by Harold Lamb
Abdul Dost was one of the most expert swordsmen in Hindustan. Although slow to think, he, like many men of great physical activity, was alert to move. Having rendered their assailants harmless, he and Khlit glanced hastily about the tent.
They saw a strange sight. Mustafa's lean form was writhing helplessly on the sand. Taleb Khan leered at them like a hideous toad, his fat arms waving weakly and more weakly to catch the perfumed girdle of Daria Kurn which was draining his breath. The dozen followers were suffering a like fate.
“Gurkha men dina!” screamed an angry voice. “Strangle!”
Dhurum Khan pointed at Khlit and Abdul Dost in a frenzy. Except for the unexpected resistance of the two supposedly bound men, all had gone well with the thags.
In their guise of merchants, they had assembled unsuspected at the caravansary during the absence of Taleb Khan and his followers upon the river.
They had waited by the mirza's empty tents, knowing that the men must return to their camp. Quietly they had joined the throng about Daria Kurn when all eyes were upon the woman. They had awaited their opportunity, each strangler standing beside his victim with their habitual calmness.
Only two men had survived the massacre. These faced the thags, sword in hand.
“Attack!” cried Daria Kurn. “Fools! Bunglers! They are but two.”
Several half-naked thags leaped forward with drawn knives at Khlit and Abdul Dost. The mansabdar stepped to meet them. He was smiling and his eyes were alight.
The first slayer dropped to the sand with his skull split under the folds of his turban. The second had his throat nearly cut through by a swift half stroke. The rest hung back, fearing the tall Muslim who seemed to joy in a conflict.
Khlit gazed about the scene of battle curiously. He wondered at the swift action of the thags. A moment since Taleb Khan and his men had been alive. Now they were in the last death throes, kicking and gasping on the sand.
The thought came to him that Taleb Khan had paid dearly for his disguise. Probably the slayers had thought him an ordinary merchant.
“Back to back!” he growled to Abdul Dost.
The two placed themselves in readiness. They knew better than to flee. By now figures were running from the nearby tents. Dhurum Khan had planned his masterpiece of death. All the unfortunates who slumbered in the tents had awakened from their dreams only to slip struggling into a deeper sleep.
His guards posted at the gate in the wall would have cut down any who escaped the stranglers. But no one ran from the tents except the thags.
“Oh, cowards!” The shrill voice of Daria Kurn reviled her companions. “Will you let two stand unhurt? Give me a sword!”
Khlit swept the crowd with an appraising glance. He was glad that no bows were to be seen—not knowing that the thags always worked with noose and steel, which were silent and left no traces. But momentarily the number around them grew, as the stranglers left their other victims to hasten to complete the killing.
In the unwritten law of thaggi, the ritual of Kali, it was unheard of to permit any of the destined victims to escape. If one died all must die.
Jaim Ali caught the arm of Daria Kurn as she was rushing upon the two warriors with streaming hair.
“Let me strike!” she wailed. “Mine—and Dhurum Khan's— was the plan. They are marked for my sword.”
“True it is,” the boy cried, “that you are the one whose counsel we sought. We are your servants, O Daria Kurn, beloved of Kali.”
He swung a long noose in the air, stepping toward the waiting two. But the woman would not be denied. She darted forward, and seeing this the thags under Dhurum surged after her.
“We must complete the work,” they whispered to each other. “If not, we are doomed. The evil omen of the slain woman is bearing fruit.”
“Aye, the evil omen,” chanted Dhurum Khan, hearing.
“Ho!” laughed Abdul Dost. “The slayers come—faithless followers of the Prophet. The low-born cooks taste of the feast they have prepared!”
Knives and short swords were ill weapons against the two finest sword-arms in Hindustan. At each sentence the Afghan, now thoroughly warmed to his work, struck aside a leaping thag. When he struck, men crumpled to earth.
Jaim Ali's noose closed over Khlit's blade and arm, but Abdul Dost cut the cord and sent the youth reeling with the same blow. Daria Kurn sprang at him, and her knife caught in his cloak, biting into his chest.
