Drums Along the Khyber

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by Philip McCutchan


  *

  Later the General unbent to an unprecedented degree.

  “Damn well done, boy,” he said, his hand on his son’s shoulder outside the H.Q. tent. “Damn well! Your mother will be most proud of you, to be sure. I’ll send for her when we reach cantonments. You’ll like to see her, naturally.” He blew his nose, hard. “You’ll do, boy, you’ll do.”

  Ogilvie said, “I couldn’t have managed without the R.S.M.”

  “He’d be the first to say you could—but I know his worth well enough. A fine man, James.”

  “Yes,” Ogilvie hesitated, then came out with it. “Sir...may I ask...what about those terms?”

  The General stiffened at once, and glared stonily. “Terms, boy? What damn terms? Never heard of any damn terms!”

  “No, sir. I see. But if I may point out, sir...Ahmed Khan is still alive.”

  “That’s none of your damn business,” the General said promptly, and the matter had been left at that. But Ogilvie still didn’t know how his father was going to get out of it gracefully. Ahmed Khan had been taken prisoner during the final fighting and was to be taken back into India so that he could not act again to undermine the authority of the Amir in Kabul; and he would be held until some decision had been reached as to his future. But James Ogilvie could not help feeling disturbed on another count: Afghanistan would now be left under an unpopular Amir through whom, presumably, Ahmed Khan’s hated British would now virtually rule the country one hundred per cent; Ogilvie wondered if any real good had been achieved after all the fighting, all the dying. The single star on each of his shoulders told him he had no business to be thinking such thoughts at all; and that uniform meant something—though he couldn’t at that moment have said just what it did mean. Reaction had come to him; his weariness had caught up with him as well. He had a nagging suspicion that he could never go through a similar experience again, that, knowing now what action was like, he would not be able to bring himself to the point of facing it again. For the rest of it, he would soon be back to routine regimental life—and the continuing enmity of Andrew Black, which was not a very pleasing prospect.

  *

  They came back through the Khyber Pass without incident, beneath those watchful strongholds on the crags whose personnel had heard the news of the great British victory; and beyond the Pass they rested by Fort Jamrud before marching in the last eight miles to Peshawar. What was left of the Division came back without the 88th, who had been left behind to garrison Jalalabad until the politicians had settled matters finally. They came back as seasoned men—not yet veterans, but men who had had a full taste of action and had so conducted themselves as to retain intact the perimeter of Empire, men who had earned the telegraphed but entirely personal thanks of Her Majesty in Windsor Castle. Ahmed Khan was riding in the column, under a Captain’s Escort. In front of him, visible on an open commissariat cart, travelled the Brigade Major’s newly-built field lavatory, having made its second trip through the Khyber within a short while. As they marched in to cantonments at Peshawar, the victorious column found that the whole garrison with its women and children, or such as were not down with the sickness, had turned out to wave and cheer them in. It was a Sunday, as it happened, and the British troops were in their scarlet tunics after church parade; it was a colourful sight, especially since the Commander-in-Chief India had hurried with his gilded Staff from Calcutta to greet the returning victors in person. He took the salute, his hand quivering with emotion, as the 114th marched past with the pipers, backed up now by a brass band from Peshawar District, crashing out Scots Wha Hae. The whole garrison was going mad. Andrew Black was still cantering officiously up and down the line; but he rode stiffly ahead with a scowl on his face as it became quite clear that most of the welcome was for James Ogilvie in particular even though he, Black, had done a not inconsiderable service to the Empire in catching the spy in his act of transmission. It had not taken long for word to reach Peshawar that Ogilvie and his fellow-prisoners had swung the rebel line and made possible the capture of the all-important guns; and his name, as their leader and thus the symbol for them all, was being cheered to the echo. There was one moment when Ogilvie caught a glimpse of Mary Archdale with a group of senior wives and he could have sworn she blew him a kiss; her eyes were shining and she was looking straight at him, dancing up and down in here excitement as she—even she—was caught up in the exhilaration of the triumphant march. There were low groans and some boos as Ahmed Khan went past; the rebel leader met them with a smile, disdainfully. The music went on; the pipes were now silent, leaving it to the brass to play the regiments to quarters on its own. The British Grenadiers, Lillibullero…Schubert’s March Militaire. And finally, as the tail of the column moved into barracks, with some of the great crowd following and attempting to shake the soldiers’ hands, the whole concourse burst with a roar of spontaneous emotion, that reminded Ogilvie of that day aboard the trooper in the Arabian Sea, into God Save The Queen.

