Flashman at the Charge

I suppose my life has been full of poetic justice—an expression customarily used by Holy Joes to cloak the vindictive pleasure they feel when some enterprising fellow fetches himself a cropper. They are the kind who'll say unctuously that I was properly hoist with my own petard at Arabat, and serve the bastard right. I'm inclined to agree; East would never have abandoned me if I hadn't heaved Valla out of the sled in the first place. He'd have stuck by me and the Christian old school code, and let his military duty go hang. But my treatment of his beloved made it easy for him to forget the ties of comradeship and brotherly love, and do his duty; all his pious protestations about leaving me were really hypocritical moonshine, spouted out to salve his own conscience.

I know my Easts and Tom Browns, you see. They're never happy unless their morality is being tried in the furnace, and they can feel they're doing the right, Christian thing—and never mind the consequences to anyone else. Selfish brutes. Damned unreliable it makes 'em, too. On the other hand, you can always count on me. I'd have got the news through to Raglan out of pure cowardice and self-love, and to hell with East and Valla both; but your pious Scud had to have a grudge to pay off before he'd abandon me. Odd, ain't it? They'll do for us yet, with their sentiment and morality.

In the meantime he had done for me, handsomely. If you're one of the aforementioned who take satisfaction in seeing the wicked go arse over tip into the pit which they have digged, you'll relish the situation of old Flashy, a half-healed crack in his head, a broken rib crudely strapped up with rawhide, lousy after a week in a filthy cell under Fort Arabat, and with his belly muscles fluttering in the presence of Captain Count Nicholas Pavlovitch Ignatieff.

They had hauled me into the guard-room, and there he was, the inevitable cigarette clamped between his teeth, those terrible hypnotic blue-brown eyes regarding me with no more emotion than a snake's. For a full minute he stared at me, the smoke escaping in tiny wreaths from his lips, and then without a change of expression he lashed me across the face with his gloves, back and forth, while I struggled feebly between my Cossack guards, trying to duck my head from his blows.

"Don't!" I cried. "Don't, please! Pajalsta! I'm a prisoner! You've no right to … to treat me so! I'm a British officer … please! I'm wounded … for God's sake, stop!"

He gave me one last swipe, and then looked at his gloves, weighing them in his hand. Then, in that icy whisper, he said: "Burn those," and dropped them at the feet of the aide who stood beside him.

"You," he said to me, and his voice was all the more deadly for not bearing the slightest trace of heat or emotion, "plead for mercy. You need expect none. You are forsworn—a betrayer of the vilest kind. You were treated with every consideration, with kindness even, by a man who turned to you in his hour of need, laying on you the most solemn obligation to protect his daughter. You repaid him by abducting her, by trying to escape, and by abandoning her to her death. You …"

"It's a lie!" I shouted. "I didn't—it was an accident! She fell from the sled—it wasn't my fault! I was driving, I wasn't even with her!"

His reply to this was a gesture to the aide, who struck me with the gloves again.

"You are a liar," says Ignatieff. "The officer of the pursuing troop saw you. Pencherjevsky himself has told me how you and your comrade East left Starotorsk, how you basely seized the opportunity to escape …"

"It wasn't base … we'd given no parole … we had the right of any prisoners of war … in all honour …"

"You talk of honour," says he softly. "You thought to escape all censure, because you believed Pencherjevsky was doomed. Fortunately, he was not a hetman of Cossacks for nothing. He cut his way clear, and in spite of your unspeakable treatment of his daughter, she too survived."

"Thank God for that!" cries I. "Believe me, sir, you are quite mistaken. I intended no betrayal of the Count, and I swear I never mistreated his daughter—it was all an accident …

"The only accident for you was the one that prevented your escaping. I promise you," he went on, in that level, sibilant voice, "that you will live to wish that sled had crushed your life out. For by your conduct, you understand, you have lost every right to be treated as an honourable man, or even as a common felon. You are beyond the law of nations, you are beyond mercy. One thing alone can mitigate your punishment."

He paused there, to let it sink in, and to take another cigarette. The aide lit it for him, while I waited, quaking and sweating.

"I require an answer to one question," says Ignatieff, "and you will supply it in your own language. Lie to me, or try to evade it, and I will have your tongue removed." His next words were in English. "Why did you try to escape?"

Terrified as I was, I daren't tell him the truth. I knew that if he learned that, I'd found out about his expedition to India, it was all up with me.

"Because … because there was the opportunity . . and there wasn't any dishonour in it. And we meant … ah, Miss Pencherjevsky no harm, I swear we didn't …"

"You lie. No one, in your situation, would have attempted such a foolhardy escape, let alone such a dishonourable one, without some pressing reason." The blue-brown eyes seemed to be boring into my brain. "I believe I know what it was—the only thing it could possibly be. And I assure you, in five minutes from now you will be dying, in excruciating agony, unless you can tell me what is meant by -" he paused, inhaling on his cigarette "- Item Seven." He let the smoke trickle down his nostrils. "If, by chance, you are unaware of what it means, you will die anyway."

There was nothing for it; I had to confess. I tried to speak, but my throat was dry. Then I stammered out hoarsely, in English:

"It's a plan … to invade India. Please, for God's sake, I found out about it by accident, I … "

"How did you discover it?"

I babbled it out, how we had eavesdropped in the gallery and heard him talking to the Tsar. "It was just by chance … I didn't mean to spy … it was East, and he said we must try to escape … to get word to our people … to warn them! I said it was dishonourable, that we were bound as gentlemen …"

"And Major East was with you, and overheard?"

"Yes, yes … it was his notion, you see! I didn't like it … and when he suggested we escape, when those beastly peasants attacked Starotorsk … what could I do? But I swear we meant no harm, and … and it's a lie that I mistreated Miss Pencherjevsky—I'll swear it, by my honour, on the Bible…"

"Gag him," says Ignatieff. "Bring him to the courtyard. And bring a prisoner. Any one in the cells will do."

They stuffed a rag into my mouth, and bound it, stifling my pleas for mercy, for I was sure he was going to make away with me horribly, now that he had his information. They pinioned my wrists, and thrust me brutally out into the yard; it was freezing, and I had nothing but my shirt and breeches. I waited, trembling with cold and funk, until presently another Cossack appeared, driving in front of him a scared, dirty-looking peasant with fetters on his legs. Ignatieff, who had followed us out, and was pinching the paper of a cigarette, beckoned the Cossack.

"What was this fellow's offence?"

"Insubordination, Lord Count."

"Very good," says Ignatieff, and lit his cigarette.

Two more Cossacks appeared, carrying between them a curious bench, like a vaulting horse with very short legs and a flat top. The prisoner shrieked at the sight of it, and tried to run, but they dragged him to it, tearing off his clothes, and bound him on it face down, with thongs at his ankles, knees, waist and neck, so that he lay there, naked and immovable, but still screaming horribly.

Ignatieff beckoned one of the Cossacks, who held out to him a curious thick black coil, of what looked for all the world like shiny liquorice. Ignatieff hefted it in his hands, and then stepped in front of me and placed it over my head; I shuddered as it touched my shoulders, and was astonished by the weight of the thing. At a sign from Ignatieff the Cossack, grinning, drew it slowly off my shoulders, and I realized in horror as it slithered off like an obscene black snake that it was a huge whip, over twelve feet long, as thick as my arm at the butt and tapering to a point no thicker than a boot-lace.

"You will have heard of this," says Ignatieff softly. "It is called a knout. Its use is illegal. Watch."

The Cossack stood opposite the bench with its howling victim, took the knout in both hands, and swept it back over his shoulder so that its hideous lash trailed behind him in the snow. Then he struck.

I've seen floggings, and watched with fascination as a rule, but this was horrible, like nothing imaginable. That diabolical thing cut through the air with a noise like a steam whistle, so fast that you couldn't see it; there was a crack like a pistol-shot, a fearful, choked scream of agony, and then the Cossack was snaking it back for another blow.

"Wait," says Ignatieff, and to me: "Come here." They pushed me forward to the bench, the bile nearly choking me behind the gag; I didn't want to look, but they forced me. The wretched man's buttocks were cut clean across, as by a sabre, and the blood was pouring out.

"The drawing stroke," says Ignatieff. "Proceed."

Five more shrieking cuts, five more explosive cracks, five more razor gashes, and the snow beneath the bench was sodden with blood. The most horrible thing was that the victim was conscious still, making awful animal noises.

"Now observe," says Ignatieff, "the effect of a flat blow."

The Cossack struck a seventh time, but this time he didn't snap the knout, but let it fall smack across the patient's spine. There was a dreadful sound, like a wet cloth slapped on stone, but from the victim no cry at all. They unstrapped him, and as they lifted the bleeding wreck of his body from the bench, I saw it was hanging horribly limp in the middle.

"The killing stroke," said Ignatieff. "It is debatable how many of the drawing blows a man can endure, but with the flat stroke one is invariably fatal." He turned to look at me, and then at the blood-soaked bench, as though considering, while he smoked calmly. At last he dropped his cigarette in the snow.

"Bring him inside."

I was half-fainting with fear and shock when they dropped me sprawling in a chair, and Ignatieff sat down behind the table and waved them out. He lit himself another cigarette, and then said quietly:

"That was a demonstration, for your benefit. You see now what awaits you—except that when your turn comes I shall take the opportunity of ascertaining how many of the drawing strokes a vigorous and healthy man can suffer before he dies. Your one hope of escaping that fate lies in doing precisely as you are told—for I have a use for you. If I had not, you would be undergoing destruction by the knout at this moment."

He smoked in silence for a minute, never taking his eyes off me, and I watched him like a rabbit before a snake. Not only the hideous butchery I had watched, but the fact that he had condemned a poor devil to it just to impress me, appalled me utterly. And I knew I would do anything—anything, to escape that abomination.

"That you had somehow learned of Item Seven I already suspected," says Ignatieff at last. "Nothing else would have led you to flee. Accordingly, for the past week, we have proceeded on the assumption that intelligence of our expedition would reach Lord Raglan—and subsequently your government in London. We can now be certain that it has done so, since your companion, Major East, has not been recaptured. This betrayal is regrettable, but by no means disastrous. Indeed, it can be made to work to our advantage, for your authorities will suppose that they have seven months to prepare against the blow that is coming. They will be wrong. In four months from now our army will be advancing over the Khyber Pass, thirty thousand strong, with at least half as many Afghan allies eager to descend across the Indus. If every British soldier in India were sent to guard the frontier—which is impossible—it would not serve to stem our advance. No adequate help can arrive from England in time, and your troops will have a rebellious Indian population at their backs while we take them by the throat. Our agents are already at work, preparing that insurrection.

"You may wonder how it is possible to advance the moment of our attack by three months. It is simple. General Khruleffs original plan for an attack through the Syr Daria country to Afghanistan and India will be adhered to—our army had been preparing to take this route, which was abandoned only lately because of minor difficulties with native bandits and because the southern road, through Persia, offered a more secure and leisurely progress. The change of plan will thus be simple to effect, since the army is still poised for the northern route, and the arrangements for its transport by sea across Caspian and Aral can proceed immediately. This will ensure progress at twice the speed we could hope for if we went through Persia. And we will consolidate our position among the Syr Daria and Amu Daria tribesmen in passing."

I didn't doubt a word of it—not that I cared a patriotic damn. They could have India, China, and the whole bloody Orient for me, if only I could find a way out for myself.

"It is as well that you should know this," went on Ignatieff, "so that you may understand the part which I intend that you should play in it. A part for which you are providentially qualified. I know a great deal about you—so much, indeed, that you will be astonished at the extent of my knowledge. It is our policy to garner information, and I doubt," went on this cocky bastard, "whether any state in Europe can boast such extensive secret dossiers as we possess. I am especially aware of your activities in Afghanistan fourteen years ago—of your work, along with such agents as Burnes and Pottinger, among the Gilzais and other tribes. I know even of the exploit which earned you the extravagant nickname of 'Bloody Lance', of your dealings with Muhammed Akbar Khan, of your solitary survival of the disaster which befell the British Army*(*See Flashman.)—a disaster in which, you may be unaware, our own intelligence service played some part."

Now, shaken and fearful as I was, one part of my mind was noting something from all this. Master Ignatieff might be a clever and devilish dangerous man, but he had at least one of the besetting weaknesses of youth: he was as vain as an Etonian duke, and it led him to commit the cardinal folly in a diplomatic man. He talked too much.

