The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  They passed by the front gate that gave onto the courtyard, formidable-looking doors of teak taller than a man, strapped and studded with iron, then turned the corner to plod along beside the outer wall toward the tower. King found himself starting slightly as Yasmini laid her hand on his arm in the gloom, her face a pale shadow.

  “Now. Now is the best . . . the least-bad time,” she said, her voice a breathy whisper.

  He nodded silently and made a broad gesture with hand across mouth to remind everyone that silence was absolutely necessary. Ibrahim sneered slightly as he rolled out of the back of the wagon and fell prone against the wall of Allenby’s house, near-invisible in his earth-colored clothes. King went next, the whisper of his soft leather boots on the brick of the sidewalk only slightly louder. The rest of the crew followed, at intervals just great enough to give each man time to clear the next. A shadow skittered across the road and took cover behind a planter. The wagon continued on its way, the shod hooves of the mules loud enough to cover a multitude of sins; far more noise than the party made, certainly.

  Ibrahim gave a jerk of surprise when Yasmini murmured now once more, close to his ear. What he muttered in turn were curses, or propitiary prayers against djinn and effreet. King smiled tautly to himself in the darkness; that Ibrahim Khan of the Dongala Khel saw the woman as a spirit made it possible for him to obey her in a way unthinkable for a Pathan if she had been a mere female.

  Ibrahim rose and unslung the coil of strong, thin, knotted rope he’d been wearing like a bandoleer, and began to swing the small grapnel fastened to its end. That had three arched prongs, the steel covered in chevron-printed rubber, a refinement that had won his enthusiastic praise at Elias’s house and a visibly hidden decision to steal the marvelous contrivance.

  Now it cut the air in a whirling circle half a dozen times as the Afghan paid out cord between his fingers; and then a quiet huff! of effort as he flung it upward. It sailed up like a bat through the night, trailing the dark-colored rope, and vanished between two crenellations. Ibrahim stood back and pulled it in cautiously, ready in case the hooks did not catch and the little weight of forged steel came down again. When it did catch he increased the tension steadily, setting the hooks in whatever they’d caught with a steady pull before testing his weight on it.

  “Bhisti-sawad,” he murmured; excellent. “The wolves are in the fold tonight!”

  Then he drew his chora, clamped it between his teeth, and swarmed up the rope like a giant rock spider, only the occasional soft rutching of his curl-toed boots against the plastered stone blocks of Allenby’s house disturbing the silence of the night. King waited below, holding the rope steady but keeping his eyes locked on the tower top. When Ibrahim was halfway to the heights there was a flicker of movement; he froze, and a man appeared at the top of the tower above, reaching for the rope.

  Across the street the Mongol caravan guard rose from where he had squatted behind a planter. His recurved bow came up, four feet of glossy laminated wood and horn and sinew with gazelle-horn tips for the nocks. King had noticed the bowman’s shoulders before, broad enough to make him seem squat despite being of middle height—the man had seemed an awkward waddling yaksha-troll in Elias’s house, but David had vouched for him.

  Now those shoulders bent the hundred-thirty-pound pull of the nomad bow in a single effortless twist of arm and torso, the string resting on the bone ring that protected the Mongol’s thumb as he locked it around the base of the shaft. The arrowhead flashed once, then became a streak that echoed to the eyes the flat snap of the string releasing and the vvvzzipp of cloven air. There was a muffled thump from above, and the Mongol drew, aimed, and loosed again in another movement of stark grace.

  Ibrahim swarmed up the rest of the way to the rooftop of the tower, swung over, then flicked a hand into view for a moment to show that all was clear.

  “Good for you, Genghis,” King whispered to himself; although actually the man’s name was something like Togrul. A rifle with a telescopic sight could have done no better, and they couldn’t afford the noise of a shot—certainly not outside the muffling stone walls of the house.

