Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Luckily for us the wind was playing ducks and drakes with acoustics, for otherwise the least noise we made would have betrayed us; and who could cling to that crazy ledge, let alone reach it, without making any amount of noise! We were breathing hard from the climb, for one thing; for another, the rock’s unevenness was painful to hands and knees, and we had to keep shifting our weight. If we had been detected, one shove with a stick would have ended the careers of all three of us. I think if anyone had shouted at us suddenly from above we would have jumped out of our shivering skins and slid to death! There were certainly never three men who felt less heroic.

  However, we received warning before a shout came, and had time to cling to one another and the rock, digging our fingers into crannies. Someone yelled against the wind in Pushtu that there was an approach unguarded. He came and stood above us with his back to the ravine, gesticulating and shouting at the torchmen. We could only catch about one word in ten that he said, but from the general drift of it he seemed anxious about the track we had climbed by. Apparently the others took no notice of him. He moved a pace or two along the ledge, and by screwing my neck around I could see the top of his head as he peered over; but he drew back instantly and went to yelling again at Joan Angela’s bodyguard. I could not hear what he said.

  He came back to his original position directly over us, still yelling, and, lying prone on his belly, leaned over. Then his face was just five feet above us, and I could see the dark outline of his turbaned head distinctly against the sky. I took aim with the pistol, but had to move to do it, resting my elbow in the Sikh’s back; and as luck would have it, I slipped and almost fell off the ledge, so I did not fire, not caring to waste a bullet even in that crisis.

  But I could not recover balance without getting to my knees. Then the others moved, and forced me to stand upright, so I reached up, meaning to seize the Pathan’s neck and pull him over. He drew back, and by that time the other two were standing upright beside me. I bent my knee for Grim to mount by, and he had his hand on my shoulder, when the Pathan’s face grinned within a foot of mine, and he almost screamed at me:

  “The tooth, Ramm-is-den! Have you the tooth?”

  That saved his life. This time it was Narayan Singh’s sword that licked upward, and checked only in the nick of time.

  “Ho!” the Sikh laughed in my ear, “the gods are good to us!” And his weight followed Grim’s on my knee. They scrambled on to the ledge and dragged me after them. And as if the whole thing had been timed by G.H.Q., as we got to our feet a very hurricane of firing burst out from the ravine below us.

  I would like to tell exactly what happened then, but it happened so fast that a man’s brain could hardly record it. We had the full advantage of surprise, and all the corresponding disadvantage that goes with it, not least of which is that every man acts then on impulse and reason hardly enters into the ensuing chaos. The torchmen began beating out their torches — all except one, who waved his flaming stick frantically as if hoping to summon friends from heaven knew where. By that light I saw one of the bodyguard seize Joan Angela to kill her with his tulwar, and my pistol bullet tore through the breadth of him under the arms as the tulwar was in mid-air. I saw her stoop and pick the tulwar up. Then darkness. The fool who was waving the torch had flung it down into the ravine.

  We four rushed the bodyguard, and the howling wind seemed to change key as nine or ten tulwars whirled thrumming to stand us off. Those Pathans could see no more than we could. They depended on speed of swordsmanship to bar the way as it were with a wall of live steel. But one man fired his rifle at random in our general direction, and I went like a rock out of a catapult, straight for the flash.

  I use my fist in times like that — instinct, I suppose. My left took the rifleman full in the mouth, and he went down like a poleaxed steer. The others followed through behind me, and that broke line, nerve, resolution — everything. The remainder was panic, or riot, or hell, or whatever you care to call it — hand-to-hand shoot, and slash, and butt-work in the dark, with the Sikh’s sword striking fire on tulwar blades, and the gasping and grunting of desperate men in a shambles.