"It follows," says he, "that you can be of use to us in Afghanistan. It will be convenient, when our army arrives there, to have a British officer, of some small reputation in that country, to assist us in convincing the tribal leaders that the decay of British power is imminent, and that it will be in their interests to join in the conquest of India. They will not need much convincing, but even so your betrayal will add to the impression our armed force will make."

For all his impassivity, I knew he was enjoying this; it was in the tilt of his cigarette, and the glitter in his gotch eye.

"It is possible, of course, that you will prefer death—even by the knout—to betrayal of your country. I doubt it, but I must take into consideration the facts which are to be found in your dossier. They tell me of a man brave to the point of recklessness, of proved resource, and of considerable intelligence. My own observation of you tends to contradict this—I do not judge you to be of heroic material, but I may be mistaken. Certainly your conduct at Balaclava, of which I have received eye-witness accounts, is of a piece with your dossier. It does not matter. If, when you have been taken to Afghanistan with our army, you decline to make what the Roman priests call a propaganda on our behalf, we shall derive what advantage we can from displaying you naked in an iron cage along the way. The knouting will take place when we arrive on Indian soil."

He had it all splendidly pat, this icy Muscovite bastard, and well pleased with himself he was, too. He pinched another cigarette between his fingers, thinking to himself to see if there was any other unpleasant detail he could rub into me, and deciding there wasn't, called to the Cossack guard.

"This man," says he, "is a dangerous and desperate criminal. He is to be chained wrist and ankle at once, and the keys are to be thrown away. He will accompany us to Rostov tomorrow, and if, while he is in your charge he should escape or die"—he paused, and when he went on it was as casually said as though he were confining them to barracks—"you will be knouted to death. And your families also. Take him away."

You may not credit it, but my feelings as they thrust me down into my underground pit, clamped chains on my wrists and ankles, and slammed the door on me, were of profound relief. For one thing, I was out of the presence of that evil madman with his leery optic—that may seem small enough, but you haven't been closeted with him, and I have. Point two, I was not only alive but due to be preserved in good health for at least four months—and I was old soldier enough to know that a lot can happen in that time. Point three, I wasn't going into the unknown: Afghanistan, ghastly place though it is, was a home county hunt to me, and if once I could get a yard start, I fancied I could survive the going a sight better than any Russian pursuers.

It was a mighty "if', of course, but funny things happen north of the Khyber—come to that, I wondered if Ignatieff and his brother-thugs knew exactly what they were tackling in taking an army through that country. We'd tried it, and God knew we were fitter to go to war than the Russians ever were, yet we'd come most horribly undone. I remembered my old sparring chums, the Gilzais and Baluchis and Khels and Afridis—and those fiends of Ghazis—and wondered if the Ruskis knew precisely the kind of folk they'd be relying on for safe-conduct and alliance.

They had their agents in Afghanistan, to be sure, and must have a shrewd notion of how things were; I wondered if they had secured their alliances in advance, perhaps with the King? And one thing was certain, the Afghans hated the British, and would join in an attack on India like Orangemen on the Twelfth. It would be all up with the Honourable East India Company then, and no bones about it.

Thinking about that, I could make a guess that if there was a point where the Russian force might run into trouble, it would be in the wild country that they must pass through before they reached Afghanistan. In my days at Kabul, Sekundar Burnes had told me a bit about it—of the independent Khanates at Bokhara and Samarkand and the Syr Daria country, where the Russians had even then been trying to extend their empire, and getting a bloody nose in the process. Fearsome bastards those northern tribes were, Tajiks and Uzbeks and the remnants of the great hordes, and from the little I'd heard from folk like Pencherjevsky, they were still fiercely resisting Russian encroachment. We'd had a few agents up that way ourselves, in my time, fellows like Burnes and Stoddart, trying to undermine Russian influence, but with our retreat from Afghanistan it was well out of our bailiwick now, and the Russians would no doubt eat up the tribes at their leisure. That's what Ignatieff had hinted, and I couldn't see the wild clans being able to stand up to an army of thirty thousand, with ten thousand Cossack cavalry and artillery trains and the rest of it.

No, setting aside a few minor rubs, this Russian expedition looked to me to be on a good firm wicket—but that mattered nothing as far as I was concerned. What I had to bide my time for was Afghanistan, and the moment when they brought me out of my blinkers to make what Ignatieff called a propaganda on Russia's behalf. That would be the moment to lift up mine eyes unto the hills, or the tall trees, or the nearest hole in the ground—anywhere at all, so long as it offered a refuge from Ignatieff. I didn't even think about the price of failure- to escape—it was quite unthinkable.

You may think it strange, knowing me, that even in the hellish mess I found myself, with the shadow of horrible death hanging over me, I could think ahead so clearly. Well, it wasn't that I'd grown any braver as I got older the reverse, if anything—but I'd learned, since my early days, that there's no point in wasting your wits and digestion blubbering over evil luck and folly and lost opportunities. I'll admit, when I thought how close I'd been to winning clear, I could have torn my hair—but there it was. However fearful my present predicament, however horrid the odds and dangers ahead, they'd get no better with being fretted over. It ain't always easy, if your knees knock as hard as mine, but you must remember the golden rule: when the game's going against you, stay calm—and cheat.

In this state of philosophic apprehension, then, I began my journey from Fort Arabat the following day—a journey such as I don't suppose any other Englishman has ever made. You can trace it on the map, all fifteen hundred miles of it, and your finger will go over places you never dreamed of, from the edge of civilization to the real back of beyond, over seas and deserts to mountains that perhaps nobody will ever climb, through towns and tribes that belong to the Arabian Nights rather than to the true story of a reluctant English gentleman (as the guide books would say) with two enormous scowling Cossacks brooding over him the whole way.

The first part of the journey was all too familiar, by sled back along the Arrow of Arabat, over the bridge at Yenitchi, and then east along that dreary winter coast to Taganrog, where the snow was already beginning to melt in the foul little streets, and the locals still appeared to be recovering from the excesses of the great winter fair at Rostov. Russians, in my experience, are part-drunk most of the time, but if there's a sober soul between the Black Sea and the Caspian for weeks after the Rostov kermesse he must be a Baptist hermit; Taganrog was littered with returned revellers. Rostov I don't much remember, or the famous river Don, but after that we took to telegues, and since the great Ignatieff was riding at the front of our little convoy of six vehicles, we made good speed. Too good for Flashy, bumping along uncomfortably on the straw in one of the middle wagons; my chains were beginning to be damned uncomfortable, and every jolt of those infernal telegues bruised my wrists and ankles. You may think fetters are no more than an inconvenience, but when every move you make means lifting a few pounds of steel, which chafes your flesh and jars your bones, and means you can never lie without their biting into you, they become a real torture. I pleaded to have them removed, if only for an hour or two, and got a kick in my half-mended rib for my pains.

Cossacks, of course, never wash (although they brush their coats daily with immense care) and I wasn't allowed to either, so by the time we were rolling east into the half-frozen steppe beyond Rostov I was filthy, bearded, tangled, and itchy beyond belief, stinking with the garlic of their awful food, and only praying that I wouldn't contract some foul disease from my noisome companions—for they even slept either side of me, with their nagaikas knotted into my chains. It ain't like a honeymoon at Baden, I can tell you.

There were four hundred miles of that interminable plain, getting worse as it went on; it took us about five days, as near as I remember, with the telegues going like blazes, and new horses at every post-house. The only good thing was that as we went the weather grew slightly warmer until, when we were entering the great salt flats of the Astrakhan, the snow vanished altogether, and you could even travel without your tulup.

Astrakhan city itself is a hell-hole. The land all about is as flat as the Wash country, and the town itself lies so low they have a great dyke all round to prevent the Volga washing it into the Caspian, or t'other way round. As you might expect, it's a plague spot; you can smell the pestilence in the air, and before we passed through the dyke Ignatieff ordered everyone to soak his face and hands with vinegar, as though that would do any good. Still, it was the nearest I came to making toilet the whole way.

Mark you, there was one good thing about Astrakhan: the women. Once you get over towards the Caspian the people are more slender and Asiatic than your native Russian, and some of those dark girls, with their big eyes and long straight noses and pouting lips had even me, in my unkempt misery, sitting up and dusting off my beard. But of course I never got near them; it was into the kremlin for Flash and his heavenly twins, and two nights in a steaming cell before they put us aboard a steamer for the trip across the Caspian.

It's a queer sea, that one, for it isn't above twenty feet deep, and consequently the boats are of shallow draught, and bucket about like canoes. I spewed most of the way, but the Cossacks, who'd never sailed before, were in a fearful way, vomiting and praying by turns. They never let go of me, though, and I realized with a growing sense of alarm that if these two watch-dogs were kept on me all the way to Kabul, I'd stand little chance of giving them the slip. Their terror of Ignatieff was if anything even greater than mine, and in the worst of the boat's heaving one of them was always clutching my ankle chains, even if he was rolling about the deck retching at the same time.

It was four days of misery before we began to steam through clusters of ugly, sandy little islands towards the port of Tishkandi, which was our destination. I'm told it isn't there any longer, and this is another strange thing about the Caspian—its coastline changes continually, almost like the Mississippi shores. One year there are islands, and next they have become hills on a peninsula, while a few miles away a huge stretch of coast will have changed into a lagoon.

Tishkandi's disappearance can have been no loss to anyone; it was a dirty collection of huts with a pier, and beyond it the ground climbed slowly through marshy salt flats to two hundred miles of arid, empty desert. You could call it steppe, I suppose, but it's dry, rocky heartbreaking country, fit only for camels and lizards.

"Ust-Yurt," says one of the officers, as he looked at it, and the very name sent my heart into my boots.

It's dangerous country, too. There was a squadron of lancers waiting for us when we landed, to guard us against the wild desert tribes, for this was beyond the Russian frontiers, in land where they were still just probing at the savage folk who chopped up their caravans and raided their outposts whenever they had the chance. When we made camp at night it was your proper little laager, with sangars at each corner, and sentries posted, and half a dozen lancers out riding herd. All very business-like, and not what I'd have expected from Ruskis, really. But this was their hard school, as I was to learn, like our North-west Frontier, where you either soldiered well or not at all.

It was five days through the desert, not too uncomfortable while we were moving, but freezing hellish at night, and the dromedaries with their native drivers must have covered the ground at a fair pace, forty miles a day or thereabouts. Once or twice we saw horsemen in the distance, on the low rocky barchans, and I heard for the first time names like "Kazak" and "Turka", but they kept a safe distance. On the last day, though, we saw more of them, much closer, and quite peaceable, for these were people of the Aral coast, and the Russians had them fairly well in order on that side of the sea. When I saw them near I had a strange sense of recognition—those swarthy faces, with here and there a hooked nose and a straggling moustache, the dirty puggarees swathed round the heads, and the open belted robes, took me back to Northern India and the Afghan hills. I found myself stealing a look at my Cossacks and the lancers, and even at Ignatieff riding with the other officers at the head of our caravan, and thinking to myself—these ain't your folk, my lads, but they're mighty close to some I used to know. It's a strange thing, to come through hundreds of miles of wilderness, from a foreign land and moving in the wrong direction, and suddenly find yourself sniffing the air and thinking, "home". If you're British, and have soldiered in India, you'll understand what I mean.

Late that afternoon we came through more salty flats to a long coastline of rollers sweeping in from a sea so blue that I found myself muttering through my beard "Thalassa or thalatta, the former or the latter?," it seemed so much like the ocean that old Arnold's Greeks had seen after their great march. And suddenly I could close my eyes and hear his voice droning away on a summer afternoon at Rugby, and smell the cut grass coming in through the open windows, and hear the fags at cricket outside, and from that I found myself dreaming of the smell of hay in the fields beyond Renfrew, and Elspeth's body warm and yielding, and the birds calling at dusk along the river, and the pony champing at the grass, and it was such a sweet, torturing longing that I groaned aloud, and when I opened my eyes the tears came, and there was a hideous Russian voice clacking "Aralskoe More!",*(*"Aral Sea!") and bright Asian sunlight, and the chains galling my wrist and ankle-bones, and foreign flat faces all round, and I realized that my earlier thoughts of home had been an illusion, and this was alien, frightening land.

There was a big military camp on the shore, and a handy little steamer lying off, and while the rest of us waited Ignatieff was received with honours by a group of senior officers—and he only, a captain, too. Of course, I'd realized before this that he was a big noise, but the way they danced attendance on him you'd have thought he was the Tsar's cousin. (Maybe he was, for all I know.)

