by Harold Lamb
“By Siva and Vishnu—by the many-armed gods!” His sword came into his hand swiftly. “Wo to you who have done this thing!”
He took a step forward, his weapon raised. The actors looked at each other and their hands went under their loose robes. Malcolm caught the glitter of knife blades, and saw the trap that had been laid for Rawul Singh. In a broil the Rajput would be slain, and every one present would swear that it was merely a quarrel over a woman.
“The girl is mine,” observed the potail of the village uncertainly, drawing back as he did so.
Malcolm’s hand checked the Rajput before another step was taken.
“Wait,” he said. “It is my command.”
Loyalty to his officer and fierce resentment struggled for mastery in Rawul Singh, so that he stood transfixed beside Malcolm. And then every head in the assembly became still.
The hookah stems were withdrawn from bearded lips; the clamor of the music ceased. A long sigh escaped the lips of the watchers.
“It is a trick,” whispered Malcolm, “to make you attack them and to separate us.”
Although they must have understood, none of the watchers moved or spoke. Their eyes were fastened on a spot a little to the right of Malcolm. Tala alone gave a low cry as if perception had pierced the numbness of her mind.
A yard from Malcolm’s elbow the head of a large cobra weaved from side to side. The hood, fully inflated, showed the brilliant spectacle mark. The light hissing of the snake was barely to be heard under the murmur of the wind in the vines of the ruined tower.
Rawul Singh, however, marked the sound and looked down, Malcolm following the direction of his eyes.
“Sahib,” uttered the Rajput under his breath, “do not stir. The snake has been angered.”
Malcolm could not take his eyes from the reptile, whose long length coiled near his foot, the tip of the snake’s tail still within the aperture of the wall—the niche near which they had been sitting.
He reflected quite coolly that if he had moved—if Rawul Singh had continued his advance to his daughter—the snake would have struck. It had appeared quite by chance—yet Malcolm had made certain in the first day of his stay in the castle that there were no snakes in the ruins.
And, as if by chance, a twig fell from the air to the earth near the cobra, which seemed to swell the more thereat.
“Dom Gion is devilishly clever, after all,” thought Malcolm.
Rawul Singh was powerless to aid his officer, who stood between him and Tala and the snake. He was certain that no one in the assemblage would risk his life by slipping behind the snake and striking at it—the only chance of preventing it from striking.
And the bite of the snake, Rawul Singh knew, would bring death to Malcolm sahib. The feringhi might cauterize and bind the wound, but—deprived of the protection of the rajput, other poison would be injected into him secretly—and a hundred persons would swear it was the snake that had caused his death.
He heard his daughter’s cry, and his sharpened senses caught the slight sound of silk slippers on grass. Then there was a flash of steel in the shadow behind the snake.
The cobra darted its head at Malcolm, but the head writhed on the ground and there were two coils instead of one. Tala stared down at the stain on her scimitar, her eyes dark with the fear that comes to one who is wakened from sleep by an evil dream.
Rawul Singh jerked Malcolm away from the threshing coils and the spectacled head that was still menacing. He snatched Tala back and peered into her face.
“Dost know me—thy father?” he said harshly.
“The snake frightened me. It was near thee.” Her voice was dull and low but the glaze had passed from her eyes.
“Well for our honor that it was so and thou didst slay it.”
A slight movement near them caused Rawul Singh to wheel and Malcolm to look around. His head bent in salutation, Hossein emerged from the shadow of the brushpile where he had been standing.
“Mashallah, sahib,” he smiled. “God be praised that you escaped the snake. Now that it is slain you should be safe.” His words were low-pitched and held a double significance. “It is a pity that this fine tamasha be interrupted. Sahib, favor your servant by commanding that it proceed.”
Politely he saluted Rawul Singh and as he did so, the torch-light flashed on rich pearls in his turban. Hossein was quite composed for he saw his chance to play a part and to strike where he knew Dom Gion had failed.
