The Peshawar Lancers

by S. M. Stirling

  A servant offered the monarch a skin of water. “Take it to the soldiers,” he said softly, and then: “That’s an order!”

  Narayan Singh nudged him softly as they took a careful mouthful and passed it on down the line. “Under the very eyes, eh, sahib?”

  “Careerist,” King chuckled.

  Worry ran underneath the humor. Two of the Gurkhas were dead, and another wounded. He had two more of the flares, no more; they wouldn’t come again tonight, but . . .

  “Any chance of their giving up?” Charles said, sounding unhopeful.

  “Not a prayer, Your Majesty,” King said.

  “Charles or sir will do, Captain King, under the circumstances. And we are going to be brothers-in-law.”

  “Sir,” King said, a little flustered. By Krishna, we are, if we live, and isn’t that a strange thought. Yasmini grinned at him; well, stranger things had happened to him, lately.

  He went on: “No, sir, not this breed. Now they’ve got their blood up and they’ll be really angry.”

  Charles shrugged, his eyes going up to where Cassandra waited on her ledge. “Damn, but I wish I could climb,” he said. “One of the things we have in common . . . We’ll just have to count on Sir Manfred and your man Ibrahim, won’t we?”

  Narayan Singh winced.

  King woke to the sound of gunfire. He winced, as the noise drove needles into his ears, awakening the savage headache of dehydration. And the shots were coming from the ledge above where Cass had her perch . . .

  He blinked crusted eyes. The bodies outside the sangar were bloating already. Could the Afghans be trying again in daylight? He felt a stab of savage pain in his leg as he moved; a chora-wound on the third night . . . or had it been the fourth?

  He looked up, craning his neck dangerously close to exposure. Cass was shooting, but up in the air—not trying to hit anything. That jarred him awake, awake enough to hear her croaking between shots.

  Of course, he thought, the words crawling through his mind. “Can’t talk.”

  His own voice was nightjar hoarse. He picked up his binoculars and looked down the valley. The Afghans were moving! But not forward; they were running back toward their blimps, tugging at ropes tied around boulders and deep-driven stakes. His desiccated brain took in the information, but refused to process it. It was not until the first blimp slumped and then broke into blue flame under a stutter of machine-gun fire that he recognized what had happened; not until he heard the bugle blowing charge that he accepted it. Even then, he was too worn to cheer, or do more than shake Yasmini awake.

  The Afghans were running, away from their burning blimps this time, scattering like quail. Through the smoke of the blimps and the blacker, lower soot of the burning brushwood shelters they’d thrown up came the ordered glitter of lance points, pennants; then the tossing heads of the horses and the khaki turbans. Another bugle call and the trot built up to a gallop; even at this distance he could hear the drumming thunder of the hooves like a humming deep in the earth. The points fell in a rippling wave, and the Peshawar Lancers passed through the loose formation of their foes like a plow coulter through soft earth. Then they were turning, some shaking aside broken lance shafts and drawing their sabers; others let the lances pivot at the balance to drag them free of bodies.

  “Slaughter the brutes!” King called in a croak, adding his voice to the other survivors.

  Narayan Singh was dancing like a bear, yelling wordlessly, half delight and half aching frustration at missing the all-too-rare chance of a massed charge against Pathans caught in the open with nowhere to hide. His regiment was giving another demonstration of a military lesson three thousand years old: To run away from a lancer is death.

  The second pass was more like pigsticking, clumps and pairs of horsemen wheeling and scattering over the rolling plain as the enemy turned at bay or tried to burrow behind rocks and bushes, or in a very few instances called for quarter—but cavalry gives no quarter, and the lances drove down again.

  The thought of rescue slid through his mind, like a cold drink of water—very much like a cold drink of water, and he found himself imagining a canteen with a longing like a yogi’s for nirvana.

  All of them were standing outside the sangar-wall when the party of riders trotted up from the valley where twin pyres burned to mark the graves of the Afghan blimps. King saluted as Colonel Claiborne drew rein and growled, taking in his filthy, tattered Guardsman’s outfit:

  “Not in proper uniform, and absent without leave, dammit.”