They put us aboard the steamer that evening, and I was so tuckered out by the journey that I just slept where I lay down. And in the morning there was a coast ahead, with a great new wooden pier, and a huge river flowing down between low banks to the sea. As far as I could see the coast was covered with tents, and there was another steamer, and half a dozen big wooden transports, and one great warship, all riding at anchor between the pier and the river mouth. There were bugles sounding on the distant shore, and swarms of people everywhere, among the tents, on the pier, and on the ships, and a great hum of noise in the midst of which a military band was playing a rousing march; this is the army, I thought, or most of it, this is their Afghan expedition.

I asked one of the Russian sailors what the river might be, and he said: "Syr Daria," and then pointing to a great wooden stockaded fort on the rising land above the river, he added: "Fort Raim."³⁵ And then one of the Cossacks pushed him away, cursing, and told me to hold my tongue.

They landed us in lighters, and there was another delegation of smart uniforms to greet Ignatieff, and an orderly holding a horse for him, and all around tremendous bustle of unloading and ferrying from the ships, and gangs of orientals at work, with Russian non-coms bawling at them and swinging whips, and gear being stowed in the newly-built wooden sheds along the shore. I watched gun limbers being swung down from a derrick, and cursing, half-naked gangs hauling them away; the whole pier was piled with crates and bundles, and for all the world it looked like the levee at New Orleans, except that this was a temporary town of huts and tents and lean-to's. But there were just as many people, sweating and working in orderly chaos, and you could feel the excitement in the air.

Ignatieff came trotting down to where I was sitting between my Cossacks, and at a word they hauled me up and we set off at his heels through the confusion, up the long, gradual slope to the fort. It was farther off than I'd expected, about a mile, so that it stood well back from the camp, which was all spread out like a table down the shoreline. As we neared the fort he stopped, and his orderly was pointing at the distant picket lines and identifying the various regiments—New Russian Dragoons, Romiantzoff's Grenadiers, Astrakhan Carabiniers, and Aral Hussars, I remember. Ignatieff saw me surveying the camp, and came over. He hadn't spoken to me since we left Arabat.

"You may look," says he, in that chilling murmur of his, "and reflect on what you see. The next Englishman to catch sight of them will be your sentry on the walls of Peshawar. And while you are observing, look yonder also, and see the fate of all who oppose the majesty of the Tsar."

I looked where he pointed, up the hill towards the fort, and my stomach turned over. To one side of the gateway was a series of wooden gallows, and from each one hung a human figure—although some of them were hard to recognize as human. A few hung by their arms, some by their ankles, one or two lucky ones by their necks. Some were wasted and blackened by exposure; at least one was still alive and stirring feebly. An awful carrion reek drifted down on the clear spring air.

"Unteachables," says Ignatieff. "Bandit scum and rebels of the Syr Daria who have been unreceptive to our sacred Russian imperial mission. Perhaps, when we have lined their river with sufficient of these examples, they will learn. It is the only way to impress recalcitrants. Do you not agree?"

He wheeled his horse, and we trailed up after him towards the fort. It was bigger, far bigger, than I'd expected, a good two hundred yards square, with timber ramparts twenty feet high, and at one end they were already replacing the timber with rough stone. The Russian eagle ensign was fluttering over the roofed gatehouse, there were grenadiers drawn up and saluting as -Ignatieff cantered through, and I trudged in, clanking, to find myself on a vast parade, with good wooden barracks around the walls, troops drilling in the dusty square, and a row of two-storey administrative buildings down one side. It was a very proper fort, something like those of the American frontier in the 'seventies; there were even some small cottages which I guessed were officers' quarters.

Ignatieff was getting his usual welcome from a tubby chap who appeared to be the commandant; I wasn't interested in what they said, but I gathered the commandant was greatly excited, and was babbling some great news.

"Not both of them?" I heard Ignatieff say, and the other clapped his hands in great glee and said, yes, both, a fine treat for General Perovski and General Khruleff when they arrived.

"They will make a pretty pair of gallows, then," says Ignatieff. "You are to be congratulated, sir. Nothing could be a better omen for our march through Syr Daria."

"Ah, ha, excellent!" cries the tubby chap, rubbing his hands. "And that will not be long, eh? All is in train here, as you see, and the equipment arrives daily. But come, my dear Count, and refresh yourself."

They went off, leaving me feeling sick and hang-dog between my guards; the sight of those tortured bodies outside the stockade had brought back to me the full horror of my own situation. And I felt no better when there came presently a big, brute-faced sergeant of grenadiers, a coiled nagaika in his fist, to tell my Cossacks they could fall out, as he was taking me under his wing.

"Our necks depend on this fellow," says one of the Cossacks doubtfully, and the sergeant sneered, and scowled at me.

"My neck depends on what I've got in the cells already," growls he. "This offal is no more precious than my two birds. Be at peace; he shall join them in my most salubrious cell, from which even the lizards cannot escape. March him along!"

They escorted me to a corner on the landward side of the fort, down an alley between the wooden buildings, and to a short flight of stone steps leading down to an iron-shod door. The sergeant hauled back the massive bolts, thrust back the creaking door, and then reached up, grabbing me by my wrist-chains.

"In, tut!" he snarled, and yanked me headlong down into the cell. The door slammed, the bolts ground to, and I heard him guffawing brutally as their footsteps died away.

I lay there trembling on the dirty floor, just about done with fatigue and fear. At least it was dim and cool in here. And then I heard someone speaking in the cell, and raised my head; at first I could make nothing out in the faint light that came from a single window high in one wall, and then I started with astonishment, for suspended flat in the air in the middle of the cell, spread-eagled as though in flight, was the figure of a man. As my eyes grew accustomed to the dimness I drew in a shuddering breath, for now I could see that he was cruelly hung between four chains, one to each limb from the top corners of the room. More astonishing still, beneath his racked body, which hung about three feet from the floor, was crouched another figure, supporting the hanging man on his back, presumably to take the appalling strain of the chains from his wrists and ankles. It was the crouching man who was speaking, and to my surprise, his words were in Persian.

"It is a gift from God, brother," says he, speaking with difficulty. "A rather dirty gift, but human—if there is such a thing as a human Russian. At least, he is a prisoner, and if I speak politely to him I may persuade him to take my place for a while, and bear your intolerable body. I am too old for this, and you are heavier than Abu Hassan, the breaker of wind."

The hanging man, whose head was away from me, tried to lift it to look. His voice, when he spoke, was hoarse with pain, but what he said was, unbelievably, a joke.

"Let him … approach .. then … and I pray … to God … that he has … fewer fleas … than you … Also … you are … a most … uncomfortable … support … God help … the … woman … who shares … your bed."

"Here is thanks," says the crouching man, panting under the weight. "I bear him as though I were the Djinn of the Seven Peaks, and he rails at me. You, nasrani,"*(*Christian.) he addressed me: "If you understand God's language, come and help me to support this ingrate, this sinner. And when you are tired, we shall sit in comfort against the wall, and gloat over him. Or I may squat on his chest, to teach him gratitude. Come, Ruski, are we not all God's creatures?"

And even as he said it, his voice quavered, he staggered under the burden above him, and slumped forward unconscious on the floor.

The hanging man gave a sudden cry of anguish as his body took the full stretch of the chains; he hung there moaning and panting until, without really thinking, I scrambled forward and came up beneath him, bearing his trunk across my stooped back. His face was hanging backward beside my own, working with pain.

"God … thank you!" he gasped at last. "My limbs are on fire! But not for long—not for long—if God is kind." His voice came in a tortured whisper. "Who are you—a Ruski?"

"No," says I, "an Englishman, a prisoner of the Russians."

"You speak … our tongue … in God's name?"

"Yes," says I, "Hold still, curse you, or you'll slip!"

He groaned again: he was a devilish weight. And then: "Providence … works strangely," says he. "An angliski … here. Well, take heart, stranger … you may be . . more fortunate … than you know."

I couldn't see that, not by any stretch, stuck in a lousy cell with some Asiatic nigger breaking my back. Indeed, I was regretting the impulse which had made me bear him up—who was he to me, after all, that I shouldn't let him dangle? But when you're in adversity it don't pay to antagonize your companions, at least until you know what's what, so I stayed unwillingly where I was, puffing and straining.

"Who … are you?" says he.

"Flashman. Colonel, British Army."

"I am Yakub Beg, "³⁶ whispers he, and even through his pain you could hear the pride in his voice. "Kush Begi, Khan of Khokand, and guardian of … the White Mosque. You are my … guest … sent to me … from heaven. Touch … on my knee … touch on my bosom … touch where you will."

I recognized the formal greeting of the hill folk, which wasn't appropriate in the circumstances.

"Can't touch anything but your arse at present," I told him, and I felt him shake—my God, he could even laugh, with the arms and legs being drawn out of him.

"It is a … good answer," says he. "You talk … like a Tajik. We laugh … in adversity. Now I tell you … Englishman … when I go hence … you go too."

I thought he was just babbling, of course. And then the other fellow, who had collapsed, groaned and sat up, and looked about him.

"Ah, God, I was weak," says he. "Yakub, my son and brother, forgive me. I am as an old wife with dropsy; my knees are as water."

Yakub Beg turned his face towards mine, and you must imagine his words punctuated by little gasps of pain.

"That ancient creature who grovels on the floor is Izzat Kutebar, "³⁷ says he. "A poor fellow of little substance and less wit, who raided one Ruski caravan too many and was taken, through his greed. So they made him "swim upon land', as I am swimming now, and he might have hung here till he rotted—and welcome—but I was foolish enough to think of rescue, and scouted too close to this fort of Shaitan. So they took me, and placed me in his chains, as the more important prisoner of the two—for he is dirt, this feeble old Kutebar. He swung a good sword once, they say—God, it must have been in Timur's time!"

"By God!" cries Kutebar. "Did I lose Ak Mechet to the Ruskis? Was I whoring after the beauties of Bokhara when the beast Perovski massacred the men of Khokand with his grapeshot? No, by the pubic hairs of Rustum! I was swinging that good sword, laying the Muscovites in swathes along Syr Daria, while this fine fighting chief here was loafing in the bazaar with his darlings, saying 'Eyewallah, it is hot today; give me to drink, Miriam, and put a cool hand on my forehead.' Come out from under him, feringhee, and let him swing for his pains."

"You see?" says Yakub Beg, craning his neck and trying to grin. "A dotard, flown with dreams. A badawi zhazhkayan*(*A wild babbler.) who talks as the wild sheep defecate, at random, everywhere. When you and I go hither, Flashman bahadur, we shall leave him, and even the Ruskis will take pity on such a dried-up husk, and employ him to clean their privies—those of the common soldiers, you understand, not the officers."

If I hadn't served long in Afghanistan, and learned the speech and ways of the Central Asian tribes, I suppose I'd have imagined that I was in a cell with a couple of madmen. But I knew this trick that they have of reviling those they respect most, in banter, of their love of irony and formal imagery, which is strong in Pushtu and even stronger in Persian, the loveliest of all languages.

"When you go hither!" scoffs Kutebar, climbing to his feet and peering at his friend. "When will that be? When Buzurg Khan remembers you? God forbid I should depend on the goodwill of such a one. Or when Sahib Khan comes blundering against this place as you and he did two years ago, and lost two thousand men? Eyah! Why should they risk their necks for you—or me? We are not gold; once we are buried, who will dig us up?"

"My people will come," says Yakub Beg. "And she will not forget me."

"Put no faith in women, and as much in the Chinese," says Kutebar cryptically. "Better if this stranger and I try to surprise the guard, and cut our way out."

"And who will cut these chains?" says the other. "No, old one, put the foot of courage in the stirrup of patience. They will come, if not tonight, then tomorrow. Let us wait."

"And while you're waiting," says I, "put the shoulder of friendship beneath the backside of helplessness. Lend a hand, man, before I break in two."

Kutebar took my place again, exchanging insults with his friend, and I straightened up to take a look at Yakub Beg. He was a tall fellow, so far as I could judge, narrow waisted and big shouldered—for he was naked save for his loose pyjamy trousers—with great corded arm muscles. His wrists were horribly torn by his manacles, and while I sponged them with water from a chatti*(*Water jug.) in the corner I examined his face. It was one of your strong hill figureheads, lean and long jawed, but straight-nosed for once—he'd said he was a Tajik, which meant he was half-Persian. His head was shaved, Uzbek fashion, with a little scalp-lock to one side, and so was his face, except for a tuft of forked beard on his chin. A tough customer, by the look of him; one of those genial mountain scoundrels who'll tell you merry stories while he stabs you in the guts just for the fun of hearing his knife-hilt bells jingle.