“Tala, thy daughter,” he added to the Rajput, “has long been under my humble protection. Misfortune, perhaps the fate of her brother, had unsettled her mind and she could not recall the name of her father. Inshallah—what is fated, will come to pass. I did not know that she would appear this night as a dancer.”
Familiarly he stepped to the girl’s side and looked into her face. As he did so his dark cheeks flushed for Tala was very fair to look upon. A new excitement had added its luster to her eyes.
“Is it not true,” he asked her softly, “that I, unworthy Hossein, have spoken of love to you? Have I not been gentle to you?”
Malcolm, who had been staring up at the sky whence the stick had fallen near the snake, turned and looked quizzically at the girl. She half put out her hand to the thug, then frowned as if uncertain of her feelings.
Rawul Singh surveyed the placid Moslem youth fiercely, and glanced jealously at his daughter.
“I have been sick,” she repeated slowly in Turki as if seeking for words. “Sometimes I liked you, Hossein. But you promised—you would take me away where I would find my father. Now Dom Gion has done that, although I do not quite know how-—”
“She knows not what she is saying,” broke in Hossein. “Too much opium has been given her, Rawul Singh, yet not by me.”
Assuring himself that Malcolm was giving orders to the perturbed potail for the actors to proceed, Hossein bent close to the Rajput and whispered—
“Rajput, would you look upon the man who slew your son?”
“Point him out, and name your reward.”
“Come, then, but quietly. He hides within the castle, waiting to set hands on the revenue of the feringhi. Say naught to the sahib, for you know that he would but arrest the man and place him in a feringhi prison.”
“It must wait.”
There was perhaps no other inducement that would have appealed to Rawul Singh so strongly. But he would not leave his master.
As for Hossein, he shrugged, then cast a significant look at the thugs in the circle of spectators and loosened the long sash that was bound tightly around his waist. In the shadow of the castle wall he might have a chance to set upon the Rajput.
The Moslem youth was a skilled strangler, yet he desired the sound of music to stifle any possible outcry, for Rawul Singh was a big man and would not die quickly even if set upon from behind in the darkness.
It would be a notable achievement, thought Hossein, and would bring him fame among the thugs—fame and possession of Tala. Dom Gion’s craft had failed, Hossein meditated, and Tala had almost betrayed them.
He would risk being seen by the spectators, perhaps. But he was young and anxious to distinguish himself.
His deed would come at a fortunate moment for the thugs, for with Rawul Singh out of the way, Dom Gion might deal with the feringhi that night.
* * * *
“You have done your share in entertainment,” Malcolm assured the potail and the other merchants.
“Now I will take part in the tamasha.”
“The sahib is kind.”
Malcolm looked at the ring of faces around him and smiled. Many of these were his enemies and many were thugs; but he knew that they would not openly molest him—at least until he gave Dom Gion an opportunity to strike again.
And this he did not intend to do.
While the potail and his fellows watched, Malcolm told off three or four torch-bearers and placed them around the base of the tower. He then looked for Rawul Singh, and noticed that the Rajput was hanging
back, glancing anxiously into the castle hall behind him. He was hoping to set eyes on the slayer of his son.
Then Malcolm called to the potail and the leading men of the village.
“Come with me,” he commanded, “and bring a torch—there are snakes about, it seems.”
The men hung back but Malcolm was imperious, his hard eyes threatening. As they approached he beckoned them into the castle. Choosing his way, the Scot went quickly to the foot of the stair leading to the tower. Rawul Singh followed the group, preferring to watch from the rear where he could see any weapon lifted against his master.
Malcolm took a risk in leaving the Bhir men at his back, but he had selected them with care—fat men and wealthy, consequently timid of their persons. The music outside clamored away as the potail had commanded and drowned their footfalls.
Hossein slipped behind Rawul Singh. “It’s time we took the offensive,” Malcolm thought, “after standing ’em off so long. Better for the morale of all concerned.”
With that, nodding to the others to follow, he stepped on the stairs running up swiftly. The final few feet he took in a bound and came out on the terrace top, pistol in hand.
Here he crouched, leveling his weapon.
