The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  “No. I will not give you another hostage, traitor, no matter what you do.”

  “You won’t?” Pienaar said, and laughed. “I think you will, kaffir-lover. I saw my family burned alive in my own house, and couldn’t save them—I know exactly how it feels. Now you’ll know, and do as you’re told!”

  The pistol barked again, and Charles gave a hoarse grunt as if the bullet had struck him instead of his father. Henri looked back at the tableau on the Garuda’s bridge. The second bullet hadn’t been quite as well aimed; it had plowed a furrow through the older man’s calf, a little above the first wound. There was pain on the bewhiskered face of the ruler of half mankind, but he forced himself erect, leaning on Pratap’s shoulder.

  Be as you wish to seem, Henri thought—the ancient philosopher’s advice, simple and deadly difficult.

  There is a man who has lived his role until he is exactly as he appears, neither more nor less. When the bitter hour of the hemlock comes for me, may I drink it so.

  Beside him Warburton’s rifle was rock-steady, but Henri could see tears trickling down and dripping onto the polished walnut stock; shocking, on the face of the cynical, self-sufficient Political Service agent he’d come to know over the past half year.

  “Shabash, Padishah,” Warburton whispered again.

  “Call him in!” Pienaar said. “And do it in a language I can understand.”

  It was then that Henri understood what would happen. He saw the beginning of the hobbling leap that John II made, his lieutenant beside him. Pienaar fired four times, and every bullet struck; none was enough to stop the two old men before they grappled with him and toppled off the catwalk onto the great semicircle of glass that surrounded it. There was enough time for Warburton to drop his rifle and drag the hatchway closed; enough for Henri de Vascogne to throw himself flat.

  Enough for several of the men on the bridge to scream, as they saw their leader’s hand relax and the deadman switch go flying free.

  Cassandra King had always doubted tales of out-of-body experiences; the product of minds unbalanced by poor diet and excessive meditation, in her opinion. Some corner of her rationalist soul laughed at that now, as she watched herself acting—her body acting, without the least volition. Against the screaming commands of her own mind, in fact.

  Her sari and Yasmini’s were both good silk, stronger than rope. She whipped off her own, tossed it into a loose cord, tied off one end around the railing. By then the blond woman had her own off, and the petticoat; the eerie detachment Cassandra felt let her see and feel a flash of embarrassment at a few spots of blood at the crotch of the white underdrawers—she was always finicky about her own periods.

  The garments went together with good running knots; she stamped on one end and hauled to draw them tight, took a turn around her body, stepped up onto the rail, and dropped down into the slipstream with a straight rappel. The wind buffeted at her, swinging her like a mountain gust. That thought gave her steadiness; she caromed into Sita and got an arm around her under the rib cage just before her hands released the broken edge of the window framing. It snapped free, tumbling away below, and the princess seized her with arms and legs. The silk stretched, but held; and so did the knots.

  Cassandra felt a surge of relief, until Yasmini’s shout reached her. She looked up, and felt her face go gray. The silk of the sari was bent over the rim of the window frame not far from where Sita’s hands had clung. She could see the first strands fray, even as she watched. Another quick glance down; they were over land, tumbled gray-yellow-brown moonlit desert—and it was a very long two thousand feet.

  What to do?

  “Sita!” Cassandra called; their faces were virtually pressed together. “Climb up me, and then up the rope—I can’t lift us both. I’ll follow.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Yes you can!”

  “No, I really can’t!” Sita said, and brought a hand around before Cassandra’s face. The rushing wind of the airship’s passage blew the drops of blood back into her friend’s face, and she moved it immediately.

  “Sorry,” she half shouted. “But I really can’t. Both hands—cut on the broken glass in the frame. I’d fall halfway up.”

  They both looked up; seven feet, and it might as well have been the surface of the moon. Yasmini was leaning far over the railing, her face a mask of effort as she tried to haul them up. Cassandra suppressed a hysterical giggle at the sight. The Russian girl was strong for her size—but she was tiny, and there was one tall and one medium-sized woman at the end of that fraying silk rope. Call it two and a half times her own weight; utter futility.