"You are an Englishman," says he, as I washed his wrists. "I knew one, once, long ago. At least I saw him, in Bokhara, the day they killed him. He was a man, that one—Khan Ali, with the fair beard. "Embrace the faith,' they said. "Why should I?' says he, 'since you have murdered my friend who forsook his church and became a Muslim. Ye have robbed; ye have killed; what do you want of me?' And they said, 'Blood'. Says he: "Then make an end.' And they killed him. I was only a youth, but I thought, when I go, if I am far from home, let me go like that one. He was a ghazi, *(*Champion.) that Khan Ali. "³⁸

"Much good it did him," growled Kutebar, underneath. "For that matter, much good Bokhara ever did anyone. They would sell us to the Ruskis for a handful of millet. May their goats' milk turn to urine and their girls all breed Russian bastards—which they will do, no doubt, with alarming facility."

"You spoke of getting out of here," says I to Yakub Beg. "Is it possible? Will your friends attempt a rescue?"

"He has no friends," says Kutebar. "Except me, and see the pass I am brought to, propping up his useless trunk."

"They will come," says Yakub Beg, softly. He was pretty done, it seemed to me, with his eyes closed and his face ravaged with pain. "When the light fades, you two must leave me to hang—no, Izzat, it is an order. You and Flashman bahadur must rest, for when the Lady of the Great Horde comes over the wall the Ruskis will surely try to kill us before we can be rescued. You two must hold them, with your shoulders to the door."

"If we leave you to hang you will surely die," says Kutebar, gloomily. "What will I say to her then?" And suddenly he burst into a torrent of swearing, slightly muffled by his bent position. "These Russian apes! These scum of Muscovy! God smite them to the nethermost pit! Can they not give a man a clean death, instead of racking him apart by inches? Is this their civilizing empire? Is this the honour of the soldiers of the White Tsar? May God the compassionate and merciful rend the bowels from their bodies and -"

"Do you rest, old groaner," gasps Yakub, in obvious pain from the passionate heaving of his supporter. "Then you may rend them on your own account, and spare the All-wise the trouble. Lay them in swathes along Syr Daria—again."

And in spite of Kutebar's protests, Yakub Beg was adamant. When the light began to fade he insisted that we support him no longer, but let him hang at full stretch in his chains. I don't know how he endured it, for his muscles creaked, and he bit his lip until the blood ran over his cheek, while Kutebar wept like a child. He was a burly, grizzled old fellow, stout enough for all his lined face and the grey hairs on his cropped head, but the tears fairly coursed over his leathery cheeks and beard, and he damned the Russians as only an Oriental can. Finally he kissed the hanging man on the forehead, and clasped his chained hand, and came over to sit by me against the wall.

Now that I had a moment to think, I didn't know what to make of it all. My mind was in a whirl. When you have been tranquil for a while, as I had been at Starotorsk, and then dreadful things begin to happen to you, one after another, it all seems like a terrible nightmare; you have to force your mind to steady up and take it all in, and make yourself understand that it is happening. That flight through the snow with East and Valla—was it only four weeks ago? And since then I'd been harried half-way round the world, it seemed, from those freezing snowy steppes, across sea and desert, to this ghastly fort on the edge of nowhere, and here I was—Harry Flashman, rank of Colonel, 17th Lancers, aide-de-camp to Lord Raglan (God, this time last year I'd been playing pool in Piccadilly with little Willy)—here I was, in a cell with two Tajik-Persian bandits who talked a language³⁹ I hadn't heard in almost fifteen years, and lived in another world that had nothing to do with Raglan or Willy or Piccadilly or Starotorsk or—oh, aye, it had plenty to do with the swine Ignatieff. But they were talking of rescue and escape, as though it were sure to come, and they chained in a stinking dungeon—I had to grip hard to realize it. It might mean—it just might—that when I had least right to expect it, there was a chance of freedom, of throwing off the horrible fear of the death that Ignatieff had promised me. Freedom, and flight, and perhaps, at the end of it, safety?

I couldn't believe it. I'd seen the fort, and I'd seen the Russian host down on the shore. You'd need an army—and yet, these fellows were much the same as Afghans, and I knew their way of working. The sudden raid, the surprise attack, the mad hacking melee (I shuddered at the recollection), and then up and away before civilized troops have rubbed the sleep from their eyes. There were a thousand questions l wanted to ask Kutebar- but what was the use? They had probably just been talking to keep their spirits up. Nothing would happen; we were stuck, in the grip of the bear, and on that despairing conclusion I must have fallen asleep.

And nothing did happen. Dawn came, and three Russians with it bearing a dish of nauseating porridge; they jeered at us and then withdrew. Yakub Beg was half-conscious, swinging in his fetters, and through that interminable day Kutebar and I took turns to prop him up. I was on the point, once or twice, of rebelling at the work, which didn't seem worth it for all the slight relief it gave his tortured joints, but one look at Kutebar's face made me think better of it. Yakub Beg was too weak to joke now, or say much at all, and Kutebar and I just crouched or lay in silence, until evening came. Yakub Beg somehow dragged himself back to sense then, just long enough to order Kutebar hoarsely to let him swing, so that we should save our strength. My back was aching with the strain, and in spite of my depression and fears I went off to sleep almost at once, with that stark figure spread horribly overhead in the fading light, and Kutebar weeping softly beside me.

As so often happens, I dreamed of the last thing I'd seen before I went to sleep, only now it was I, not Yakub Beg, who was hanging in the chains, and someone (whom I knew to be my old enemy Rudi Starnberg) was painting my backside with boot blacking. My late father-in-law, old Morrison, was telling him to spread it thin, because it cost a thousand pounds a bottle, and Rudi said he had gallons of the stuff, and when it had all been applied they would get Narreeman, the Afghan dancing-girl, to ravish me and throw me out into the snow. Old Morrison said it was a capital idea, but he must go through my pockets first; his ugly, pouchy old face was leering down at me, and then slowly it changed into Narreeman's, painted and mask-like, and the dream became rather pleasant, for she was crawling all over me, and we were floating far, far up above the others, and I was roaring so lustfully that she put her long, slim fingers across my lips, cutting off my cries, and I tried to tear my face free as her grip grew tighter and tighter, strangling me, and I couldn't breathe; she was murmuring in my ear and her fingers were changing into a hairy paw—and suddenly I was awake, trembling and sweating, with Kutebar's hand clamped across my mouth, and his voice hissing me to silence.

It was still night, and the cold in the cell was bitter. Yakub Beg was hanging like a corpse in his chains, but I knew he was awake, for in the dimness I could see his head raised, listening. There wasn't a sound except Kutebar's hoarse breathing, and then, from somewhere outside, very faint, came a distant sighing noise, like a sleepy night-bird, dying away into nothing. Kutebar stiffened, and Yakub Beg's chains clinked as he turned and whispered:

"Bhistisawad!* (*Heavenly!) The sky-blue wolves are in the fold!"

Kutebar rose and moved over beneath the window. I heard him draw in his breath, and then, between his teeth, he made that same strange, muffled whistle—it's the kind of soft, low noise you sometimes think you hear at night, but don't regard, because you imagine it is coming from inside your own head. The Khokandians can make it travel up to a mile, and enemies in between don't even notice it. We waited, and sure enough, it came again, and right on its heels the bang of a musket, shattering the night.

There was a cry of alarm, another shot, and then a positive volley culminating in a thunderous roar of explosion, and the dim light from the window suddenly increased as with a lightning flash. And then a small war broke out, shots, and shrieks and Russian voices roaring, and above all the hideous din of yelling voices—the old Ghazi war-cry that had petrified me so often on the Kabul road.

"They have come!" croaked Yakub Beg. "It is Ko Dali's daughter! Quick, Izzat—the door!"

Kutebar was across the cell in a flash, roaring to me. We threw ourselves against the door, listening for the sounds of our guards.

"They have blown in the main gate with barut,"* (*Gunpowder.) cries Yakub Beg weakly. "Listen—the firing is all on the other side! Oh, my darling! Eyah! Kutebar, is she not a queen among women, a najud?* (*A woman of intelligence and good shape.) Hold fast the door, for when the Ruskis guess why she has come they will -"

Kutebar's shout of alarm cut him short. Above the tumult of shooting and yelling we heard a rush of feet, the bolts were rasping back, and a great weight heaved at the door on the other side. We strained against it, there was a roar in Russian, and then a concerted thrust from without. With our feet scrabbling for purchase on the rough floor we held them; they charged together and the door gave back, but we managed to heave it shut again, and then came the sound of a muffled shot, and a splinter flew from the door between our faces.

"Bahnanas!"(Apes.) bawled Kutebar. "Monkeys without muscles! Can two weak prisoners hold you, then? Must you shoot, you bastard sons of filth?"

Another shot, close beside the other, and I threw myself sideways; I wasn't getting a bullet in my guts if I could help it. Kutebar gave a despairing cry as the door was forced in; he stumbled back into the cell, and there on the threshold was the big sergeant, torch in one hand and revolver in the other, and two men with bayoneted muskets at his heels.

"That one first!" bawls the sergeant, pointing at Yakub Beg. "Still, you!" he added to me, and I crouched back beside the door as he covered me. Kutebar was scrambling up beyond Yakub Beg; the two soldiers ignored him, one seizing Yakub Beg about the middle to steady him while the other raised his musket aloft to plunge the bayonet into the helpless body.

"Death to all Ruskis!" cries Yakub. "Greetings, Timur -"

But before the bayonet could come down Kutebar had launched himself at the soldier's legs; they fell in a thrashing tangle of limbs, Kutebar yelling blue murder, while the other soldier danced round them with his musket, trying to get a chance with his bayonet, and the sergeant bawled to them to keep clear and give him a shot.

Old dungeon-fighters like myself- and I've had a wealth of experience, from the vaults of Jotunberg, where I was sabre to sabre with Starnberg, to that Afghan prison where I let dear old Hudson take the strain—know that the thing to do on these occasions is find a nice dark corner and crawl into it. But out of sheer self-preservation I daren't—I knew that if I didn't take a hand Kutebar and Yakub would be dead inside a minute, and where would Cock Flashy be then, poor thing? The sergeant was within a yard of me, side on, revolver hand extended towards the wrestlers on the floor; there was two feet of heavy chain between my wrists, so with a silent frantic prayer I swung my hands sideways and over, lashing the doubled chain at his forearm with all my strength. He screamed and staggered, the gun dropping to the floor, and I went plunging after it, scrabbling madly. He fetched up beside me, but his arm must have been broken, for he tried to claw at me with his far hand, and couldn't reach; I grabbed the gun, stuck it in his face, and pulled the trigger—and the bloody thing was a single-action weapon, and wouldn't fire!

He floundered over me, trying to bite—and his breath was poisonous with garlic—while I wrestled with the hammer of the revolver. His sound hand was at my throat; I kicked and heaved to get him off, but his weight was terrific. I smashed at his face with the gun, and he released my throat and grabbed my wrist; he had a hold like a vice, but I'm strong, too, especially in the grip of fear, and with a huge heave I managed to get him half off me—and in that instant the soldier with the bayonet was towering over us, his weapon poised to drive down at my midriff.

There was nothing I could do but scream and try to roll away; it saved my life, for the sergeant must have felt me weaken, and with an animal snarl of triumph flung himself back on top of me—just as the bayonet came down to spit him clean between the shoulder blades. I'll never forget that engorged face, only inches from my own—the eyes starting, the mouth snapping open in agony, and the deafening scream that he let out. The soldier, yelling madly, hauled on his musket to free the bayonet; it came out of the writhing, kicking body just as I finally got the revolver cocked, and before he could make a second thrust I shot him through the body.

As luck had it, he fell on top of the sergeant, so there was Flashy, feverishly cocking the revolver again beneath a pile of his slain. The sergeant was dead, or dying, and being damned messy about it, retching blood all over me. I struggled as well as I could with my fettered hands, and had succeeded in freeing myself except for my feet—those damned fetters were tangled among the bodies—when Yakub shouted:

"Quickly, angliski! Shoot!"

The other soldier had broken free from Kutebar, and was in the act of seizing his fallen musket; I blazed away at him and missed—it's all too easy, I assure you—and he took the chance to break for the door. I snapped off another round at him, and hit him about the hip, I think, for he went hurtling into the wall. Before he could struggle up Kutebar was on him with the fallen musket, yelling some outlandish war-cry as he sank the bayonet to the locking-ring in the fellow's breast.

