The Sirdar's Oath: A Tale of the North-West Frontier Read online

  CHAPTER FIVE.

  MURAD AFZUL, TERROR.

  Peaks--jagged and lofty, peaks--stark and pointed, cleaning up into theunclouded but somewhat brassy blue. Rock-sides, cleft into wondrous,criss-cross seams; loose rocks again, scattering smoother slopes ofshale, where the white gypsum streaks forced their way through.Beneath--far beneath--winding among these, a mere thread--the white dustof a road. Of vegetation none, save for coarse, sparse grass bents, andhere and there a sorry attempt at a pistachio shrub. A great blackvulture, circling on spreading wing, over this chaos of cliff and chasm,of desolation and lifelessness, turns his head from side to side andcroaks; for experience tells him that its seeming lifelessness is butapparent.

  "Ya, Allah! and are we to wait here until the end of the world? Intruth, brother, we had better seek to serve some other chief."

  Thus one dirty-white-clad figure to another dirty-white-clad figure--both resembling each other marvellously. The same bronze visage, thesame hooked nose and rapacious eyes, the same jetty tresses on each sideof the face, and the same long and shaggy beard, characterised these twono less than the score and a half other precisely similar figures lyingup among the interstices of this serrated ridge, watching the waybeneath. The dirty-white turbans had been laid aside in favour of aconical dust-coloured _kulla_, the neutral hue of which headgear blendedwith the sad tints of the surrounding rocks and stones.

  "I know not, brother," rejoined the second hook-nosed son of thewilderness. "Yet it seems that since the _Sirkar_ [Note 1] has beenchanged at Mazaran, a great change too has come over our father theNawab."

  "Nawab!" repeated the first speaker, with disgust. "Nawab! How can ourchief take such a dirty title, only fit for swine of Hindu idolators.It is an insult on the part of the accursed Feringhi to offer such atitle to a freeborn son of the mountains; and such a one as the chief ofthe Gularzai. Nawab!" and the speaker spat from between his closedteeth, with a sort of hiss of contempt.

  "Yet, if it serves to place him higher in the estimation of the Feringhiand of the tribes our neighbours, what matter?" returned the other."The Nawab Mahomed Mushim Khan sounds great in the ears of such."

  The sneering laugh which rattled from the other's throat was checked,for now the attention of all became concentrated on a cloud of dustcoming into view, and advancing along the thread of road windingbeneath. Eagerly now, thirty pairs of fierce eyes were bent on thatwhich moved beneath their gaze--a passing of men, mounted and armed, tothe number of about three score; and fierce brows bent in hatred, asthey scowled upon the representative of that irresistible Power, which,with all its failings and errors of judgment, yet in the long run heldin salutary restraint the excesses of their wild and predatory race.For this was the escort of the British Political Agent, returning froman official visit to their tribal chieftain.

  A squad of Levy Sowars rode in front, and a larger one of NativeCavalry, the official himself, with two or three attendants beingbetween; the servants with camp necessaries and furniture bringing upthe rear, yet taking apparent care to keep somewhat close upon the heelsof the armed escort. Upon this array the wild hillmen gazed with many amuttered curse. The time for that might come, in the orderings of Allahand His Prophet; but it was not to-day--was the thought that possessedseveral of their minds.

  The cavalcade held on its way, winding round a high precipitous spur, toreappear again further on, small and distant, then to vanish entirelywhere a great _tangi_ cleft the heart of the mountain. And look!Below, once more, in the direction whence it had first appeared, whirledanother cloud of dust, insignificant this time compared with before.

  The eyes of the marauders gleamed from beneath shaggy brows, and a stirran through their numbers. Brown, claw-like hands gripped the barrelsof firearms--no antiquated, if picturesque jezails these, butLee-Metford magazine rifles up to date, save for a few Martinis--whiletulwars were half drawn from their scabbards, and gazed at with lovinglymurderous graze ere being replaced again. Yet the group of figureswhich emerged into view on the road beneath was not formidable,consisting in fact of but four human beings.

  Two were mounted, and two on foot, and between them they were drivingseveral pack animals, laden to their fullest capacity. At sight ofthese, the band, all its tactics prearranged, moved down from itseyrie-like lurking place, dividing, as it did so, into three.

  Chand Lall, general trader, who was mounted, and his two assistants whowere afoot, were uneasy, and the former was secretly cursing his ownavarice which had prevented him from purchasing an extra pack animal ortwo, which would have enabled him and his possessions to have keptbeneath the wing of the Political Agent's escort, whereas now he wasvery considerably behind the tail of the same. But the fourth of thegroup, the other mounted man, was quite cool; indeed, it looked asthough he actually preferred the solitude of their wild surroundings--and perhaps he did.

