by Talbot Mundy
“Then bring up all the dynamite we have, and all the loose powder you can lay your hands on. Set half of it in the narrowest gut of the Serpent’s Mouth. Put the rest of it near this entrance. Set fuses, and stand a guard ready to blow up both entrances at the first attempt to break in.”
Even Rahman almost mutinied at that, but Lottie backed Gup loyally and Rahman, remembering a legend, laughed, though with a wry face:
“By my beard — are you a new Iskander and Bucephalus? Will you slit the throat of safety, to encourage us to win?”
“You know as well as I do, Rahman, that our one chance is as an army in the field, free to move and to smite swiftly.”
In the distance, in the clear blue sky above the Khyber, he could see ten British planes observing the Amir’s main line of advance; they looked like seagulls circling above shoals of fish, and there were small black dots in the sky that he knew were vultures following the Amir’s columns, for the crimson harvest. Scouts brought word that a league-long column of the Amir’s men, marching light and without artillery, was pouring through a pass some twenty miles away, to the northward, and all men knew that column could have only one objective. Gup sent at once for Tom O’Hara.
“Tom, write me a laissez-passer, to Peshawar, for every woman in this place, except Lottie, and for all their baggage, with an escort of a hundred mounted men. Ask them to let the men and mules return to me. And tell them that if the women are shown the least discourtesy—”
“No need to mention that, Gup. They’ll intern ’em, of course, and send the men back as requested.”
“You don’t care for a command, I suppose?”
“You said ut. At my own game I’m a useful specimun. Besides, I’ve a girl in Copenhagen. I’m not looking for the next world. Copenhagen suits me.” Gup left more than a thousand men to guard the cavern entrance and to keep communication open. Several hundred more were needed to carry out the ammunition boxes. That attended to, he galloped with Lottie and Rahman to the ledge overlooking the Valley of Doab, on which he had camped two nights before and where the tent-pegs were still upstanding in the ground. From there, without glasses they could see the snakelike movement of the approaching Afghan column. Its speed was noticeably faster than that of Europeans on the march; there were mules and baggage-camels, but not many; and the Afghan general was so reckless, or else in such haste and so ill-informed, that his advance-guard consisted of only a squadron of cavalry riding in close formation.
“The first round will be ours, Rahman! If we can’t lick that lot, we don’t deserve our dinner!”
There was plenty of time to decide on a plan, and Gup and Rahman found no trouble in agreeing about details. Obviously, they must hurl that column back by the way it had come and, if it should not be badly enough or swiftly enough defeated, drive a wedge between it and the Khyber to prevent its making contact with the Amir’s main advance. The chief difficulty was an almost total lack of staff officers and of almost any means of signaling; they were forced to depend on the natural fighting instinct of the Hillmen, who would keep in touch for their own sakes, and who knew the ledges and the tracks that led from ridge to ridge; but to keep them in hand after the first shot was fired looked like a stark impossibility.
Rahman accepted the post of honor in command of the troops who must bear the first shock of engagement. The captain of the Ranee’s body-guard had been promoted to command three thousand men, as much to salve his injured feelings as for any other reason; he and his brigade were hidden amid boulders on the lower slope facing the mouth of the Valley of Doab. Another three thousand men, in command of a Sikh named Baba Singh were stationed to block the highroad leading to the caverns. Fifteen hundred more were then spread fanwise across the mouth of the Valley of Doab with orders to retreat up the beds of the rivers and draw the Afghans after them into the valley, where all of the rest of the lashkar was hidden amid the rocks at the foot of the enormous walls. Then Rahman, with only fifteen hundred, marched northward up the gorge to meet the enemy and throw up a barricade of rocks from cliff to cliff in the narrowest place they could find.
