The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  The Frenchman nodded, half-seen, and obeyed, his boots pounding up the staircase. King heard a choking sound behind him and wheeled. David bar-Elias was standing frozen, his sword half-drawn. Beyond him was Ignatieff, almost invisible in his black robes save for the pale face. From the awful stink, much of the robes’ color was dried and rotting blood. There was fresh blood on his face and hands, and his blue eye glinted with a terrible merriment as he extended one finger toward the Jew’s face.

  “Tchernobog has his mark on you, zhid,” he said in Russian. “The Peacock stands ready to bear your soul to the Mouth that shall eat all existence.”

  “Snap out of it!” King said, deliberately jostling the Jew as he came up beside him. “No need to be alarmed at a man who can’t even afford to pay his laundry bill, by the smell.”

  The older man came to himself with a start, and they both backed a step—into the corridor that led to Narayan Singh’s prison.

  Ignatieff laughed, a soft grating sound. Behind him the men in saffron robes advanced, their heads nodding in inhuman unison as they hummed together. In the rear of their ranks a voice rose in song—a hymn. A hymn to Her; a song of the pestilence that was Her health, of the famine that was Her affluence; of the agony that was Her joy. Several in the first row were snapping rumal-handkerchiefs from hand to hand, the cloth flickering too fast to see; others brandished the short one-bladed pickaxes, or skinning knives. They edged forward, between the figure in the black robe and his enemies.

  “So,” the Russian said. “An Angrezi dog and his arse-sniffing Yid jackal. Filth, defending a world of filth. You have committed sacrilege, but you can pay immediately. Oh, how you shall pay!”

  He half turned. “Take them! We have them trapped—take them alive for the sacrifice.”

  Oh, no you don’t, King thought.

  The corridor was a tight fit for two men, if it came to fighting; just about right for one with sword and long knife. If they could hold the enemy off—

  “Fall back,” King said. “Give me blade room. You can spell me if I tire.”

  “I have a better idea than that, my Angrezi hero,” David bar-Elias said. “More light, please.”

  King brought the bull’s-eye lantern up and squeezed the grips, opening the shutter more widely. David stepped up, with the odd-looking pistol King had noted in his hand. The Kali-worshipers rushed immediately, but the Jew met them with a ripple of fire that would have done credit to a Gatling gun, killing a man with each shot. That was no easy thing; in darkness and the terror of close combat most men would miss two times out of three, even at point-blank range. Most of the dead were down with head wounds; the bodies fell in the front rank, some limp, more thrashing for a few seconds like pithed frogs.

  Ignatieff reacted just as swiftly, grabbing two of his followers and holding them together before him as a shield. When the sixth bullet fired and the pistol clicked on an empty chamber he grinned and threw them aside.

  “Take them!” he called again.

  His followers began to climb over the twitching mound of bodies. David extended the pistol and fired again. This time the sound was a softer thudump, rather than the sharp crack of regular fire. A circular patch of Ignatieff’s robes disappeared, right over his stomach; he went down with an uffff! like a man punched hard in the belly. Dismayed, the Kali-worshipers wavered.

  “Shabash!” King shouted, wishing he’d done the deed himself. Take that for Hasamurti, you bloody maniac! Although—had that been a gleam of chain mail beneath the robe? It wouldn’t stop a normal bullet, but that had sounded like—

  “Now we run!” David called cheerfully. Then, in gasps as they tore down the corridor into darkness: “French . . . bought it in Cairo . . . extra barrel, round of buckshot!”

  The door to the chamber at the end was open. Within—

  Narayan Singh bit his lip until the blood flowed. He was “swimming on land,” hanging in midair suspended by chains that ran from each limb to brackets in the walls. A man of less than his thick-limbed, bull-necked strength would have been racked to madness long since. As it was, every joint of his limbs was a mass of fire, and the tendons that ran up into the muscles were like iron rods heated to white welding heat in a smith’s forge.

  Still, he managed a hoarse laugh as he heard shouts and running feet outside his prison, and then gave a bellow:

  “Shabash!” he shouted. “Shabash, sahib!” And laughed again when the lights went out.