  I heard Joan Angela cry aloud, and as I tore in to her aid she thrust out blindly with the tulwar and ran the point through the skin over my left ribs. I don’t know how a man sees at a time like that. Forgotten, latent senses function. Two Pathans seized Joan Angela to carry her off. One clapped his hand over her mouth from behind, and the other seized her legs to stop her kicking. I used the pistol and missed both of them. The second man let go her legs and closed with me, groping for my eye to stick a thumb in it. I took him around the waist, up-ended him, and flung him over the ravine. I don’t know where the pistol went, or how. I never gave it a thought until some time later.

  I ran back for Joan Angela, and she was gone. Yelling for the others, with no hope of being heard against the wind, I rushed down the ramp, overtaking three men. Two went backwards over the ravine like ninepins as they turned and met my fist. The third fired at me, but too close. I knocked the rifle up, and he staggered backwards from a blow I landed on him somewhere, leaving the rifle in my grasp. Then he ran, and I swung for him with the butt-end, finishing that business.

  That gave me a weapon, but the magazine was empty. I remember jerking out the empty shell as I ran, and sticking my thumb down into the magazine with a desperate notion of finding a cartridge jammed in there. I imagined Joan Angela’s throat being cut in the darkness; for Pathans in a panic will do anything.

  And panic there was. For down at the foot of the ramp where they had piled the loads the darkness was alive with spurting rifle-fire and the yells of the Waziris — both sides utterly desperate — none dreaming of quarter — and no control — no chance of it. Once I thought I heard King’s voice barking commands in a momentary lull, but that may have been delusion.

  Then someone rushed by from behind me, and I thought he was Narayan Singh. I ran my best to overtake him, and the two of us charged neck and neck behind a line of Pathans who were kneeling along the edge of the ramp and pouring a useless fire into the ravine, each one yelling to the others he had killed a man forevery shot he fired. Bullets from below, as wild as theirs, were spattering on the cliff above our heads. I tripped over a man’s legs and fell, rolling like a dead man down a steep, smooth place until a sharp rock knocked the wind out of me, and I lay there shamming dead for I daresay two minutes, until I could recover breath.

  Then Narayan Singh, charging and sliding down the ramp, stumbled over me in turn, and I knew the first man had been either Akbar bin Mahommed or an enemy in flight. I pounced on Narayan Singh to let him know who I was before he plunged his sword into me.

  “The sahiba!” he yelled. He was frantic — worse than I — neither man nor beast in that hour, but more like the embodiment of some ungoverned element.

  “Krishna!” he screamed, and broke loose. The night swallowed him.

  Then someone lit a torch down there among the loads — I suppose to give the Pathans a point to rally on. The Waziris yelled, and the man (or the woman, maybe) who held the torch went down under a hail of bullets. But before the light died I had seen Kangra Khan and three men on a rock at the foot of the ramp. No sign of Joan Angela. I clubbed the rifle, scrambled to my feet, and went for Kangra Khan, possessed of no thought, but an impulse.

  I don’t remember how I reached him. At that point there is a gap I can’t bridge, of hideous, screaming night, all streaked with rifle-fire. Even in dreams there’s a gap there, although most of the incidents of that night recur in sleep in intricate detail. The next I recall I was crouched beside Narayan Singh in pitch darkness under the bulge of the rock on which Kangra Khan stood, with the rifle like a club in one hand, and the other hand on the Sikh’s shoulder, to take the time from him.

  We sprang together, like fiends out of a hellhole. He ran a man clean through from behind with his sabre, and I clubbed another. A third swung for me with a tulwar, but missed his footing and fell of
f the rock. Kangra Khan fired a pistol and jumped for his life, but the Sikh caught his foot, and I closed with him.

  Over we went, all three together, Kangra Khan under us, down into the hole the Sikh and I had sprung from. And now, as I write, I can hear myself yelling, “Don’t kill him! For the love o’ God don’t kill him!” I wanted news.

  But it was easier to hold an eel than him, and he was stronger than any Pathan I have ever seen. Again and again he nearly broke away from us, but at last I got him in a stranglehold, and the Sikh seized his foot. We had him pinned then.

  “The sahiba!” I gasped. “Tell me where she is, or I’ll break your neck!” And I let him feel the pressure by way of evidence of good faith.