  It was a tremendous occasion. Nobody seemed to notice, nor would they have interpreted it correctly if they had done so, the curious flicker in the eyes of the rebel, Ahmed Khan, as he glanced at the Union Flag that the replacement bum-havildar had, with an excess of loyalty, placed in a prominent position on the Brigade Major’s field lavatory just as it rumbled past the saluting base.

  If you enjoyed Drums Along the Khyber by Philip McCutchan, you might be interested in The Great Game by Steven O’Brien, also published by Endeavour Press.

  Extract from The Great Game by Steven O’Brien

  Chapter 1

  “I will have another with you,” he said. “Although, some might say that three of these are enough.”

  I had met Toby Larburgh a mere hour before. I was in Calcutta on newspaper business. The gossip was that an affable old Nawab had insulted the Viceroy’s daughter at a reception. They had sent me down to see what all the fuss was about. I arrived on the noon train, keen as a needle, and went straight to the offices of a man I knew who was sure to give me both the official and unofficial versions of what I knew to be a very minor scandal.

  I waited in a corridor until a scurrying under-secretary with a high collar emerged and told me to come back tomorrow, or perhaps the next day; or the day after. The Viceroy had obviously got wind of the newspaper’s interest. I expect a fellow passenger had seen me on the train and had sent word ahead. My contact was probably told to take the day off just before I turned up. My glasses were steamed and my suit clung to me like a fever. A drink seemed the only sensible remedy.

  At five o’clock in the afternoon, Toby and I had found ourselves to be the only guests sitting in the lounge of the Great Eastern Hotel so we struck up a conversation.

  The storm had been building all day and we were waiting for the kal baisakh to strike. In the monsoon the humidity builds steadily until the skin is smothered and a dull clamour haunts your brain. The tongue yearns for a spear of ice.

  “So you’ve had enough of India?” I asked, as the waiter poured the drinks.

  Toby settled in his chair. Even the soda looked listless and heavy in his glass.

  “I would perhaps put it that India might have had enough of me.”

  I lifted my drink.

  “Sarawak? That’s a place for new beginnings. Young as you are, I think you have a story to tell. A woman?”

  Toby laughed. It was an easy laugh. He had an open face and clear blue eyes that looked like they had seen mountains.

  “Yes there was a woman, in a way, but that’s all done now.”

  He drew a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed the moisture from his neck.

  “Go on,” I said.

  “I must say you are an inquisitive fellow,” he replied.

  I felt that this was said without rancour.

  “It’s in my line of work to be curious,” I replied.

  Toby set his drink on the table.

  “Well, you could say that I have had a bit of an adventure.”

 
Just then the thunder broke above us with all the shock and shatter of Sarda Hari’s great canon - Zam Zammeh - the shaft of which is inscribed in cunning Persian ‘Destroyer even of the strongholds of Heaven.’ Moreover, if the thunder resembled artillery, then the rain that came rushing on its heels was the weeping of a million widows when the citadel walls have been breached.

  I slapped my knee.

  “Now you are stuck, and may as well divert me with your tale. And let me add, I don’t care a bit of it if the whole thing is untrue.”

  Toby smiled again.

  “You must be a very influential man around here if you can summon up tempests to keep a man in the lounge of the Great Eastern. But yes, I will tell you some of what has happened to me in this last year. I have told no one else and this could serve as a sort of shriving before I leave India.”

