King,” he said, setting the gun down on a counter. “Mordekai—Binyamin—see to the wounded man. Chalo!”

  “You know me, sir?” King asked courteously, as the two . . . sons?—vanished into the gloom and returned seconds later with a canvas-and-poles stretcher.

  “I knew your father, quite well; and you are his image.” The older man’s face cocked to one side. “A little taller, a little less narrow in the face.”

  “Ah . . . surely you aren’t Mr. Bar-Binyamin?”

  The man laughed. “My name is David; Elias is my father. Who will be anxious to meet you. Come.”

  “Confess, spy bastard! Confess!”

  A hand gripped the back of Narayan Singh’s neck and forced his face into the tub of water. He didn’t bother to struggle; the bonds clamping his wrists behind his back were iron, those that held him to the stool were strong, and the stool itself was bolted to the brick floor of the cellar. This time he merely waited a minute until the strength of his will had gathered, and then drew the water deliberately into his lungs.

  The liquid was like cold itching fire in his chest. When the man behind him realized what he was doing he pulled the Sikh’s head out of the water instantly, backing off as the young man spewed liquid and went into a racking coughing fit that lasted for minutes. When his head hung gasping above the tub the other interrogator came forward and wiped his face with a towel, speaking soothingly in Punjabi:

  “Why do you suffer so for this sahib-log traitor who left you to die? Don’t you realize that he is the one who causes you pain? We could give you some time to think about things—perhaps food, and a cigarette? We already have the traitor, and he has told us everything. We merely need you to corroborate what we already know.”

  Narayan Singh was naked save for a loincloth; his thick-muscled limbs were heavily matted with a furze almost like fur, and his long black hair lay in a sodden mass across his shoulders and chest. His beard was similarly tangled. That gave the white teeth of his sneer even more the appearance of a bear’s snarl.

  “Are you a Sikh, then?” he said to the man who’d been assigned to play the sympathetic part in the interrogation.

  Did the fools not realize that he’d conducted questioning of captives himself? he thought. That trick was older than the hills. So was trying to convince a man his comrades had already betrayed him. He’d seen it done better.

  “Aye,” the man said in reply to his prisoner’s question. He might well be one, from the uncut beard and the shape of his turban. “I, too, am of the khasla, the Pure, for six generations.”

  Narayan managed a harsh laugh. “Then if you must be the dog of a traitor, could you not pick a traitor who is also a man? I saw your Allenby sahib”—he loaded the term of respect with bottomless scorn—“cringe like a whipped dog himself when the steel was out, and my officer and I fought the E-rus and his minions.”

  “Where did your officer go, when he abandoned you?” the man said.

  “Ask him, if he has told you all,” Narayan Singh said.

  “We need to check the stories.”

  “You need to find him, and you will not,” Narayan Singh sneered. “And I would not know where he went, even if I wished to tell you.”

  The Sikh interrogator stepped back from him with a sigh. “If you persist with these lies,” he said calmly, “there is nothing I can do to help you.”

  The other man came forward eagerly, stripped to the waist. He was massively built, heavier than Narayan, and only a stone or two of it was fat. His skin and shaven head glistened a gunmetal blue-black; from somewhere in the Dravidian south, the Sikh Lancer thought, for his features were sharp-cut, without the bluntness of an African. He had that accent in his Hindi, too.

  “The pins?” the black man said. “Or the bed could be made ready for a guest.”

  He nodded to the iron bedstead in a corner: the one with the shackles at the corners, and a layer of charcoal beneath ready for lighting.

  “No,” the other replied. “Allenby sahib was most particular—no serious marks. Nothing that could not be accounted for by his wound. Not yet. Perhaps later, if he proves obdurate.”

  The Dravidian gave a grunt of frustration. The back of one meaty hand lashed across Narayan Singh’s face, cutting the inside of his mouth against his teeth. The Lancer spat blood and saliva on the man’s boots, bringing a curse and another blow.

  “Confess, spy bastard! Where are the documents your master stole?”

  “I know nothing of any kitubs,” Narayan said stolidly. They cannot break my will quickly, he thought with grim patience. Not in time to catch the sahib.

  The Dravidian grabbed a handful of flesh over the bandaged stab wound in the Sikh’s thigh and twisted. Despite his clenched jaw a raw grunt of agony forced its way between his lips; the flesh there was puffy and inflamed from lack of proper treatment. Colors danced before his eyes, and it was a minute before he could feel the hand slapping his face.

  “Confess, spy bastard! Confess! The law will have no mercy if you do not confess!”

  Narayan raised his head. “I am a daffadar of the Imperial Army,” he said thickly—his lips were swelling, and the pain in his leg distracted him like a shrilling behind the eyes. “I know the law; you could not treat even a sweeper thus without breaking it! And a soldier may be held only in a military prison, tried only by court-martial. This is not even a den of the civilian polis.”