  He went up next, followed by David—puffing and wheezing a little—and all but the rear guard of the crew, each man helping the next over the parapet. The tower top was a featureless rectangle fifteen feet by twenty, with nothing but a stone pavement and the crenellations ’round about. The only other feature was an iron trapdoor set into the floor, and two bodies. One had a broad-bladed arrowhead sticking out the back of his skull, and the shaft and fletching through his nose like a black exclamation point. The other was lying beside him, shot through the base of the throat just above the breastbone; he was still bleeding copiously, but for all practical purposes was as much dead mutton as his friend.

  King glanced over his shoulder at the street. Forty yards if it was an inch, uphill, and in the dark. With no more sound or fuss than a night owl might make fluttering back to its nest.

  “Useful fellow.”

  David bar-Elias smiled in the darkness. “Someday ask me of the girl from Kirkuk, and how Moishe saved us when we were nearly taken by her father’s men at the caravanserai by the Tigris,” he said reminiscently.

  “Moishe?”

  “Moishe Togrul. Long story. I promised him then that he’d have food at my table for the rest of his life.”

  “He’s earned it,” King said sincerely. “Seven courses, dessert, brandy, and a cigar.”

  The five men—and one dark-clad woman, her head wrapped so that only pale eyes showed—grouped around the door with weapons poised. Ibrahim gripped the ring and lifted . . .

  . . . and the trapdoor shifted not an inch. He dropped to his knees, swearing expressively and softly in Pashtun, and felt around the edges and across the surface with incongruously delicate fingers.

  “Locked!” he snarled. “As the plan said it was not. It must be new. See, huzoor, the keyhole is here under a little cover. But the blind sons of owls have put the hinges on the outside and we can knock—”

  “Too much noise,” King said. We’ll have to go down a story and try to get one of the window grilles—

  “Give me your lockpicks,” Yasmini said, kneeling soundlessly beside Ibrahim.

  The Pathan reared back, as if a cobra had suddenly inflated its hood beside him, and then groped in his sash-bound coat, handing her a cloth bundle with gingerly caution. She took it—her motions uncannily precise in the darkness—and unrolled it beside the door. She went to work at once, without even looking at what her two small hands in their black silk gloves were doing. King blinked again, and Ibrahim backed up, spitting to one side and making the sign of the Horns with his left hand. His right clasped quivering-tight on the hilt of his chora.

  She looked at King instead, her eyes pools of darkness with only a rim of blue around the pupils. “I can tell which exact motion will work best, of all possible ones,” she said, without halting for an instant the steady smooth movements.

  That must be how she aimed her pistol at Warburton’s, King thought, caught between fascination and terror. Just pointed it and pulled the trigger when she saw the right moment.

  “I cannot work so for long,” she said, her voice as calm as if she was discussing dinner. “The strain is too great. Much more, and my mind will break—the dreams will swallow me—many of us die so.”

  Click. Yasmini rose, stepping back wordlessly.

  Ibrahim overcame his fear of the seeress and threw the iron door back with casual strength, dropping through immediately without bothering with the ladder that showed beneath the trapdoor. King followed, sliding down the ladder with his back to the rungs instead of leaping. When his feet touched the boards of the floor he unhooked a small bull’s-eye lantern from his belt and squeezed the grip lightly, opening the shutter a crack. A quick glance showed only a storeroom, shadows dancing across old furniture and boxes and bales and heaps of dusty files, plus a staircase leading downward.

  The others follow
ed. King went to the head of the stairs—there was another door, wooden this time and unlocked—and signaled again for silence. He put his hand to the knob—

  THUDUMP.

  The ringing crash of the explosion slammed at his ears and the thick beams and planks of the tower floor shuddered and flexed under his feet. Dust shot out from the walls, making him sneeze and bringing multilingual curses from others of David’s retainers.

  “That’s torn it,” he snarled. “Someone’s blown in the bloody front gate while we were sneaking in the rear! Chalo! Go, go, go!”

  He tore the door open and lunged through.

  The target, Henri thought. He leaned out and put the night glass to his eye for a moment.

  “No movement on the tower,” he said, and drew a deep breath. “Marcel. You will stay with this lady and guard the vehicles.” Meaning, kill the drivers if they try to run away. “Give me the satchel.”