  “Best top up that drink then!”

  Chapter 2

  “No doubt you read of the trouble along the Afghan border last summer?”

  “Always unrest up there,” I said. “Hard, fierce men and old feuds, from what I hear.”

  “Quite,” agreed Toby. “And in my adventure I have stood with kings amongst men. However, I’ll begin at the beginning.”

  He looked out of the open window, to where the rain had screened us from the world.

  “As I have already told you I hail from Sussex. My father was a lawyer and wanted me to follow him, but I ached to get away. I was eighteen when he died. I took my chance. I joined the colours and came out to serve my six years.

  “I had a surprisingly quiet time of it, rising quite quickly to captain. In March last year we were stationed in Sikkim. It was to be my last posting. I went out with some other officers on a boar hunt and I was thrown from my horse near Kalimpong. A branch caught me in the leg, just below the back of the knee. I was eventually carried down to Darjeeling. They sewed up my calf, and much to my surprise, I survived the ensuing fever. Nevertheless, I was discharged from the army five weeks early, the Colonel being a generous sort of fellow. I’ll go with a slight limp until the end of my days, but I count myself lucky.

  “I came to stay in Calcutta with a distant cousin of my mother - a clergyman with an interest in beetles. In his house the shutters were always closed and only the clock’s ticking stirred the motes of dust. By and by, I found myself rootless, broke and bored. I was almost decided upon going back to England to see if I could get into a bank or something.

  “However, one morning, as I sat reading the early edition of the Times, a letter arrived summoning me to meet a man at Government House. I will not tell you his name. It seems my old Colonel had been approached to see if he knew someone able to undertake some colonial business. An agent had died in Ghondabaur and the Rajah was also reported to be ailing. They asked me if I was prepared to go up and see what had happened. I was told that the situation was delicate. The mountains were alive last year with Hazukis. There were skirmishes and prophets preaching holy war. I was told that the native territories on the border had to be handled with extreme sensitivity, but the administration had to know how their agent had perished. It seemed to me like an interesting sort of jaunt and so I agreed. Money and instructions followed. A week later I was bound north.”

  “I was right in thinking that you have seen mountains. But I must confess, I have never heard of this Rajah of Ghondabaur.”

  “Mountains you say? When I looked at the big thirty-two-miles-to-the-inch map it took me an age to find Ghondabaur, a valley tucked away at the top of two larger valleys and all three of them not bigger than my little fingernail. The contours were all bunched and numerous, so I knew there would be high peaks - higher even than the mountains on the Sikkim border. But I’m not at all surprised that you’ve never heard of it; I think it must be one of the smallest of all the Princely states, hidden as it is all the way up past Chitral.

  “I’ll get to the Rajah later. I was met by two guides outside the cantonment gates at Rawalpindi on the morning of the sixth of October. Gahez and Basir had ridden nearly four hundred miles down to fetch me. Gahez was a one-eyed grandfather. His skin had the look of polished burr wood and when he smiled a single tooth did sentry duty over his tongue. Basir was, by my reckoning, about sixteen. His cheekbones and cunning eyes suggested Uzbek ancestry. Neither of them spoke much Urdu and they hardly understood my faltering Persian. Still they had brought with them a fine dark Marwari horse for me with a tack of faded red leather.

  “We made quite a show as we trotted off up the Lawrence road: my companions on their shaggy little ponies, Basir holding the reins of two pack mules, and me on my skittish mare. The beggars waiting at the convent steps came over and mobbed us, but Gahez rode through them flicking his tasselled whip with all the disdain of a true highlander. I gave little thought to what I was leaving behind. I carried no correspondence with me other than a letter of introduction. Beyond the town promised a landscape which held no memories for me.

  “Of the journey I will not tire you with too many details. The wet heat of the plains changed gradually to the dry, scouring heat of the high places. We rode for days through the yellow hills. Basir chewed melon seeds to keep his thirst at bay. I soon realised that old Gahez was stopping each day at the campsites he remembered from his way down. Invariably this was an area of flat clear ground a little way off the road where kindling could be found.