  There was one guard with him, the Sikh; the man cursed, relighting the gas lamps from a taper. He looked at Narayan and raised his dagger, then shrugged and lowered it again. Instead he went to the door, listening with his ear pressed against it.

  A voice spoke outside: a woman’s voice, speaking in a tongue Narayan Singh didn’t understand, but thought was that of the Russki. His heart sank, although he kept the snarl on his face and craned his neck up despite the pain. Had the Russki woman betrayed the sahib?

  That seemed more likely when the Sikh guard unbarred and opened the door. Through it came the seeress, only her pale eyes visible through the eye slit of a hood. Behind her came Ibrahim Khan with long knife in hand, grinning and splashed with blood. The blood was as natural to him as his beard, and as for the grin—in the lands up north and west of Peshawar town, treason has always been accounted a good joke, and a better game than stick-and-ball.

  The woman looked around the room. Even hanging from the chains, Narayan felt a slight tingling chill as he met them. They saw more than human beings were meant to see . . .

  She stepped aside, pointed to the Sikh guard, turned her head to Ibrahim.

  “Kill,” she said.

  Her voice had the empty purity of water in a mountain stream. So much so that the guard was nearly caught flat-footed, his mind not taking in that the word was meant for him. Ibrahim Khan had no such weakness, and his Khyber knife was flicking out even as she spoke. The point of it touched the guard’s belly as he sprang backwards—there was nothing wrong with his reflexes in a fight—and instead of standing to do battle, he spun and raced for Narayan Singh with a dagger held high, plainly intending to obey his instructions and see that the prisoner wasn’t saved.

  The young Sikh felt a surge of angry frustration—to come so close to rescue!—and then filled his lungs to meet death with a cry of defiance. He could see Ibrahim making a throwing gesture, but with his left hand, and there wasn’t room under the low ceiling for a proper cast with the chora, anyway.

  Then half a pace from him, knife raised, the guard halted. The snarl left his face, replaced by a scream of pain, and the knife fell from nerveless fingers. He clutched at his right elbow with his left hand, screamed again, turned in a blundering circle, and the Pathan was upon him. Narayan saw the point of the chora slam through the man’s neck, and then a gout of blood struck him in the face, stinging fiercely in the cuts and bruises on his skin. He spat again and again to get the taste out of his mouth, blinking and squinting as he saw Ibrahim’s face again. The Pathan was tossing a lead ball with steel spikes up and down in his left hand; it was fastened to that wrist by a long length of fine chain.

  “I took it from the dead Maxdan in thy village, idolater,” he said.

  Narayan grunted, and looked down at the guard, whose head was at an odd angle as blood pooled beneath him. Ibrahim giggled again.

  “Tee-hee! That is the way to cut a Sikh’s throat. With an outward thrust; the point behind the windpipe, and the heel of the blade parts the neckbones!”

  The Sikh grunted again. “So, have you come to rescue me, then?”

  “Nay; I have come to squat on thy chest and talk to thee of the true faith. Or perhaps to tickle thee with this?”

  He spun the chora in a bright circle. Meanwhile, Yasmini had been tugging at the dead guard’s belt. After a moment she drew a knife of her own and cut the keys free, then went to Narayan’s feet.

  “Hold him,” she said, and fitted the key to the lock on one ankle iron.

  Ibrahim did
as she bid, holding up the Sikh’s shoulders and letting him down gently into a sitting position—Narayan wondered at it, until the weight came off his feet, and he bit his lip again to keep from shouting with an unbearable mixture of relief and fresh pain. When the cuffs came off his arms Narayan lay back, hissing.

  “Now, God be thanked. And my fate be cursed, that I must give thanks to a Muslim—and a Pathan, at that. Where is the sahib?”

  “Coming—if he lives,” the Pathan said.

  A third man waited in the doorway. “They come,” he called.

  “Not before time,” Ibrahim grumbled. “Are all folk but we Pushtun so heavy of foot? It is a wonder known only to Allah why we don’t rule the world.”

  “Perhaps because no two of you can agree on anything for the space it takes to cut each other’s throats,” Narayan wheezed.

