Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  Part of a tile from a broken coping-stone missed Andrew by six inches; he reached for his automatic, but Tom restrained him. Old Ugly-face had seen it — he noticed everything — he snapped out a command. The nearest monk went running, jumping through snowdrifts with his skirts tucked into his girdle, to stop that foolishness. Presently a monk fell like a sprawling vulture from a roof — likely to throw no more tiles in this world.

  Scores of monks lay dead in the crimsoning snow. Grudges and private spites were being worked off — bitter monastic hatreds that had secretly boiled for the day of revenge. The arrogant bullies of Ram-pa Yap-shi’s reign were pursued by the bullied, who were in haste to repay cruelty before the tide could turn.

  The tide was turning. Tom nudged Andrew, speechless, pointing southward. Retreat was cut off. Vengeance was on its way. Descending from level to level they had reached a platform where there was a clear view over the top of the outer wall. Already, the five hundred who had marched in darkness to plunder the cavern were on their way back; their advance guard was nearing the main gate. The commander and his aide were riding Tom’s and Andrew’s ponies and the yaks were loaded with the plunder from the cavern. The five hundred armed monks tramped behind the plunder in fours, in good marching order, nearly knee-deep in snow though the front ranks were. Tom snatched Andrew’s binoculars — stared through them.

  “The leader’s aide’s a Jap! Now we are done for! He’ll take charge and give us the works! Where’s Elsa?”

  Instead of answering, Andrew asked: “Who timed these moves? Look! Who’s that over the gate?”

  Tom focused the glasses carefully: “Looks like a Russian. His back’s this way — but — he has a thick beard — might be German — good boots — fur hat — yes — looks like a Russian rifle. Might be either — Russian or German.”

  Andrew reached for the glasses. “Let me look.” After a moment: “He might be anything except Tibetan. Tibetans can’t grow that kind of whiskers. — I bet you something — I bet he’s St. Malo’s Number One! I bet he’s laying for the Jap! I bet he thinks he’ll save his own stake now by killing the Jap! Watch!”

  Tom took the glasses again. The man on the footwalk above the main gate thrust his rifle through one of the embrasures in the arch, took aim and fired. The Jap fell from the saddle. He struggled a moment and lay still. The Tibetan leader of the column glanced up once at the gate, wheeled his pony and went galloping back past the loaded animals, throwing them into confusion. The man who had shot the Jap withdrew his rifle — by a heartbeat, by a breath too late.

  From the gate towers at either end of the footwalk Tibetans approached him — two men, who crouched like skilled hunters and moved with the agility of cats. Tom exploded:

  “By God, that’s—”

  Andrew took the words from his lips: “It’s Bompo Tsering and St. Malo’s headman Ga-pa-dug!”

  Both Tibetans had firearms, but they couldn’t use them for fear of shooting each other. They laid them down. They drew knives and closed on the man who had shot the Jap. He hadn’t time to use his rifle. He screamed as the long blades plunged into him. His rifle fell to the ground, where a monk pounced on it. The Tibetans’ knives had struck their victim so hard and deep under the ribs that he almost dragged them with him when at last he toppled backwards and fell in a shapeless heap near the postern door. He almost fell on the monk who had taken the rifle. The monk ran.

  Tom nudged Andrew, who resented being nudged:

  “Quick! Search him before the monks do it!”

  Andrew followed him down from level to level — past Old Ugly-face, who was haranguing and giving orders to crowds of monks — past naked and half naked hermits who were putting the fear of the lives to come into every monk they could get to listen. The hermits howled imprecations after them:

  “Foreigners! Devils!”

  But two monks detached themselves from Old Ugly-face’s inner-guard and checked that foolishness. They screamed at the hermits. They followed Andrew and Tom to the gate, protecting them. They stood there whirling prayer wheels, watching for a signal from Old Ugly-face to tell them what to do next.

  There were more than twenty corpses near the main gate. The snow was blood-red and trodden to slush. Tom was stooping over the knifed mystery man to search his clothing and Andrew was standing guard, when Bompo Tsering burst out through the door at the foot of the gate tower:

  “Gunnigun!” he gasped. There was blood on his coat. He was panic stricken. “Gunnigun!”

