Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins
and retching. Jassa knelt beside me, urging haste, and I forced myself up; my back and legs were smarting, but didn’t feel as though they were badly burned, and with the naik plainly about to return at any moment I was in a fever to be away.
“Can you climb?” whispers Jassa, and I saw there was a camel rope dangling from the window fifteen feet above our heads. “I’ll go first – if you can’t make it, we’ll haul you!” He seized the rope and walked up the wall like an acrobat, until he had his legs over the sill. “Up – quick!” he hissed, and I leaned on the wall a second to fetch my breath and my senses, rubbed my hands on the dirt, and laid hold on the rope.
I may not be brave, but I’m strong, and exhausted as I was I climbed by my arms alone, hauling my dead weight hand over hand, bumping and scraping against the wall – no work for a weakling, but my mortal funk was such that I could have done it with Henry VIII on my back. Up I went, nearly sick with hope, and the sill wasn’t a yard above me when I heard the door thrown back in the cell below.
I almost let go my hold in despair, but even as a yell sounded from the doorway, Jassa’s hand was on my collar, and I heaved for my life. I got an elbow on the sill, looked down, and saw the naik bounding down the steps with his gang at his heels. Jassa was through the window, hauling at me, and I got a leg over the sill; from the tail of my eye I saw one of the ruffians below swinging back his hand, there was a flash of steel, and I winced away as a thrown knife struck sparks from the wall. Jassa’s pistol banged deafeningly before my face, and I saw the naik stagger and fall. I yelled with joy, and then I was over the sill. “Drop!” shouts Jassa, and I fell about ten feet, landing with a jar that sent a stabbing pain through my left ankle. I took one step and went down, bleating, as Jassa dropped beside me and heaved me up again.
My heart went out to Goolab Singh and his gouty foot in that moment, as I thought: crocked, bigod, and only one leg to run with. Jassa had me by the shoulders; he let out a piercing whistle and suddenly there was a man on my other side, stooping beneath my arm. Between them they half-carried me, howling at every step; two shots sounded somewhere to my left, I saw pistol-flashes in the gloom, people were yelling, branches whipped my face as we blundered along, and then we were in an alley, a mounted man was alongside, and Jassa was heaving me almost bodily up behind. I clasped the rider round the waist, turning to look back, and there was Bibi Kalil’s gate, and a cowled black figure was cutting with a sabre at someone within and then sprinting after us.
The alley seemed to be full of horsemen – in fact there were only four, including Jassa. Voices were yelling behind us, feet were pounding, a torch was flaring in the gateway – and then we were round the corner.
“Gently does the trick,” says Jassa, at my elbow. “They ain’t horsed. You doing well there, lieutenant? Right, jemadar, walk-march – trot!” He urged his beast ahead, and we swung in behind him.
However he came there, he was a complete hand, our Philadelphia sawbones. Left to myself I’d have been off full tilt, blundering heaven knows where and coming to grief like as not. Jassa knew just where he wanted to go, and what time he had in hand; we trotted round a corner into a little court which I recognised as the one in which Goolab and I had opened the batting, and lo! there were two more riders on post, and to my astonishment I recognised them, and my rescuers, as black robes of Alick Gardner’s. Well, no doubt all would be made clear presently. They led the way up a long lane, and at the end Jassa reined in to look back – by George, there were torches entering the lane at a run, a bare fifty paces behind, and suddenly all my pain and fear and bewilderment vanished in overwhelming blind rage (as often happens when I’ve been terrified to death, and reckon I’m safe). By God, I’d make ’em pay, the vile, torturing scoundrels; there was a pistol in my rider’s saddle holster, and I plucked it out, bellowing, while Jassa demanded to know what the devil I was about.
“I’m going to kill one of those murdering bastards!” I roared. “Lay hands on me, you poxy vermin, you! Broil me on a damned gridiron, will you? Take that, you sons-of-bitches!” I blazed away, and had the satisfaction of seeing the torches scatter, though none of them went down.