  But I had to ease off to let him speak, although Narayan Singh twisted his foot to remind him of urgency. And it took him about a minute to gain enough breath. Then he coughed out a bark of a laugh, and answered me.

  “By Allah, I don’t know!” he said, and laughed again. Then the Sikh took a hand in earnest.

  “Have you got him, sahib?” he asked. Then he let go the leg, and thrust the point of his bloody sabre in between Kangra Khan’s teeth, standing over the two of us, with his weight poised to drive the sabre home.

  “Speak, thou! Where is she?” he demanded.

  Kangra Khan moved his head a fraction clear, and spat before he answered.

  “By Allah, I don’t know, I tell you!”

  The sabre went downward an inch.

  “Then you die like a dog!” said the Sikh.

  “By Allah, I do not know!”

  He asked no mercy — made no appeal — betrayed no sign of weakness. Under my knee I could feel his heart thumping sturdily, and, though I could not see his eyes, I did not doubt they stared up as bravely as they had ever done. If he was lying he was much too big a fool to be a chieftain in those hills, for almost any tale would have sufficed to make us spare his life for at least a little while. And I do like a man who can face death in a dark hole without flinching. I would not have killed him in that way, without more proof than I had that he had slain Joan Angela. Perhaps he guessed that.

  I bade Narayan Singh put up his sabre, and he obeyed me, for a wonder, for he was pretty well beside himself. He stood waiting with the sabre raised, to see what I would order next. And I surprised him.

  “Rope!” I said.

  It was a mad enough order to give a man on that night, in such surroundings. But Narayan Singh was in a mood to cut the heart out of the impossible. The wind lulled, and I heard his sabre thwack home twice. Then voices began calling for Kangra Khan, and one man nearly found us, lying on his belly on the rock that Kangra Khan had stood on to direct the fighting and peering down in all directions. I laid my hand on Kangra Khan’s mouth; not heavily; he understood the implication well enough. I surely would have killed him then, if he had cried out. But he made no sound, and the man went away.

  In the lull of the wind I could hear a great change in the fighting. Lord knows how, but somehow, King had got control of most of his Waziris; and though there was nothing like volleys, there did seem to be a weight of firing all directed at one place. He had persuaded them to let the piled-up loads alone, and to attack the ramp. The Pathans, if not stampeding yet, were in a mind for flight, for I could hear some bawling to the women to bring the loads back to the cavern, and others crying out that they should take to the hills. Between them there was a prodigious rushing to and fro.

  Then Narayan Singh came, and with him the moon, looking down on the scene between wild clouds. The Sikh had a long piece of rawhide. I turned Kangra Khan over and held him while Narayan Singh lashed his wrists.

  “I’ll kill you if you make one unnecessary sound,” I said in his ear, and then let him get to his feet while I peered around the rock.

  There was a battle raging on the ramp above us that would have done the Titans good to watch. The moon showed most of it, but threw enough in shadow to give imagination rein. King’s Waziris were storming the ramp in flank, and about a dozen of Kangra Khan’s men were holding it with a nerve and courage that did them credit. The moonlight was against them. Those of King’s men who were covering the assault fired from shadow. Kangra Khan’s men were in full view, and using stones to hurl back the storming parties. There appeared to be two points of assault. Unless the Waziris had ladders, which was out of all question, they must be swarming on one another’s shoulders to reach the ramp; and the Pathans yelled and danced with excitement every time they aimed a stone by hazard true enough to hit the leader and hurl a whole storming party down. Those twelve or so Pathans were having much the best of it, but I saw four of them shot dead during the minute or two while I watched. Then it seemed by their excitement they had detected a new, more determined attempt. Four of them hurried for stones, and the rest began shooting fast at a target they could certainly not see, yelling to one another to correct the aim, and themselves trying to take cover against a steady hail of bullets that swept up out of the ravine. There could not possibly be more than twenty men making the assault, and perhaps ten firing from the dark to cover it, because there were some of King’s Waziris still shooting into the scrimmage where the loads were being shouldered, and King had said he only had about fifty men all told. But it doesn’t need great numbers to make a fierce affair.

