Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Where,” he retorted, “is it written that Allah made you, but not me? And if I swear that there is one God, shall God deny me? And if God deny me not, does your unbelief matter? Shall I answer to God, or to you? And which is better — a written testimonial that any clever rogue might forge — or a man’s deeds? Which of the two shall Allah justify?”

  He stood, with his teeth set so tightly that the muscles of his jaw rose in knots. The chieftain’s pointed question had been a thrust that pricked him where he kept his fury against all dry bones of bigotry encumbering men’s inward faith. The very thought of bigotry could make him as bigoted as anybody else. He hated cant with such a livid hatred that he had formed a new cant of his own. He despised intolerance to a point where intolerance entered into him and made him furious. But his fury was magnetic.

  And in the ensuing silence the Ranee’s calm voice spoke, from the peacock throne, the ancient formula that none may ignore and not name himself an ignorant, ill-mannered fool:

  “Ye have my leave to go.”

  Again silence. Had she opened her lips, that would have amounted to permission to speak while taking leave. They bowed, hesitating, hoping for the chance to get a word in. Stately and solemn and dignified then, they filed out from the presence. It was not until the door had closed behind them that the voice of Jonesey broke on the stillness.

  “Allah! The Omnipotent made ingenuity! I will forge you the letter you need. It shall be signed by the Imam of Istamboul. I will spread it across Asia that you are a hajji and a true-believer!”

  “Not if you’re eager to live, you won’t,” Gup answered. “If you tell ’em one lie about my religion, I’ll break your head with that staff you carry! That’s the only point on which I’m touchy.”

  (NORTH TEXT)

  “You are the least touchy, the least violent, the least unreasonable man I know,” said Jonesey. “May I wait outside?”

  And they are ignorant who think that Love is meek.

  No arrogance, in all uncounted realms

  Of endless universes spiraling, can speak

  With magic such as Love’s, that overwhelms

  All opposites and pours its course

  So full of tributary forces that a stream

  Flood-swollen from a trackless source

  Is as a shadow to it, in an idler’s dream.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “What do you mean, sir, by disaster?”

  BUT Jonesey changed his mind — something that only a corpse may not do. It was the servants who filed out one by one, obedient to a gesture. One veiled figure remained in the gallery, four ivory-white fingers on the edge of the stone betraying nervousness. Then the Ranee stepped down from her throne; she laid her sari aside; instantly the woman in the gallery removed her veil, revealing Harriet Dover, darkeyed and intense. There was no sound now. Jonesey approached, his bare feet silent on the three-deep rugs, and they faced one another, Jonesey leaning on his staff.

  “What has happened?” the Ranee asked. Her eyes were liquid with a triumph that included doubt and saw beyond doubt to a victory not yet won. Delighted, she was also suspicious and doubly on guard. “You yield as breathlessly as you refused to yield. What has happened?”

  “I have been told,” said Gup with grim lips, “that my countrymen have condemned me unheard and have posted a reward for me, dead or alive.”

  “So you turn on them? You accept my offer?”

  He nodded. There was silence again in which his windy gray eyes looked into the depth of hers — a long silence, in which even Gup’s steady breathing was hardly audible.

  “You lie lamely,” she said at last. “You are too honest. You can think treason, but you can’t hide it.”

  Silence again, until Jonesey spoke: “Oh, the power of silence!”

  It was true. Silence was giving Gup time in which to turn words over in his mind. He hated lying, even after he had recognized the necessity. If he could, he preferred to tell the truth so subtly that she would misinterpret it. Afterward he would be able to quote his own words, in his own defense. It was not yet clear to him that love between two strong characters is a battle-field in which no quarter may be asked or given, but the strength of each devours the weakness of the other until only love is left. He had to conquer her, not explain himself. He could feel that, but he did not understand it yet.

  “It is they,” he said, “who have done treason against me. They shall regret it.”

  “Who told you this news?”