The cell was a shambles. Three dead men on the floor, all bleeding busily, the air thick with powder smoke, Kutebar brandishing his musket and inviting God to admire him, Yakub Beg exulting weakly and calling us to search the sergeant for his fetter keys, and myself counting the shots left in the revolver—two, in fact.

"The door!" Yakub was calling. "Make it fast, Izzat—then the keys, in God's name! My body is bursting!"

We found a key in the sergeant's pocket, and released Yakub's ankles, lowering him gently to the cell floor and propping him against the wall with his arms still chained to the corners above his head. He couldn't stand—I doubted if he'd have the use of his limbs inside a week—and when we tried to unlock his wrist-shackles the key didn't fit. While Izzat searched the dead man's clothes, fuming, I kept the door covered; the sounds of distant fighting were still proceeding merrily, and it seemed to me we'd have more Russian visitors before long. We were in a damned tight place until we could get Yakub fully released; Kutebar had changed his tack now, and was trying to batter open a link in the chain with his musket butt.

"Strike harder, feeble one!" Yakub encouraged him. "Has all your strength gone in killing one wounded Ruski?"

"Am I a blacksmith?" says Kutebar. "By the seven pools of Eblis, do I have iron teeth? I save your life—again—and all you can do is whine. We have been at work, this feringhi and I, while you swung comfortably—God, what a fool's labour is this!"

"Cease!" cries Yakub. "Watch the door!"

There were feet running, and voices; Kutebar took the other side from me, his bayonet poised, and I cocked the revolver. The feet stopped, and then a voice called "Yakub Beg?" and Kutebar flung up his hands with a crow of delight.

"Inshallah! There is good in the Chinese after all! Come in, little dogs, the work is done! Come and look on the bloody harvest of Kutebar!"

The door swung back, and before you could say Jack Robinson there were half a dozen of them in the cell—robed, bearded figures with grinning hawk faces and long knives—I never thought I'd be glad to see a Ghazi, and these were straight from that stable. They fell on Kutebar, embracing and slapping him, while the others either stopped short at the sight of me or hurried on to Yakub Beg, slumped against the far wall. And foremost was a lithe black-clad figure, tight-turbaned round head and chin, with a flowing cloak—hardly more than a boy. He stooped over Yakub Beg, cursing softly, and then shouted shrilly to the tribesmen:

"Hack through those chains! Bear him up—gently—ah, God, my love, my love, what have they done to you?"

He was positively weeping, and then suddenly he was clasping the wounded man, smothering his cheeks with kisses, cupping the lolling head between his hands, murmuring endearments, and finally kissing him passionately on the mouth.

Well, the Pathans are like that, you know, and I wasn't surprised to find these near-relations of theirs similarly inclined to perversion; bad luck on the girls, I always think, but all the more skirt for chaps like me. Disgusting sight, though, this youth slobbering over him like that.

Our rescuers were eyeing me uncertainly, until Kutebar explained whose side I was on; then they all turned their attention to Oscar and Bosie. One of the tribesmen had hacked through Yakub's chains, and four of them were bearing him towards the door, while the black-clad boy flitted alongside, cursing them to be careful. Kutebar motioned me to the door, and I followed him up the the steps, still clutching my revolver; the last of the tribesmen paused, even at that critical moment, to pass his knife carefully across the throats of the three dead Russians, and then joined us, giggling gleefully.

"The hallal!"*(*Ritual throat-cutting.) says he. "Is it not fitting, for the proper despatch of animals?"

"Blasphemer!" says Kutebar. "Is this a time for jest?"

The boy hissed at them, and they were silent. He had authority, this little spring violet, and when he snapped a command they jumped to it, hurrying along between the buildings, while he brought up the rear, glancing back towards the sound of shooting from the other side of the fort. There wasn't a Russian to be seen where we were, but I wasn't surprised. I could see the game—a sudden attack, with gunpowder and lots of noise, at the main gate, to draw every Russian in that direction, while the lifting party sneaked in through some rear bolt-hole. They were probably inside before the attack began, marking the sentries and waiting for the signal—but they hadn't bargained, apparently, for the sergeant and his men having orders to kill Yakub Beg as soon as a rescue was attempted. We'd been lucky there.

Suddenly we were under the main wall, and there were figures on the catwalk overhead; Yakub Beg's body, grotesquely limp, was being hauled up, with the boy piping feverishly at them to be easy with him. Not fifty feet away, to our left, muskets were blazing from one of the guard towers, but they were shooting away from us. Strong lean hands helped me as I scrambled clumsily at a rope-ladder; voices in Persian were muttering around us in the dark, robed figures were crouching at the embrasures, and then we were sliding down the ropes on the outside, and I fell the last ten feet, landing on top of the man beneath, who gave a brief commentary on my parentage, future, and personal habits as only a hillman can, and then called softly:

"All down, Silk One, including the clown Kutebar, your beloved the Atalik Ghazi, and this misbegotten pig of a feringhi with the large feet."

"Go!" said the boy's voice from the top of the wall, and as they thrust me forward in the dark a long keening wail broke out from overhead; it was echoed somewhere along the wall, and even above the sound of firing I heard it farther off still. I was stumbling along in my chains, clutching at the hand of the man who led me.

"Where are we going?" says I. "Where are you taking me?"

"Ask questions in the council, infidel, not in the battle," says he. "Can you ride, you feringhi who speaks Persian? Here, Kutebar, he is your friend; do you take him, lest he fall on me again."

"Son of dirt and dung," says Kutebar, lumbering out of the dark. "Did he not assist me in slaying Ruskis, who would undoubtedly have cut our throats before your tardy arrival? What would the Silk One have said to you then, eh? A fine rescue, by God! The whores of Samarkand market could have done it better!"

I thought that a trifle hard, myself; it had been as neat a jail clearance, for my money, as heart could desire, and I doubt if ten minutes had passed since I'd woken with Kutebar's hand on my mouth. I'd killed one man, perhaps two, and their blood was still wet on my face—but I was free! Whoever these fine chaps were, they were taking me out of the clutches of that rascal Ignatieff and his beastly knouts and nagaikas—I was loose again, and living, and if my fetters were galling me and my joints aching with strain and fatigue, if my body was foul and fit to drop, my heart was singing. You've sold 'em again, old son, I thought; good for you—and these accommodating niggers, of course.

About half a mile from the fort there was a gully, with cypress trees, and horses stamping in the dark, and I just sat on the ground, limp and thankful, beside Kutebar, while he reviled our saviours genially. Presently the boy in black came slipping out of the shadows, kneeling beside us.

"I have sent Yakub away," says he. "It is far to the edge of the Red Sands. We wait here, for Sahib Khan and the others—God grant they have not lost too many!"

"To build the house, trees must fall," says Kutebar complacently. I agreed with him entirely, mind you. "And how is His Idleness, the Falcon on the Royal Wrist—God, my back is broken, bearing him up! How many days did I carry his moping carcase, in that filthy cell, with never a word of complaint from my patient lips? Has my labour been in vain?"

"He is well, God be thanked," says the boy, and then the furious little pansy began to snivel like a girl. "His poor limbs are torn and helpless—but he is strong, he will mend! He spoke to me, Kutebar! He told me how you—cared for him, and fought for him just now—you and the feringhi here. Oh, old hawk of the hills, how can I bless you enough?"

And the disgusting young lout flung his arms round Kutebar's neck, murmuring gratefully and kissing him, until the old fellow pushed him away—he was normal, at least.

"Shameless thing!" mutters he. "Respect my grey hairs! Is there no seemliness among you Chinese, then? Away, you bare-faced creature—practise your gratitude on this angliski if you must, but spare me!"

"Indeed I shall," says the youth, and turning to me, he put his hands on my shoulders. "You have saved my love, stranger; therefore you have my love, forever and all." He was a nauseatingly pretty one this, with his full lips and slanting Chinese eyes, and his pale, chiselled face framed by the black turban. The tears were still wet on his cheeks, and then to my disgust he leaned forward, plainly intending to kiss me, too.

"No thank'ee!" cries I. "No offence, my son, but I ain't one for your sort, if you don't mind …"

But his arms were round my neck and his lips on mine before I could stop him—and then I felt two firm young breasts pressing against my chest, and there was no mistaking the womanliness of the soft cheek against mine. A female, bigad—leading a Ghazi storming-party on a neck-or-nothing venture like this! And such a female, There are some parts of my life that I'd be glad to relive any time—and some that I don't care to remember at all. But there aren't many that I look back on and have to pinch myself to believe that they really happened. The business of the Khokandian Horde of the Red Sands is one of these, and yet it's one of the few episodes in my career that I can verify from the history books if I want to. There are obscure works on Central Asia by anonymous surveyors and military writers,⁴⁰ and I can look in them and find the names and places—Yakub Beg, Izzat Kutebar and Katti Torah; Buzurg Khan and the Seven Khojas, the Great and Middle Hordes of the Black Sands and the Golden Road, the Sky-blue Wolves of the Hungry Steppe, Sahib Khan, and the remarkable girl they called the Silk One. You can trace them all, if you are curious, and learn how in those days they fought the Russians inch by inch from the Jaxartes to the Oxus, and if it reads to you like a mixture of Robin Hood and the Arabian Nights—well, I was there for part of it, and even I look back on it as some kind of frightening fairy-tale come true.

And when I've thumbed through the books and maps, and mumbled the names aloud as an old man does, looking out of my window at the cabs clopping past by the Park in twentieth-century London, and the governesses stepping demurely with their little charges (deuced smart, some of these governesses), I'll go and rummage until I've found that old clumsy German revolver that I took from the Russian sergeant under Fort Raim, and for a threadbare scarf of black silk with the star-flowers embroidered on it—and I can hear again Yakub's laughter ringing behind me, and Kutebar's boastful growling, and the thunder of a thousand hooves and the shouting of the turbaned Tajik riders that makes me shiver still. But most of all I smell the wraith of her perfume, and see those slanting black eyes—"Lick up the honey, stranger, and ask no questions." That was the best part.

On the night of the rescue from Fort Raim, of course, I knew next to nothing about them—except that they were obviously of the warlike tribes constantly warring with the Russians who were trying to invade their country and push the Tsar's dominions south to Afghanistan and east to the China border. It was a bloody, brutal business that, and the wild people—the Tajiks, the Kirgiz-Kazaks, the Khokandians, the Uzbeks and the rest—were being forced back up the Syr Daria into the Hungry Steppe and the Red Sands, harrying all the way, raiding the new Russian outposts and cutting up their caravans.

But they weren't just savages by any means. Behind them, far up the Syr Daria and the Amu Daria, were their great cities of Tashkent and Khokand and Samarkand and Bokhara, places that had been civilized when the Russians were running round bare-arsed—these were the spots that Moscow was really after, and which Ignatieff had boasted would be swept up in the victorious march to India. And leaders like Yakub and Kutebar were waging a desperate last-ditch fight to stop them in the no-man's-land east of the Aral Sea along the Syr Daria.

It was to the brink of that no-man's-land that they carried us on the night of our deliverance from Fort Raim—a punishing ride, hour after hour, through the dark and the silvery morning, over miles of desert and gully and parched steppe-land. They had managed to sever my ankle chain, so that I could back a horse, but I rode in an exhausted dream, only half-conscious of the robed figures flanking me, and the smell of camel-hair robes, and sinking on to a blessed softness to sleep forever.

It was a good place, that—an oasis deep in the Red Sands of the Kizil Kum, where the Russians still knew better than to venture. I remember waking there, to the sound of rippling water, and crawling out of the tent in bright sunlight, and blinking at a long valley, crowded with tents, and a little village of beautiful white houses on the valley side, with trees and grass, and women and children chattering, and Tajik riders everywhere, with their horses and camels—lean, ugly, bearded fellows, bandoliered and booted, and not the kind of company I care to keep, normally. But one of them sings out: "Salaam, angliski!" as he clattered by, and one of the women gave me bread and coffee, and all seemed very friendly.

Somewhere—I believe it's in my celebrated work, Dawns and Departures of a Soldier's Life—I've written a good deal about that valley, and the customs and manners of the tribesfolk, and what a little Paradise it seemed after what I'd been through. So it was, and some fellows would no doubt have been content to lie back, wallowing in their freedom, thanking Providence, and having a rest before thinking too hard about the future. That's not Flashy's way; given a moment's respite I have to be looking ahead to the next leap, and that very first morning, while the local smith was filing off my fetters in the presence of a grinning, admiring crowd, I was busy thinking, aye, so far so good, but where next? That Russian army at Fort Raim was still a long sight too close for comfort, and I wouldn't rest easy until I'd reached real safety—Berkeley Square, say, or a little ale-house that I know in Leicestershire.