  Cassandra spoke with more than her usual precision: “Oh, bugger.”

  The man inside the forward observation bubble was Count Vladimir Ignatieff. King sent a brief prayer of thankfulness to Krishna—it seemed appropriate, since the merciful God had appeared to Arjuna and counseled him on a warrior’s duty. Of course, he’d also told the noble bowman that he must fight and kill only from duty, without personal attachment. That was more sanctity than King was prepared to invest, just now. There were few things in all his life he’d wanted as much as he lusted to kill the Russian at that moment.

  King looked carefully before he acted; he had the time, since Ignatieff seemed preoccupied with scanning the northern horizon through a telescope. A savage grin split his face; no gun visible.

  Probably only had a limited number, and his wasn’t the greatest need, King thought, as he tapped on the rear-facing hatchway with the point of his saber. Behind him, Ibrahim Khan was alternately calling on Allah and blaspheming, as he followed the Angrezi with his chora in his hand.

  Ignatieff started violently as he noticed King out of the corner of an eye, then snapped the telescope shut. He tried to shout through the thick armor glass, and when that obviously didn’t work cracked the hatchway open a hair, ready to snatch it back if the other man made a grab for it.

  “Greetings, Captain King!” the Russian said jovially. “No doubt you think it fitting for me to come out there, and perish miserably under your good heroic sword! Spacebo, but I beg to differ.”

  “If you’re such a mighty warrior for the Black God, why don’t you come out and fight?” King called, trying to put as much taunting mockery into the question as he could to no avail.

  Oh. Perhaps I was a little hasty in my assumption that he could be goaded, King thought, in the privacy of his mind.

  Something of that must have shown on his face; not much, but the Russian was a skilled observer. His laughter was quiet, and in another circumstance might have been charming.

  “If you are such a hero, why don’t you make me come out?” he called blandly, under the rush of the slipstream. Another chuckle, and he went on:

  “But forgive me—I was looking for the greeting party I have arranged on yonder coast, to meet you and your Emperor, and to convey me home to Samarkand. When the bodies of your ruler and all the rest of the airship’s passengers are discovered, I don’t doubt the popular wrath against the Caliphate and Dai-Nippon—not to mention the xenophobic elements in France-outre-mer, also implicated—will be . . . extreme. And meanwhile, there are certain experiments I wish to perform with your sister. As a scientist, I’m sure she will appreciate—”

  He roared laughter at King’s aborted lunge; hacking through the bubble would be only marginally more practical than chopping through steel.

  “Haven’t you realized who rules this world yet, Angrezi hero?” he mocked. “Who else could it be?”

  There was nothing of humanity left in the sound his throat made now, a howl of mirth that remained wholly alien even when he modulated it into words.

  “I thank thee, Tchernobog, for thy gift of my enemy’s pain. I feel their pain, finer than the sweetest of wine on the tongue!”

  The thirty-five pounds of guncotton wrapped around Captain Pienaar’s belly exploded almost precisely two hundred feet beneath the feet of the men atop the dirigible. Most of that blast went out throug
h the line of least resistance, as the great curving glass windows of the gondola’s control bridge shattered. Enough was left to make the whole massive structure flex and buck in midair, driving the nose up until it almost stood on its tail for an instant, then diving forward like a porpoise. The ceiling of the bridge turned into shrapnel, shredding the guest cabins and the courtiers still there. Vents along the keel twisted open, spewing liquid, as the electric controls shorted out and the pneumatic lines lost pressure.

  Athelstane King had been moving backward. He heard a despairing yell behind him as the Pathan was flung free of the surface. His own left hand shot out and slapped on an aluminum ring, clinging with enormous desperate force as he was wrenched, twisted, and slapped back down on the metal walkway hard enough to make his ribs creak and his head ring from the blow his chin had taken.