  He evaded a direct answer: “I will discuss that with you when we are alone.”

  She glanced at Jonesey. “Did he speak with any one?”

  But Jonesey had no opportunity to answer. They were interrupted by the voice of Harriet Dover, ringing low contralto, ominous, as she leaned over the gallery: “In one short paroxysm of grandiose boasting your Nordic blond has undone the work of weeks. I warned you to test him before you trusted him!”

  The Ranee ignored that but her eyes darkened angrily. She spoke to Gup again.

  “Did you mean what you said about marching on Kabul?”

  “How can I answer until I have seen the army I must lead?”

  “Are you willing to take oath before the army?”

  Gup did not dare to hesitate. “Certainly,” he answered.

  “You shall review the army, and you shall swear yourself in at the same time,” she said, staring at him. “However, I have not forgotten how your countrymen sold Mary Queen of Scots to Elizabeth, and Charles the First to Cromwell.”

  Gup winced. He hated history; it is too full of the lapses from common decency of every nation under heaven.

  “Let us draw up that oath with caution,” she went on. “Harriet Dover shall make a draft of it that won’t leave you even a beggar’s loophole.”

  He smiled at that. He knew that if he should ever decide to break an oath he would need no loophole. He would smash the thing in fragments.

  “All right, draw it,” he retorted. “If it suits me, I’ll swear it. If it doesn’t I won’t.”

  “Any stipulations?”

  “None,” he answered. “I have decided to take up the sword, and by the sword I will win or fail. If I win, you win. If I fail, you will very likely die with me. If you don’t give me your complete confidence, I will treat you in the same way. Accept my sword or leave it.”

  “It isn’t your sword that I doubt,” she said, looking straight at his eyes. “Nor do I doubt you; you are of the stuff of which heroes are made. But I do doubt your Covenanter’s conscience.”

  “Doubt it then,” said Gup. “I don’t have to command your army.” But if she had taken him at his word, he had already made up his mind to seize command. It may be that she understood that. She was reading him as if his eyes and his face were the score of new, intriguing music.

  “If you play me false — was ever another woman placed as I am, rash enough to run that risk? You have nothing to lose — no pledge to offer. As a pledge, even your life is worthless; you would throw it away as some men throw the stump of a cigar. If you should fail me, do you know what I would do?”

  “I can guess,” said Gup.

  “I would realize that my own judgment and my own ideals, my own wit and my own reason were all worthless. I would realize that my life’s work is nothing, can amount to nothing and has gone down like a pack of cards. And I would have no compunctions left of any kind.”

  “Most of us feel like that,” said Gup, “until the house of cards falls. Mine fell, so I know the sensation. The trick is, not to try to build another dreamland. Build with bricks next time. Or build some other fellow’s house. Our own don’t matter much.”

  “If you fail me, I will never again trust any one,” she answered, and Gup wondered at her emphasis. It did him good to hear it. He recognized familiar symptoms. It made him realize that not only he had had to face a crisis, in which the devils of despair had done their utmost. He was emerging, robbed of nothing except trash. He wondered how she wo
uld emerge. He intended to spare her all he could.

  “Who steals my name,” he thought, “steals nothing. But if he should steal my own opinion of myself—”

  He smiled at his own sententiousness, reminding himself it was a time for deeds, on which the fate of India might hinge, not for self-examination. Let the Lords of Destiny make use of him as he was; he could not change himself in that hour. He decided to begin now, instantly, to force the underlying secrets to the surface so that he might judge the situation and develop plans. But to do that he had to deal in words first; he had to drive a wedge into the split that he discerned between the Ranee and Harriet Dover.

  “How much authority has Miss Dover?” he asked.

  “She is the first woman secretary of state who ever lived,” the Ranee answered. “Her authority is not very clearly defined; we have had no time for definitions. She and I have worked together from the first.”

  “Always together?”

  “Sometimes we have not had time for conference. I have trusted her implicitly.”

