Complete Works of Talbot Mundy

by Talbot Mundy

  “Here in this place?”

  “Where else? No man but I knows of this crypt! The ladder there leads to another room, where there is yet another ladder, and that one leads out through a secret door I know of, straight into the temple. Art ready? There is need for haste!”

  “Wait!” said the Risaldar.

  “These soldiers!” sneered the priest. “It is wait — wait — wait with them, always!”

  “Hast thou a son.”

  “Ay! But what of it?”

  “I said ‘hast,’ not ‘hadst’!”

  “Ay. I have a son.

  “Where?”

  “In one of the temple-chambers overhead.”

  “Nay, priest! Thy son lies gagged and bound and trussed in a place I know of, and which thou dost not know!”

  “Since when?”

  “Since by my orders he was laid there.”

  “Thou art the devil! Thou liest, Rajput!”

  “So? Go seek thy son!”

  The priest’s face had blanched beneath the olive of his skin, and he stared at Mahommed Khan through distended eyes.

  “My son!” he muttered.

  “Aye! Thy priestling! He stays where he is, as hostage, until my return! Also the heavenborn stays here! If, on my return, I find the heavenborn safe and sound, I will exchange her for thy son — and if not, I will tear thy son into little pieces before thy eyes, priest! Dost thou understand?”

  “Thou liest! My son is overhead in the temple here!”

  “Go seek him, then!”

  The priest turned and scampered up the ladder with an agility that was astonishing in a man of his build and paunch.

  “Hanuman should have been thy master!” jeered the Risaldar. “So run the bandar-log, the monkey-folk!”

  But the priest had no time to answer him. He was half frantic with the sickening fear of a father for his only son. He returned ten minutes later, panting, and more scared than ever.

  “Go, take thy white woman,” he exclaimed, “and give me my son back!”

  “Nay, priest! Shall I ride with her alone through that horde that are marching through the gate? I go now for an escort; in eight — ten — twelve — I know not how many hours, I will return for her, and then — thy son will be exchanged for her, or he dies thus in many pieces!”

  He turned to Suliman. “Is she awake yet?” he demanded.

  “Barely, but she recovers.”

  “Then tell her, when consciousness returns, that I have gone and will return for her. And stay here, thou, and guard her until I come.”

  “Ha, sahib!”

  “Now, show the way!”

  “But—” said the priest, “our bargain? The price that we agreed on — one lakh, was it not?”

  “One lakh of devils take thee and tear thee into little pieces! Wouldst bribe a Rajput, a Risaldar? For that insult I will repay thee one day with interest, O priest! Now, show the way!”

  “But how shall I be sure about my son?”

  “Be sure that the priestling will starve to death or die of thirst or choke, unless I hurry! He is none too easy where he lies!”

  “Go! Hurry, then!” swore the priest. “May all the gods there are, and thy Allah with them, afflict thee with all their curses — thee and thine! Up with you! Up that ladder! Run! But, if the gods will, I will meet thee again when the storm is over!”

  “Inshallah!” growled Mahommed Khan.

  Ten minutes later a crash and a clatter and a shower of sparks broke out in the sweltering courtyard where the guns had stood and waited. It was Shaitan, young Bellairs’ Khaubuli charger, with his haunches under him, plunging across the flagstones, through the black-dark archway, out on the plain beyond — in answer to the long, sharp-roweled spurs of the Risaldar Mahommed Khan.

  X.

  Dawn broke and the roofs of old Hanadra became resplendent with the varied colors of turbans and pugrees and shawls. As though the rising sun had loosed the spell, a myriad tongues, of women chiefly, rose in a babel of clamor, and the few men who had been left in. Hanadra by the night’s armed exodus came all together and growled prophetically in undertones. Now was the day of days, when that part of India, at least, should cast off the English yoke.

  To the temple! The cry went up before the sun was fifteen minutes high. There are a hundred temples in Hanadra, age-old all of them and carved on the outside with strange images of heathen gods in high relief, like molds turned inside out. But there is but one temple that that cry could mean — Kharvani’s; and there could be but one meaning for the cry. Man, woman and child would pray Kharvani, Bride of Siva the Destroyer, to intercede with Siva and cause him to rise and smite the English. On the skyline, glinting like flashed signals in the early sun, bright English bayonets had appeared; and between them and Hanadra was a dense black mass, the whole of old Hanadra’s able-bodied manhood, lined up to defend the city. Now was the time to pray. Fifty to one are by no means despicable odds, but the aid of the gods as well is better!