  “It was the first time that I had been in such close proximity with Mohammedans. Naturally I stood aside during their prostrations. However, I came to appreciate the formal beauty of their evening rites. After setting the cooking fire both of them would wash, before reciting the Maghrib prayer. When we camped out all our nights began in this way, with the red light dying in the sky and eagles winding above us, while my companions bobbed and knelt on their mats.

  “In the flicker of our camp fires I often mused that I knew nothing of the unfortunate agent apart from the few details I had been told in Calcutta; Stafford Barclay, forty six, unmarried, polylinguist. I have often wondered what drives these fellows to work in the far off regions in the service of the Queen. It is all very well in the bigger states. I have heard that life can be pleasant in Mysore and Hyderabad. However, in the wild lands it would be like stepping back in time.

  “Always up and up, the mountains grew taller after Mingora where I stayed in a guest house and they at the serai. After this there came a day when I looked down from the path and saw the eagles floating below us. We were in the place where the Karakorum and the Hindu Kush ranges meet with the Pamirs. Sometimes it was all flinty light and sometimes it was all quick showers.

  “We were on a narrow path of pebbles and mud. There was a shift in the weather and the clouds parted. Gahez laughed and spread his arms wide. His white beard was thrust outwards. ‘Sahib,’ he cried, ‘Shandoor, Roof of the World!’

  “At that moment there was a crack of rifle fire and Gahez fell back into his saddle. His horse only skipped slightly but the old man slid to the ground, without a word, quite suddenly dead. He had been shot between the eyes. Of course Basir and I ran for cover and stayed behind rocks for a good while. But there were no further shots. With my service revolver in hand I finally stepped out. Gahez’ horse was grazing, oblivious to its proximity to murder.

  “The boy came up behind me and pointed to the other side of the valley. I could see nothing but trees and a fast developing fold of greying vapour on the far slopes. In a minute the whole view was obscured by rain. I wished to break for it sharply, but Basir insisted that we hoist Gahez across his horse to take him to a convenient burial place.

  “It was a naked feeling to be riding with the skin itching on the back of my neck, telling me that some distant assassin might be looking for a break in the rain. However, there were no further shots and before nightfall we stopped on a kind of earthy knoll to camp and inter the dead man.”

  Chapter 3

  The next morning we rode through the deodars to the confluence of three rivers. The mountain tops sa
wed against the sky and wore gashes of snow. The wind coming off the reckless water was sherbet cold. Further up we came across some women washing bright cotton clothes. Basir saluted them and they smiled. It was obvious that they knew him for they left their laundry and ran up to us. All the women sported braids, each one with a single plait at the centre of their foreheads that twined away behind an ear. The youngest women wore many necklaces of red and yellow beads.

  When Basir addressed them he must have spoken in the local language because I could make nothing of it. Whatever he said made all of the women turn to me. As we left them there was a chorus of ‘Ahs’ and ‘Ai’s’.

  It was a further ride of two hours up the valley. There were stands of white poplar trees and orchards of apricots and apples. In sheltered places, grapes flourished. Finally the land became veritably alpine in nature – a rolling green pasture, with corralled horses and cattle.

  About noon Basir halted and pointed ahead to an immense outcrop of stone. “Sahib, here Ghondabaur Diz.”

  I looked up through the fluttering breeze and saw the stronghold. The walls were buff coloured. There were four towers, each roofed with brown timber and half way down one of them a gallery of narrow windows looked out on the valley. A narrow road curled behind some rocks and then reappeared at the open gates.

  As we climbed that road I was fully charged with expectation, wondering what should greet me when I crossed the threshold. There was some commotion inside, for a horn sounded and a number of men dashed out of the gates. They lined up in two ragged columns either side of the road, forming a motley guard of honour. They were indeed a varied company – mixed in ages, heights and costumes, they were armed with an assortment of old Jezails and Snyder rifles.

 

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