  “You will have to trust me. You will have to work with me,” said Gup, “if you propose to look to me to save you from disaster.”

  “What do you mean, sir, by disaster?” She looked more royal than he had seen her yet.

  “I have not yet seen your army. But you lie between two armies, each of them stronger and better supplied than yours. I know that. You will be ground between two millstones unless some one wiser than Miss Dover manages your foreign policy. As commander-in-chief I have a right to know what Miss Dover has been doing.”

  The Ranee glanced at Jonesey. “Ask Miss Dover to come here.”

  She and Gup then faced each other in a strained, uncomfortable silence.

  “Do you think,” she asked at last, “that I would be afraid to have you killed if you should play me false? I suspect you already. Why did you insult those Shinwari tribesmen?”

  “Do you call what I said an insult? I don’t think they did. I took my cue from you.”

  “You said too much. It will reach the Amir. You intended that?”

  Harriet Dover came in with Jonesey before Gup could answer. As a matter of fact he did not know what to answer: whether to take the credit for a deliberate attempt to offend the Amir, or to admit that he had merely spoken at random, intuitively taking a downright attitude toward men who he thought were bluffing.

  Harriet Dover’s soft, dark, Celtic eyes observed him calmly, but he thought he detected something else than calmness in their depths. The Ranee spoke first:

  “Harriet, what understanding have we with the Amir?”

  “None yet.”

  “Anything tentative?” Gup asked her.

  “We have been in communication for some time, through unofficial channels — through spies and so on.”

  “What was the subject of negotiations?”

  “None. He wanted to know what our intentions are. There was some very cautious inquiry as to whether we would make common cause with him if he should decide to invade India. Also he wanted to know what our claims amount to — how much territory we pretend to govern.”

  “What was your answer?”

  “Very evasive. Practically nothing.”

  “What did you mean just now by saying that I have undone the work of weeks?”

  “I regret having said that. I am almost on the verge of a breakdown from overwork. I was annoyed by your taking the reins in your own hands.” Suddenly she flared up. “You were chosen for brawn not brains! It is your business to command the army subject to the Ranee’s orders; mine to attend to negotiations.”

  “What are your plans? Why was I chosen, as you call it? What do you wish me to do with the army?” Gup asked her.

  “If you wish to know the truth, I had nothing to do with choosing you. That was Rahman’s doing. I objected to it, and to you. Nevertheless, I have loyally concurred, since I was overruled.”

  Gup turned to the Ranee. “Thanks,” he said. “That is as much as I need to know at the moment.”

  But Harriet Dover was not to be dismissed so easily. She declared she was feeling faint and asked whether she might be seated. At a nod from the Ranee she took the chair on which Gup had sat during the conference with the Shinwari chiefs. She sat sidewise, so that Gup saw her in profile; he decided she was suspicious and keyed to alertness, not faint. He turned to the Ranee again:

  “You expect to establish a kingdom here. Am I to use this army for defensive purposes?” He knew that was an awkward question. There is only one kind of defense for a new kingdom between two ancient adversaries. Even a dreamer would understand that. Rahman entered and stood silent.

  “Harriet and I are not quite in agreement,” said the Ranee. “She has tried to persuade me to make an alliance with the Amir. I prefer to let him invade India if he chooses. I see no advantage in an alliance with him. I have forbidden overtures.”

  Then Rahman spoke: “By Allah, Gup Bahadur, now you know why I was at such pains to choose a man to lead us! By my beard, it is right to let the Amir run his race, and he intends to do it; he will shoot down Khyber like a landslide. Then, say I, fall on his rear! And lo, we have a kingdom! Who shall deny us? The British? They will be grateful. The Amir? He will be caught between two armies and routed. And I say — by my beard I say it — march on Kabul. Half Afghanistan would welcome us; the other half would submit and be taught to be glad we had come. By Allah, I say: March on Kabul while the Amir runs his head into the Indian noose!”