  So the huge dome of Kharvani’s temple began to echo to the sound of slippered feet and awe-struck whisperings, and the big, dim auditorium soon filled to overflowing. No light came in from the outer world. There was nothing to illuminate the mysteries except the chain-hung grease-lamps swinging here and there from beams, and they served only to make the darkness visible. Bats flicked in and out between them and disappeared in the echoing gloom above. Censers belched out sweet-smelling, pungent clouds of sandalwood to drown the stench of hot humanity; and the huge graven image of Kharvani — serene and smiling and indifferent — stared round-eyed from the darkness.

  Then a priest’s voice boomed out in a solemn incantation and the whispering hushed. He chanted age-old verses, whose very meaning was forgotten in the womb of time — forgotten as the artist who had painted the picture of idealized Kharvani on the wall. Ten priests, five on either side of the tremendous idol, emerged chanting from the gloom behind, and then a gong rang, sweetly, clearly, suddenly, and the chanting ceased. Out stepped the High Priest from a niche below the image, and his voice rose in a wailing, sing-song cadence that reechoed from the dome and sent a thrill through every one who heard.

  His chant had scarcely ceased when the temple door burst open and a man rushed in.

  “They have begun!” he shouted. “The battle has begun!”

  As though in ready confirmation of his words, the distant reverberating boom of cannon filtered through the doorway from the world of grim realities outside.

  “They have twenty cannon with them! They have more guns than we have!” wailed he who brought the news. Again began the chanting that sought the aid of Siva the Destroyer. Only, there were fewer who listened to this second chant. Those who were near the doorway slipped outside and joined the watching hundreds on the roofs.

  For an hour the prayers continued in the stifling gloom, priest relieving priest and chant following on chant, until the temple was half emptied of its audience. One by one, and then by twos and threes, the worshipers succumbed to human curiosity and crept stealthily outside to watch.

  Another messenger ran in and shouted: “They have charged! Their cavalry have charged! They are beaten back! Their dead lie twisted on the plain!”

  At the words there was a stampede from the doorway, and half of those who had remained rushed out. There were hundreds still there, though, for that great gloomy pile of Kharvani’s could hold an almost countless crowd.

  Within another hour the same man rushed to the door again and shouted:

  “Help comes! Horsemen are coming from the north! Rajputs, riding like leaves before the wind! Even the Mussulmans are for us!”

  But the chanting never ceased. No one stopped to doubt the friendship of arrivals from the north, for to that side there were no English, and England’s friends would surely follow byroads to her aid. The city gates were wide open to admit wounded or messengers or friends — with a view, even, to a possible retreat — and whoever cared could ride through them unchallenge
d and unchecked.

  Even when the crash of horses’ hoofs rattled on the stone paving outside the temple there was no suspicion. No move was made to find out who it was who rode. But when the temple door reechoed to the thunder of a sword-hilt and a voice roared “Open!” there was something like a panic. The chanting stopped and the priests and the High Priest listened to the stamping on the stone pavement at the temple front.

  “Open!” roared a voice again, and the thundering on the panels recommenced. Then some one drew the bolt and a horse’s head — a huge Khaubuli stallion’s — appeared, snorting and panting and wild-eyed.

  “Farward!” roared the Risaldar Mahommed Khan, kneeling on young Bellairs’ winded charger.

  “Farm twos! Farward!”

  Straight into the temple, two by two, behind the Risaldar, rode two fierce lines of Rajputs, overturning men and women — their drawn swords pointing this way and that — their dark eyes gleaming. Without a word to any one they rode up to the image, where the priests stood in an astonished herd.

  “Fron-tt farm! Rear rank— ‘bout-face!” barked the Risaldar, and there was another clattering and stamping on the stone floor as the panting chargers pranced into the fresh formation, back to back.

  “The memsahib!” growled Mahommed Khan. “Where is she?”