  When he came fully back to himself the Garuda was shooting skyward, fast enough that his breath came quick; then vents opened all along the upper keel to release lifting hydrogen—an automatic response from pressure gauges. He couldn’t see the gas that roared out, but he could smell it; airship hydrogen was deliberately contaminated with a little sulfur-rich methane, to make detecting leaks easier. He coughed at the stink, chest laboring in the thin air of the heights. But their ascent slowed, for which he was thankful; it had seemed they were going to bounce right up to the moon.

  Count Ignatieff had been nearly as lucky as his enemy. The wave of pressure catapulted him forward, but his grip on the handle of the hatchway was already strong and ready. That did not prevent him being flipped out onto the outer hull of the Garuda, yet it held him safe until the light metal crumpled and gave way beneath his hand; long enough for the bucking plunge to end, although that was a long moment—nothing eight hundred fifty feet long and many tons in weight could whipcrack swiftly.

  Then he slid over the curved surface, hands scrabbling. The ring he seized was not far from King’s, and it was the Lancer officer’s turn to yell laughter. They swung like pendulum bobs, close enough that Athelstane’s wild slash could almost connect. The slack look left Ignatieff’s face at that, and since he had both hands free to grip he was able to come to his feet before his enemy—just long enough to draw his saber and face the Lancer.

  “So,” he snarled, as the motion beneath them died down to a mere tossing. “The Peacock Angel has his joke with us both. It will be you and I, it seems—but His wings will bear me up!”

  King’s lips peeled back from his teeth. His whole left arm burned from the wrenching it had taken saving his life, and there was a slight blurriness to his vision and a fierce ache in his head. None of that mattered as he closed in for the kill. There would be no fancy footwork here; that was an invitation to go over the side. It would be strength and speed against strength and speed—whether his injuries would be enough to balance his youth and reach. He drew back his blade for the first cut, and Ignatieff’s rose to meet it.

  Krishna, but he’s strong, King thought, as the swords met.

  The blades flashed again and again, an unmusical kring-skrang! of steel on steel. It was barbarian-style swordplay, not scientific; drunken barbarians at that, because the hull was still pitching and rolling with a slow majesty that sent both men staggering and lurching. One such sent King into the path of Ignatieff’s saber, just close enough that the tip of the blade touched the skin over his eyes. Blood poured down from the shallow cut, half-blinding him, stinging.

  Ignatieff shouted laughter. “Shall I wait for you to bandage that?” he called. “Shall I be a sportsman about it, Anglichani?”

  He drove King toward the stern with a stamping thrust that made the Lancer shuffle back with a quick foot-to-foot, and almost killed him as his heel skidded off the walkway onto the slick-slippery surface of the hull. King saved himself with a desperate, convulsive leap. Half-blind, he used a trick Ranjit Singh had taught him, something the Sikh had picked up from Eric King and said was an old family legend of the squires of Rexin—whipping his sword in a frantic Maltese cross in front of himself, down and up and over and back diagonally.

  It created an impenetrable shield, for the thirty seconds or so you could keep it up before your arm went leaden from fatigue. He used the time to scrub his left sleeve across his eyes, then held it to his forehead to staunch the flow of blood. Not the best position for sword work, he thought, and snarled aloud:

  “Bugger sportsmanship and sod you!”

  For a long moment they stood; the airship was stabilizing, and their sabers just crossed at the point. Ignatieff lunged again, and King beat it aside; again, and again. The Russian’s eyes narrowed; his opponent was fighting in a purely defensive style, apart from refusing to give ground, and darting glances to Ignatieff’s right and rear.

  Mustn’t let him suspect, King thought.

  “Look behind you,” he called, whipping a backhand cut at the Russian. Ignatieff caught it easily, grunting a laugh as the swords locked.

  “Look behind you, you stupid sodding cannibal!”

  “The oldest trick in the world!” Ignatieff sneered.

  “What trick?” King answered, and laughed. The sound was as cold as the Russian’s voice.