And now there were more planes visible above the Khyber. There was a far-off drum-fire of artillery, but it did not sound like weight of metal or effective numbers. Probably the Amir’s troops were surging toward India, resisted by a fraction of their number who were holding on, to gain time until divisions could be rushed to their support. Perhaps there was not more than one division of the Anglo-Indian army available; Gup knew nothing about that; neither did Tom O’Hara; all troop movements had been kept so secret that not even Harriet Dover’s spies had learned how many hours or days the Indian army might need before it could oppose effective strength against an onslaught. There might be a rebellion in India. The whole Punjaub might have risen. Something was bringing the Amir down in all that haste.
Presently Gup heard Rahman hotly engaged, with the enemy, up the gorge. He left Lottie on horseback, on an eminence inside the Valley of Doab, where she could be seen by all the lashkar; then he galloped up the gorge to see how Rahman fared.
“They bring artillery, by God,” said Rahman. “Two mountain batteries are taking up position on that ledge. When they get our range, we can never hold this heap of stones.”
Even as he spoke a shell from a screw-gun that had been packed on a mule’s back to a mountain ledge fell and exploded about four hundred yards away, killing some of the Afghans’ own riflemen, who had thrown up a low wall of rocks. A second shell fell closer to the target. A third fell only fifty yards away.
“Fall back now, Rahman. It will take them twenty minutes to reach another ledge to fire from. Then fall back again before they get the range.”
He returned to where he had left Lottie. Her bodyguard and his were clustered near to serve as gallopers. From where they sat their horses they could watch Rahman skilfully managing indignant men, who wished to be reenforced, and falling back too rapidly to be enfiladed from the overhanging ledges of the gorge. He was cleverly encouraging the Afghans’ over-confidence. They followed him too eagerly when he reached the mouth of the Valley of Doab and retreated past it toward the highway leading southward to the caverns. Before he reached that he was reenforced — stood — began to fight back savagely. He and his men were a dam that checked the Afghan flood, which spread into the mouth of the Valley of Doab, trying to outflank him. Then Gup’s fifteen hundred opened fire, shooting and retreating into the rock-strewn valley. Checked by Rahman, the Afghans turned into the valley, pursuing the fifteen hundred, when suddenly the three thousand commanded by the former captain of the Ranee’s body-guard opened a withering fire from their cover of boulders.
The Afghans turned three ways. Their center hurled itself on Rahman’s stuttering front; their left wing faced a hail of bullets from three thousand invisible riflemen; their right wing poured into the Valley of Doab, where apparently they hoped to find some outlet that should bring them to the caverns or bring them behind Rahman’s rear. And because Gup’s fifteen hundred steadily retired along the river-beds in front of them, that seemed the line of least resistance; also, in that valley there was room to form ranks and recover confidence; so into the valley, following his right wing the Afghan general crowded his hurrying men, including his mule batteries, which he hoped to turn on those unseen riflemen among the boulders who were raking his left wing. He left the mouth of the gorge to the northward almost empty.
At last Gup gave the signal to the hidden lashkar, riding into full view and waving his cloak. The valley became a shambles then — no stopping it. The mountain batteries — the one advantage that the Afghans had — were caught between a cross-fire of machine-guns as they tried to take position on some slightly rising ground; they instantly ceased to be anything but carrion and metal. The Afghan general fell with nearly all his staff and there arose a roar of “Din! Din!” as merciless as the howl of winter storms, out-roaring the machine-gun stutter as a chorus drowns orchestral music. There were not many prisoners le
ft to take by the time Gup’s gallopers had reached the mullahs and persuaded them to stop the slaughter.
And then came Tom O’Hara, dodging between rocks until he reached Gup’s stirrup.
“That’s all, Gup — let the doctors clean up the mess. We’ve the radio working at last. News from the Khyber. Our fellows are catching ut hot and the Amir looks like breaking through. The north end o’ the Khyber’s chock-a-block with all his baggage-wagons. Get a move on — don’t waste men on guarding prisoners — strip ’em, take their weapons and chase ’em back to Kabul! Get your men in hand before they know ut. Clap ’em due east — find your way to the Khyber somehow — over the mountains — a hell of a trail, and you’ve got to make ut! Leave Lottie to me — I’ll get her to Peshawar somehow.”
