by Talbot Mundy
It was a devils’ anthem, glorifying hellishness — suggestive of the gnashing of a million teeth, and the whicker of drawn blades — more shuddersome and mean than the wind of a winter’s night. And it ceased as suddenly as it had begun.
Another ruffian fired at the roof, and while the crack of the shot yet echoed seven other of the arena guards stepped forward with long horns and blew a blast. That was greeted by a yell that made the cavern tremble.
Instantly a hundred men rose from different directions and raced for the arena, each with a curved sword in either hand. The yelling changed back into the chant, only louder than before, and by that much more terrible. Cymbals crashed. The music-box resumed its measured grinding of The Marseillaise. And the hundred began an Afridi sword dance, than which there is nothing wilder in all the world. Its like can only be seen under the shadow of the “Hills.”
Ismail put his hands together and howled through them like a wolf on the war-path, nudging King with an elbow. So King imitated him, although one extra shout in all that din seemed thrown away.
The dancers pranced in a circle, each man whirling both swords around his head and the head of the man in front of him at a speed that passed belief. Their long black hair shook and swayed. The sweat began to pour from them until their arms and shoulders glistened. The speed increased. Another hundred men leaped in, forming a new ring outside the first, only facing the other way. Another hundred and fifty formed a ring outside them again, with the direction again reversed; and two hundred and fifty more formed an outer circle — all careering at the limit of their power, gasping as the beasts do in the fury of fighting to the death, slitting the air until it whistled, with swords that missed human heads by immeasurable fractions of an inch.
Ismail seemed obsessed by the spirit of hell let loose — drawn by it, as by a magnet, although subsequent events proved him not to have been altogether without a plan. He got up, with his eyes fixed on the dance, and dragged King with him to a place ten rows nearer the arena, that had been vacated by a dancer. There — two, where there was only rightly room for one — he thrust himself and King next to some Orakzai Pathans, elbowing savagely to right and left to make room. And patience proved scarce. The instant oaths of anything but greeting were like overture to a dog fight.
“Bismillah!” swore the nearest man, deigning to use intelligible sentences at last. “Shall a dog of an Afridi bustle me?”
He reached for the ever-ready Pathan knife, and Ismail, with both eyes on the dancing, neither heard nor saw. The Pathan leaned past King to stab, but paused in the instant that his knife licked clear. From a swift side-glance at King’s face be changed to full stare, his scowl slowly giving place to a grin as he recognized him.
“Allah!”
He drove the long blade back again, fidgeting about to make more room and kicking out at his next neighbor to the same end, so that presently King sat on the rock floor instead of on other men’s hip-bones.
“Well met, hakim! See — the wound heals finely!”
Baring his shoulder under the smelly sheepskin coat, he lifted a bandage gingerly to show the clean opening out of which King had coaxed a bullet the day before. It looked wholesome and ready to heal.
“Name thy reward, hakim! We Orakzai Pathans forget no favors!” (Now that boast was a true one.)
King glanced to his left and saw that there was no risk of being overheard or interrupted by Ismail; the Afridi was beating his fists together, rocking from side to side in frenzy, and letting out about one yell a minute that would have curdled a wolf’s heart.
“Nay, I have all I need!” he answered, and the Pathan laughed.
“In thine own time, hakim! Need forgets none of us!”
“True!” said King.
He nodded more to himself than to the other man. He needed, for instance, very much to know who was planning a jihad, and who “Bull-with-a-beard” might be; but it was not safe to confide just yet in a chance-made acquaintance. A very fair acquaintance with some phases of the East had taught him that names such as Bull-with-a-beard are often almost photographically descriptive. He rose to his feet to look. A blind man can talk, but it takes trained eyes to gather information.
The din had increased, and it was safe to stand up and stare, because all eyes were on the madness in the middle. There were plenty besides himself who stood to get a better view, and he had to dodge from side to side to see between them.
“I’m not to doctor his men. Therefore it’s a fair guess that he and I are to be kept apart. Therefore he’ll be as far away from me now as possible, supposing he’s here.”
Reasoning along that line, he tried to see the face on the far side, but the problem was to see over the dancers’ heads. He succeeded presently, for the Orakzai Pathan saw what he wanted, and in his anxiety to be agreeable, reached forward to pull back a box from between the ranks in front.
Its owners offered instant fight, but made no further objection when they saw who wanted it and why. King wondered at their sudden change of mind, the Pathan looked actually grieved that a fight should have been spared him. He tried, with a few barbed insults, to rearouse a spark of enmity, but failed, to his own great discontent.
The box was a commonplace affair, built square, of pine, and had probably contained somebody’s new helmet at one stage of its career. The stenciled marks on its sides and top had long ago become obliterated by wear and dirt.
King got up on it and gazed long at the rows of spectators on the far side, and having no least notion what to look for, he studied the faces one by one.
“If he’s important enough for her to have it in for him, he’ll not be far from the front,” he reasoned and with that in mind he picked out several bull-necked, bearded men, any one of whom could easily have answered to the description. There were too many of them to give him any comfort, until the thought occurred to him that a man with brains enough to be a leader would not be so obsessed and excited by mere prancing athleticism as those men were. Then he looked farther along the line.