Afghanistan looked the best bet—not that it's a place I'd ever venture into gladly, but there was no other way to India and my own people, and I figured that Yakub Beg would see me safe along that road, as a return for services rendered to him in our cell at Fort Raim. We jail-birds stick together, and he was obviously a man of power and influence—why, he was probably on dining-out terms with half the badmashes*(*Ruffians.) and cattle-thieves between here and Jallalabad, and if necessary he'd give me an escort; we could travel as horse-copers, or something, for with my Persian and Pushtu I'd have no difficulty passing as an Afghan. I'd done it before. And there would be no lousy Russians along the road just yet, thank God—and as my thoughts went bounding ahead it suddenly struck me, the magnificent realization—I was free, within reach of India, and I had Ignatieff's great secret plan of invasion! Oh, East might have taken it to Raglan, but that was nothing in the gorgeous dream that suddenly opened up before me—the renowned Flashy, last seen vanishing into the Russian army at Balaclava with boundless energy, now emerging in romantic disguise at Peshawar with the dreadful news for the British garrison.

"You might let the Governor-General know," I would tell my goggling audience, "that there's a Russian army of thirty thousand coming down through the Khyber shortly, with half Afghanistan in tow, and if he wants to save India he'd better get the army up here fairly smart. Yes, there's no doubt of it—got it from the Tsar's secret cabinet. They probably know in London by now—fellow called East got out through the Crimea, I believe—I'd been wounded, you see, and told him to clear out and get the news through at any price. So he left me—well, you take your choice, don't you? Friendship or duty?—anyway, it don't signify. I'm here, with the news, and it's here we'll have to stop 'em. How did I get here? Ha-ha, my dear chap, if I told you, it wouldn't make you any wiser. Half-way across Russia, through Astrakhan, over the Aral Sea (Caspian, too, as a matter of fact) and across the Hindu Kush—old country to me, of course. Rough trip? No-o, not what I'd call rough, really—be glad when these fetter-marks have healed up, though—Russian jailers, I don't mind telling you, have a lot to learn from English chambermaids, what? Yes, I assure you, I am Flashman—yes, the Flashman, if you like. Now, do be a good fellow and get it on the telegraph to Calcutta, won't you? Oh, and you might ask them to forward my apologies to Lord Raglan that I wasn't able to rejoin him at Balaclava, owing to being unavoidably detained. Now, I'd give anything for a bath, and a pair of silk socks and a hairbrush, if you don't mind …"

Gad, the Press would be full of it. Hero of Afghanistan, and now Saviour of India—assuming the damned place was saved. Still, I'd have done my bit, and East's scuttle through the snow would look puny by comparison. I'd give him a careful pat on the back, of course, pointing out that he'd only done his duty, even if it did mean sacrificing his old chum. "Really, I think that in spite of everyything, I had the easier part," I would say gravely. "I didn't have that kind of choice to make, you see." Modest, off-hand, self-deprecatory—if I played it properly, I'd get a knighthood out of it.

And all I had to do to realize that splendid prospect was have a chat with Yakub Beg, as soon as he had recovered from his ordeal, point out that the Russians were our mutual enemies and I was duty bound to get to India at once, thank him for his hospitality, and be off with his blessing and assistance. Not to waste time, I broached the thing that afternoon to Izzat Kutebar, when he invited me to share a dish of kefir with him in the neighbouring tent where he was recovering, noisily, from his captivity and escape.

"Eat, and thank Providence for such delights as this, which you infidels call ambrosia," says he, while one of his women put the dish of honey-coloured curds before me. "The secret of its preparation was specially given by God to Abraham himself. Personally, I prefer it even to a Tashkent melon—and you know the proverb runs that the Caliph of the Faithful would give ten pearl-breasted beauties from his hareem for a single melon of Tashkent. Myself, I would give five, perhaps, or six, if the melon were a big one." He wiped his beard. "And you would go to Afghanistan, then, and to your folk in India? It can be arranged—we owe you a debt, Flashman bahadur, Yakub and I and all our people. As you owe one to us, for your own deliverance," he added gently.

I protested my undying gratitude at once, and he nodded gravely.

"Between warriors let a word of thanks be like a heart-beat—a small thing, hardly heard, but it suffices," says he, and then grinned sheepishly. "What do I say? The truth is, we all owe our chief debt to that wild witch, Ko Dali's daughter. She whom they call the Silk One." He shook his head. "God protect me from a wayward child, and a wanton that goes bare-faced. There will be no holding her in after this—or curbing Yakub Beg's infatuation with her, either. And yet, my friend, would you and I be sitting here, eating this fine kefir, but for her?"

"Who is she?" I asked, for I'd seen—and felt—just enough of that remarkable female last night to be thoroughly intrigued. She'd have been a phenomenon anywhere, but in a Muslim country, where women are kept firmly in their place, and never dream of intruding in men's work, her apparent authority had astounded me. "Do you know, Izzat, last night until she … er, kissed me—I was sure she was a man."

"So Ko Dali must have thought, when the fierce little bitch came yelping into the world," says he. "Who is Ko Dali?—a Chinese war lord, who had the good taste to take a Khokandian wife, and the ill luck to father the Silk One. He governs in Kashgar, a Chinese city of East Turkestan a thousand miles east of here, below the Issik Kul and the Seven Rivers Country. Would to God he could govern his daughter as well—so should we be spared much shame, for is it not deplorable to have a woman who struts like a khan among us, and leads such enterprises as that which freed you and me last night? Am I, Kutebar, to hold up my head and say: "A woman brought me forth of Fort Raim jail'? Aye, laugh, you old cow," he bellowed at the ancient serving-woman, who had been listening and cackling. "You daughter of shame, is this respect? You take her side, all you wicked sluts, and rejoice to see us men put down. The trouble with the Silk One," he went on to me, "is that she is always right. A scandal, but there it is. Who can fathom the ways of Allah, who lets such things happen?"

"Well," says I, "it happened among the Ruskis, you know, Kutebar. They had an empress—why, in my own country, we are ruled by a queen."

"So I have heard," says he, "but you are infidels. Besides, does your Sultana, Vik Taria, go unveiled? Does she plan raid and ambush? No, by the black tomb of Timur, I'll wager she does not."

"Not that I've heard, lately," I admitted. "But this Silk One—where does she come from? What's her name, anyway?"

"Who knows? She is Ko Dali's daughter. And she came, on a day—it would be two years ago, after the Ruskis had built that devil's house, Fort Raim, and were sending their soldiers east of the Aral, in breach of all treaty and promise, to take our country and enslave our people. We were fighting them, as we are fighting still, Yakub and I and the other chiefs—and then she was among us, with her shameless bare face and bold talk and a dozen Chinese devil-fighters attending on her. It was a troubled time, with the world upside down, and we scratching with our fingernails to hold the Ruskis back by foray and ambuscade; in such disorders, anything is possible, even a woman fighting-chief. And Yakub saw her, and …" He spread his hands. "She is beautiful, as the lily at morning—and clever, it is not to be denied. Doubtless they will marry, some day, if Yakub's wife will let him—she lives at Julek, on the river. But he is no fool, my Yakub—perhaps he loves this female hawk, perhaps not, but he is ambitious, and he seeks such a kingdom for himself as Kashgar. Who knows, when Ko Dali dies, if Yakub finds the throne of Khokand beyond his reach, he may look to Ko Dali's daughter to help him wrest Kashgar province from the Chinese. He has spoken of it, and she sits, devouring him with those black Mongolian eyes of hers. It is said," he went on confidentially, "that she devours other men also, and that it was for her scandalous habits that the governor of Fort Raim, Engmann the Ruski—may wild hogs mate above his grave!—had her head shaved when she was taken last year, after the fall of Ak Mechet. They say -"

"They lie!" screeched the old woman, who had been listening. "In their jealousy they throw dirt on her, the pretty Silk One!"

"Will you raise your head, mother of discord and ruiner of good food?" says Izzat. "They shaved her scalp, I say, which is why she goes with a turban about her always—for she has kept it shaved, and vowed to do so until she has Engmann's own head on a plate at her feet. God, the perversity of women! But what can one do about her? She is worth ten heads in the council, she can ride like a Kazak, and is as brave as … as … as I am, by God! If Yakub and Buzurg Khan of Khokand—and I, of course—hold these Russian swine back from our country, it will be because she has the gift of seeing their weaknesses, and showing us how they may be confounded. She is touched by God, I believe—which is why our men admit her, and heed her—and turn their heads aside lest they meet her eye. All save Yakub Beg, who has ever championed her, and fears nothing."

"And you say she'll make him a king one day, and be his queen? An extraordinary girl, indeed. Meanwhile she helps you fight the Ruskis."

"She helps not me, by God! She may help Yakub, who fights as chief of the Tajiks and military governor under Buzurg Khan, who rules in Khokand. They fight for their state, for all the Kirgiz-Kazak people, against an invader. But I, Izzat Kutebar, fight for myself and my own band. I am no statesman, I am no governor or princeling. I need no throne but my saddle. I," says this old ruffian, with immense pride, "am a bandit, as my fathers were. For upwards of thirty years—since I first ambushed the Bokhara caravan, in fact—I have robbed the Russians. Let me wear the robe of pride over the breastplate of distinction, for I have taken more loot and cut more throats of theirs since they put their thieving noses east of the Blue Lake*(*The Aral Sea.) than any -"

"And a chit of a girl had to lift you from Fort Raim prison," cries the crone, busy among her pots. "Was it an earthquake they had in Samarkand last year—nay, it was Timur turning in his grave for the credit of the men of Syr Daria! Heh-heh!"

"… and it is as a bandit that I fight the Ruskis," says he, ignoring the interruption. "Shall I not be free to rob, in my own country? Is that not as just a cause as Yakub's, who fights for his people's freedom, or Buzurg's, who fights for his throne and his fine palace and revenue and dancing-women? Or Sahib Khan, who fights to avenge the slaughter of his family at Ak Mechet? Each to his own cause, I say. But you shall see for yourself, when we go to greet Yakub tonight—aye, and you shall see the Silk One, too, and judge what manner of thing she is. God keep me from the marriage-bed of such a demon, and when I find Paradise, may my houris not come from China."

So that evening, when I had bathed, trimmed my beard, and had the filthy rags of my captivity replaced by shirt, pyjamy trousers, and soft Persian boots, Kutebar took me through the crowded camp, with everyone saluting him as he strutted by, with his beard oiled and his silver-crusted belt and broad gold medal worn over his fine green coat, and the children crowding about him for the sweets which he carried for them. A robber he might be, but I never saw a man better liked—mind you, I liked him myself, and the thought struck me that he and Pencherjevsky and old Scarlett would have got on like a house on fire. I could see them all three hunting in Rutland together, chasing poachers, damning the government, and knocking the necks off bottles at four in the morning.

We climbed up to the white houses of the village, and Izzat led me through a low archway into a little garden where there was a fountain and an open pillared pavilion such as you might find in Aladdin's pantomime. It was a lovely little place, shaded by trees in the warm evening, with birds murmuring in the branches, the first stars beginning to peep in the dark blue sky overhead, and some flute-like instrument playing softly beyond the wall. It's strange, but the reality of the East is always far beyond anything the romantic poets and artists can create in imitation.

Yakub Beg was lying on a pile of cushions beneath the pavilion, bare-headed and clad only in his pyjamys, so that his shoulders could be massaged by a stout woman who was working at them with warmed oil. He was tired and hollow-eyed still, but his lean face lit up at the sight of us—I suppose he was a bit of a demon king, with his forked beard and skull-lock, and that rare thing in Central Asia, which they say is a legacy of Alexander's Greek mercenaries—the bright blue eyes of the European. And he had the happiest smile, I think, that ever I saw on a human face. You only had to see it to understand why the Syr Daria tribes carried on their hopeless struggle against the Russians; fools will always follow the Yakub Begs of this world.

