Read Ebook: The Sirdar's Oath: A Tale of the North-West Frontier by Mitford Bertram

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Ebook has 699 lines and 41952 words, and 14 pages

fateful consequences that rebuff was destined to entail upon his master, upon others--and, perchance, upon himself.

For what they gazed upon here was but a beginning. It was the mark of Murad Afzul.

A LEGACY OF VENGEANCE.

The Nawab Mahomed Mushim Khan, commonly known as Mushim Khan, Chief of the Gularzai, was seated beneath the shade of an apricot tope, discussing affairs of state with his brother and vizier, Kuhandil Khan.

The hour of prayer was just over, yet here and there a group of belated worshippers was still engaged in the prescribed ceremonial, bowing down, low and oft, in the direction of the Holy City, while others were wending their way towards the gate in the long low mud wall behind which stood the village. Here and there, too, knelt camels, in process of being loaded for a journey, eternally snarling and roaring, as is the way of those cross-grained, hideous, but essentially useful animals, and flocks of black goats and of fat-tailed Persian sheep moved lazily off to their browsing grounds attended by tall, shaggy herdsmen armed with their long-barrelled, sickle-stocked guns--and accompanied by great savage dogs, a match for wolf or panther, and far more dangerous than either to any human being not well armed, who should incur their hostility. Even as Raynier had set forth, there was not anything here of the jewelled gorgeousness and architectural splendour popularly associated with the conventional Nawab, yet it was Mushim Khan's principal and favourite place of abode.

It lay in a basin-like hollow. Overhead and around, a grim array of chaotic peaks towered to a considerable height--the slopes lined with cliffs, and strewn with tumbled rocks, representing a vastness of area which the unaccustomed eye took some time to appreciate. Through this valley a small river flowed, having for its outlet a narrow, cliff-hung pass, which was, in fact, the principal access to the great natural amphitheatre.

In describing the chief's personal appearance Raynier had not exaggerated. Mushim Khan was unquestionably a fine-looking man. Tall and straight, his powerful frame was well set off by the flowing whiteness of his garments, and the symmetrical folds of his snowy turban made an effective framework to the strong and dignified face. It was a finer face than those possessed by most of his countrymen, being somewhat fuller, and, though regular of feature, yet had not that hawk-like and predatory expression engendered by the lean and exaggeratedly aquiline cast of profile of the rest. His full beard and the two long tresses hanging low down on either side of his broad chest were jet black, but in view of the custom of dyeing such his age would be hard to determine approximately. His brother, the Sirdar Kuhandil Khan, was scarcely his inferior in appearance--in fact, there was so strong a family likeness between them that they might easily have been mistaken for each other.

"And our people are being inflamed by unrest, brother?"

"Are they not?" answered Kuhandil Khan. "Murad Afzul is here among them again, and it seems that he is drawing all men with him."

"Murad Afzul?" and the chief's brows darkened. "Murad Afzul! I have a mind to make an end of that robber. To what purpose should we allow such as he to draw us into war with the Feringhi? And what should come of such war? Will our land grow fat beneath it or our people increase?"

"It would not be good to make an end of him at this moment," said the vizier. "His following is large and powerful, and our people are ever turbulent. For long has he been teaching them to cast eyes upon Mazaran, whose garrison is weak, and where there is much plunder."

"Then Murad Afzul is chief of the Gularzai," said Mushim Khan, bitterly. "Well, we shall see, for I will order him to take his possessions and depart."

"The omen is favourable," said the vizier, lifting his eyes. "Lo--here he comes?"

Two men were approaching--one tall and of middle age, the other of medium height and old. These drew near and salaamed, yet without the obsequious servility customary on approaching the presence of the more despotic Eastern ruler; for these mountain chiefs ruled more by patriarchal prestige than despotic power. Mushim Khan gave them peace, and they seated themselves.

With the taller and younger of the two we are already acquainted. The other was lean and wrinkled, with fierce eyes staring restlessly out from beneath shaggy brows. He had also a trick of clenching and unclenching his claw-like fingers as though gripping something, and this, together with his bony, hawk-like countenance and rolling eyes, gave him an indescribably cruel, not to say demoniacal, aspect.

"Peace to the chief of the Gularzai," began this man, in a nasal grating snuffle. "Peace to him whom the Feringhi hath created a Nawab, for men say he loves peace."

To all of this the chief listened gravely. He distrusted the speaker, and wholly disapproved of the plan, for he had already been sounded on the matter, and that not once. Murad Afzul spat from time to time, nodding his evil head in approval as he gloated in anticipation over the delights in store--of the bazaar in Mazaran running with blood, and the camel loads of choice loot which should find their way to his mountain retreat. Oh, there were merry times ahead.