  He saw two more men—the sahib, thanks be to God, and the Guru!—speed through the door. One, a Jew by his dress and looks, took something from his coat, knocked the base of it against the wall, and threw it out into the corridor. Then the two of them slammed the iron door shut, barred it, grabbed several heavy instruments of torture, and tossed them against it as well.

  “Greetings, sahib!” Narayan called. “Thy father was right—listen to the Jew indeed!”

  King nodded, holding back a huge grin of relief—it would have been past bearing, if Narayan had been dead after all. Dying in battle was one thing; being done to death in a pit of human weasels like this was no fate for an honest fighting man.

  “I see you have been lying in idleness while the rest of us labored, bhai,” he said. Then gently: “Can you move?”

  “Not except to crawl on my belly like a snake, sahib,” the Sikh said. “Ai! My joints are like fire, and I as weak as a woman when there is battle to be done, curse these banchuts!”

  King checked him over, with a quick skill born of long acquaintance with the hurts men inflict on each other. The Sikh’s wrists and ankles were lacerated and bleeding, and his joints and tendons had all been stretched far beyond their natural ranges. None of the joints were dislocated, though, and he didn’t think anything had torn too badly; Narayan was enormously strong, and had his life nailed tight to his backbone.

  Fists were beating on the outside of the door; then something went pop and hissed. The pounding and shouts of rage gave way to screams of panic, retching, and pain. David bar-Elias grinned as he dashed across the basement chamber to the outer window. That was at head height, just enough for a man to worm through, if it were open.

  “I dabble in chemistry,” he said, breaking the glass there with the butt of his pistol, careful to leave no spikes or sharp edges. “As witness—”

  He pulled another ball from his long coat, slapped it against the stone, and tossed it out through the bars. It popped in its turn, and let off a spark of bright light on the roadway outside. Almost immediately came the sound of mule hooves on pavement, and the driver of the wagon came forward with another of Elias’s men. They fitted the device the blacksmith had made to the bars; it was more than a simple grapnel, more like a giant pair of iron pliers, with twin ropes on the long handles running to the rear of the wagon, and hooked claws on the business end that went around either side of the iron grille.

  The driver slapped the backs of his four mules with the reins. They surged forward, and the huge leverage of the simple machine tore the iron bars inward and forward with irresistible force. They ripped free of their seating in the stone with a tooth-grating squeal of tortured metal and clanged away across the street, shedding sparks and fragments of cement mortar. The driver leapt down to untie the rope even as King grabbed Yasmini around the waist with both hands and boosted her through the gap.

  Her body was warm and lithe as a mongoose between his hands as she climbed up, a little heavier than he’d thought it would be from her size and build but still no burden. He followed her, and then turned and knelt on the pavement.

  “Ibrahim, then hand up Narayan.”

  The Pathan came through easily, and then they manhandled the limp but conscious and quietly swearing form of the Sikh out, the swearing becoming inventive when the burly shoulders stuck and had to be tugged free with no excessive gentleness. David and his retainer came last; the Jew paused to throw another of his surprises into the open window.

  “Shalom,” he called mockingly down into the cellar, and then tumbled into the wagon with the rest of them.

  The driver was already pulling the heads of the mules around, calling to them, keeping the pace down to a rapid walk—a gallop would be far too likely to attract attention, once they were safely away, and it made it easier for Togrul to sprint out, toss in his bow, and follow it by rolling across the tailboard. King looked at his watch, blinked astonishment, looked again. He was familiar with the rubber time of combat, but—

  “Seventeen minutes?” he said. It was then that the full glee of it struck him, and he laughed aloud. “Seventeen minutes!”

  He looked up, and saw Yasmini unwinding the cloth that had concealed her face.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “You are wel—” she began, then clutched at her brow. A single whimper of pain, and she fell forward boneless into his arms.

  Cassandra King waited in the darkness. This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, she thought, as acid chewed at her stomach and the cold stale smell of the small hours oppressed her. Then: No. I think Charles has the harder part. He has to wait all unknowing, and act as if nothing was happening.