  Then his eyes fell on the shorter figure, helped along with an arm over Narayan Singh’s shoulder and the other strapped to his chest. All humor left his face: He pressed palms together and salaamed from the saddle.

  “Maharaj,” he said formally. “I kiss feet. And thank the ten thousand faces of God we were in time.”

  “Colonel, I’m more inclined to kiss yours,” Charles III said.

  He looked at the well-dressed Afghan princeling riding beside Claiborne, at Warburton beside him, and the twoscore weapon-bristling badmashes behind them both, grinning from their saddles at the gora-log, some showing the marks of recent hard fighting.

  “And who is this—”

  King’s surprise pushed aside propriety. “Ibrahim Khan!” he exclaimed.

  The ragged Borderer was resplendent now in a knee-length coat of striped silk, billowing white trousers of the same, and soft black knee boots. His horse was not groomed to a shine, but it would have brought approving looks in most of the Empire; and now his pugaree was wound about the base of a polished spired steel helm with a neck guard of silvered chain mail.

  “I told you my father was a malik, gora-log,” Ibrahim said. “Bismillah! It is not my fault if you thought he was chief of one village, rather than twelve . . . and a strong hill fort with a town at its feet. If ever you come in peace to the Tirah country, my house is yours—and if you come in war, be ready for an even warmer reception. But in any case, forget not to send my two hundred mohurs, and my horse!”

  “I will,” King said steadily. “If ever you cross the Border again in peace, a place at my board awaits. And if you come raiding, a rope and a gallows!”

  The Afghan chuckled. “If you can catch me!”

  Then his eyes sought Narayan Singh. “And now I have saved thy Padishah, idolater. Does that not show how all things are accomplished by the will of Allah?”

  Narayan Singh straightened as troopers rushed forward to support the monarch and relieve him of the weight; Charles watched the exchange in silence, but with bright-eyed interest.

  “Saving the Padishah is an honor we share, child of misbelief,” the Sikh said. “And that is not strange at all—for we both be fighting men, you and I.”

  Ibrahim eyed the corpses lying shot or hacked before the sangar and nodded, slowly; his eyes met King’s, and he rode closer, smiling that mocking smile as he offered his hand. Both men shook it.

  “Go with God,” the Afghan said to the man who had been his lord for a few brief months. “I am not sorry to have fought at thy side.” He looked at Yasmini. “May Allah give you many sons . . . and no daughters such as this at all!”

  He turned his horse aside to let the doctor of the Peshawar Lancers through, then spurred away with his fighting tail behind him, riding in an effortless torrent down the rocky slopes.

  King smiled himself at the brave show, and then again as he recognized the military surgeon; it was the same Reserve “yoni-doctor” who had treated his arm four months before. The physician stared in appalled wonder at the work ahead of him, then darted forward, ignoring the King-Emperor for the more seriously wounded behind him and calling for his assistants and their supplies.

  Charles glanced after him. “I like that chap’s priorities,” he said.

  His face sobered, as he looked at what awaited the healer. All the drugs and bandages in the world could not repair what lay there, for some.

  “And that’ll teach me to wish for adventure,” he said ruefully.


  Cassandra came sliding down the rope from her perch, raising eyebrows among the officers watching. She grabbed at a full canteen a trooper offered, drank, coughed, drank again, forced herself to sip.

  “I suspect it’s the sort of wish you get granted whether you speak it or not,” she said, and walked forward to the King-Emperor’s side.

  “There’s work to be done,” the monarch said. “We have an Imperial wedding to organize—two, in fact.”

  Henri nodded at his glance, and Sita seconded the gesture more emphatically, taking the hand of France-outre-mer’s Prince Imperial. The kunwari grinned herself, despite dry cracked lips, at the gasps and dropped jaws among the watching soldiers, particularly the officers.