“Care to go with him?” Gup asked her.
“No. You know I won’t. I go with you.”
“You heard her, Tom?”
“I heard ut.”
“Do your job, Tom. Reach as many mullahs as you can and preach loot to ’em. Tell ’em the plunder is all in the Khyber, waiting to be seized. Get busy.” Lottie and Gup divided forces for the moment, rallying the men. Her presence on a battle-field astride a red Kabuli mare and escorted by fifty mounted men who did her bidding even to the point of herding away with naked saber-blades the hot-eyed plunderers who were stripping dead and wounded — was something so new, so amazing, so original that men obeyed her, wondering what next the way of Allah would unfold.
And Gup found Rahman — told him the news in almost Tom O’Hara’s words.
“By God,” said Rahman, “and by my beard, I have seen the impossible come to pass so often that I say no longer: None can do this or that. Nevertheless, I believe this is more than the Prophet himself could bring to pass — be blessings on him! To the Khyber — now — with thirty thousand men — in time to stop Afghans who hurry to loot India’s cities?”
“Now!” said Gup. “And in time! And your turn for the read-guard, Rahman. Take five thousand men, load every mule we have with ammunition — load every man with all the rations he can carry — and follow us. Who is the best guide?”
“Pepul Das.”
“Send him to me. Is there a trail horses can follow?”
“No, Bahadur. Mules, yes — but in the darkness?”
“Full moon, Rahman. Get a move on.”
“All right, Gup Bahadur. By the leave of Allah we have wrought one marvel. Let us do this other. Leave that stallion with me and I will send him to Peshawar for you when the fighting is all over.”
“What do you mean?”
“The burra-sahibs in Peshawar will forgive you. They will forgive her. Will they forgive me? Nay, and I will never ask it. Rahman must take to the hills!”
“You must think a hell of a lot of my friendship! Do you suppose that she or I would accept an amnesty in which you weren’t included? Either we all go free or none of us. Who are you that you should be too proud to share luck with your friends? Shake hands, you damned old loyal rogue! I’ll meet you in Peshawar or the next world. We will all take tea with the High Commissioner!”
Then frenzy, followed by a nightmare. All that evening and all that night Gup led and the lashkar followed him. There were times when he tied Lottie to her mule, in case she should fall asleep and pitch down some almost bottomless crevass, but he spared her no more than he spared himself; he let her see this thing she had begun, to the dregs of its crimson finish. There was neither military formation nor any attempt at it, nor any possibility of keeping it; the lashkar streamed in endless zigzag lines, in single file, like insects on the face of a dead moon. There were several trails; each had its advocates and each man chose whichever leader took the trail he fancied, over raw grim mountains echoing to the distant thunder of contending guns.
And many a man went down to death that night on rocks where none but kites would ever find him. Many a score of loaded mules slid kicking to the depth of some dark chasm, some blown off the sloping ledges by a graceless wind that howled from the northern snow. There was neither halt nor help for any one.
Whoever could not march, might lag and lose himself; who lost himself might cry his lungs out to the heedless night, where moonlight only made enormous shadows deeper and all sound was changed into mocking echoes flung back from the owl-roosts on the face of tortured rock.
But when the cold dawn touched the mountain-tops with shimmering silver, and then mauve, and it was still dark in the Khyber, Gup Bahadur, with a woman’s hand in his, stood staring at the snow-white mist that lay in the bed of the dreadful gorge like a glacier steadily moving — split suddenly, at measured intervals, by flames of crimson and electric blue when shells burst and the crags exploded millions of spastic echoes.
There was an army’s rear and all its baggage-train beneath that soft white mist. Perhaps there was an Amir and his staff. There might be wagon-loads of minted money. And beside Gup, and around him, and along the jagged cliffs on either hand, their faces strained with weariness and cruel with anticipation, stood, lay, knelt and leaned the grim, indomitable vanguard of the lashkar — possibly three thousand men. They were starving, but the loot lay underneath the mist. They were so dog-weary that they had to pause and gather strength for the descent into the pass, but they were as hunting dogs that gather new strength from the rock they laid their bellies on, and no man flinched from the final, most exacting effort.