He greeted me eagerly, and presented me to Sahib Khan, his lieutenant, of whom I remember nothing except that he was unusually tall, with moustaches that fell below his chin; I was trying not to look too pointedly at the third member of the group, who was lounging on cushions near Yakub, playing with a tiny Persian kitten on her lap. Now that I saw her in full light, I had a little difficulty in recognizing the excitable, passionate creature I had taken for a boy only the night before; Ko Dali's daughter this evening was a very self-possessed, consciously feminine young woman indeed—of course, girls are like that, squealing one minute, all assured dignity the next. She was dressed in the tight-wrapped white trousers the Tajik women wear, with curled Persian slippers on her dainty feet, and any illusion of boyishness was dispelled by the roundness of the cloth-of-silver blouse beneath her short embroidered jacket. Round her head she wore a pale pink turban, very tight, framing a striking young face as pale as alabaster—you'll think me susceptible, but I found her incredibly fetching, with her slanting almond eyes (the only Chinese thing about her), the slightly-protruding milk-white teeth which showed as she teased and laughed at the kitten, the determined little chin, and the fine straight nose that looked as though it had been chiselled out of marble. Not as perfectly beautiful as Montez, perhaps, but with the lithe, graceful gift of movement, that hint of action in the dark, unfathomable eyes which—aye, well, well. As Yakub Beg was saying:

"Izzat tells me you are eager to rejoin your own people in India, Flashman bahadur. Before we discuss that, I wish to make a small token sign of my gratitude to you … well, for my life, no less. There are perhaps half a dozen people in the world who have saved Yakub Beg at one time or another—three of them you see here …"

"More fool us," growls Kutebar. "A thankless task, friends."

"… but you are the first feringhi to render me that service. So"—he gave that frank impulsive grin, and ducked his shaven head -" if you are willing, and will do me the great honour to accept …"

I wondered what was coming, and caught my breath when, at a signal from Sahib Khan, a servant brought in a tray on which were four articles—a little bowl containing salt, another in which an ember of wood burned smokily, a small square of earth with a shred of rank grass attaching to it, and a plain, wave-bladed Persian dagger with the snake-and-hare design on its blade. I knew what this meant, and it took me aback, for it's the ultimate honour a hillman can do to you: Yakub Beg wanted to make me his blood brother. And while you could say I had saved his life—still, it was big medicine, on such short acquaintance.

However, I knew the formula, for I'd been blood brother to young Ilderim of Mogala years before, so I followed him in tasting the salt, and passing my hand over the fire and the earth, and then laying it beside his on the knife while he said, and I repeated:

"By earth, and salt, and fire; by hilt and blade; and in the name of God in whatever tongue men call Him, I am thy brother in blood henceforth. May He curse me and consign me to the pit forever, if I fail thee, my friend."

Funny thing—I don't hold with oaths, much, and I'm not by nature a truthful man, but on the three occasions that I've sworn blood brotherhood it has seemed a more solemn thing than swearing on the Bible. Arnold was right; I'm damned beyond a doubt.

Yakub Beg had some difficulty, his shoulders were still crippled, and Sahib Khan had to lift his hand to the tray for him. And then he had to carry both his hands round my neck as I stooped for the formal embrace, after which Kutebar and Ko Dali's daughter and Sahib Khan murmured their applause, and we drank hot black coffee with lemon essence and opium, sweetened with sherbet.

And then the serious business began. I had to recite, at Yakub Beg's request, my own recent history, and how I had come into the hands of the Russians. So I told them, in brief, much of what I've written here, from my capture at Balaclava to my arrival in Fort Raim—leaving out the discreditable bits, of course, but telling them what they wanted to hear most, which was why there was a great Russian army assembling at Fort Raim, for the march to India. They listened intently, the men only occasionally exploding in a "Bismillah!" or "Eyah!", with a hand-clap by way of emphasis, and the woman silent, fondling the kitten and watching me with those thoughtful, almond eyes. And when I had done, Yakub Beg began to laugh—so loud and hearty that he hurt his torn muscles.

"So much for pride, then! Oh, Khokand, what a little thing you are, and how insignificant your people in the sight of the great world! We had thought, in our folly, that this great army was for us, that the White Tsar was sending his best to trample us flat—and we are just to be licked up in the bygoing, like a mosquito brushed from the hunter's eye when he sights his quarry. And the Great Bear marches on India, does he?" He shook his head. "Can your people stop him at the Khyber gate?"

"Perhaps," says I, "if I get word to them in time."

"In three weeks you might be in Peshawar," says he, thoughtfully. "Not that it will profit us here. The word is that the Ruskis will begin their advance up Syr Daria within two weeks, which means we have a month of life left to us. And then -" he made a weary little gesture. "Tashkent and Khokand will go; Perovski will drink his tea in the serai by Samarkand bazaar, and his horses will water in the See-ah stream. The Cossacks will ride over the Black Sands and the Red." He smiled wryly. "You British may save India, but who shall save us? The wise men were right: "We are lost when Russia drinks the waters of Jaxartes'. They have been tasting them this four years, but now they will sup them dry."

There was silence, the men sitting glum, while the Silk One toyed with her cat, and from time to time gave me a slow, disturbing glance.

"Well," says I, helpfully, "perhaps you can make some sort of … accommodation with them. Terms, don't you know."

"Terms?" says Yakub. "Have you made terms with a wolf lately, Englishman? Shall I tell you the kind of terms they make? When this scum Perovski brought his soldiers and big guns to my city of Ak Mechet two years ago, invading our soil for no better reason than that he wished to steal it, what did he tell Mahomed Wali, who ruled in my absence?" His voice was still steady, but his eyes were shining. "He said: "Russia comes not for a day, not for a year, but forever'. Those were his terms. And when Wali's people fought for the town, even the women and children throwing their kissiaks*(*Hard dung balls used as missiles.) against the guns, and held until there was no food left, the swords were all broken, and the little powder gone, and the walls blown in, and only the citadel remained, Wali said: "It is enough. We will surrender'. And Perovski tore up the offer of surrender and said: "We will take the citadel with our bayonets'. And they did. Two hundred of our folk they mowed down with grape, even the old and young. That is the honour of a Russian soldier; that is the peace of the White Tsar."

"My wife and children died in Ak Mechet, beneath the White Mosque," says Sahib Khan. "They did not even know who the Russians were. My little son clapped his hands before the battle, to see so many pretty uniforms, and the guns all in a row."

They were silent again, and I sat uncomfortably, until Yakub Beg says:

"So you see, there will be no terms. Those of us whom they do not kill, they will enslave: they have said as much. They will sweep us clean, from Persia to Balkash and the Roof of the World. How can we prevent them? I took seven thousand men against Ak Mechet two winters since, and saw them routed; I went again with twice as many, and saw my thousands slain. The Russians lost eighteen killed. Oh, if it were sabre to sabre, horse to horse, man to man, I would not shirk the odds -: but against their artillery, their rifles, what can our riders do?"

"Fight," growls Kutebar. "So it is the last fight, let it be one they will remember. A month, you say? In that time we can run the horse-tail banner to Kashgar and back; we can raise every Muslim fighting-man from Turgai to the Killer-of-Hindus, *(*Hindu Kush range.) from Khorassan to the Tarm Desert." His voice rose steadily from a growl to a shout. "When the Chinese slew the Kalmucks in the old time, what was the answer given to the faint hearts: 'Turn east, west, north, south, there you shall find the Kirgiz'. Why should we lie down to a handful of strangers? They have arms, they have horses—so have we. If they come in their thousands, these infidels, have we not the Great Horde of the far steppes, the people of the Blue Wolf,⁴² to join our jihad?*(*Holy war.) We may not win, but by God, we can make them understand that the ghosts of Timur and Chinghiz Khan still ride these plains; we can mark every yard of the Syr Daria with a Russian corpse; we can make them buy this country at a price that will cause the Tsar to count his change in the Kremlin palace!"

Sahib Khan chimed in again: "So runs the proverb: 'While the gun-barrel lies in its stock, and the blade is unbroken'. It will be all that is left to us, Yakub."

Yakub Beg sighed, and then smiled at me. He was one of your spirited rascals who can never be glum for more than a moment. "It may be. If they overrun us, I shall not live to see it; I'll make young bones somewhere up by Ak Mechet. You understand, Flashman bahadur, we may buy you a little time here, in Syr Daria—no more. Your red soldiers may avenge us, but only God can help us."

"And He has a habit of choosing the winning side, which will not be ours," says Kutebar. "Well, I'm overdue for Paradise; may I find it by a short cut and a bloody one."

Ko Dali's daughter spoke for the first time, and I was surprised how high and yet husky her voice was—the kind that makes you think of French satin sofas, with the blinds down and purple wall-paper. She was lying prone now, tickling the kitten's belly and murmuring to it.

"Do you hear them, little tiger, these great strong men? How they enjoy their despair! They reckon the odds, and find them heavy, and since fighting is so much easier than thinking they put the scowl of resignation on the face of stupidity, and swear most horribly." Her voice whined in grotesque mimicry. "'By the bowels of Rustum, we shall give them a battle to remember—hand me my scimitar, Gamal, it is in the woodshed. Aye, we shall make such-and-such a slaughter, and if we are all blown to the ends of Eblis—may God protect the valorous!—we shall at least be blown like men. Eyewallah, brothers, it is God's will; we shall have done our best.' This is how the wise warriors talk, furry little sister—which is why we women weep and children go hungry. But never fear—when the Russians have killed them all, I shall find myself a great, strong Cossack, and you shall have a lusty Russian tom, and we shall live on oranges and honey and cream forever."

Yakub Beg just laughed, and silenced Kutebar's angry growl. "She never said a word that was not worth listening to. Well, Silk One, what must we do to be saved?"

Ko Dali's daughter rolled the kitten over. "Fight them now, before they have moved, while they have their backs to the sea. Take all your horsemen, suddenly, and scatter them on the beach."

"Oh, cage the wind, girl!" cries Kutebar. "They have thirty thousand muskets, one-third of them Cossack cavalry. Where can we raise half that number?"

"Send to Buzurg Khan to help you. At need, ask aid from Bokhara."

"Bokhara is lukewarm," says Yakub Beg. "They are the last to whom we can turn for help."

The girl shrugged. "When the Jew grows poor, he looks to his old accounts. Well, then, you must do it alone."

"How, woman? I have not the gift of human multiplication; they outnumber us."

"But their ammunition has not yet come—this much we know from your spies at Fort Raim. So the odds are none so great—three to one at most. With such valiant sabres as Kutebar here, the thing should be easy."

"Devil take your impudence!" cries Kutebar. "I could not assemble ten thousand swords within a week, and by then their powder and cartridge ships will have arrived."

"Then you should have assembled them before this," was the tart rejoinder.

"Heaven lighten your understanding, you perverse Chinese bitch! How could I, when I was rotting in jail?"

"That was clever," says she, "that was sound preparation, indeed. Hey, puss-puss-puss, are they not shrewd, these big strong fellows?"

"If there were a hope of a surprise attack on their camp succeeding, I should have ordered it," says Yakub Beg. "To stop them here, before their advance has begun …" He looked at me. "That would solve your need as well as ours, Englishman. But I see no way. Their powder ships will arrive in a week, and three days, perhaps four thereafter, they will be moving up Syr Daria. If something is to be done, it must be done soon."

"Ask her, then," says Kutebar sarcastically. "Is she not waiting to be asked? To her, it will be easy."

"If it were easy, even you would have thought of it by now," says the girl. "Let me think of it instead." She rose, picking up her cat, stroking it and smiling as she nuzzled it. "Shall we think, little cruelty? And when we have thought, we shall tell them, and they will slap their knees and cry: 'Mashallah, but how simple! It leaps to the eye! A child could have conceived it.' And they will smile on us, and perhaps throw us a little jumagi, *(*Pocket-money.) or a sweetmeat, for which we shall be humbly thankful. Come, butcher of little mice."

And without so much as a glance at us, she sauntered off, with those tight white pants stirring provocatively, and Izzat cursing under his breath.

"Ko Dali should have whipped the demons out of that baggage before she grew teeth! But then, what do the Chinese know of education? If she were mine, by death, would I not discipline her?"

"You would not dare, father of wind and grey whiskers," says Yakub genially. "So let her think—and if nothing comes of it, you may have the laugh of her."

"A bitter laugh it will be, then," says Kutebar. "By Shaitan, it will be the last laugh we have."

Now their discussion had been all very well, no doubt, but it was of no great interest to me whether they got themselves cut up by the Russians now or a month hence. The main thing was to get Flashy on his way to India, and I made bold to raise the subject again. But Yakub Beg disappointed me.