Khlit had never slain a woman. He turned his blade as he cut at the mistress of the thags and she was knocked senseless. But Dhurum Khan, thinking to take advantage of the opening, was slain swiftly.
The thags hesitated at sight of the bodies on the earth. They gave a wailing cry of grief. It was drowned in the quick tumult of rushing horses.
“Mount, master!” cried the voice of Kehru. “The horses come behind you!”
The trained ears of the two warriors located the horses without obliging them to turn their heads. The slayers looked up, startled at sight of the three mounts trotting from behind the tent. Kehru, unnoticed by the thags because he had been hidden among the animals during the massacre, had acted swiftly and well.
Khlit and Abdul Dost leaped back as one man and grasped the manes of the passing horses. Neither warrior needed aid of the stirrups to mount. The Cossack, in fact, landed standing on the saddle, a favorite trick, and gave a yell of triumph. It was good to be mounted again.
His wide coat-skirts flapped out and his gray hair swayed behind him as he headed straight for the caravansary gate, his horse at a round gallop.
Kehru chortled joyously and dug his bare heels into the flanks of his pony. The guards at the gate were without bows. One ran forward uncertainly, but dodged back at the sweep of the Afghan's blade.
They were through the gate and the broad road to Pawundur stretched before them. Within a few moments—so swiftly they went—they met the cavalcade of the vizier with his servants and soldiers.
Straightaway, at the tidings they brought, the cavalcade broke into a gallop and gained the crossroads just as the sun reached the level horizon of Pawundur plain. At the gate they halted— Khlit and Abdul Dost and the vizier, who rode a mule and was attended by two slaves who had held a sunshade over him during the heat of the day.
“Allah!” said the vizier.
It was a strange sight. Tents, animals, ropes, bales of goods, and men were gone as if swept away in the brief interlude by a magic hand. The level gleam of the setting sun shone redly on the stretch of sand.
Upon the sand in grotesque and grim attitudes lay Taleb Khan, Mustafa and their men, coolies and officials alike. No wounds were to be seen on their bodies—save for a certain redness about the throat and bulge of the staring eyes. Their weapons were taken from them, but their common garments, assumed as a disguise, remained. The vizier went from one to the other and paused at the round body of Taleb Khan.
“By the thrice-blessed name of God!” he said, and was silent. “It is written that those who don the garb of trickery shall drink the cup of deceit. Where is the revenue of Pawundur?”
Khlit dismounted and showed him the ebony box in the sand by the dead ameer.
“Herein was the revenue of Pawundur,” he said.
Abdul Dost had already related the tale of the thag attack, saying nothing however of the treachery of Taleb Khan. A righteous man, the mansabdar was loath to speak ill of the slain.
In the chest were numerous rocks, and nothing more. Again the vizier looked about the caravansary and stretched out his arms in resignation. The tale of the crossroads—and he read it with his own eyes—was complete. He ordered his followers to make camp and bury the bodies. But Khlit would not linger in the caravansary. He sought out Kehru and led him to the vizier.
“Here is a stripling, O man of the Mogul,” he said, “who will make a brave warrior. Take him into the service of the Mogul and it shall one day profit you.”
Whereupon he mounted and lifted a hand in farewell. At the gate he tur
ned in his saddle.
“Perhaps,” he called, “you may find the revenue of Pawundur —in the villages from here to the border. But seek it not after the manner of Taleb Khan.”
The vizier had a tender skin. He knew of the thags. He did not care to seek the revenues of Pawundur. Nevertheless, in time strange tales came to him, and he wondered.
After this fashion the tales came to be told in the bazaars and the highways of Pawundur. Abdul Dost had been thinking as he rode beside Khlit away from the caravansary and turned his horse's head into the road that led to the North.
“Eh,” he pondered, “it was a clever thought—your thought to cry 'robbery' to Taleb Khan. Did Daria Kurn verily take from the chest that which was within?”
Khlit shook his head.
“Then it was a lie. It was a good lie, full-tongued. It was fated to save our lives.”
“It was not a lie.”
For a dozen paces the Afghan considered this. He was puzzled. Either the thags had taken the gold and gems from the chest, or they had not. This was as clear to him as his horse's ears before his eyes. He told this to Khlit.