  One man hurled a stone from the ramp that apparently hit the mark, for the Pathans broke cover and danced and yelled in chorus. But I heard King’s shrill whistle below, and another attack began immediately, covered by a hotter fire than ever. But in spite of the moonlight the odds were all with the Pathans. Four men could have held that flank of the ramp against a hundred unless there were some diversion.

  So I had to be Diversion — Jack-in-the-box — Kismet on the flank of the Pathans! There was no alternative, unless I wished to see King’s Waziris hopelessly beaten off.

  “Guard the prisoner!” I shouted to Narayan Singh; and, clubbing the rifle again, I scrambled out of the hole before fear, posing as discretion, should lay a restraining hand on me. It was then or never. In another minute any help would be too late.

  So I charged into the moonlight, at the risk of being hit by the Waziri bullets, and the first the Pathans knew of my coming was when the butt of the rifle smacked like a poleaxe on the nearest man’s head and he toppled overside, leaving room for my swing at the next, and the next.

  And of that, I remember not much. It was battleaxe work, and my strength was what counted. Four or five of them charged me, and I stepped back where an overhanging buttress of the cliff made shadow, dodging as they slashed at me, and bringing down the butt with all the force I knew.

  They told me afterwards Mahommed’s Tooth preserved me. Maybe! Something did. I was untouched!

  Someone found the path that Grim, Narayan Singh and I had climbed by. King’s second storming party reached the ramp by that route and came charging down on us. Then King and no other, with a shield made of wood in his hand to turn the defenders’ stones aside, and his feet on a Waziri’s shoulder, gained the top, and his party came scrambling after him. The Pathans took to flight, to add themselves to the chaos where the loads were. Lying, standing, kneeling, the Waziris fired savagely into that mess, sweeping the ramp and the rocks, and completing the stampede, if yells meant anything.

  King and I both tried to stop them; he, because ammunition now was desperately short; I, because Narayan Singh was down there in the dark, with a prisoner who might mean more to us than a hundred men when it should come to daylight and a show-down. But it was slow work stopping them. The priceless, irrecoverable bullets were squandered for many minutes.

  “Where’s the girl?” King demanded, when he got a chance to pay attention to me.

  I told him I didn’t know. He said nothing — pointedly. He displayed no interest when I told him we had Kangra Khan with his hands tied. He went on mastering his men, getting them posted to repel a possible return assault, singling out the wounded, sending them up to the cavern. There were
nearly a score of wounded, several with scant chance of recovery.

  There was no sense in arguing with King about Joan Angela. Besides, I was alone to blame. It was I who had had the opportunity to snatch her away from her guards — I who missed it. It was up to me to find her, and I turned and went, straight down the ramp again.

  Two-thirds of the way down I met Narayan Singh leading Kangra Khan, who was coming quietly enough, aware that the Sikh’s long sabre would stop midway the first shout he might attempt. I stopped them, and pushed them both back into the dark behind a boulder out of reach of stray shots.

  “Now,” I said to Kangra Khan, “tell me where the sahiba is, and as soon as I’ve found her I’ll let you go free.”

  He shook his head. “Huzoor, I do not know!” he answered.

  “Is she down there among your men?”

  “As Allah is my witness, she did not pass me. I have not seen her since I left her well guarded near the cavern. She is slain, no doubt.”

  He looked nearly as despondent as I felt, for from his point of view Joan Angela’s death meant the loss of an enormous ransom. But Narayan Singh was unconvinced.

  “I say kill him, sahib!” he broke in. “If she is dead, he slew her! Kill him, and then you and I together will search for her body below there.”

  But I felt fairly well convinced that Kangra Khan was telling truth; and never yet having murdered a prisoner I felt no disposition to begin.

  “Take him to the cavern,” I said. “I’m going down alone.”