  Harriet Dover leaned back in the chair looking tired of an endless argument, but her eyes were bright and her voice was almost savagely dynamic.

  “Do you think the Amir is such a fool as that? Well — wait and see. I have done my best. Remember, this army has no artillery.”

  “We will take the Amir’s,” Rahman asserted cheerfully.

  Gup decided he had driven in his wedge; if he should go too far just yet he might cease to be the unknown quantity that it was necessary that he should be. He even tried to patch up temporary peace with Harriet Dover, although instinct as well as reason warned him that she was a dangerous friend and a deadlier enemy.

  “There is time for us all to agree yet,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Time?” she retorted. “Much you know! The Amir won’t wait.”

  “How do you know that?” he asked her suddenly.

  Perhaps he spoke too sharply to a woman who had been living on her nerves for weeks. She winced and glared at him with hatred. For a moment there was almost triumph in her eyes, or so Gup read it; it was as if she forefelt triumph and tried to mask it. However, she mastered herself, and when she spoke her voice was calm:

  “One expects to be able to guess things after studying a situation as long and minutely as I have studied this one. We will see whether my guess is right or not.”

  She got up and went to the Ranee’s side, putting an arm around her. “Let Lottie decide it. After all, we must follow her fortune, mustn’t we? What do you say, Jonesey?”

  “Something funny, I suppose,” said Jonesey. “I think Gup Bahadur will spring a surprise on us. Is that funny? Or will it be?”

  As a woman who owned an army and was bidding for a kingdom that Iskander of Macedon won and lost, the Ranee surely was entitled to the last word, but Gup deprived her of it.

  “Lunch—” she began.

  He saluted. “Send me out a sandwich — tea in a bottle — no cream or sugar. Jonesey and Rahman shall show me the stores, ammunition and so on — possibly the men, too. You and Miss Dover can draw up the oath that you want me to swear. Am I excused?”

  He saluted again and backed toward the door, where Jonesey and Rahman joined him, Rahman bristling like a hedge-hog with belligerent emotion and exuding friendliness. However, Gup noticed that Jonesey exchanged glances with Harriet Dover before closing the door behind him. He wondered why. He pondered that.

  Within this life no moment and no man

  May boast the long war won. Each victor
y reveals

  Another view, another challenge in the van,

  New opportunity. Faith’s magic heals

  Old wounds and weariness, re-lights old fires

  That died untended, shows in vision vast

  A new goal, new resources — then requires

  Accounting of to-day, to-morrow, not the past

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “We Moslems also believe that Eve persuaded Adam.”

  GUP hardly believed his eyes. Afterward, almost nobody except Tom O’Hara and a few Indian Government spies believed what preparations had been made within those caverns for a war that should alter the map of Asia. There was even a factory for making smokeless powder. There was no artillery, but there were machine-guns by the hundred and enough ammunition to outlast weeks of heavy fighting. In a cavern near where those were stored was a Pathan ex-British-Indian army infantryman with six subordinates, who instructed the tribesmen in squads of twenty, all day long, until squad after squad was sent home competent to handle machine-guns in action. All they needed was mechanical instructions; they were born fighters, of much experience, who knew every trick of taking cover and every yard of their rock-strewn mountainsides and valleys.

  Some one had studied the secret of discipline, not of a standing army in rigmarole-routine barracks but of an irregular army in the field whose whole genius and only chance must consist in ferocious attack; an army that should live off an enemy’s country and contain within itself small units that could automatically absorb recruits from conquered territory; an army that could move like lightning and strike venomously. Lessons had been learned from Iskander of Macedon and Genghis Khan. Each squad of twenty had elected its own leader, to whom each swore implicit obedience. Those leaders were taught in a school in the caverns. Each ten leaders presently elected one to whom, in turn, they swore obedience, and that one was initiated into a sort of secret aristocracy that flattered vanity while at the same time providing an atmosphere of mystery. Thus the higher ranks were closed against sedition seeping from beneath.