“Lottie, can you lead?” Gup asked her.
“No,” she answered. “I could lead them, but I can’t lead you. You are Cock o’ the North!”
“If I’d pipes,” he said, “to play that tune—”
“You’ve nothing, Gup. You’ve no more than the Bruce had — just a handful of men and a chance. Save India! You can do it.”
“Lottie,” he said, “I’m afraid.”
“You?”
“I’m afraid to leave you. I don’t know where to leave you.”
“Gup, if you can leave me, you are swifter than I think! Lead on, I’m coming too.”
“No place for a woman, Lottie. There’s grim death down there. I would like you to watch the finish of the thing that you began. Stay up here with the eagles. I can hide you. Perhaps I can persuade some men to stay up here and protect you.”
“Gup, if you die down there in the Khyber, I intend to die too. Don’t ask me why. Don’t argue. Lead on!” But he was adamant. He would not listen to her. “No place for a woman, Lottie.”
He seized men by the throat. He threatened them. He praised them. In the name of Allah and his own right hand he promised them money and men’s approval if they would be her body-guard and keep her out of harm’s way while the fighting lasted. Some men laughed and leaped to the lower rocks to have a good start of the rest when the charge into the Khyber should begin. Some answered him with yells, their comrades echoing. They began that terrible “Din! Din!” that awakens a craving to slay and be slain — the war-cry that announces Hillmen are at war without rule of any kind except their own raw tyranny of devil-take-the-hindmost. The mist perhaps was blanketing the echoes but alarm might leap along the Khyber-bed at any moment and rob surprise of its advantage. There was need for haste. Red-headed Scots ferocity in haste found fifteen men who swore, bruised feet excusing them, that they would keep out of the fight and guard Gup’s lady-love for her weight in silver money. Gup would have offered her weight in gold or diamonds in that hour and would have trusted Providence to fill his purse.
Then he led, not loving what he did. He loved it no more than a surgeon loves to slay a mother that a child may live. His own weariness of mind and body was almost absolute. Not even the thought that he was saving India stirred him much. He saw nothing beyond the immediate task — no reward, no goal, no purpose but to drive his lance into the long leg-weary dragon that was the Amir’s invading host. He was a man in a dream. He only lacked a little savagery to have been a throw-back to a Highland ancestor, wind-weaned, hungrier than the clansmen whom he led on a merciless fora
y.
He felt like a ghost as he dropped into the Khyber mist with a thousand men behind him following like devils homing into hell’s mouth. Streams of laggards overtook them, pressed forward by Rahman’s hurrying rear-guard. Hard-breathing, limping, striving with aching tendons, they scrambled downward from rock to rock — until forms in the mist below took shape and they knew themselves, by Allah’s grace, a swarm of hornets loosed on a helpless serpent’s flank. The Amir’s army turned upon itself and writhed — they into it, into it, slaughtering — men in a dream. No man but bore a grudge against the Afghan Government. There was hardly a man but believed his village had been burned by Afghan foragers, his women raped, his honor trampled in the byre dung.
“Allaho Akbar! Din! Din!”
Plunder they forgot then. They were fighting to be first to enter paradise — God’s meadows, where the faithful live for ever amid sensuous delights and there is no more hunger. They were at it hand-to-hand, each butchered enemy a foot-hold hacked on the ascent to everlasting bliss — each carcase fuel for the flames of Eblis.
“Din! Din!”
Gup kept half a hundred in control. They followed him because he was the biggest man in sight — because they saw his sword cut down three Afghan sowars who leaped from behind a broken limber and attacked him three at once. They followed him because he fought like some one from another world. And Gup was two men, one part frenzy and the other a Scotsman calculating how much damage he might do before a tulwar should slit his throat. The frenzy served to throw a spell over his men and make them do his bidding. It gave him speed. The cold calm underlying it wrought more valuable damage than ten times that much frenzy spent on murder could have done.