King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure, Talbot Mundy [ebook smartphone TXT] 📗

not one of them could run another yard, King trusting to his horse to find a footing along the cliff-tops, and to the men to find the way.

“Whither?” one whispered to him.

“To Khinjan!” he answered; and that was enough. Each whispered to the other, and they all became fired with curiosity more potent than money bribes.

When he halted at last and dismounted and sat down and the stragglers caught up, panting, they held a council of war all together, with Ismail sitting at King's back and leaning a chin on his shoulder in order to hear better. Bone pressed on bone, and the place grew numb; King shook him off a dozen times; but each time Ismail set his chin back on the same spot, as a dog will that listens to his master. Yet he insisted he was her man, and not King's.

“Now, ye men of the Hills,” said King, “listen to me who am political-offender-with-reward-for-capture-offered!” That was a gem of a title. It fired their imaginations. “I know things that no soldier would find out in a thousand years, and I will tell you some of what I know.”

Now he had to be careful. If he were to invent too much they might denounce him as a traitor to the “Hills” in general. If he were to tell them too little they would lose interest and might very well desert him at the first pinch. He must feel for the middle way and upset no prejudices.

“She has discovered that this mullah Muhammad Anim is no true muslim, but an unbelieving dog of a foreigner from Farangistan! She has discovered that he plans to make himself an emperor in these Hills, and to sell Hillmen into slavery!” Might as well serve the mullah up hot while about it! Beyond any doubt not much more than a mile away the mullah was getting even by condemning the lot of them to death. “An eye for the risk of an eye!” say the unforgiving Hills.

“If one of us should go back into his camp now he would be tortured. Be sure of that.”

Breathing deeply in the darkness, they nodded, as if the dark had eyes. Ismail's chin drove a fraction deeper into his shoulder.

“Now ye know--for all men know--that the entrance into Khinjan Caves is free to any man who can tell a lie without flinching. It is the way out again that is not free. How many men do ye know that have entered and never returned?”

They all nodded again. It was common knowledge that Khinjan was a very graveyard of the presumptuous.

“She has set a trap for the mullah. She will let him and all his men enter and will never let them out again!”

“How knowest thou?” This from two men, one on either hand.

“Was I never in Khinjan Caves?” he retorted. “Whence came I? I am her man, sent to help trap the mullah! I would have trapped all you, but for being weary of these 'Hills' and wishful to go back to India and be pardoned! That is who I am! That is how I know!”

Their breath came and went sibilantly, and the darkness was alive with the excitement they thought themselves too warrior-like to utter.

“But what will she do then?” asked somebody.

King searched his memory, and in a moment there came back to him a picture of the hurrying jezailchi he had held up in the Khyber Pass, and recollection of the man's words.

“Know ye not,” he said, “that long ago she gave leave to all who ate the salt to be true to the salt? She gave the Khyber jezailchis leave to fight against her. Be sure, whatever she does, she will stand between no man and his pardon!”

“But will she lead a jihad? We will not fight against her!”

“Nay,” said King, drawing his breath in. Ismail's chin felt like a knife against his collar bone, and Ismail's iron fingers clutched his arm. It was time to give his hostage to dame Fortune. “She will go down into India and use her influence in the matter of the pardons!”

“I believe thou art a very great liar indeed!” said the man who lacked part of his nose. “The Pathan went, and he did not come back. What proof have we.”

“Ye have me!” said King. “If I show you no proof, how can I escape you?”

They all grunted agreement as to that. King used his elbow to hit Ismail in the ribs. He did not dare speak to him; but now was the time for Ismail to carry information to her, supposing that to be his job. And after a minute Ismail rolled into a shadow and was gone. King gave him twenty minutes start, letting his men rest their legs and exercise their tongues.

Now that he was out of the mullah's clutches--and he suspected Yasmini would know of it within an hour or two, and before dawn in any event--he began to feel like a player in a game of chess who foresees his opponent mate in so many moves.

If Yasmini were to let the mullah and his men into the Caves and to join forces with him in there, he would at least have time to hurry back to India with his eighty men and give warning. He might have time to call up the Khyber jezailchis and blockade the Caves before the hive could swarm, and he chuckled to think of the hope of that.

On the other hand, if there was to be a battle royal between Yasmini and the mullah he would be there to watch it and to comfort India with the news.

“Now we will go on again, in order to be close to Khinjan at break of day,” he said, and they all got up and obeyed him as if his word had been law to them for years. Of all of them he was the only man in doubt--he who seemed most confident of all.

They swung along into the darkness under low-hung stars, trailing behind King's horse, with only half a dozen of them a hundred yards or so ahead as an advance guard, and all of them expecting to see Khinjan loom above each next valley, for distances and darkness are deceptive in the “Hills,” even to trained eyes. Suddenly the advance guard halted, but did not shoot. And as King caught up with them he saw they were talking with some one.

He had to ride up close before he recognized the Orakzai Pathan.

“Salaam!” said the fellow with a grin. “I bring one hundred and eleven!”

As he spoke graveyard shadows rose out of the darkness all around and leaned on rifles.

“Be ye men all ex-soldiers of the raj?” King asked them.

“Aye!” they growled in chorus.

“What will ye?”

“Pardons!” They all said the word together.

“Who gave you leave to come?” King asked.

“None! He told us of the pardons and we came!”