The Ruby Sword Part 24

"Dis chief--he Umar Khan."

The interest wherewith he would have received this announcement was dashed with a feeling as of the last glimmer of hope extinguished. It was bad enough to know that he was in the power of a revengeful barbarian with every motive for nourishing a deadly grudge against himself, but that this man should turn out to be the famous outlaw, whose savage and cruel nature was a matter of notoriety--well, he felt as good as dead already.

Now he recognised that Umar Khan's object in leading the Ghazi outbreak was not merely that of indiscriminate bloodshed, or even plunder. It was to get possession of himself--for the purpose of wreaking some deadly vengeance which he shuddered to contemplate--and well he might.

"Tell Umar Khan," he said, "that the money we have promised him will be punctually paid--and that when I am back among my friends again in Shalalai I will add to it another two thousand rupees."

The outlaw chief received the rendering of this with a contemptuous grunt, and continued to glare none the less vindictively upon his prisoner. Then he gave certain orders, in the result of which those who had horses prepared to mount them, the remainder following on foot; for those Marris who had been surprised into partic.i.p.ating in the ma.s.sacre had now decided to cast in their lot with Umar Khan. A steed was also provided for Campian, but over and above being an inferior beast, a check rein, held by one of his custodians, was pa.s.sed through the bit.

Before they set forth, however, the leader issued another order, and in the result there stepped out from the stationmaster's house two men. To his surprise the hostage recognised in these Bhallu Khan and the other forest guard. So these were the traitors? These had brought this crew of cut-throat murderers down upon them--and would share in the spoil.

Such was his first thought, but he had never made a greater mistake in his life; the fact being that the two foresters were as innocent of complicity as he himself. They had been squatting outside the station after bidding farewell to their official superior. As fellow countrymen and fellow believers, the Ghazis had refrained from putting them to the sword, but had ordered them to remain within the outbuilding while the work of blood and plunder proceeded--and neither to come forth nor to look forth on pain of death. Now they were released. But first Umar Khan treated them to a long harangue, to which they listened with profound attention.

Campian--hailing the man who had acted as interpreter--told him to ask the chief if he might write a line to the Colonel Sahib and send it by the foresters. A curt refusal was returned, and he was ordered to mount.

As the band receded over the plain, from its midst he could see the white figures of the two foresters moving along the platform--but no others. Yes--he could. He could make out Vivien's figure. He thought he knew what was in her mind as she strained her glance over that amount of s.p.a.ce, if haply she might distinguish him in that throng of retreating forms--and it seemed to him that their very souls went forth to each other and met in blissful reconciliation. Then all was shut from his gaze. The band was entering the black portal of a great _tangi_.

The sight of its smooth rock walls brought back the recollection of that other day, and the result was, on the whole, a cheering one. Then how sore had been his strait. He had come through it, however. Why not again?

At sundown they halted, and spreading their chuddas and putting off their shoes, the whole band proceeded to perform their devotions in most approved fashion. Behind them lay the mangled remains of their unoffending and defenceless victims, slaughtered in cold blood; but then these were heathens and infidels, and to slay such was a meritorious act. So these sons of the desert and the mountain prayed in the direction of Mecca with enhanced faith and fervour.

Throughout half the night they travelled onward. Onward and upward, for they seemed to be ascending higher and higher among the jagged mountain crests. The wind blew piercingly cold, and Campian shivered. They threw him an old poshteen or fur-lined coat, and this he was glad to pull round him in spite of qualms lest it should already be more or less thickly populated. Soon after midnight they halted, and building a large fire under an overhanging rock, lay down beside it. Campian, worn out with fatigue and the reaction after the day's excitement, went into a heavy dreamless sleep.

He was awakened by a push. It seemed as though he had been asleep but five minutes, whereas in point of fact it must have been nearly midday, so high in the heavens was the sun. He looked forth. Piles of mountains in chaotic ma.s.ses heaved up around; all stones and slag; no trees, no herbage worthy of the name. One of the Baluchis handed him a bowl of rice, cold and insipid, and a chunk of mahogany looking substance, which smelt abominably rancid--and which he turned from with loathing. It was in fact a hunk of dried and salted goat flesh. Having got outside the first article of diet, he remembered ruefully how he had been cheerful over the prospect of seeing something of the inner life of the lively Baluchi, but this, as a beginning, was decidedly discouraging.

This appeared to be a favourite halting place, judging from the old marks of fires everywhere around, and a better hiding place it seemed hard to imagine, such an eyrie was it, perched up here out of reach, where one might pa.s.s below again and again and never suspect its existence. The band seemed in no hurry, resting there the entire day.

Part of this the hostage turned to account by trying to win over the good offices of the squint-eyed cross-breed.

This worthy, who rejoiced in the name of Buktiar Khan, was not indisposed to talk. He too was promised a largesse when the prisoner should be set at liberty.

"What you do to dis chief?" he said, in reply to this.

"Eh? I don't quite follow."

"Dis chief, he hate you very much. What you do to him?"

"Oh, I see," and the prisoner's heart sank. His chances of escaping death--and that in some ghastly and barbarous form--looked slighter and slighter. "I never harmed him, that I know of for certain. I never harmed anyone except in fair fight. If he has suffered any injury from me it must be in that way. Tell him, Buktiar, if you get the opportunity, and if you don't, make the opportunity--that a man with the name for bravery and dash that he has made does not bear a grudge over injuries received in fair and open fight. You understand?"

"I un'stand--when you slow speak. Baluchi, he very cross man. You strike him, he strike you. You kill him, his one brother, two brother, kill you, if not dis year, then next year."