The Cossack leaned forward and silently drew a handful of gold from one of his saddlebags—the bags that had rested at his saddle peak since their departure from the boat. From the other sack he pulled out a jewel or two mixed with grain and oaten cakes.
“The treasure of Taleb Khan!” said Abdul Dost, staring.
“Aye,” responded Khlit. “Taleb Khan. On the boat I had a thought that the wealth would be safer in these bags. So I took it—when you looked the other way—from the chest. I would have rendered it truly to Taleb Khan, but he seized upon us.”
Abdul Dost drew rein for his sunset prayer.
“Verily,” he mused, “the fate of the ameer was a strange fate. What is written, is written. Not otherwise.”
Thereafter, at each village they passed, the inhabitants gathered around them while a tall Ferang, dressed much like a wild wolf, scattered handfuls of gold among them, laughing the while, and spurred away before they could prostrate themselves in gratitude or rob the two warriors.
And at the final village of Pawundur province, the dark-faced Afghan who rode with the Ferang showed a double handful of fine gems, red rubies of Badakshan and blue diamonds of Persia. He replaced the jewels in his girdle.
“Say to the vizier,” he cried, “that this is the price of the guilt of one who was named Taleb Khan.”
The Curved Sword
I
In the mountains the light of the sun is strongest; there the shadows are deepest. The herds find there the richest grass, and the water that rushes from the snows overhead.
In the mountains the herder sleeps under the open eyes of God. And he hears the voice of the winds, betokening sunrise and storm.
In the mountains the eagle beholds the world beneath his wings.
Is an eagle to be found in the lowlands? Nay—naught is there but the sparrow-hawk and kite.
Afghan proverb
Chan, the minstrel, rose and girded tight his shawl-belt. It was the hour of sunset and the namaz gar—the evening prayer. From the village below his tent Chan could hear the mullah's cry; but although scarcely a village in the southern foothills of the Himalayas did not join in the prayer to the Prophet in the year 1609, Chan heeded neither mullah's cry nor his own spiritual welfare.
Sunset to Chan the minstrel meant sometimes supper of mutton or rice and sometimes a yearning stomach. This evening, however, he had left the stock of rice and dried apricots in his felt tent untasted. He had been engaged in the more important work of composing a love lyric.
The song was finished—and the Afghan youth boasted a critical ear, schooled in the musical modes of the wandering bards of Samarkand, likewise a skilled finger to stir the one string of his guitar—and Chan sprang into the saddle of his pony, which had been grazing behind the tent. He adjusted the shagreen quiver of arrows behind his left shoulder, slinging his guitar over his right arm.
Chan was a dark-faced, merry-eyed youth—although a wisdom beyond his years, born of many privations and no little fighting, lurked behind the smile in those same brown eyes. The zirih— sleeveless coat of mail—gripped his lithe body tightly under the ragged and travel-stained red-velvet cloak. Blue turquoise glimmered on the dagger-hilt that peered from his girdle, and a brown cap of sable fur topped his black locks.
His pony began to trot mechanically down toward the village as the minstrel hummed the refrain of his new lyric triumphantly. An unstrung bow bobbed at his saddle-peak. Chan, who was as skilled at making play with bowstring as guitar string, had long ago passed the test of Afghan archery—to shoot, at full gallop, an arrow at a mark, loosen the bow and use it as a whip, then restring to let fly another arrow at the same mark.
“My bow for an enemy, my song for my mistress,” he hummed, “and both, my faith, reach to the heart—aye, both to the heart.” Thus sang Chan as he trotted onward, fully prepared to take either weapon in hand—so uncertain were these times in the hills of Hindustan.
“Nay,” he murmured to the ears of his pony that twitched back responsively; “shall we sew the pearls of wit upon the cord of love or ply the arrow-stitches of vengeance! Hai—ohai, the day is fair and soon we shall see the gray stone walls that enclose the fairest jewel of paradise!”
Meditating in this manner, he passed through the village—not without a tentative sniff at the odors that rose with the smoke of the cooking-fires before the huts. He called cheerily at the flocks of black-faced sheep that pressed home from the pasture trails. Snatching at a cluster of dying, yellow roses, he arrayed the blossoms bravely in his cap.