  He jerked his head in a gesture of contempt. The place of his imprisonment was a brick-lined cellar, big and dim but low-built; there were small iron-barred windows with thick dusty glass at one side along t
he ceiling giving out onto street level, and an iron door built into one wall. It smelled of damp brick, and faintly of drains. Besides the instruments of pain it held a wall rack of crisscrossed boards, a type he recognized from a juvenile adventure at Rexin Manor—one used to store wine bottles on their sides. He and King had stolen in there one Holi festival when they were eleven, and drunk themselves silly. How the pitaji had beaten him! Punishment came separately for Athelstane King, of course, but he’d noted a caution in the young lord’s sitting down or backing a horse for a week afterward.

  “This is some place of your master’s,” Narayan Singh said. “You dare not take me before the polis or a court.”

  The Sikh interrogator sighed again. “You are held under the Defense of the Realm Act,” he said. “Regular procedures do not apply—I’m afraid you are alone, quite alone.”

  “And this will be the place of your death, if you do not confess!” the Dravidian said. Then to his companion: “If he loves to swim”—a nod toward the half-barrel tub of water—“perhaps he will enjoy a dance upon air less.”

  The Sikh interrogator shrugged. “I wish we could spare him. But if he will not listen to reason . . .”

  The two men unbound him from the stool—cautiously. They were both strong, though, and the clamp of their hands on his arms was like living metal. The Dravidian ran an eyelock on the end of a rope through the bar-and-loop that held his wrists, and then both heaved on the other end. It ran over a hook set into one of the teak rafters that spanned the ceiling; weight came onto the arms and the already tight-stretched muscles of his shoulders. He clenched his teeth against it; the pain was not so bad all at once . . . but he knew he might hang there forever, as far as these two or their master were concerned.

  “Narayan Singh will remember your face,” he said to the dark man.

  “He will have to take a tikut and wait in line,” the man replied, laughing, and slammed his fist into the sopping red bandage on the Sikh’s leg, laughing again as Narayan twisted in midair.

  Then he bent and set a thing like a pointed candle-stick on the floor beneath the prisoner. “Perhaps you wish to stand,” he said. “Stand on this, then, and relieve your pain. Come, bhai, let us leave the spy bastard to his thoughts.”

  The two men opened the iron door, giving him a glimpse of nothing but a stone-walled corridor. The door slammed with a hollow thud, taking the room’s single lantern with them.

  Bad, Narayan Singh thought, as darkness like hot felt fell across his eyes. Without light, I cannot tell how time has passed.

  Then he strained his eyes to see the windows—surely that meant that it must be dark outside, also? It was hard to tell; jags of vivid color shot before his eyes anyway, and he was turning slowly. Water ran off him to drip on the floor, an added torment as his throat grew dry and the slow burning in his arms and joints swelled.

  Without time, there was no ending.

  King looked about him alertly as David bar-Elias led him into the building. This outer portion was drab enough—deliberately so, he thought. A man who was a Delhi agent for at least six Kashmiri zamindars that he knew of must be able to afford better than this. This was a simple long room with a counter, and shelves behind it bearing mysterious bundles and sacks. No different from a thousand or ten thousand other minor banian-merchant houses in Delhi.

  There was a faint smell that didn’t go with it, though. Something . . . Yes, by Ganesha god of wisdom, King thought. He recognized it from Ibrahim, when they first met—and from the bazaars of Peshawar and half a dozen places on or over the Border. Dried camel sweat soaked into cloth. And spices, and leather, and brass polish . . .

  David cocked an eye at him. “A Jew learns not to make a show,” he said. “It attracts the eye of tax collectors and bandits.” He gave a massively expressive shrug. “If there is a difference.”

  The middle-aged man swung up a section of the counter and led King and Ibrahim through another door. That gave on a short corridor that ended in a staircase on one side and a space curtained with heavy ebony beads on the other.

  “A room for you later,” he said, nodding to the staircase. “For now, through here.”

  The ebony beads were cunningly carved, fitting together like a wooden jigsaw puzzle turned upright to make a wall. Light glinted through them, and they fell heavy and smooth around King as he pushed through. For a moment he stopped, shocked. Light came from several lanterns planted here and there, but they were lost in the vast shadowy dimness beyond, a warehouse that must extend clear from the Chandi Chowk to the Mukherji Marg just inside the Old City wall. And several blocks to either side, as well. A balcony ran around the inside, giving on to rooms behind. Before him was a maze, bales and bundles piled three times the height of a man’s head snaking back beyond sight.