  He was still laughing as Ibrahim Khan rose up the curve of the airship’s hull behind Ignatieff, anchored by the dagger he’d driven through the tough multi-ply cotton. His other hand swung the chora. Ignatieff sensed it at the last instant and made one last desperate leap. None of his tiger speed had deserted him, and the tip only creased the skin of his left leg, instead of slicing his Achilles tendon as the Afghan intended. That still left him off-balance for the better part of two seconds. For swordsmen at their level, that was an eternity.

  King needed no thought for the lunge that extended him forward, knee deep-bent and left leg behind him, the flat of his blade turned parallel to the ground with a twist of the wrist, so that it would not catch on ribs. For one long instant they stood frozen, the Russian looking down incredulously at the blade that drew a silver curve through his body just below the breastbone, and then he toppled backward. King’s fingers released the sword hilt, and Ignatieff’s body thumped on the drum-taut hull of the Garuda, slithered away, gathered speed, twisted for a second as the blade caught in the cloth, then flew free trailing a long scream.

  Down toward the waiting horsemen his telescope had sought in vain, flailing the air for two thousand feet of greeting before he landed and spattered before their feet.

  No wings after all, King thought, in a single moment of exultation. Peacock, Angelic, or otherwise. Take that for Hasamurti, you filthy sod, and for my father, and for Ranjit Singh, and for Yasmini—for all of us.

  Then he threw himself flat and hooked his feet into a loop, letting himself slide down and extending a hand to Ibrahim Khan. The Afghan thriftily took a second to clamp his Khyber knife between his teeth and grasped the Angrezi’s hand in one nearly as strong, using the other man’s arm as a lever to swing himself up. When they were both on the flat pathway and hanging on to a metal loop of their own, he turned his face to the officer of the Peshawar Lancers.

  “Forget not the two hundred gold mohurs,” he said. “Or the horse—the food you provide has been scanty of late!”

  Yasmini strained until red throbbed before her eyes and her breath rasped in her throat. It was no use; she could see strand after strand of the silk part; perhaps her efforts were merely making things worse, but she would not stop—

  The universe kicked her, but still she strained, her small booted feet against the railing and her body arched back. She was not aware of the airship’s lurch and roll, only of the weight on the end of the improvised rope. It flung upward and back, pivoting her and being pivoted on the fulcrum of her immovable self. When the two saris parted at the weak point chafed by the shards of glass, she tumbled backward utterly spent, every muscle in her tiny compact body slack. All she could do was lie and watch, as the princess and Athelstane’s sister tumbled in and lay sprawled together on the floor of the observation
deck, identical expressions of stunned bewilderment on their faces.

  It is not easy to face death, and then be spared—even for the brave, she thought. As I know better than any living. For did I not die a thousand times?

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Cassandra King cleared her throat. She sat facing the head of the airship; the end of the observation gallery should have been there. Much of it was missing, and she could look up through the shattered upper deck to the interior of the hull. The gasbag there was notably sagging as the ship drifted nose-down. Every few seconds some bit of dangling wreckage would twist free and fall away downward, toward the rugged hills—or low mountains—below. They were at seven thousand feet above sea level, but much less than that above the ground; the December air was bitterly cold and dry enough to make your sinuses crackle.

  They’d seen nomad camps already, black butterfly-shaped tents of goat hair, herds of sheep, men who pointed upward—and sometimes fired jezails at the obviously crippled Angrezi ship of the air. They passed over fallow fields, leafless trees, flat-roofed stone villages where every house was a fort and thin curls of smoke wound upward. Word would be spreading, as fast as hard-driven horses could go.

  “We have seven severely wounded,” Cassandra said; all the more senior survivors were grouped in a circle focused on Charles.

  “The badly wounded are mostly from the court officials and the Guard officers who were forward when the explosion went off,” she continued. “Most of them didn’t make it, and those who did . . . I’m afraid a few of them will die, too: The court physician did. There are fifteen surviving members of the Foot Guards platoon, not including their officer—he was last out when your father gave the order to retreat, and the blast got him. Almost all of the airship crew are dead—the mutineers killed them in their bunks, apart from a few servants. Twenty-eight people fit to walk, altogether. And the mutineers are all dead as well.”