The pony, knowing well the way, passed rapidly under twisted junipers, over grassy downs, and by glens already shadowy with evening. A wind, stirring in lazy gusts from the mountain passes overhead, tossed the dried balls of gray thistles before the rider, who struck at them readily with his bow.
Chan's hut had been on the mountain slope just within the upper timber line where he could watch what was going on in the valleys, fully prepared to flee to the rocky passes if need be. Overhead, the giant shoulders of the Koh-i-Baba thrust up from the pine forest; still farther rose the barren wastes of the heights to the snow peaks, encrimsoned by the setting sun.
He was now riding through the fertile uplands of the province known to his race as Badakshan, which was on the marches of the empire of Hindustan, the border above Kabul Valley, and the passes through the Hindu Kush—the Shyr and Khyber Passes, already scenes of age-old battles—and a thorn in the side of the emperor of Hindustan, Padishah Jahangir, the Mogul, Lord of the World and Master of Ind.
Without guidance the pony turned aside from the valley trail through the dried broom that led to a gorge under one of the cliffs. Here an apple orchard almost concealed a tiny sandstone house. Chan tethered his mount to one of the trees and advanced, peering about him in the uncertain light.
Overhead the sky was still blue and the sun was blood-colored behind the summits, but in the gorge darkness fell swiftly, and already a star or two was winking into being in the East. A dog slunk off at his approach. Chan glanced at it in some surprise, humming still as he took his guitar in hand.
Under a rose-bush near the house wall he sat cross-legged, and smiled. Within the stone wall, he thought, a lovely girl would be expecting his song. Chan, of course, had never seen her face, but he had talked with her and knew that she must be lovely.
Then his figure stiffened and he looked attentively at the ground.
Many horses had passed here since his last visit. The bushes were broken through in places and the earth trampled. The minstrel ran an exploring finger over one of the imprints and drew in his breath sharply, feeling the mark of leather shoes.
For a space the man was silent, his senses keenly alert. The quietude of the stone house weighed upon him, and he remembered the furtive manner of the dog. He even fancied that he heard a moan issue from within.
Abruptly the howl of the dog disturbed him. Chan sprang up and ran into the door, stooping under the low portal. At his feet he could make out a human body that moved and sighed. A glance around the bare stone chamber, and a second, more hesitant, into the screened woman's quarters, showed him that no one else was to be seen.
He bent over the form at his feet and saw that it was the mother of the house.
“Aie!” she cried, seeing Chan. “Aie!”
“What has come to pass? Whither your daughter—”
The mother rose to her knees, tresses disheveled about her shoulders and her hands bloodied. She who had often driven him from the orchard with abuse grasped his knees, leaving thereon the stains of torn fingers.
“Evil has come upon this house. Riders passed along the road, and one saw the child of my heart and liver watching from under the trees. They took her, and beat me when I cried out—taking the rings from my fingers—”
The woman held up her hands and Chan saw that two fingers had been cut off. He freed himself from her grasp, drawing a long breath, and stepped toward the door.
“Who were the riders, and whither did they turn their horses' heads?”
For a space the mother was silent, looking fearfully out of the door. Then a fresh outburst of grief overcame her.
“Alacha, the Slayer, it was, with his men. May Ali the just pursue him with retribution! May he taste the evil he has stored up for others! Barkallah! O Chan, brave Chan, men say you are quick and shrewd. Mount, good Chan, speed your shaft—” Mechanically the young minstrel slung the guitar over his back and strung his bow.
“Went they south or north?”
“South, toward the camp of that black Turkoman, Alacha.” Her weak voice rose in sudden terror. “Strike not at Alacha, foolish one! Anger not those who hold the valley within their grasp. Nay—send the shaft into the breast of my pearl of beauty, my innocent daughter—”
But the minstrel strode from door and house, mounting with a single leap. Behind him the peasant woman rocked in her misery, heedless of her own hurt. Chan wore no spurs, yet the pony wheeled away at full gallop at the urge of its rider.