A rude interruption there and then occurred to bear out the other's words. Campian, who was seated on the ground at the time, felt himself seized from behind and flung violently on his back. Half-a-dozen sinewy ruffians had laid hold of him, and he was powerless to move. Bending over him was the savage face of Umar Khan, stamped with the same expression of diabolical malignity as it had worn when he had first beheld it.

"O dog," began the outlaw, pushing his now helpless prisoner with his foot, "dost guess what I am going to do with thee?"

"Put an end to me, I suppose," answered Campian wearily, when this had been rendered. "But it doesn't seem fair. I yielded myself up on the understanding that I should only be detained until the five thousand rupees were paid. And now I have promised you two thousand more. What do you gain by my death?"

Buktiar duly translated this, and the Baluchi answered:

"What do I gain? Revenge--blood for blood. But hearken. I had intended to strike off thy head, but thou shalt have thy life. Yet if Umar Khan must walk lame for the remainder of his life, why should the dog whose bite rendered him lame walk straight? Answer that, dog--pig-- answer that," growled the barbarian, grinding his teeth, and working himself up into a frenzy of vindictive rage. "Tell him what I said just now, Buktiar--that a brave man never bears malice for wounds received in fair fight," was the answer.

But this appeal was lost on Umar Khan. He spat contemptuously and went on.

"I had meant to strike off thy head, thou pig, but will be merciful. As I walk lame, thou shalt walk lame. I will strike off both thy feet instead."

A cold perspiration broke out from every pore as this was translated to the unfortunate man. Even if he survived the shock and agony of this frightful mutilation, the prospect of going through life maimed and helpless, and all that it involved--Oh, it was too terrible.

"I would rather die at once," he said. "It will come to that, for I shall bleed to death in any case."

"Bleed to death? No, no. Fire is a good _hakim_," [Physician], replied the Baluchi, with the laugh of a fiend. "Turn thy head and look."

Campian was just able to do this, though otherwise powerless to move.

Now he noticed that the fire near which they had been sitting had been blown into a glow, and an old sword blade which had been thrust in it was now red hot. The perspiration streamed from every pore at the prospect of the appalling torment to which they were about to subject him. Not even the thought that this was part of the forfeit he had to pay for the saving of Vivien availed to strengthen him. Unheroic as it may sound, there was no room for other emotion in his mind than that of horror and shrinking fear. The ring of savage, turbaned countenances thrust forward to witness his agony were to him at that moment as the faces of devils in h.e.l.l.

Umar Khan drew his tulwar and laid its keen edge against one of the helpless man's ankles.

"Which foot shall come off first?" he snarled. "You, Mohammed, have the hot iron ready."

He swung the great curved blade aloft, then down it came with a swish.

Was his foot really cut off? thought the sufferer. It had been done so painlessly. Ah, but the shock had dulled the agony! That would follow immediately.

Again the curved blade swung aloft. This time it was quietly lowered.

"Let him rise now," said Umar Khan, with a devilish expression of countenance which was something between a grin and a scowl.

Those who held him down sprang off. In a dazed sort of way Campian rose to a sitting posture and stared stupidly at his feet. No mutilated stump spouting blood met his gaze. The vindictive savage had been playing horribly upon his fears. He was unharmed.

"I have another thought," said Umar Khan, returning his sword to its scabbard. "I will leave thee the use of thy feet until to-morrow morning. Then thou shalt walk no more."

The prospect of a surgical amputation, even when carried out with all the accessories of scientific skill, is not conducive to a placid frame of mind, by any means. What then must be that of a cruel mutilation, with all the accompaniments of sickening torture, for no other purpose than to gratify the vindictive spite of a barbarian? The reaction from the acute mental agony he had undergone had rendered Campian strangely helpless. It was a weariful feeling, as though he would fain have done with life, and in his desperation he glanced furtively around to see if it would not be possible to s.n.a.t.c.h a weapon and die, fighting hard. A desire for revenge upon the ruffian who had subjected him to such outrage then came uppermost. Could he but seize a tulwar, Umar Khan should be his first victim, even though he himself were cut to pieces the next moment. But he had no opportunity. The Baluchis guarded their weapons too carefully.

"Does that devil really mean what he says, Buktiar?" he took occasion to ask, "or is he only trying to scare me?"

"He mean it," replied the cross-breed, somewhat gloomily, for were the prisoner injured the prospect of his own reward seemed to vanish. "Once he cut off one man's feet--and hands too--and leave him on the mountain.

Plenty wolf that part--dey eat him."

This was cheering. How desperate was his strait, here, in the power of these cruel savages--in the heart of a ghastly mountain waste that a month or two ago he had never heard of--even now he did not know where he was. Their route the day before had been so tortuous that he could not guess how near or how far they had travelled from any locality known to him.

"I will give you a thousand rupees, Buktiar, if you help me to escape,"

he said. "If you can't help me, but do nothing to prevent me, I'll give you five hundred."

The cross-breed squinted diabolically as he strove to puzzle out how he was to earn this reward. Like most Asiatics he was acquisitive and money loving, and to be promised a rich reward, and yet see no prospect of being able to earn it, was tantalising to the last degree. He shook his head in his perplexity.

"Money good, life better," he said. "Dey see me help you--then I dead.

What I do?"

Then Umar Khan spoke angrily, and in the result Buktiar left the side of the prisoner, with whom he had no further opportunity of converse that day.

The night drew down in gusty darkness. A misty drizzle filled the air, and it was piercingly cold. The Baluchis huddled round their fires, having lighted two, and presently their deep-toned drowsy conversation ceased. One by one they dropped off to sleep.