“If there’s trouble,” says he, “you must just ride for it.”
To this fatherly advice he and Burnes added a few words about how I should conduct myself if the matter of subsidy was discussed with me, bidding me be reassuring at all costs – no thought of who should reassure me, I may say – and dismissed me. Burnes said they had high hopes of me, a sentiment I found it difficult to share.
However, there was nothing for it, and next morning found me on the road east, with Iqbal and an Afghan guide on either side and five troopers of the 16th Lancers for escort. It was a tiny enough guard to be useless against anything but a stray robber – and Afghanistan never lacked for those – but it gave me some heart, and what with the fresh morning air, and the thought that all would probably be well and the mission another small stepping stone in the career of Lieutenant Flashman, I felt rather more cheerful.
The sergeant in charge of the Lancers was called Hudson, and he had already shown himself a steady and capable man. Before setting out he had suggested I leave behind my sabre – they were poor weapons, the Army swords, and turned in your grip13 – and take instead one of the Persian scimitars that some of the Afghans used. They were light and strong, and damned sharp. He had been very business-like about it, and about such matters as rations for the men and fodder for the horses. He was one of those quiet, middle-sized, square-set men who seem to know exactly what they are doing, and it was good to have him and Iqbal at my back.
Our first day’s march took us as far as Khoord-Kabul, and on the second we left the track at Tezeen and went south-east into the hills. The going had been rough enough on the path, but now it was frightful – the land was all sun-scorched rock and jagged peaks, with stony defiles that were like ovens, where the ponies stumbled over the loose stones. We hardly saw a living creature for twenty miles after we left Tezeen, and when night came we were camped on a high pass, in the lee of a cliff that might have been the wall of hell. It was bitter cold, and the wind howled up the pass; far away a wolf wailed, and we had barely enough wood to keep our fire going. I lay in my blanket cursing the day I got drunk at Rugby, and wishing I were snug in a warm bed with Elspeth or Fetnab or Josette.
Next day we were picking our way up a long stony slope when Iqbal muttered and pointed, and far ahead on a rocky shoulder I made out a figure which vanished almost as soon as I saw it.
“Gilzai scout,” said Iqbal, and in the next hour we saw a dozen more of them; as we rode upwards we were aware of them in the hills on either side, behind boulders or on the ledges, and in the last few miles there were horsemen shadowing us on either side and behind. Then we came out of a defile, and the guide pointed ahead to a height crowned with a great grey fortress, with a round tower behind its outer wall, and a cluster of huts outside its embattled gate. This was Mogala, stronghold of the Gilzai chieftain, Sher Afzul. I seldom saw a place I liked less at first sight.
We went forward at a canter, and the horsemen who had been following us galloped into the open on either side, keeping pace to the fort, but not approaching too close to us. They rode Afghan ponies, carried long jezzails and lances, and were a tough-looking crowd; some wore mail over their robes, and a few had spiked helmets; they looked like warriors from an Eastern fairy tale, with their outlandish clothes and fierce bearded faces – and of course, they were.
Close by the gate was a row of four wooden crosses, and to my horror I realised that the blackened, twisted things nailed to them were human bodies. Sher Afzul obviously had his own notions of discipline. One or two of the troopers muttered at the sight, and there were anxious glances at our shadowers, who had lined up on either side of the gateway. I was feeling a trifle wobbly myself, but I thought, to hell with these blackamoors, we are Englishmen, and so I said, “Come on, lads, ride to attention,” and we clattered under the frowning gateway.
I suppose Mogala is about a quarter of a mile from wall to wall, but inside its battlements, in addition to its huge keep, there were barracks and stables for Sher Afzul’s warriors, storehouses and armouries, and the house of the Khan himself. In fact, it was more of a little palace than a house, for it stood in a pretty garden under the shadow of the outer wall, shaded by cypress tress, and it was furnished inside like something from Burton’s Arabian Nights. There were tapestries on the walls, carpets on the paved floor, intricately carved wood screens in the archways, and a general air of luxury – he did himself well, I thought, but he took no chances. There were sentries all over the place, big men and well armed.
Sher Afzul turned out to be a man about sixty, with a beard dyed jet black, and a lined, ugly face whose main features were two fierce, burning eyes that looked straight through you. He received me civilly enough in his fine presence chamber, where he sat on a small throne with his court about him, but I couldn’t doubt Burnes’s assertion that he was half-mad. His hands twitched continuously, and he had a habit of jerking his turbanned head in a most violent fashion as he spoke. But he listened attentively as one of his ministers read aloud McNaghten’s letter, and seemed satisfied, and he and his people exclaimed with delight over the present that Cotton had sent – a pair of very handsome pistols by Manton, in a velvet case, with a matching shot pouch and powder flask. Nothing would do but we must go straight into the garden for the Khan to try them out; he was a rotten shot, but at the fourth attempt he managed to blow the head off a very handsome parrot which sat chained on a perch, screeching at the explosions until the lucky shot put an end to it.
There was loud applause, and Sher Afzul wagged his head and seemed well pleased.
“A splendid gift,” he told me, and I was pleased to find that my Pushtu was quite good enough for me to follow him. “You are the more welcome, Flashman bahadur, in that your guns are true. By God, it is a soldier’s weapon!”
I said I was delighted, and had the happy idea of presenting one of my own pistols on the spot to the Khan’s son, a bright, handsome lad of about sixteen, called Ilderim. He shouted with delight, and his eyes shone as he handled the weapon – I was off to a good start.
Then one of the courtiers came forward, and I felt a prickle up my spine as I looked at him. He was a tall man – as tall as I was – with those big shoulders and the slim waist of an athlete. His coat was black and well fitting, he wore long boots, and there was a silk sash round his waist to carry his sabre. On his head he had one of those polished steel casques with vertical prongs, and the face under it was strikingly handsome in the rather pretty Eastern way which I personally don’t like. You have seen them – straight nose, very full lips, woman’s cheeks and jaw. He had a forked beard and two of the coldest eyes I ever saw. I put him down as a nasty customer, and I was right.
“I can kill parrots with a sling,” he said. “Are the feringhee pistols good for anything else?”
Sher Afzul damned his eyes, more or less, for casting doubts on his fine new weapons, and thrusting one into the fellow’s hand, told him to try his luck. And to my amazement, the brute turned straight about, drew a bead on one of the slaves working in the garden, and shot him on the spot.
I was shaken, I can tell you. I stared at the twitching body on the grass, and the Khan wagging his head, and at the murderer handing back the pistol with a shrug. Of course, it was only a nigger he had killed, and I knew that among Afghans life is dirt cheap; they think no more of killing a human being than you and I do of shooting a pheasant or catching a fish. But it’s a trifle unsettling to a man of my temperament to know that he is in the power – for, guest or no, I was in their power – of blackguards who kill as wantonly and readily as that. That thought, more than the killing itself, rattled me.
Young Ilderim noticed this, and rebuked the black-coated man – not for murder, mark you, but for discourtesy to a guest!
“One does not bite the coin of the honoured stranger, Gul Shah,” was what he said, meaning you don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. For the moment I was too fascinated at what I had seen to pay much heed, but as the Khan, talking rapidly, escorted me inside again, I remembered that this Gul Shah was the customer Burnes had warned me about – the friend of the arch-rebel, Akbar Khan. I kept an eye on him as I talked with Sher Afzul, and it seemed to me he kept an eye on me