Part 24

The cavalry were very quiet, but each man gripped his carbine and stood beside his horse. Again the voice called, “Who goes there?” and in a louder key, “O brothers, give the alarm!” Now, every man in the cavalry would have died in his long boots sooner than have asked for quarter, but it is a fact that the answer to the second call was a long wail of “Marf karo! Marf karo!” which means, “Have mercy! Have mercy!” It came from the climbing regiment.

The cavalry stood dumbfoundered, till the big troopers had time to whisper one to another: “Mir Khan, was that thy voice? Abdullah, didst thou call?” Lieutenant Halley stood beside his charger and waited. So long as no firing was going on he was content. Another flash of lightning showed the horses with heaving flanks and nodding heads; the men, white eye-balled, glaring beside them, and the stone watch-tower to the left. This time there was no head at the window, and the rude iron-clamped shutter that could turn a rifle-bullet was closed.

“Go on, men,” said the Major. “Get up to the top at any rate!” The squadron toiled forward, the horses wagging their tails and the men pulling at the bridles, the stones rolling down the hillside and the sparks flying. Lieutenant Halley declares that he never heard a squadron make so much noise in his life. They scrambled up, he said, as though each horse had eight legs and a spare horse to follow him. Even then there was no sound from the watch-tower, and the men stopped exhausted on the ridge that overlooked the pit of darkness in which the village of Bersund lay. Girths were loosed, curb-chains shifted, and saddles adjusted, and the men dropped down among the stones. Whatever might happen now, they held the upper ground of any attack.

The thunder ceased, and with it the rain, and the soft thick darkness of a winter night before the dawn covered them all. Except for the sound of falling water among the ravines below, everything was still. They heard the shutter of the watch-tower below them thrown back with a clang, and the voice of the watcher calling, “Oh, Hafiz Ullah!”

The echoes took up the call, “La-la-la!” and an answer came from the watch-tower hidden round the curve of the hill, “What is it, Shahbaz Khan?”

Shahbaz Khan replied in the high-pitched voice of the mountaineer: “Hast thou seen?”

The answer came back: “Yes. God deliver us from all evil spirits!”

There was a pause, and then: “Hafiz Ullah, I am alone! Come to me.”

“Shahbaz Khan, I am alone also; but I dare not leave my post!”

“That is a lie; thou art afraid.”

A longer pause followed, and then: “I am afraid. Be silent! They are below us still. Pray to God and sleep.”

The troopers listened and wondered, for they could not understand what save earth and stone could lie below the watch-towers.

Shahbaz Khan began to call again: “They are below us. I can see them! For the pity of God come over to me, Hafiz Ullah! My father slew ten of them. Come over!”

Hafiz Ullah answered in a very loud voice, “Mine was guiltless. Hear, ye Men of the Night, neither my father nor my blood had any part in that sin. Bear thou thine own punishment, Shahbaz Khan.”

“Oh, some one ought to stop those two chaps crowing away like cocks there,” said the Lieutenant, shivering under his rock.

He had hardly turned round to expose a new side of him to the rain before a bearded, long-locked, evil-smelling Afghan rushed up the hill, and tumbled into his arms. Halley sat upon him, and thrust as much of a sword-hilt as could be spared down the man's gullet. “If you cry out, I kill you,” he said cheerfully.

The man was beyond any expression of terror. He lay and quaked, gasping. When Halley took the sword-hilt from between his teeth, he was still inarticulate, but clung to Halley's arm, feeling it from elbow to wrist.

“The Rissala! The dead Rissala!” he gasped, “It is down there!”

“No; the Rissala, the very much alive Rissala. It is up here,” said Halley, unshipping his watering-bridle and fastening the man's hands. “Why were you in the towers so foolish as to let us pass?”

“The valley is full of the dead,” said the Afghan. “It is better to fall into the hands of the English than the hands of the dead. They march to and fro below there. I saw them in the lightning.”

He recovered his composure after a little, and whispering, because Halley's pistol was at his stomach, said: “What is this? There is no war between us now, and the Mullah will kill me for not seeing you pass!”

“Rest easy,” said Halley; “we are coming to kill the Mullah, if God please. His teeth have grown too long. No harm will come to thee unless the daylight shows thee as a face which is desired by the gallows for crime done. But what of the dead regiment?”

“I only kill within my own border,” said the man, immensely relieved. “The dead regiment is below. The men must have passed through it on their journey--four hundred dead on horses, stumbling among their own graves, among the little heaps--dead men all, whom we slew.”

“Whew!” said Halley. “That accounts for my cursing Carter and the Major cursing me. Four hundred sabres, eh? No wonder we thought there were a few extra men in the troop. Kurruk Shah,” he whispered to a grizzled native officer that lay within a few feet of him, “hast thou heard anything of a dead Rissala in these hills?

“Assuredly,” said Kurruk Shah with a grim chuckle. “Otherwise, why did I, who have served the Queen for seven-and-twenty years, and killed many hill-dogs, shout aloud for quarter when the lightning revealed us to the watch-towers? When I was a young man I saw the killing in the valley of Sheor-Kit there at our feet, and I know the tale that grew up therefrom. But how can the ghosts of unbelievers prevail against us who are of the Faith? Strap that dog's hands a little tighter, Sahib. An Afghan is like an eel.”

“But a dead Rissala,” said Halley, jerking his captive's wrist. “That is foolish talk, Kurruk Shah. The dead are dead. Hold still, Sag.” The Afghan wriggled.

“The dead are dead, and for that reason they walk at night. What need to talk? We be men; we have our eyes and ears. Thou canst both see and hear them down the hillside,” said Kurruk Shah composedly.

Halley stared and listened long and intently. The valley was full of stifled noises, as every valley must be at night; but whether he saw or heard more than was natural Halley alone knows, and he does not choose to speak on the subject.