  Andrew shook him. “Steady now. What’s up? Say it slowly, one word at a time!”

  “Nobly born, my having killed Ga-pa-dug!”

  “Where?”

  “In gate tower!”

  “Why?”

  “His telling me, my should killing you.”

  “What for?”

  “Hot damn — then his and my being too rich. But my not shooting you! My dying sooner!”

  Andrew changed the subject. “What’s through that door?”

  “Gatehouse. Stair. Machine — open-gate.”

  “What else?”

  “ ‘Nother door. Shut tight.”

  “Leading which way?”

  “Leading belong passage inside big wall — that way — wall all hollow.” Tom came up, washing his hands with snow.

  “Nothing doing,” he said. “Might be Russian or German. No documents — no identity mark. — We’d better find Elsa.”

  “Elsa’s all right. She has her orders from Old Ugly-face.”

  “How do you know she’s all right? Where is she?”

  “She asked me to trust her,” said Andrew. “You do as you please.”

  “When did she ask?”

  “Just now. Say — d’you notice how few firearms these monks have—”

  “Five hundred outside — on their way!” Tom answered.

  “But almost none inside!”

  Tom nodded, impatiently. “Ram-pa Yap-shi,” he said, “disarmed all except the five hundred he thought he could count on. At one time, not long ago, there were three or four thousand rifles in—”

  Andrew interrupted: “Where are they now?” he pointed. “Are they in that big building where the six hermits are posted at the door?”

  Tom agreed. “Right! That’s the main storehouse.”

  Old Ugly-face had posted six naked hermits at the only entrance to the storehouse, to prevent looting. No monks, no matter how they longed for firearms, dared to try to pass those hermits to force the door. Hermits are very holy. Eternities in hell are too much to pay for a rifle and ammunition.

  “God! If they do get at those rifles,” said Tom, “there’ll be a slaughter to beat Jesus. Listen to that, will you!”

  Rifle butts were thundering on the main gate. The five hundred outside were demanding admission. They were shouting. Some were firing their rifles. But that was a good sign; it meant lack of discipline. If their officers couldn’t control them —

  “If Old Ugly-face hasn’t a trick in reserve now, he’s a goner,” said Tom. “That means us too. So—”

  Old Ugly-face did have a trick in reserve. He came chanting, followed by chanting monks, and stood facing the main gate, fifty feet back from it, on the pediment of an urn-shaped stupa that contained the ashes of a saint. Two hermits, each wrapped in a blanket, approached the postern, and stood one at each side of it. It was a narrow postern, almost in the middle of the gate — not room for more than one person to pass through at a time.

  Andrew and Tom stood back against the gatehouse wall. There was no shadow there, but they were less noticeable. Andrew whispered to Bompo Tsering to get his gang together and hold them ready for sudden orders. He had to threaten him to make him obey. A vulture landed above the gate and perched there, moving restlessly. Another dozen vultures soared out of the sky and perched on a roof ridge. The first vulture joined the others and they sat all in a row.

  Tom’s nerves were ragged. Inaction fretted him. “God, what’s the old man waiting for?”
r />   “You need food,” said Andrew. “Here, eat this.” He gave him chocolate. Tom munched it.

  Then they saw why Old Ugly-face was waiting. The number one hermit had reached the top of the wall, by the stairs in the righthand gatehouse. He was wearing Andrew’s blanket, but not for warmth, he let it flutter in the wind. He was already talking to the monks outside and they had left off shouting. His voice had a weird carrying power, but Andrew couldn’t understand him, and if Tom could distinguish the words he was too attentive to repeat them; he shook his head when Andrew asked what the hermit was saying. All the monks in the wide courtyard were spellbound, many of them open-mouthed — expectant — afraid. A door opened suddenly.

  “Christ! Who’s timing this!” said Andrew.

  It was a door at the end of a lean — to shed that was evidently a covered passage for use in winter. It made a circuit around two sides of the courtyard, turning at right angles along an inner wall, toward a monastery building.

  Ram-pa Yap-shi came through the door, all alone. The door closed behind him and someone inside shot the bolt noisily. His hands were not tied, but he held them behind him as if they were. He walked with dignity toward the main gate but, while still ten feet away from it, turned and stood still. There was no sign of recognition between him and Old Ugly-face. Not a word was spoken. Less than an hour ago Ram-pa Yap-shi had gloated over the tortures prepared for Old Ugly-face. Now he awaited his own fate.