  There were piles of carpets—not just Agra and Jaipur, but the unmistakable wine reds and blues of Isfahan and Tabriz in the Caliphate, and even some with the markings of Bokhara and Samarkand in the Czar’s dominions. Bundles of swords, plain Imperial-issue stirrup-hilted sabers and fantastic jeweled hilts that must be worth a fortune each, if they were genuine, and wavy-edged kris-blades from the Pirate Isles. Books, some modern, others scrolls made of palm leaves. Boxes of dried fruit—he saw one with the King brand on the rough poplar wood. Saddles, for horse and camel; the dusty finery of what must have been some maharaja’s ceremonial elephant howdah. Tiger skins, leopard, a superb clouded leopard from the Himalayas. Tibetan devil masks; Chin silks—

  And sitting cross-legged before a low table, a man. Old, the flesh grown stringy and gaunt, the long beard and side curls white. He wore a dark robe and a blue silk turban, and his face was like an ancient eagle’s save for the eyes—deep, dark brown, clever and penetrating.

  “Do you play chess, Captain King?” the old man said.

  “Now and then,” King replied.

  “I played with your father,” Elias bar-Binyamin said. “Sound, sound—a sound player. But too hasty.”

  Everyone on earth knew my father except me! King thought; but he nodded gravely and sank down on the cushion opposite the Jew. The old man’s son sat beside him, silent and attentive, with a slight secret smile on his lips.

  “I believe you also exchanged one of these with him,” King said, fishing out the tessera and laying it down on the table with the inset chessboard, careful not to upset any of the pieces. Even then his gaze lingered on them for an instant—they appeared to be carved from white and black jade, and he’d never heard of the latter.

  “Heh-yey, heh-yey,” Elias sighed.

  He reached into the neck of his robe and produced another rod of ivory. The fingers that fitted them together were gnarled, the knuckles standing out like walnuts; at some time several of them had been broken and healed crookedly. The shattered ends of the ivory fitted perfectly, and he pushed them toward King.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I remember that—that day in the Khyber mouth—and my promise.” The sharp brown eyes in the wrinkled face looked up at him. “Do you think a Jew keeps faith, then, like an Angrezi gentleman?”

  King kept his face impassive. “I think that my father knew when a man was trustworthy,” he said. “And so does my mother . . . and Ranjit Singh.”

  “Heh, keyh!” Elias chuckled suddenly, and his face became a child’s for an instant. “Put me in my place, did you? Heh?”

  “Not at all, sir,” King said. As an afterthought: “St. Disraeli was a Jew, if I recall correctly.”

  “Poh. An apikiros,” Elias said dismissively. “Heretic—apostate, you would say.” Still, the remark seemed to have amused and pleased him at the same time. He went on: “A Pathan with you, I see,” he said. “And a woman?”

  “The Pathan is my man,” King said. “On the hilt and the steel. The woman . . . her name is Yasmini. And I was hoping you could tell me about her.”

  Yasmini sank to her knees on the piled carpets. That put her face about on a level with King as he sat. Her hands came up, slowly, slow
ly, and unwrapped the hood and veil of the burqua from her face.

  King watched closely. He’d been expecting something unusual, but even so his breath drew in a little in shock. Elf, indeed, was his first thought—something from the Rackham-illustrated book of Legends from Lost Homeland he’d read as a boy, an ancient heirloom a century and more old. Delicately triangular face, hair like palest gold, tiny nose, huge blue-rimmed green eyes—

  Ibrahim Khan scrabbled backward in frank terror, forgetting for an instant that a warrior of the Dongala Khel feared nothing. Elias gasped aloud, and his son swore in a language unfamiliar and guttural. Yasmini seemed as startled herself, leaning forward to look at Elias.

  “You have his eyes,” she murmured in Russian. “Disraeli’s eyes.”

  Then she slumped bonelessly to the carpet. King leaned forward in alarm, touching fingers to her neck. The pulse was there, regular but a little faint, and slow.

  “Bhang lassi,” he said in explanation. “She accosted me in the street just as I was about to enter . . .”

  He went on to outline the events at Metcalfe House; no point in holding back, if he was going to trust these people at all. Several times during the story the younger Jew seemed about to interrupt, only to be checked by a wave of his father’s hand. King brought the tale back to Yasmini at the end:

  “Gave me a warning that saved my life, and saved it again several times over. By Krishna, though, she’s strange!”

  “Yey,” Elias said. “Stranger than you think!”

  Just then a woman came out with a tray; middle-aged and plump, dressed in Hindu fashion but not, King thought, of that people. Elias nodded in confirmation:

  “My daughter-in-law, Rebekka,” he said. “You must be hungry.” He looked over at Ibrahim and spoke in the Pathan’s tongue: “The food is clean for Muslims, if that concerns you.” He turned his face back to King. “Eat, then. Be my guest, as your father was, and listen.”

  King obeyed; he felt the emptiness in his middle now, after the tension of combat and pursuit. The food was excellent, though not elaborate: minced lamb cooked with garlic, turmeric, and coriander, mixed with peas and tomatoes and served on basmati rice with naan for scooping, hot tea, and fruit to follow.