  The two tiki-gharis waited; she stood close to the seat where the driver of the first sat tense and let him see her revolver. Henri’s man sat beside the other, a hand on his shoulder in what a casual observer might have thought was a companionable gesture. She gnawed the inside of her lip until she caught herself, forced the nervous tic to stop, then found herself doing it again.

  Time stretched, more quietly after the first burst of shouts and shooting. Some of the hired dacoits came staggering out of the shattered front entrance of Warburton’s house and around the corner toward her. Most of them were hauling bundles, some as large as they were. A few limped and clutched at wounds. Some made off on their own, probably because they’d found a bit of loot beyond their wildest dreams. Most of them came over to the gharis and tumbled in, chattering excitedly until she gave a crisp command for silence—and showed them the pistol. One at the other ghari seemed disposed to argue; Henri’s man silenced him with three swift savage elliptical kicks, using his feet like fists, and chucked his moaning form into the vehicle for his friends to catch.

  A time that stretched, when nobody came, and then one last bandit plunged out toward them.

  Cassandra started to shout a warning, but the pursuing shadow was on the dacoit before she could speak. Something flashed in the night as he sprang for the man’s shoulders, something white and quicker than a striking cobra. Then the dacoit was down on the ground, and the pursuer had a knee between his shoulder blades as he strained upward. There was a brief flurry as the victim’s hands and feet thrashed at the ground, then stillness; the assassin crouched and stared about, glaring.

  Sweet Mother Pravati, Cassandra thought to herself, appalled. Her hand raised the pistol without conscious decision, as she might have struck at a poisonous serpent. A Thug!

  Thuggee was something out of legend, a tale of the Old Empire and the Second Mutiny, hardly real despite Athelstane’s grim description of his encounter in Peshawar. Now she had seen one of the Deceivers at work herself, as if she’d been catapulted back in time to the Exodus, or even Colonel Sleeman and the youth of the first Victoria. She lowered the pistol to firing position, letting the muzzle fall down until the foresight filled the notch of the rear as Ranjit Singh had taught her—

  There was a vvvviwp of cloven air. Then the Thug jerked, rising upright and pawing at his head, seeming to dance a jig as he circled. That let her see clearly what had struck; a long black-fletched arrow was through the man’s head, right through
the ears, and the killing handkerchief fell from nerveless fingers. He tried to scream, his mouth open in a huge dolorous gape, and then blood boiled out of it, flowing black in the faint moonlight. He collapsed with a limp finality.

  What next? Cassandra thought. I just saw a Thug kill a man. Then someone shot an arrow through his head. Who was it? Arjuna, perhaps?

  Then: Sita . . . what if she doesn’t come back? What will I tell Charles? The girl was an Imperial pain in the sit-upon without any dispute, but she was so alive; impossible to imagine her dead, there in that den of stranglers. And Henri—the Frenchman is an experienced soldier, she told herself. He’ll keep them safe.

  False reassurance. Good men died, when they met bad luck or overwhelming force; as her father had. That was the way the world worked. What next was a very serious question.

  The next thing was a konstabeel in blue and yellow, walking quickly to see what had happened on his beat with such noise and activity. Cassandra stepped back into the shadow of the ghari, hissing imperiously for silence as the occupants shifted nervously at the sight of their natural enemy. The vehicle rocked on its springs as they crowded to the other side, anxious not to be seen through the window.

  They needn’t worry, Cassandra thought, fighting down a giggle she knew was hysterical as the man halted, gaping incredulously at the ruined front of the house he must have seen a thousand times whole on his rounds. Staring at shattered ruin, dead bodies, and scattered weapons.

  The representative of the polis was a brave man. Armed only with a hardwood truncheon, a set of hand-cuffs, and a notebook, he took several steps forward and began to blow frantically on the whistle that hung on a lanyard around his neck.

  That’s torn it, Cassandra thought.

  City police didn’t patrol in groups, not in a neighborhood like this, but soon enough one was going to hear the whistle, use his own, and alert the whole district. Patrols would come to investigate; it was a wonder nobody’s household retainers had already.