  “As calm as Christ!” said Tom. “God! What’s going to happen now?”

  The hermit on the wall kept talking to the monks outside. Andrew and Tom both watched Old Ugly-face. A monk was whispering to Bompo Tsering. The two hermits at the postern waited for a signal from the one on the wall. Bompo Tsering shouted suddenly to Andrew and came running.

  “Hot damn! Gunnigun! Our letting only one man come in!”

  Andrew strode toward the postern and Tom followed. The hermit signaled from the wall. The hermits below opened the postern. Instantly a big monk with a bandolier over his chest barged through as if there were pressure behind him. He thrust his rifle muzzle at the hermit who stood in the way. Another monk followed; he, too, was being shoved from the rear. Tom spoke:

  “Now! Both together!”

  It was Andrew’s fist that socked the third man who tried to get through. The man staggered back. Tom slammed and bolted the postern. He and Andrew stood with their backs to it. Old Ugly-face’s lips moved, giving orders to a monk who stood beside him.

  The two armed monks who had forced their way in were bewildered. They had prodded a holy hermit and felt afraid. They couldn’t make head or tail of things. They couldn’t retreat. They had their rifles; but Tom and Andrew made no secret of having automatics, and, besides that, had the drop on them. So they didn’t know what to do. They stood looking from Ram-pa Yap-shi to Old Ugly-face, and back again. Old Ugly-face spoke to a monk, and the monk came and said they might take Ram-pa Yap-shi away. He said more than that, but Andrew and Tom couldn’t hear it. Ram-pa Yap-shi made no comment, but he turned his back toward Old Ugly-face. He was shivering a little — doing his best not to.

  The hermit on the wall began talking again to someone outside. The wind blew a sudden squall, clanging the roof bells and raising clouds of snow. The hermits opened the postern and Ram-pa Yap-shi walked out, followed by the two armed monks. Almost before the postern bolt slid home there was a ragged volley of rifle fire.

  Tom glanced at Andrew: “Well, he’s got his. Quick! Merciful! We’ll be lucky if nothing worse happens to us. — Where in God’s name is Elsa?”

  Andrew snapped at him: “It’s none of our God-damned business where she is! Her life’s her own.”

  He felt a sudden hunch that was like the pull of a magnet. He obeyed it.

  “Where are you going?” Tom demanded.

  “There are stairs in the gatehouse. When I’ve seen what’s doing, I’ll come back and let you know!”

  He opened the door of the gatehouse and closed it quietly behind him — bolted it. He intended to find Elsa. But he couldn’t have told why he should look for her in the gate tower, nor why he bolted the door behind him. He just did it, feeling that he did right — feeling confident.

  CHAPTER 62

  It was almost dark inside the gate tower. The machinery for opening the gate took up most of the space. Beside a bench for the use of the gate guard was the door of which Bompo Tsering had spoken. It was locked; Andrew tried to force it — kicked it — couldn’t shake it.

  The narrow stairway followed the curve of the wall. There was no guardrail. The stairs were worn and loose. He went up them two at a time. At the top, a narrow door gave access to the footwalk above the main gate. The door was held open by the body of Ga-pa-dug that lay across the threshold in a pool of blood. Bompo Tsering hadn’t taken the man’s rifle. That was a mystery all its own. Andrew took it, unloaded it, tested the breech mechanism, reloaded it, and went out to the footwalk. Looking for Elsa? He couldn’t have answered the question. He asked it of himself, but with no special emphasis. He had a more than vague feeling that he was doing the right thing.

  In the corner between tower and footwalk was an irregular masonry platform roughly eight feet square, protected from everything but wind by a pierced barbette. By standing well into the corner he could look down into the courtyard without being seen — and on the other hand, through the opening in the barbette, he could see the armed men outside. Inside, he could even see Tom Grayne, although Tom had his back to the gatehouse and was almost hidden by the bulge in the wall.