  He took it in his hand, a rough jute sack with straps, the sort of thing poor men used to carry their goods on their backs as they traveled. Inside was a toggle fuse, and a set of linen tubes of blasting powder lashed together around it to make a twenty-five-pound bundle. The ghari slowed, and Sita—might the all-powerful and eternal God and His son smite her with hemorrhoids—leaned over to open the door. He jerked his left hand, and the toggle came away as the cord pulled the igniter free.

  A low hissing and bitter smell came from the satchel as the time fuse began to burn, along with a thin haze of blue smoke. This one was industrial make, not an armory product; his lack of faith in its accuracy showed as he pitched it to lie against the base of Allenby’s teak doors.

  “Allez! Chalo!” Henri shouted, and the driver snapped his whip at the horses’ rumps.

  They were swaybacked and somnolent beasts, but the unaccustomed pop made them break into a shambling gallop, nearly losing their footing on the sharp turn, then sinking almost to their haunches as the driver stood on the seat to haul on the reins. Henri piled out of the dim, ill-smelling interior; his eyes saw the faint light of the street as almost day-bright. He squeezed them tight and shielded them with a hand as the clock in his head counted down the seconds. There was a delay; just enough for him to wonder if the fuse the attaché had found was going to work, then an ear-shattering crash and roar. The charge was much bigger than he’d thought was really needed—but it was an open-air explosion, and very few military operations had ever failed because too much force was used.

  “Chalo!” he shouted again.

  And reached out to grab Sita’s shoulder as she tried to dash past him and draw a light saber at the same time. The Gurkha grabbed her by the other. Bandits pelted past them, yelling their glee at the chance to loot a rich sahib’s house and get pardons in advance, and good gold coin as well. This wasn’t an operation where there was any sense in trying to lead from the front—trying to inspire these gallows-bait would be more likely to get you shot in the back. The only one left with them was the rat-faced little Bengali who was an expert at opening things, and that because he had no appetite for fighting and the prospect of a very fat reward. The Frenchman took the scabbard of his own sword in his left hand and drew his pistol with his right, conscious of Malusre and the Gurkha arming themselves as well.

  “Now,” he said.

  They trotted around the corner, into the light of gas lamps on cast-iron pillars within the house grounds, and into a choking cloud of powder smoke. One leaf of the gates had been torn loose and was lying in the road; the other leaned drunkenly, held only by the upper hinge. There was less damage within, but a man lay moaning with a great splinter through his thigh, a servant from his looks. One of the dacoits was bending over him with a knife in hand, rifling his pockets. Henri kicked him in the buttocks before he could cut the man’s throat.

  “The servant is one of the Good People, perhaps,” he said tightly, as the dacoit gave them a glare and ran off. The servant moaned again and clutched his thigh as if trying to squeeze the flesh back together. Henri could hear Sita gulp slightly as she took in the blood and the whimpers of pain.

  The formal garden and fountain were Mughal-style, with water running down a marble channel in the center, geometric flower beds now mostly bare for winter, and clipped trees. The house proper surrounded it on three sides, an arched gallery of pillars on either side and an upper story with balconies; the main entrance was at the rear of the enclosure, tall glass doors and Classical pillars flanking them. The bandits were already breaking the glass panes down, scattering through the formal entertaining hall. He could hear shots and screams and the clash of steel from within, as he led them by the shattered glass. The memory of the plans came back to him easily; memorizing maps had been part of his trade since he was a boy.

  “This way.”

  Up a broad staircase at the rear of the hall that led to a landing, the burnt-sulfur smell of the powder mingling with incense and wax and polish. Right there, up more stairs, and down a long corridor that led back around the central court, colorful with tile on the walls and the arched ceiling, lit gas lamps caged in brass arabesques. It ended in another door, teak covered in ivory inlay, but looking formidably stout. The little rat-faced burglar went to work on the lock.