He found a man soon who was not interested in the dancing, but who had eyes and ears apparently for everything and everybody else. He watched him for ten minutes, until at last their eyes met. Then he sat down and kicked the box back to its owners.
He looked again at Ismail. With teeth clenched and eyes ablaze, the Afridi was smashing his knuckles together and rocking to and fro. There was no need to fear him. He turned and touched the Pathan’s broad shoulder. The man smiled and bent his turbaned head to listen.
“Opposite,” said King, “nearly exactly opposite — three rows back from the front, counting the front row as one — there sits a man with his arm in a sling and a bandage over his eye.”
The Pathan nodded and touched his knife-hilt.
“One-and-twenty men from him, counting him as one, sits a man with a big black beard, whose shoulders are like a bull’s. As he sits he hangs his head between them — thus.”
“And you want him killed? Nay, I think you mean Muhammad Anim. His time is not yet.”
The suggestion was as good-naturedly prompt as if the hakim’s need had been water, and the other’s flask were empty. He was sorry he could not offer to oblige.
“Who am I that I should want him killed?” King answered with mild reproof. “My trade is to heal, not slay. I am a hakim.”
The other nodded.
“Yet, to enter Khinjan Caves you had to slay a man, hakim or no!”
“He was an unbeliever,” King answered modestly, and the other nodded again with friendly understanding.
“What about the man yonder, then?” the Pathan asked. “What will you have of him?”
“Look! See! Tell me truly what his name is!”
The Pathan got up and strode forward to stand on the box, kicking aside the elbows that leaned on it and laughing when the owners cursed him. He stood on it and stared for five minutes, counting deliberately three times over, striking a finger on the palm of his hand to check him
self.
“Bull-with-a-beard!” he announced at last, dropping back into place beside King. “Muhammad Anim. The mullah Muhammad Anim.”
“An Afghan?” King asked.
“He says he is an Afghan. But unless he lies he is from Isbtamboul (Constantinople).”
Itching to ask more questions, King sat still and held his peace. The direr the need of information in the “Hills,” and in all the East for that matter, the greater the wisdom, as a rule, of seeming uninquisitive. And wisdom was rewarded now, for the Pathan, who would have dried up under eager questioning, grew talkative. Civility and volubility are sometimes one, and not always only among the civilized. King — the hakim Kurram Khan — blinked mildly behind his spectacles and looked like one to whom a savage might safely ease his mind.
“He bade me go to Sikaram where my village is and bring him a hundred men for his lashkar. He says he has her special favor. Wait and watch, I say!
“Has he money?” asked King, apparently drawing a bow at a venture for conversation’s sake. But there is an art in asking artless questions.
“Aye! The liar says the Germans gave it to him! He swears they will send more. Who are the Germans? Who is a man who talks of a jihad that is to be, that he should have gold coin given him by unbelievers? I saw a German once, at Nuklao. He ate pig-meat and washed it down with wine. Are such men sons of the Prophet? Wait and watch, say I!”
“Money?” said King. “He admits it? And none dare kill him for it? You say his time is not yet come?”
More than ever it was obvious that the hakim was a very simple man. The Pathan made a gesture of contempt.
“I dare what I will, hakim! But he says there is more money on the way! When he has it all — why — we are all in Allah’s keeping — He decides!”
“And should no more money come?”
This was courteous conversation and received as such — many a long league removed from curiosity.
“Who am I to foretell a man’s kismet? I know what I know, and I think what I think! I know thee, hakim, for a gentle fellow, who hurt me almost not at all in the drawing of a bullet out of my flesh. What knowest thou about me?”
“That I will dress the wound for thee again!”
Artless statements are as useful in their way as artless questions. Let the guile lie deep, that is all.
“Nay, nay! For she said nay! Shall I fall foul of her, for the sake of a new bandage?”
The temptation was terrific to ask why she had given that order, but King resisted it; and presently it occurred to the Pathan that his own theories on the subject might be of interest.
“She will use thee for a reward,” he said. “He who shall win and keep her favor may have his hurts dressed and his belly dosed. Her enemies may rot.”
“Who is fool enough to be her enemy?” asked King, the altogether mild and guileless.
The Pathan stuck out his tongue and squeezed his nose with one finger until it nearly disappeared into his face.
“If she calls a man enemy, how shall he prove otherwise?” he answered. Then he rolled off center, to pull out his great snuff-box from the leather bag at his waist.
“Does she call the mullah Muhammad Anim enemy?” King asked him.
“Nay, she never mentions him by name.”
“Art thou a man of thy word?” King asked.
“When it suits me.”
“There was a promise regarding my reward.”
“Name it, hakim! We will see.”
“Go tell the mullah Muhammad Anim where I sit!”
The fellow laughed. He considered himself tricked; one could read that plainly enough; for taking polite messages does not come within the Hills’ elastic code of izzat, although carrying a challenge is another matter. Yet he felt grateful for the hakim’s service and was ready to seize the first cheap means of squaring the indebtedness.