  First, he directed his attention outside. Ram-pa Yap-shi was not dead. Very much not dead. The ragged volley that had greeted him when he went out through the postern must have been a salute, or perhaps a display of emotion on the part of the armed monks. They didn’t look much like soldiers — more like brigands. They had abandoned formation and were milling around him, most of them shouting; but the gusty wind carried away the uproar so that it only reached Andrew like the noise of surf on a distant beach. Ram-pa Yap-shi, in his long black robe, with his hands behind him, looked like a Catholic martyr about to be burned at the stake.

  Because of the wind it was impossible to tell what was going on. But Old Ugly-face knew; he was being kept posted. The hermit on the wall near the opposite gate tower — quite naked now — Andrew’s blanket had blown away — was shouting at the top of his lungs, first to the monks outside, then relaying their answer, again at the top of his lungs, to another hermit below, who relayed it to Old Ugly-face at his post of authority on the broad pediment of the stupa.

  Old Ugly-face was no longer standing. They had brought him a high-backed chair like a bishop’s throne. Some of the monks who clustered around him had sent for their own official robes, so that it looked something like a court. There was dignity, color, organization. There was even a table, at which a secretary sat taking dictation from Old Ugly-face. It looked like a proscription list. If it was, it was good tactics. Numbers of monks were presenting themselves for registration on the “good” list before it was too late; they were kneeling in the snow, calling out their names and begging a benediction.

  Many more than a thousand monks had lined up in hollow square with their backs to the courtyard wall — perhaps obedient — perhaps not daring to come nearer. Andrew studied them. He thought they looked dangerous. All crowds are alike in that they all reveal their mood more distinctly than individuals do. Remembering crowds of strikers in Ohio, and Chinese dock laborers in Amoy and Shanghai, Andrew decided those monks were waiting to be swayed one way or the other by the turn of events. He wondered why Old Ugly- face didn’t pay more attention to them — flatter them a little — win them over with some demagogic fireworks.

  But a strangely subtle mental change began to take place. He found he couldn’t think of Old Ugly-face and failure in one and the same thought. There was a calm, unhurried feeling of exhilaration that existed entirely apart from events and things; and yet it controlled them, in a way n
ot easy to define, but that filled experience, so that it was. There was no arguing it. The things — people — movements, that one saw, heard, felt, were the same and yet otherwise. There was a sensation of new reality. They were part of a pattern — not pawns, but intelligent agents, each fulfilling a destiny — moving intricately toward a predetermined future that could not possibly be avoided except in one way.

  He remembered Elsa’s “subconsciousness, consciousness, superconsciousness”— “From — at — toward.” A change of consciousness, and all things, events, beings, change their meaning, lose confusion and stand simplified in new perspective. Old Ugly-face, as Andrew then perceived it, was the conscious outlet through whom superconsciousness flowed, to which anyone might tune in within the limits of his spiritual stage of evolution.

  “I guess I’m a one-tube outfit,” he reflected.

  He didn’t wonder any longer that Elsa should have asked to be accepted as Old Ugly-face’s chela. He could understand the relief to her of being recognized as an evolving spirit rather than being condemned, and self- condemned, as a freak unfit for confidence.

  God, how he loved her! — or was that selfishness? Was it his own craving to perceive with an inner eye — to see the ravishing beauty of new dimensions — as he did sometimes perceive, when Elsa, with her mystic companionship, lifted his thought upward?

  He felt Elsa’s hand in his. It seemed part of the mystic moment. He didn’t turn to look. He went on watching Ram-pa Yap-shi, realizing that he hadn’t once ceased watching him. Timeless and measureless thought had filled his mind while Ram-pa Yap-shi spoke perhaps ten words — inaudible from where Andrew watched. The words were bitterness made visible — as scornful and cold as the wind. Ram-pa Yap-shi had refused something. But what?

  The hermit shouted from the wall. The message was relayed to Old Ugly- face. He spoke. Monks ran to do his bidding. Tom beckoned Bompo Tsering and the two of them were almost swept off their feet as they tried to line up their men in front of the main gate. Andrew decided to go down and lend a hand. He didn’t want to; it meant losing a spiritual vision that he might never regain. He lingered one more moment, thinking of Elsa — until she tugged at his hand, and he turned. She was beside him, sheltered from the wind, between him and the gatehouse wall.