  “Sir Manfred,” Charles III went on, oblivious of the arm he’d put around Cassandra’s waist. “I want you and Detective-Captain Malusre—no, Major Malusre would be appropriate, I think, Major Sir Tanaji Malusre, KCBE—to put together a team to start combing out the secret services—”

  King put his own arm around Yasmini’s shoulders; she embraced his waist, as high as she could reach in that position, and took some of the weight off his injured leg. Her face gazed up at him silently, gravely happy. King gave her a gentle squeeze and spoke to his daffadar:

  “Well, bhai, now we’ll ride back to Peshawar town once more, wounded and victorious. I with a wife this time, though; perhaps you should start looking yourself. My son will need a right-hand man.”

  Narayan Singh tugged at his dust-streaked black beard and shook his head, his expression mock-grave:

  “Ah, sahib, the sad duty of beating off the would-be brides I will leave my father and mother to accomplish, while I find solace in mere trifles such as gold and rank. Under the very eye, eh, bhai?”

  Laughing, they stepped forward into the bright sunshine. A huge cry of Shabash! rang out as the ordered ranks of the Peshawar Lancers parted like two great doors to let the King-Emperor and his friends pass eastward to the Border.

  Epilogue

  “Don’t worry,” Cassandra Saxe-Coburg-Gotha said. “Mother will love you. She told me so, at the wedding. Now you can really get to know each other—and I’ll be staying for a week, I promise. Planning the new observatories can wait that long.”

  Yasmini nodded doubtfully, clutching at her new sister-in-law’s hand and looking at her husband.

  Athelstane King reined in beside the gig; his face thoughtful as he stroked a hand down the neck of his horse. They had halted for a moment of farewells, as Rissaldar-Major Narayan Singh turned up the rutted lane to his father’s house. The file of troopers from the Peshawar Lancers who rode escort a discreet distance behind the captain’s woman and the Queen-Empress stiffened in the saddle and saluted as he passed—he’d already become something of a regimental legend. He was alone, but the pack saddle on the horse that followed behind him on a leading rein held a number of small, very heavy boxes.

  The Sikh had courteously refused transfer to the Guards, but accepted the gold—no fancy modern bank deposits for him!—with equally grave politeness. His charger stepped high, and brothers and sisters were running from the farmhouse to meet the resplendent figure in dress uniform, with the plain bronze medal of the Victoria Cross on his chest; behind them Ranjit Singh stumped, roaring and waving.

  The lord of Rexin laughed softly, shook his head, and looked up through the fresh green leaves of the chinar trees and the exploding white and pink flowers of the orchards, up toward the manor and its gardens. A slight wry smile remained on his face, and he took a deep breath of cool air scented with new growth and fresh-turned earth and sweet with peach and apple blossom.

  He was in plain civilian garb today, his jacket and turban a forest color that matched the new growth. There would be a crowd to wade through again, but this would be of folk he knew, not the courtiers of Delhi. Then . . .

  “Then we’ll be home,” he said to his wife.

  “I’ve never been home,” she said, a hand on the swelling of her stomach. “Never in all my life.”

  “We’re both home now,” he said. “Home is where our children are born.”

  “The hour that dreams are brighter and winds colder,

  The hour that young love wakes on a white shoulder . . .

  That hour, O Master, shall be bright for thee:

  Thy merchants chase the morning down the sea . . .”

  Appendix One:

  The Fall

  On October 3, 1878, the first of a series of high-velocity heavenly bodies struck the earth. The impacts continued for the next twelve hours, moving in a band from east to west and impacting at shallow angles. The scanty and confused records meant that it was never possible to determine the exact nature of the object or objects; the consensus of Imperial scholars a century and a half later was that the Fall was either a spray of comets or a smaller number of large comets (possibly only one) that broke up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

  The first impact was close to the southern edge of Moscow; later studies by Imperial scholars examining the crater indicated an energy release in the 300 megaton range. A band of further impacts of 100 to 300 megatons swept across Europe, the last striking 50 miles west and slightly south of Paris. Strikes were recorded as far north as the Baltic, and the southernmost fell at the head of the Adriatic; that was, however, the only impact south of the Alps.