“Say, won’t that larn ’em, though!” cries Jassa. “You feel better now, lieutenant? You’re sure – don’t want to go back and burn their barn down? Fine – achha, jemadar, jildi jao!”
Which we did, at a steady canter in the broader ways, and at a walk in the twisting alleys, and as we rode I learned from Jassa what had brought my saviours at the eleventh hour.
He, it seemed, had been keeping a closer eye on me for weeks than ever I knew. He had spotted me leaving the Fort, and trailed me, wondering, to the French Soldiers’ canteen and Bibi Kalil’s house. Skulking in the shadows, he’d seen me received by the widow, and having a foul mind, supposed I was bedded for the night. Fortunately, he’d skulked farther, spied the Khalsa bigwigs downstairs, and realised that there was villainy afoot. Deciding that he could do nothing alone, he’d legged it for the Fort, and made straight for Gardner.
“I figured you were treed, and needed help in numbers. Alick was the only hope – he may not cotton to me, exactly, but when I told him how you were under the same roof as Maka Khan and the Akali, didn’t he jump, just? Didn’t come himself, though – bad policy for him to be seen crossing the Khalsa, don’t you know? But he told off the jemadar and a detail, and we hit the leather. I scouted the house, but no sign of you. A couple of sentries perambulating in the garden, though, and then I heard you hollering from the back of the house. I took a quiet slant that way, and marked the window your noise seemed to be coming from – say, you’re a right audible soldier, ain’t you? After that, two of the jemadar’s fellows smoothed out the sentries, and took station while he and I slipped along to your window – and here you are. They’re capable, Alick’s boys, no error. But what took you into that bear’s den – and what in Creation were they doing to you?”
I didn’t tell him. The events of the night were still a hideous jumble in my mind, and reaction had me in its grip. I was shaking so hard I barely kept the saddle, I wanted to vomit, and my ankle was throbbing with pain. Once again, when all seemed well, Lahore had become a nightmare, with enemies all about – the only bright side was that there seemed no lack of worthy souls eager to pluck me out of the soup. God bless America, if you like – they’d turned up trumps again, at no small risk to themselves, for if the Khalsa got wind that Gardner was aiding enemies of the state, he’d be in queer street.
“Don’t you fret about Alick!” snorts Jassa. “He’s got more lives’n a cat, and more nuts on the fire than you can count. He’s Dalip’s man, and Jeendan’s man, and best chums with Broadfoot, and he’s Goolab Singh’s agent in Lahore, and –”
Goolab Singh! That was another who took an uncommon interest in Flashy’s welfare. I was beginning to feel like a fives pill being thrashed about in a four-hand fifteen-up, with my seams split and the twine showing. Well, to the devil with it, I’d had enough. I reined in and demanded of Jassa where we were going; I’d been half aware that we were threading our way through the alleys near the south wall, and once or twice we’d skirted under the wall itself; we’d passed the great Looharree Gate and the Halfmoon Battery and were abreast of the Shah Alumee, which meant we were holding east, and were no nearer the Fort than when we’d started. Not that I minded that.
“For I’m not going back there, I can tell you! Broadfoot can peddle his pack and be damned! This bloody place ain’t safe –”
“That’s what Gardner reckoned,” says Jassa. “He thinks you should make tracks for British territory. You know the war’s started? Yes, sir, the Khalsa’s over the river at half a dozen places between Harree-ke-puttan and Ferozepore – eighty thousand horse, foot, and guns on a thirty-mile front. God knows where Gough is – halfway to Delhi with his tail between his legs if you believe the bazaar, but I doubt it.”
Seven thousand at Ferozepore, I was thinking. Well, Littler was done for – Wheeler, too, with his pitiful five thousand at Ludhiana … unless Gough had managed to reinforce. I’d had no sure word for three weeks, but it didn’t seem possible that he could have concentrated strongly enough to resist the overwhelming