"Surely," answered Mushim Khan, looking slightly puzzled, for he saw no coherence in the question.

"His end was that of a brave man if a mistaken one," replied the chief, in a deep voice, and frowning, for he disliked and resented the raking up of this matter. But Hadji Haroun nodded, looking as though awaiting further particulars.

"He died fighting the Feringhi, by whom he was shot--and is now in Paradise," supplemented Kuhandil Khan.

"Then he is alive?"

"Would that he were. Would that his end had been that of a soldier. But it was not. Ya, Mahomed! What an end was his! Wah-wah! what an end!"

And the crooked, claw-like fingers clenched and unclenched upon empty air. Murad Afzul, who had been prepared for this psychological moment, now rose, and having salaamed, moved away, for it was not fitting that he should hear the terrible disclosure about to be made to the two brothers.

"And by them he was shot, by reason of the part he took against them in the rising," said the chief. "And, after all, it was what he might expect, for many of the Feringhi were then slain."

"Hanged?" broke from both, in incredulous horror. "Now that cannot be. The Feringhi would never put to so shameful a death a man of his descent."

"Yet he was hanged, O chiefs--hanged in such fashion as is not to be named--hanged with a portion of swine flesh tied to his body."

Both the listeners had half sprung to their feet, and all unconsciously had struck a crouching, wild-beast attitude--and in truth their faces were in keeping. Their lips had gone back from their teeth and their eyes were glaring.

But the other did not quail.

"It is no lie. Ya, Mahomed! To such a death did they put a Sirdar of the Gularzai. Many were so put to death by the Feringhi, they declaring that such had slain their women and children, having first been lashed, and so also did Allahyar Khan die. But before he died there was one who stood by to whom he whispered his bequest of vengeance, and from that one at his own death came the knowledge to me. Read; here is proof."

"The name?" they growled, looking up. "The name, the name?"

"Are you superstitious, Miss Clive?"

"Well, I don't know. Not more than other people, I suppose."

"That is tantamount to an answer in the affirmative," rejoined Raynier. "Believer in `luck.' Observances connected with the new moon--the finding of a horse-shoe. Things of that kind."

"Oh no, I'm not," she answered decidedly.

"What? You would really upset the salt, and omit to throw some over your shoulder--or walk under a ladder?"

"As to that, I'd make sure there was no one on it with a paint-pot first."

"That's better. And you're not afraid of ghosts, eh?"

"Well, I've never seen one," she answered, demurely mischievous. And then they both laughed.

It was near sundown--also near the camp. They were returning from an afternoon ride, and the rest of the party, Haslam and the Tarletons to wit, were some way on ahead. These two were alone together.

This they had frequently been, since accident had thus thrown them together, and in that brief period of time Raynier had fallen to wondering more and more what there was about Hilda Clive that already he had begun to think how he would miss her later on, and how on earth they could have been shut up together on board a ship all the time they had, and yet that he should hardly have taken any notice of her. Now in their daily intercourse she was so companionable and tactful--and withal feminine. She was really attractive too, he thought, not for the first time, as he looked at her and noticed how well she sat her horse. As an actual fact she really had improved in the point of appearance, and that vastly; for the healthy outdoor life in that high climate had added a colour to her face which gave it just that amount of softness in which it had seemed lacking before.

"If you are absolutely sure you are free from superstition," went on Raynier, "I'd like to show you something that's worth seeing."

"What is it?"

"Oh, I must see it. Where is it, Mr Raynier?"

"Close here. But before you venture you had better think over the penalty. The belief is that whoever enters it meets his death in some shape or form before the end of the next moon."

"That's creepy, at any rate. But is the idea borne out by fact?"

"They say it is, without exception. You would not get any of the people here to set foot in it on any consideration whatever."

"Then none of them ever set foot in it?"

"I should rather think not."

"Then how do they know what would happen if they did?"

They had been riding over a nearly level plain, sparsely grown with stunted vegetation, and shut in by hills, stony and desolate, breaking up here and there into a network of chasms. Under one of these and at the further edge of the plain was pitched their camp, and from where they now halted they could distinguish the smoke of the fires rising straight upward on the still air, could make out the glimmer of a white tent or two. Right in front of them reared a mountain side, steep and lofty, rising in terraced slopes--and, cleaving this there yawned the entrance of a gigantic rift.

"I'm not surprised they should weave all sorts of superstitions about such a place as this," said Hilda Clive, as she gazed up, with admiration not unmixed with awe, at the sheer of the stupendous rock portals, so regular in their smooth immensity as almost to preclude the possibility of being the work of Nature unaided.

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