“Stand up, Dom Gion,” he cried to the figure that knelt against the parapet. “Or I fire. Come, come, I saw you watching me, and I’m rarely curious to see you, my friend, after this long time.”
The merchants had not presumed to ascend the stairs, but presently they heard footsteps coming down toward them. By the glow of the torch they saw the thin figure of the half-caste, his yellow face pallid and his light eyes darting about him. One pace away was Malcolm, his pistol at the other’s head.
“I have brought you,” said the Scot to them sternly, “to witness the arrest of an evil-doer, by name Dom Gion, who has illegally claimed governorship of the district of Bhir.”
The potail and the merchants gave back readily; in fact they made haste out of the castle corridor to the lights of the terrace. Dom Gion had built up an aura of fear about his presence—fear reinforced with threats—and it was perhaps the first time that they had seen him so clearly, face to face.
Moreover, not suspecting as Malcolm had done that the half-caste was in his favorite eyrie of the tower, there was something distinctly unnerving in the way Malcolm had, as it were, plucked his enemy out of the air.
Yet as the Scot and his prisoner moved into the light and the music ceased for the second time, many of the thugs among the spectators moved uneasily and felt for their strangling nooses and knives.
“Stand back!” ordered Malcolm, looking in vain for Rawul Singh.
Dom Gion glanced about eagerly, but the first figure he saw was that of Tala, staring at him hostilely, her eyes bright with anger.
“Is this the man who kept thee captive?” Malcolm asked her.
“Aye sahib.”
At that fear came suddenly upon Dom Gion.
“Aid!” he shrieked. “Aid for the jemadar. Servants of Kali, strike down this man!”
He flung himself on the ground, crouching away from Malcolm’s pistol, hope flashing into his twisted face as he realized that the other hesitated to shoot.
“Fools!” cried the half-caste. “Hossein—Oho, Hossein! It is the jemadar who calls—
And then the watchers saw a strange thing. Rawul Singh stepped from the darkness of the castle. About his neck was bound a thug noose that dangled over his shoulders; his face was purple and blood came from his nostrils down over his beard.
In his arms Rawul Singh carried the limp body of Hossein.
“Sahib,” he groaned, throwing the body down, “the thug would have strangled me. Aye—almost he overcame me, until he exulted and cried in my ear that he who had killed the son would strangle the father.”
The Rajput straightened, glaring at Dom Gion.
“Sahib, it gave me strength—that word. I ask pardon of thee for not keeping beside thee—it was a trick of our enemies.”
Malcolm studied the throng of onlookers and saw that many were slipping away. Those who were not thugs prepared to depart as hastily as possible with dignity. The death of Hossein had taken away any desire that they might have had to fight. The followers of Dom Gion lingered, scowling and muttering.
“And I,” said Malcolm quickly, “ask thy pardon, Rawul Singh. I suspected thee. Thou art a brave man—a very brave man.” Turning on the thugs, he announced, “Dom Gion will be shot if the castle is not cleared within a moment.”
The thugs were not open fighters. They looked at one another, and went away, hoping for another opportunity to strike at the white man.
That opportunity never came, for the next day brought Cunningham and his men.
It was not until after Cunningham and his sepoys had reached Bhir and taken the prisoner, Dom Gion, in charge—pending trial before law for the murders he had caused to be committed—that Tala could be prevailed upon to lead her father and Malcolm to the tank in the jungle where she had been kept captive and where Dom Gion had secreted his riches.
This hoard, Malcolm assured Cunningham, should be returned to those who proved themselves kin to the victims of the thugs.
The lease deeds and other concessions they burned. And Malcolm, after convincing himself that all active thugs had left Bhir, deposed the potail on grounds that the man had taken thug money.
This done, he resigned his office and said goodbye to Cunningham, mounting immediately and riding away to his duties. For the ride out of the village, Malcolm was accompanied by Rawul Singh, who leaped from his horse and saluted the Scot standing, looking long and regretfully after the vanishing form of his superior officer.