  The next impact was the largest of all, apparently in the western Atlantic, and the body involved may have been up to a kilometer in diameter. Further large fragments fell all across North America, in a rather wider band than in Europe and as far west as the Rocky Mountains.

  Blast damage from strikes on land was the first and most obvious consequence; millions probably died in the immediate aftermath.

  Hours to days later, tsunamis struck the coasts of countries all around the North Atlantic Basin. These were most severe along the Atlantic coast of North America, with wave fronts reaching as far inland as the Appalachians in some places. In Europe, Ireland, coastal Scandinavia, and much of the Atlantic coast of France and Spain were wrecked, with loss of life in the tens of millions; the destruction would have been even worse, had not the shallow bed of the North Sea robbed the monster waves of some of their force. The “shadow” of Ireland protected much of western England, and the British Isles as a whole had a similar effect on northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

  The impacts—particularly the water strike—released enormous amounts of particulate matter and water into the upper atmosphere. The Gulf Stream was also disrupted for several years, and did not fully resume for a decade.

  The climatic effects were drastic and immediate. With insolation reduced by 10 percent or more, winter was exceptionally severe throughout the northern hemisphere, and the southern-hemisphere summer was relatively cool and damp. In Europe, where the warming effect of the Gulf Stream was so important—England is as far north as Labrador, one should remember—the cold season was more than Siberian in its harshness and lasted into April.

  Recovery might have been possible, despite the enormous loss of life and destruction of infrastructure, had the next summer been even remotely normal. But it was not. The combination of reduced sunlight and loss of the Gulf Stream made the “warm” season colder and wetter than anything in recorded history throughout Europe, with killing frost in at least a few days of every month as far south as Naples. The following winter was almost as severe as that of 1878, as were those of 1880 and 1881. The summers showed some improvement, but not enough for any appreciable agricultural yield; and there were no sources of imported food available.

  By late 1879, with starvation universal, order had broken down throughout northern and central Europe. Mass migrations southward were attempted, but the bulk of the northern Mediterranean shore was only marginally better off in terms of climate, and no better off in terms of food supply when the remnants of the starving hordes arrived. Populations crashed, with only a few small enclaves holding out on the Mediterranean shore. Elsew
here, the only survivors were the most successful cannibal bands.

  Even when the climate warmed enough to make agriculture possible again, neither seed grain nor working stock nor tools were usually available; and the remaining population huddled in tiny groups, hiding from and hunting each other in a grisly game of stalking and eating. By 1890, the total population of mainland Europe west of the Urals had fallen to a few million. Here and there tiny hamlets were making attempts to restart farming, but on a level barely Neolithic except for materials salvaged from pre-Fall settlements. Throughout the continent, the forest began its reconquest of the landscape.

  North America followed a basically similar trajectory, with patches of settled life surviving along the Gulf Coast. The eastern seaboard remained almost clear of human life for generations; on the interior plains there were small farming enclaves toward the east, with nomad hunters and herders (white, Amerind, and mixed) farther south and west, and a remnant of the Mormons in Utah. Most of the land swiftly reverted to wilderness, and the population was reduced below the levels of 1600.

  California suffered less climatically, although the cold and increased rainfall did drastically reduce yields. Attempts to evacuate population from farther east resulted in an impossible overburdening of its resources—a tragic consequence of the survival of the transcontinental railways—and ultimately a number of regressed city-states emerged.

  Most of the rest of the northern hemisphere suffered several years of weather wild enough to reduce crop yields by at least 50 percent, with gradual amelioration from 1881 on and more or less normal weather returning by the 1890s. Effects were strongest to the north, tapering off toward the tropics. Mathematically, it might have been possible for a third to a half of the population of, say, northern China to survive; but when it became apparent that massive famine was inevitable, “secondary effects”—chaos, banditry, civil and regional wars—set in, as struggles over the meager yields of food broke out.