“Keep my place!” he ordered, getting up. He growled it, as some men speak to dogs, because growling soothed his ruffled vanity.
He helped himself noisily to snuff then and began to clear a passage, kicking out to right and left and laughing when his victims protested. Before he had traversed fifty yards he had made himself more enemies than most men dare aspire to in a lifetime, and he seemed well pleased with the fruit of his effort.
The dance went on for fifteen minutes yet, but then — quite unexpectedly — all the arena guards together fired a volley at the roof, and the dance stopped as if every dancer had been hit. The spectators were set surging by the showers of stone splinters, that hurt whom they struck, and their snarl was like a wolf-pack’s when a tiger interferes. But the guards thought it all a prodigious joke and the more the crowd swore the more they laughed.
Panting — foaming at the mouth, some of them — the dancers ran to their seats and set the crowd surging again, leaving the arena empty of all but the guards. The man whose seat Ismail had taken came staggering, slippery with sweat, and squeezed himself where he belonged, forcing King into the Pathan’s empty place. Ismail threw his arms round the man and patted him, calling him “mighty dancer,” “son of the wind,” “prince of prancers,” “prince of swordsmen,” “war-horse,” and a dozen more endearing epithets. The fellow lay back across Ismail’s knees, breathless but well enough contented.
And after a few more minutes the Orakzai Pathan came back, and King tried to make room for him to sit.
“I bade thee keep my place!” he growled, towering over King and plucking at his knife-belt irresolutely. He made it clear without troubling to use words that any other man would have had to fight, and the hakim might think himself lucky.
“Take my seat,” said King, struggling to get up.
“Nay, nay — sit still, thou. I can kick room for myself. So! So! So!”
There was an answering snarl of hate that seemed like a song to him, amid which he sat down.
“The mullah Muhammad Anim answered he knows nothing of thee and cares less! He said — and he said it with vehemence — it is no more to him where a hakim sits than where the rats hide!”
He watched King’s face and seeing that, King allowed his facial muscles to express chagrin.
“Between us, it is a poor time for messages to him. He is too full of pride that his lashkar should have beaten the British.”
“Did they beat the British greatly?” King asked him, with only vague interest on his face and a prayer inside him that his heart might flutter less violently against his ribs. His voice was as non-committal as the mullah’s message.
“Who knows, when so many men would rather lie than kill? Each one who returned swears he slew a hundred. But some did not return. Wait and watch, say I!”
Now a man stood up near the edge of the crowd whom King recognized; and recognition brought no joy with it. The mullah without hair or eyelashes, who had admitted him and his party through the mosque into the Caves, strode out to the middle of the arena all alone, strutting and swaggering. He recalled the man’s last words and drew no consolation from them, either.
“Many have entered! Some went out by a different road!”
Cold chills went down his back. All at once Ismail’s manner became unencouraging. He ceased to make a fuss over the dancer and began to eye King sidewise, until at last he seemed unable to contain the malice that would well forth.
“At the gate there were only words!” he whispered. “Here in this cavern men wait for proof!”
He licked his teeth suggestively, as a wolf does when he contemplates a meal. Then, as an afterthought, as though ashamed, “I love thee! Thou art a man after my own heart! But I am her man! Wait and see!”
The mullah in the arena, blinking with his lashless eyes, held both arms up for silence in the attitude of a Christian priest blessing a congregation. The guards backed his silent demand with threatening rifles. The din died to a hiss of a thousand whispers, and then the great cavern grew still, and only the river could be heard sucking hungrily between the smooth stone banks.
&
nbsp; “God is great!” the mullah howled.
“God is great!” the crowd thundered in echo to him; and then the vault took up the echoes. “God is great — is great — is great — ea — ea — eat!”
“And Muhammad is His prophet!” howled the mullah. Instantly they answered him again.
“And Muhammad is His prophet!”
“His prophet — is His prophet — is His prophet!” said the stalactites, in loud barks — then in murmurs — then in awe-struck whispers.
That seemed to be all the religious ritual Khinjan remembered or could tolerate. Considering that the mullah, too, must have killed his man in cold blood before earning the right to be there, perhaps it was enough — too much. There were men not far from King who shuddered.
“There are strangers!” announced the mullah, as a man might say, “I smell a rat!” But he did not look at anybody in particular; he blinked at the crowd.
“Strangers!” said the stalactites, in an awe-struck whisper.
“Show them! Show them! Let them stand forth!”
“Oh-h-h-h-h! Let them stand forth!” said the roof.
The mullah bowed as if that idea were a new one and he thought it better than his own; for all crowds love flattery.
“Bring them!” he shouted, and King suppressed a shudder — for what proof had he of right to be there beyond Ismail’s verbal corroboration of a lie? Would Ismail lie for him again? he wondered. And if so, would the lie be any use?
Not far from where King sat there was an immediate disturbance in the crowd, and a wretched-looking Baluchi was thrust forward at a run, with arms lashed to his sides and a pitiful look of terror on his face. Two more Baluchis were hustled along after him, protesting a little, but looking almost as hopeless.