  “Open, sahi—”

  He threw the door back triumphantly, and the words cut off in the beginning of a squeal and an unpleasant crunching thock sound as an ironbound sal-wood club slammed into his face, square in the center of the prominent nose. The man behind was huge, muscular under his blubber, and very dark. Henri shot him, and Malusre and the Gurkha followed in less than half a second, the sound of their pistols blending into a single long crackle. Sita’s gun was out and pointed well, but she hadn’t fired, and her eyes were wide as the man toppled backward with three red dots blossoming on his chest. He twisted as he fell, showing craters the size of a young girl’s fist in his back, full of torn flesh and blood and splintered bone. Sita gulped again at the sight, and wrinkled her nose at the smell.

  “Not much like hunting,” she said.

  “Good,” Henri said. At her inquiring look: “I’ve known men, and a few women, who never made that distinction. None of them persons you would be happy to associate with. But next time—shoot anyway. This was one of Detective Malusre’s Bad People.”

  “It’s dirty work, but someone has to do it?” Sita said, with a flash of spirit.

  “Exactly.”

  The décor within was in the Imperial fashion, and looked of good quality but old—inherited, perhaps. One piece in a niche was new; a goddess dancing on a gashed corpse. She was dark-faced, with hair of snakes and a long, lolling red tongue, a necklace of skulls across her breasts, a belt of severed hands about her waist, clutching weapons and dripping heads in her many hands. A third eye flamed in her forehead, winking red—a ruby.

  “The Dreadful Bride,” Sita whispered behind him. “Kali—the dark aspect of Durga.”

  “A demon?” he asked, moving forward.

  Yes, a desk, and a picture behind it. The picture was the likeliest place to conceal a safe; the Angrezi were not an imaginative people about such things.

  “Not exactly,” Sita replied. “Kali can be the demon-slayer in some legends, embodiment of the power of Shiva. Our Indian gods are like that, ambiguous. It all depends on which region and which cult you’re talking about, and some are one thing in public and another privately. From that image I’d say it’s one of the bad ones, where she’s just a blood-drinking bitch bent on universal destruction.”

  “Quelle surprise,” Henri muttered dryly. “Let us to work.”

  He’d seen prettier images in the devil huts of the shamans of European cannibal tribes. And burned them, on punitive expeditions, with the shamans inside. He walked over and felt around the edges of the painting behind the desk as Malusre checked the others and the Gurkha kept watch at the door.

  This was a rather fetching landscape in a glossy realistic style, and looked ancient—pre-Fall, almost certainly; it showed a flock of
sheep scattering across a bright, green landscape of pastures and wheatfields and poplar trees, while in the foreground a red-haired shepherd dallied with a milkmaid who had a lamb in her lap; rather oddly, he was offering her a moth.

  A slight click came clearly as his fingers tripped a hidden catch. The painting swung aside to show a safe.

  “Here,” he said.

  The other men joined him, while Sita began quickly going through the contents of the desk. Malusre looked at the safe and clucked his tongue.

  “Govind and Chubb,” he said, indicating a brass plate screwed to the steel. “And set directly into the stone. I could not open it without a pneumatic drill and a diamond bit or the combination. Nirad could perhaps, but—”

  He motioned over his shoulder at the corpse of the little burglar. The prominent nose had been smashed completely in, and both eyes had popped out under the pressure of the massive stroke. Henri was briefly but extremely glad the man who wielded it hadn’t managed to get within arm’s reach. Then he noticed something odd.

  “Not as much noise as I expected. Could Allenby be out?” Even traitors attended dinner parties.

  “No,” Malusre said. “I checked most particularly. His wife is staying with relatives—she often does—and his children are all at boarding schools at this time of year.” The winter term began right after Diwali. “But he is here.”

  “Well, he’s not here, here,” Sita said from the desk. “And neither are most of his servants—a house this size should have at least twenty or thirty.” A pause as she finished her quick scan of the desk. “Nothing! Nothing out of the ordinary!”

  “There would not be,” Henri said grimly. “This Allenby is a professional of Intelligence, even if he is a traitor. Anything incriminating would be in the safe. We must find him, and soon, or go—the police will arrive in moments. Without documents, we must have the man himself. Make him talk.”