  “My son!” said the High Priest. “Bring me my son!”

  “A life for a life! Thy heavenborn first!”

  “Nay! Show me my son first!”

  The Risaldar leaped from his horse and tossed his reins to the man behind him. In a second his sword was at the High Priest’s throat.

  “Where is that secret stair?” he growled. “Lead on!”

  The swordpoint pricked him. Two priests tried to interfere, but wilted and collapsed with fright as four fierce, black-bearded Rajputs spurred their horses forward. The swordpoint pricked still deeper.

  “My son!” said the High Priest.

  “A life for a life! Lead on!”

  The High Priest surrendered, with a dark and cunning look, though, that hinted at something or other in reserve. He pulled at a piece of carving on the wail behind and pointed to a stair that showed behind the outswung door. Then he plucked another priest by the sleeve and whispered.

  The priest passed on the whisper. A third priest turned and ran.

  “That way!” said the High Priest, pointing.

  “I? Nay! I go not down!” He raised his voice into an ululating howl. “O Suliman!” he bellowed. “Suliman! O! — Suliman! Bring up the heaven-born!”

  A growl like the distant rumble from a bear-pit answered him. Then Ruth Bellairs’ voice was heard calling up the stairway.

  “Is that you, Mahommed Khan?”

  “Ay, memsahib!”

  “Good! I’m coming!”

  She had recovered far enough to climb the ladder and the steep stone stair above it, and Suliman climbed up behind her, grumbling dreadful prophecies of what would happen to the priests now that Mohammed Khan had come.

  “Is all well, Risaldar?” she asked him.

  “Nay, heavenborn! All is not well yet! The general sahib from Jundhra and your husband’s guns and others, making one division, are engaged with rebels eight or nine miles from here. We saw part of the battle as we rode!”

  “Who wins?”

  “It is doubtful, heavenborn! How could we tell from this distance?”

  “Have you a horse for me?”

  “Ay, heavenborn! Here! Bring up that horse, thou, and Suliman’s! Ride him cross-saddle, heavenborn — there were no side-saddles in Siroeh! Nay, he is just a little frightened. He will stand — he will not throw thee! I did better than I thought, heavenborn. I come with four-and-twenty, making twenty-six with me and Suliman. An escort for a queen! So — sit him quietly. Leave the reins free. Suliman will lead him! Ho! Fronnnt! Rank— ‘bout-face!”

  “My son!” wailed the High Priest. “Where is my son?”

  “Tell him, Suliman!”

  “Where I caught thee, thou idol-briber!” snarled the Risaldar’s half-brother.

  “Where? In that den of stinks. Gagged and bound all this while?”

  “Ha! Gagged and bound and out of mischief where all priests and priests’ sons ought to be!” laughed Mahommed Khan. “Farward! Farm twos Ter-r-r-ott!”

  In went the spur, and the snorting, rattling, clanking cavalcade sidled and pranced out of the temple into the sunshine, with Ruth and Suliman in the midst of them.

  “Gallop!” roared the Risaldar, the moment that the last horse was clear of the temple-doors. And in that instant he saw what the High Priest’s whispering had meant.

  Coming up the street toward them was a horde of silent, hurrying Hindus, armed with swords and spears, wearing all of them the caste-marks of the Brahman — well-fed, indignant relations of the priests, intent on avenging the defilement of Kharvani’s temple.

  “Canter! Fronnnt — farm — Gallop! Charge!”

  Ruth found herself in the midst of a whirlwind of flashing sabers, astride of a lean-flanked Katiawari gelding that could streak like an antelope, knee to knee with a pair of bearded Rajputs, one of whom gripped her bridle-rein — thundering down a city street straight for a hundred swords that blocked her path. She set her eyes on the middle of Mahommed Khan’s straight back, gripped the saddle with both hands, set her teeth and waited for the shock. Mahommed Khan’s right arm rose and his sword flashed in the sunlight as he stood up in his stirrups. She shut her eyes. But there was no shock! There was the swish of whirling steel, the thunder of hoofs, the sound of bodies falling. There was a scream or two as well and a coarse-mouthed Rajput oath. But when she dared to open her eyes once more they were thundering still, headlong down the city street and Mahommed Khan was whirling his sword in mid-air to shake the blood from it.

