King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure by Talbot Mundy (fiction novels to read TXT) 📖

traversed fifty yards he had made himself more enemies than most men dare aspire to in a lifetime, and he seemed well pleased with the fruit of his effort.

The dance went on for fifteen minutes yet, but then--quite unexpectedly--all the arena guards together fired a volley at the roof, and the dance stopped as if every dancer had been hit. The spectators were set surging by the showers of stone splinters, that hurt whom they struck, and their snarl was like a wolf-pack's when a tiger interferes. But the guards thought it all a prodigious joke and the more the crowd swore the more they laughed.

Panting--foaming at the mouth, some of them--the dancers ran to their seats and set the crowd surging again, leaving the arena empty of all but the guards. The man whose seat Ismail had taken came staggering, slippery with sweat, and squeezed himself where he belonged, forcing King into the Pathan's empty place. Ismail threw his arms round the man and patted him, calling him “mighty dancer,” “son of the wind,” “prince of prancers,” “prince of swordsmen,” “war-horse,” and a dozen more endearing epithets. The fellow lay back across Ismail's knees, breathless but well enough contented.

And after a few more minutes the Orakzai Pathan came back, and King tried to make room for him to sit.

“I bade thee keep my place!” he growled, towering over King and plucking at his knife-belt irresolutely. He made it clear without troubling to use words that any other man would have had to fight, and the hakim might think himself lucky.

“Take my seat,” said King, struggling to get up.

“Nay, nay--sit still, thou. I can kick room for myself. So! So! So!”

There was an answering snarl of hate that seemed like a song to him, amid which he sat down.

“The mullah Muhammad Anim answered he knows nothing of thee and cares less! He said--and he said it with vehemence--it is no more to him where a hakim sits than where the rats hide!”

He watched King's face and seeing that, King allowed his facial muscles to express chagrin.

“Between us, it is a poor time for messages to him. He is too full of pride that his lashkar should have beaten the British.”

“Did they beat the British greatly?” King asked him, with only vague interest on his face and a prayer inside him that his heart might flutter less violently against his ribs. His voice was as non-committal as the mullah's message.

“Who knows, when so many men would rather lie than kill? Each one who returned swears he slew a hundred. But some did not return. Wait and watch, say I!”

Now a man stood up near the edge of the crowd whom King recognized; and recognition brought no joy with it. The mullah without hair or eyelashes, who had admitted him and his party through the mosque into the Caves, strode out to the middle of the arena all alone, strutting and swaggering. He recalled the man's last words and drew no consolation from them, either.

“Many have entered! Some went out by a different road!”

Cold chills went down his back. All at once Ismail's manner became unencouraging. He ceased to make a fuss over the dancer and began to eye King sidewise, until at last he seemed unable to contain the malice that would well forth.

“At the gate there were only words!” he whispered. “Here in this cavern men wait for proof!”

He licked his teeth suggestively, as a wolf does when he contemplates a meal. Then, as an afterthought, as though ashamed, “I love thee! Thou art a man after my own heart! But I am her man! Wait and see!”

The mullah in the arena, blinking with his lashless eyes, held both arms up for silence in the attitude of a Christian priest blessing a congregation. The guards backed his silent demand with threatening rifles. The din died to a hiss of a thousand whispers, and then the great cavern grew still, and only the river could be heard sucking hungrily between the smooth stone banks.

“God is great!” the mullah howled.

“God is great!” the crowd thundered in echo to him; and then the vault took up the echoes. “God is great--is great--is great--ea--ea--eat!”

“And Muhammad is His prophet!” howled the mullah. Instantly they answered him again.

“And Muhammad is His prophet!”

“His prophet--is His prophet--is His prophet!” said the stalactites, in loud barks--then in murmurs--then in awe-struck whispers.

That seemed to be all the religious ritual Khinjan remembered or could tolerate. Considering that the mullah, too, must have killed his man in cold blood before earning the right to be there, perhaps it was enough--too much. There were men not far from King who shuddered.

“There are strangers!” announced the mullah, as a man might say, “I smell a rat!” But he did not look at anybody in particular; he blinked at the crowd.

“Strangers!” said the stalactites, in an awe-struck whisper.

“Show them! Show them! Let them stand forth!”

“Oh-h-h-h-h! Let them stand forth!” said the roof.

The mullah bowed as if that idea were a new one and he thought it better than his own; for all crowds love flattery.

“Bring them!” he shouted, and King suppressed a shudder--for what proof had he of right to be there beyond Ismail's verbal corroboration of a lie? Would Ismail lie for him again? he wondered. And if so, would the lie be any use?

Not far from where King sat there was an immediate disturbance in the crowd, and a wretched-looking Baluchi was thrust forward at a run, with arms lashed to his sides and a pitiful look of terror on his face. Two more Baluchis were hustled along after him, protesting a little, but looking almost as hopeless.

Once in the arena, the guards took charge of all three of them and lined them up facing the mullah, clubbing them with their rifle-butts to get quick obedience. The crowd began to be noisy again, but the mullah signed for silence.

“These are traitors!” he howled, with a gesture such as Ajax might have used when he defied the lightning.

The roof said “Traitors!”

“Slay them, then!” howled the crowd, delighted. And blinking behind the horn-rimmed spectacles, King began to look about busily for hope, where there did not seem to be any.

“Nay, hear me first!” the mullah howled, and his voice was like a wolf's at hunting time. “Hear, and be warned!”

The crowd grew very still, but King saw that some men licked their lips, as if they well knew what was coming.

“These three men came, and one was a new man!” the mullah howled. “The other two were his witnesses! All three