  "Be at peace, brother," this one was saying. "Are we not safe, for weare in the hand of Allah? Wherefore then this hurry? Nothing can bebut what is written. But there, I forget, my memory groweth old withits owner. Thou art not of the number of true believers." And hedeliberately and leisurely dismounted, as though discovering a suddenlameness in the near foreleg of his horse.

  "That is all very well, Ibrahim, who art a Moslem," said the fat Hindu,whose distressed impatience was painfully manifest. "None will harmthee. But I--"

  The words died in his throat, choked there by the sight of a number ofstealing figures, flitting down from rock to rock. The countenance ofthe unfortunate trader grew a dirty leaden white. Already the roadbefore him was barred. Wildly he gazed around. That behind him wasbarred too. His companion, quite unmoved, was still examining the hoofof his horse. High overhead, a speck in the ether, above the gnomelikecrags, the black vulture still turned his head from side to side andcroaked.

  Already the marauders had seized the pack animals. The two young menwho drove them had fallen flat and were grovelling and wailing formercy. Rough hands had flung the Hindu from his saddle, and he lay onthe ground, moaning with fear, and quaking in every limb, as he staredfrantically at the dull flash of razor-edged tulwars, brandished overhim, the savage, hairy faces glowering down upon him, fell andthreatening with religious hate and racial contempt.

  "Rise up, fat dog," said one of the marauders, kicking him. "Rise up,and come with us."

  "Mercy, Sirdar Sahib, and suffer me to go my way," whined the terrifiedman, as he tremblingly obeyed the first clause of the injunction. "I ambut a poor trader, but have ever been generous to such as ye. Taketherefore of my poor store, yet leave me a little that I may begin lifeagain."

  The leader of the band laughed evilly and spat.

  "Thy poor store! Ha! We will take all and afterwards skin thee of yetmore, thou usurer, who comest into our country but to leave it poorer."

  "Not so, Sirdar Sahib," expostulated the trader, plucking up a littlecourage by virtue of the name he was about to invoke. "What I have, Ihave from the Nawab--the Nawab Mushim Khan--given in honest trade.Shall I then suffer ill-treatment at the Nawab's very gates?"

  "The Nawab. Ha--ha!" jeered the leader, spitting again. "Walk, fatinfidel dog. Dost hear?"

  And a buffet on the side of the head, which nearly felled him, convincedthe unfortunate trader that this was no time for further expostulation;and, accordingly, panting, wheezing, stumbling, he strove his painfulutmost to keep pace up the steep hill with his perilous and unwelcomeescort. His attendants were undergoing but little ill-treatment. Theywere young and lithe, and gave no trouble; moreover, they had little ornothing to lose, so feared nothing. Ibrahim, who happened to be a_mullah_, and whom the other had subsidised for the supposed protectionof his own company, to whom no violence whatever had been offered, wasleading his steed tranquilly over the rough, stony slope, chatting andlaughing familiarly with the band; and at the sight the unhappy ChandLall's soul grew more bitter within him. Why had he been so ready toaccept this plausible rogue's benevolent sanct
ity, he thought, as nowfifty instances occurred to him of delays, slight at the time, but oncolourable pretext, to retard him more and more--to increase subtly andimperceptibly more and more the distance between him and the armed forcewith which he had obtained permission to travel. Bitterly he reproachedhimself. He saw through it now--in fact, he did not believe thatIbrahim was a _mullah_ at all; but _mullah_ or not, certain it was thathe was the confederate and decoy of the ferocious and predatory gang whohad so daringly swooped down upon himself and his goods, almost withincall of the Political Agent's armed escort.

  On they fared, higher and higher, until at length, utterly exhausted,Chand Lall realised that he lay powerless and beyond all reach or hopeof aid in one of the fastnesses of his captors, away in the most savageand frowning recesses of the mountain world. And then something in thevery hopelessness of it all as he saw the fruits of a long and toilsomeexpedition utterly thrown away, moved the wretched man to a sort ofdesperation. He threatened.

  "See you," he said, "I am not a man who can be smuggled away and noinquiries made. I am not a man who can be ill-treated with impunity. Iam a man of consequence, and of importance to the _Sirkar_. I am afriend of the Nawab--"

  He stopped short. There was that in the look of the leader--to whom hehad addressed these words--which seemed to freeze the half deliriousdesperation within him.

  "A friend of the Nawab! Ha--ha! Hearken, O man of consequence and ofimportance to the _Sirkar_," bending down a savage face to note andrevel in the terror he was about to strike into his victim. "Is itpossible that thou hast never yet heard the name of Murad Afzul? Is itpossible, I say? Ya, Allah! is it possible?"

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  Note 1. Government ordinarily. In this instance the representative ofGovernment.