Not until the dust of Malcolm’s passage, had settled down did Rawul Singh return to his hut and Tala.
Cunningham had rewarded the Rajput by appointing him potail.
Peace was established in Bhir. And for a while Rawul Singh enjoyed his new prestige and the favor of the sahibs. He asked Cunningham frequently about Malcolm, when making his reports, which were always very brief and concerned mainly with the summary punishment of Mussulmans.
In time, as the district continued law abiding and prosperous, Rawul Singh became very restless, and his reports ceased entirely. He mounted his horse and rode to Agra to seek the Resident in person.
* * * *
And in the course of time Captain John Malcolm, then quartered in one of the hill stations of Kashmir, received a letter from the Resident which said among other things:
It is just as well perhaps for the influence of the Government among the natives, my dear captain, that the Rajpoot, Rawul Singh has resigned his office as potail. I asked him for the reason that inspired his decision and he responded that Bhir was only fit to be administered by a trader or a woman, now that there was no fighting to be had.
Rawul Singh then asked for your address, and, although I informed him that he is clearly beyond the age limit for our non-commissioned native officers he insisted that he would ride to Kashmeer and that you would have a place for him near you.
I fancy that almost any day you may see him ride in at your Quarters with his daughter on the horse behind him and his luggage in his saddle-bags. I had not thought that he would leave the grave of his son—you are aware of the persistency of the natives in clinging to such customs—but, upon my word, he seems to have adopted you as his son.
Y’r Ob’t & Resp’tf’l Serv’t,
A. CUNNINGHAM.
THE GRAND CHAM (1921)
CHAPTER I
The Gate of Shadows
It was evening on the plain of Angora in the year of Our Lord 1394. The sun was a glimmering ball of red, peering through a haze of dust at the caravan of Bayezid the Great, surnamed the Thunderbolt, Sultan of the Osmanli and Seljuk Turks, master of the Caliphate and overlord of the Mamelukes of Egypt.
Bayezid reined in his white Arab.
“We will sleep the night here,” he announced, “for this is an auspicious spot.”<
br />
At Angora a decade ago, as leader of the hard-fighting Osmanlis, Bayezid had won his first pitched battle. He had been acclaimed sultan and straightway had slain his brother with his own hand. From that moment Fate had been kind to the man called the Thunderbolt.
“To hear is to obey,” cried his followers. “Hail to the Mighty, the Merciful, the All-Dispensing One!”
Bayezid glanced around through the dust haze and saw the quivering shapes of silk pavilions rising from the baked clay floor of the plateau as his camp-followers scurried about. A line of grunting baggage-camels stalked into the nest of tents that marked the quarters of his grandees. Attended by Negro slaves, the several litters of his women halted beside the khanates that separated his household from the small army that attended him.
A slow smile crossed his broad, swart face.
A powerful hand caressed the pearls at the throat of his tunic. Fate had indeed exalted him. He had been called the spiritual effigy of the formerly great khalifs of Damascus and Baghdad. He knew himself to be the supreme monarch of Asia, and in that age the courts of Asia were the rendezvous of the world.
True, on the outskirts of the sultan’s empire, to the East, was Tamerlane the Tatar and his horde. But had not Tamerlane said that Bayezid, given the men to follow him, was the wisest of living generals?
As for Europe, Bayezid had advanced the border of his empire into Hungary; Constantinople, glittering with the last splendor of the Byzantines, was tottering; Venice and Genoa paid tribute for permission to use the trade routes into the Orient.
Bayezid glanced curiously at the group of Frankish slaves whose duty it was to run beside his horse. They were panting, and sweat streaked the sand that coated their blackened faces. Fragments of cloth were wrapped about their bleeding feet.
Five of the six captives bent their heads in the salaam that had been taught them. The sixth remained erect, meeting the sultan’s eye.
Bayezid half frowned at this boldness which broke the thread of his thoughts. His hand rested on the gold trappings of his splendid horse. To the side of this horse slaves were dragging a cloth of silver carpet that stretched to the opening of the imperial khanates.