  Ahead lay the city gate and she could see another swarm of Hindus rushing from either side to close it. But “Charge!” yelled Mahommed Khan again, and they swept through the crowd, through the half-shut gate, out on the plain beyond, as a wind sweeps through the forest, leaving fallen tree-trunks in its wake.

  “Halt!” roared the Risaldar, when they were safely out of range. “Are any hurt? No? Good for us that their rifles are all in the firing-line yonder!”

  He sat for a minute peering underneath his hand at the distant, dark, serried mass of men and the steel-tipped lines beyond it, watching the belching cannon and the spurting flames of the close-range rifle-fire.

  “See, heavenborn!” he said, pointing. “Those will be your husband’s guns! See, over on the left, there. See! They fire! Those two! We can reach them if we make a circuit on the flank here!”

  “But can we get through, Risaldar? Won’t they see us and cut us off?”

  “Heavenborn!” he answered, “men who dare ride into a city temple and snatch thee from the arms of priests dare and can do anything! Take this, heavenborn — take it as a keepsake, in case aught happens!”

  He drew off the priest’s ring, gave it to her and then, before she could reply:

  “Canter!” he roared. The horses sprang forward in answer to the spurs and there was nothing for Ruth to do but watch the distant battle and listen to the deep breathing of the Rajputs on either hand.

  XI.

  There could be no retreat that day and no thought of it. Jundhra and Doonha were in ruins. The bridges were down behind them and Hanadra lay ahead. The British had to win their way into it or perish. Tired out, breakfastless, suffering from the baking heat, the long, thin British line had got — not to hold at bay but to smash and pierce — an over-whelming force of Hindus that was stiffened up and down its length by small detachments of native soldiers who had mutinied.

  Numbers were against them, and even superiority of weapons was not so overwhelmingly in their favor, for those were the days of short-range rifle-fire and smoothbore artillery, and one gun was considerably like another. The mutinous sepoys had their rifles with them; there were guns from the ramparts of Hanadra that wer
e capable of quite efficient service at close range; and practically every man in the dense-packed rebel line had a firearm of some kind. It was only in cavalry and discipline and pluck that the British force had the advantage, and the cavalry had already charged once and had been repulsed.

  General Turner rode up and down the sweltering firing-line, encouraging the men when it seemed to him they needed it and giving directions to his officers. He was hidden from view oftener than not by the rolling clouds of smoke and he popped up here and there suddenly and unexpectedly. Wherever he appeared there was an immediate stiffening among the ranks, as though he carried a supply of spare enthusiasm with him and could hand it out.

  Colonel Carter, commanding the right wing, turned his head for a second at the sound of a horse’s feet and found the general beside him.

  “Had I better have my wounded laid in a wagon, sir?” he suggested, “in case you find it necessary to fall back?”

  “There will be no retreat!” said General Turner. “Leave your wounded where they are. I never saw a cannon bleed before. How’s that?”

  He spurred his horse over to where one of Bellairs’ guns was being run forward into place again and Colonel Carter followed him. There was blood dripping from the muzzle of it.

  “We’re short of water, sir!” said Colonel Carter.

  And as he spoke a gunner dipped his sponge into a pool of blood and rammed it home.

  Bellairs was standing between his two guns, looking like the shadow of himself, worn out with lack of sleep, disheveled, wounded. There was blood dripping from his forehead and he wore his left arm in a sling made from his shirt.

  “Fire!” he ordered, and the two guns barked in unison and jumped back two yards or more.

  “If you’ll look,” said General Turner, plucking at the colonel’s sleeve, “you’ll see a handful of native cavalry over yonder behind the enemy — rather to the enemy’s left — there between those two clouds of smoke. D’you see them?”

  “They look like Sikhs or Rajputs,” said the colonel.

  “Yes. Don’t they? I’d like you to keep an eye on them. They’ve come up from the rear. I caught sight of them quite a while ago and I can’t quite make them out. It’s strange, but I can’t believe that they belong to the enemy. D’you see? — there — they’ve changed direction. They’re riding as though they intended to come round the enemy’s left flank!”