"You shall go, surely, but a few days will make no difference. By then we shall have made a resolve here, and it were best your chiefs in India knew what it was. So they may be the better prepared. In the meantime, Flashman bahadur, blood brother, take your ease among us."

I couldn't object to that, and for three days I loafed about, wandering through the camp, observing the great coming and going of couriers, and the arrival each day of fresh bands of horsemen. They were coming in from all parts of the Red Sands, and beyond, from as far as the Black Sands below Khiva, and Zarafshan and the Bokhara border—Uzbeks with their flat yellow faces and scalp-locks, lean, swarthy Tajiks and slit-eyed Mongols, terrible-looking folk with their long swords and bandy legs—until there must have been close on five thousand riders in that valley alone. But when you thought of these wild hordes pitted against artillery and disciplined riflemen, you saw how hopeless the business was; it would take more than the Silk One to think them out of this.

An extraordinary young woman that—weeping passionately over Yakub's wounds on the night of the rescue, but in council with the men as composed (and bossy) as a Mayfair mama. A walking temptation, too, to a warm-blooded chap like me, so I kept well clear of her in those three days. She might be just the ticket for a wet week-end, but she was also Yakub Beg's intended—and that apart, I'm bound to confess that there was something about the cut of her shapely little jib that made me just a mite uneasy. I'm wary of strong, clever women, however beddable they may be, and Ko Dali's daughter was strong and too clever for comfort. As I was to find out to my cost—God, when I think what that Chinese-minded mort got me into!

I spent my time, as I say, loafing, and getting more impatient and edgy by the hour. I wanted to get away for India, and every day that passed brought nearer the moment when those Russian brutes (with Ignatieff well to the fore, no doubt) came pouring up the Syr Daria valley from Fort Raim, guns, Cossacks, foot and all, and spread like a tide over the Khokand country. I wanted to be well away before that happened, bearing the glad tidings to India and reaping the credit; Yakub Beg and his hairy fellows could fight the Russians how they liked, for although I'll own I'd conceived an affection for him and his Tajiks and Uzbeks, and wished them no harm, it was all one to me how they fared, so long as I was safely out of it. But Yakub still seemed uncertain how to prepare for the fight that was coming; he'd tried his overlord, Buzurg Khan, for help, and got little out of him, and egged on by Kutebar, he was coming round to the Silk One's notion of one mad slash at the enemy before they had got under way from Fort Raim with their magazines full. It was a doomed enterprise, of course, but he figured he'd do them more damage on the beach than when they were upcountry on the march; good luck, thinks I, just give me a horse and an escort first, and I'll bless your enterprise as I wave farewell.

And it would have fallen out like that, too, but for the infernal ingenuity of that kitten-tickling besom—Kutebar was right: Ko Dali should have whaled the wickedness out of her years ago.

It was the fourth day, and I was lounging in the camp's little market, improving my Persian by learning the ninety-nine names of God (only the Bactrian camels know the hundredth, which is why they look so deuced superior) from an Astrabad caravan-guard-turned-murderer, when Kutebar came in a great bustle to take me to Yakub Beg at once. I went, thinking no evil, and found him in the pavilion with Sahib Khan and one or two others, squatting round their coffee table. Ko Dali's daughter was lounging apart, listening and saying nothing, feeding her kitten with sweet jelly. Yakub, whose limbs had mended to the point where he could move with only a little stiffness, was wound up like a fiddle-string with excitement; he was smiling gleefully as he touched my hand in greeting and motioned me to sit.

"News, Flashman bahadur! The Ruski powder boats come tomorrow. They have loaded at Tokmak, the Obrucheff steamer and the Mikhail, and by evening they will be at anchor off Syr Daria's mouth, with every grain of powder, every cartridge, every pack for the artillery in their holds! The next day their cargoes will be dispersed through the Ruski host, who at the moment have a bare twenty rounds to each musket." He rubbed his hands joyfully. "You see what it means, angliski? God has put them in our hands—may his name be ever blessed!"

I didn't see what he was driving at, until Sahib Khan enlightened me.

"If those two powder boats can be destroyed," says he, "there will be no Ruski army on the Syr Daria this year. They will be a bear without claws."

"And there will be no advance on India this year, either!" cries Yakub. '"What do you say to that, Flashman!"

It was big news, certainly, and their logic was flawless—so far as it went: without their main munitions, the Russians couldn't march. From my detached point of view, there was only one small question to ask.

"Can you do it?"

He looked at me, grinning, and something in that happy bandit face started the alarms rumbling in my lower innards.

"That you shall tell us," says he. "Indeed, God has sent you here. Listen, now. What I have told you is sure information; every slave who labours on that beach at Fort Raim, unloading and piling baggage for those Ruski filth, is a man or a woman of our people—so that not a word is spoken in that camp, not a deed done, not a sentry relieves himself, but we know of it. We know to the last peck of rice, to the last horse-shoe, what supplies already lie on that beach, and we know, too, that when the powder-ships anchor off Fort Raim, they will be ringed about with guard-boats, so that not even a fish can swim through. So we cannot hope to mine or burn them by storm or surprise."

Well, that dished him, it seemed to me, but on he went, happily disposing of another possibility.

"Nor could we hope to drag the lightest of the few poor cannon we have to some place within shot of the ships. What then remains?" He smiled triumphantly and produced from his breast a roll of papers, written in Russian; it looked like a list.

"Did I not say we were well served for spies? This is a manifest of stores and equipment already landed, and lying beneath the awnings and in the sheds. My careful Silk One"—he bowed in her direction—"has had them interpreted, and has found an item of vast interest. It says—now listen, and bless the name of your own people, from whom this gift comes—it says: 'Twenty stands of British rocket artillery; two hundred boxes of cases.'"

He stopped, staring eagerly at me, and I was aware that they were all waiting expectantly.

"Congreves?" says I. "Well, what -"

"What is the range of such rockets?" asked Yakub Beg.

"Why—about two miles," I knew a bit about Congreves from my time at Woolwich. "Not accurate at that distance, of course; if you want to make good practice, then half a mile, three-quarters, but -"

"The ships will not be above half a mile from the shore," says he, softly. "And these rockets, from what I have heard, are fiercely combustible—like Greek fire! If one of them were to strike the upperworks of the steamer, or the wooden hull of the Mikhail -"

"We would have the finest explosion this side of Shaitan's lowest pit!" exulted Kutebar, thumping the table.

"And then—a Russian army without powder, with cannon that would be so much useless lumber, with soldiers armed for nothing better than a day's hunting!" cries Yakub. "They will be an army bahla dar!" (Literally, "wearing hunting gloves in one's belt", i.e. unarmed.)

For the life of me, I couldn't understand all this excitement.

"Forgive me," says I. "But the Ruskis have these rockets—you don't. And if you're thinking of stealing some of 'em, I'm sorry, Yakub, but you're eating green corn. D'ye know how much a single Congreve rocket-head weighs, without its stick? Thirty-two pounds. And the stick is fifteen feet long—and before you can fire one you have to have the firing-frame, which is solid steel weighing God knows what, with iron half-pipes. Oh, I daresay friend Kutebar here has some pretty thieves in his fighting-tail, but they couldn't hope to lug this kind of gear out from under the Russians' noses—not unseen. Dammit, you'd need a mule-train. And if, by some miracle, you did get hold of a frame and rockets, where would you find a firing-point close enough? For that matter, at two miles—maximum range, trained at fifty-five degrees—why, you could blaze away all night and never score a hit!"

I suddenly stopped talking. I'd been expecting to see their faces fall, but Yakub was grinning broader by the second, Kutebar was nodding grimly, even Sahib Khan was smiling.

"What's the joke, then?" says I. "You can't do it, you see."

"We do not need to do it," says Yakub, looking like a happy crocodile. "Tell me: these things are like great sky-rockets, are they not? How long would it take unskilled men—handless creatures like the ancient Kutebar, for example—to prepare and fire one?"

"To erect the frame?—oh, two minutes, for artillerymen. Ten times as long, probably, for your lot. Adjust the aim, light the fuse, and off she goes—but dammit, what's the use of this to you?"

"Yallah!" cries he, clapping his hands delightedly. "I should call you saped-pa—white foot, the bringer of good luck and good news, for what you have just told us is the sweetest tidings I have heard this summer." He reached over and slapped my knee. "Have no fear—we do not intend to steal a rocket, although it was my first thought. But, as you have pointed out, it would be impossible; this much we had realised. But my Silk One, whose mind is like the puzzles of her father's people, intricately simple, has found a way. Tell him, Kutebar."

"We cannot beat the Ruskis, even if we launch our whole power, five or six thousand riders, upon their beach camp and Fort Raim," says the old bandit. "They must drive us back with slaughter in the end. But"—he wagged a finger like an eagle's talon under my nose—"we can storm their camp by night, in one place, where these feringhi ra-kets are lying—and that is hard by the pier, in a little go-down.*(*Warehouse.) This our people have already told us. It will be a strange thing if, descending out of the night past Fort Raim like a thunderbolt, we cannot hold fifty yards of beach for an hour, facing both ways. And in our midst, we shall set up this ra-ket device, and while our riders hold the enemy at bay, our gunners can launch this fire of Eblis against the Ruski powder ships. They will be in fair range, not half a mile—and in such weather, with timbers as dry as sand, will not one ra-ket striking home be sufficient to burn them to Jehannum?"

"Why—yes, I suppose so—those Congreves burn like hell. But, man," I protested, "you'll never get off that beach alive—any of you! They'll ring your storming party in, and cut it down by inches—there are thirty thousand of them, remember? Even if you do succeed in blowing their ship to kingdom come, you'll lose—I don't know, a thousand, two thousand swords doing it."

"We shall have saved our country, too," says Yakub Beg, quietly. "And your India, Flashman bahadur. Like enough many will die on that beach—but better to save Khokand for a year, or perhaps even for a generation, and die like men, than see our country trampled by these beasts before the autumn comes." He paused. "We have counted the odds and the cost, and I ask your advice, as a soldier of experience, not on the matter of holding the beach and fighting off the Ruskis, for that is an affair we know better than you, but only as to these rockets. From what you have told us, I see that it can be done. Silk One"—he turned towards her, smiling and touching his brow—"I salute your woman's wit—again."

I looked at her with my skin crawling. She'd schemed up this desperate, doomed nonsense, in which thousands of men were going to be cut up, and there she sat, dusting her kitten's whiskers. Mind you, I didn't doubt, when I thought of the thing, that they could bring it off, given decent luck. Five thousand sabres, with the likes of Kutebar roaring about in the dark, could create havoc in that Russian camp, and probably secure a beachhead just long enough for them to turn the Russians' own rockets on the powder ships. And I knew any fool could lay and fire a Congreve. But afterwards? I thought of the shambles of that beach in the dark—and those rows of gallows outside Fort Raim.

And yet, there they sat, those madmen, looking as pleased as if they were going to a birthday party, Yakub Beg calling for coffee and sherbet, Kutebar's evil old face wreathed in happy smiles. Well, it was no concern of mine, if they wanted to throw their lives away—and if they did succeed in crippling the Russian invasion before it had even started, so much the better. It would be glad news to bring into Peshawar—by jove, I might even hint that I'd engineered the whole thing: if I didn't, the Press probably would. "British Officer's Extraordinary Adventure. Russian Plot Foiled by His Ingenuity. Tribal Life in the Khokand. Colonel Flashman's Remarkable Narrative." Yes, a few helpings of that would go down well … Elspeth would be in raptures … I'd be the lion of the day yet again …

And then Yakub Beg's voice broke in on my daydreams.

"Who shall say there is such a thing as chance?" he was exulting. "All is as God directs. He sends the Ruski powder ships. He sends the means of their destruction. And"—he reached out to pass me my coffee cup—"best of all, he sends you, blood brother, without whom all would be naught."

You may think that until now I'd been slow on the uptake—that I should have seen the danger signal as soon as this lunatic mentioned Congreve rockets. But I'd been so taken aback by the scheme, and had it so fixed in my mind that I had no part in it, anyway, that the fearful implication behind his last words came like a douche of cold water. I nearly dropped my coffee cup.

"Naught?" I echoed. "What d'you mean?"

"Who among us would have the skill or knowledge to make use of these rockets of yours?" says he. "I said you were sent by God. A British officer, who knows how these things are employed, who can ensure success where our bungling fingers would … "

"You mean you expect me to fire these bloody things for you?" I was so appalled that I said it in English, and he looked at me in bewilderment. Stammering, and no doubt going red in the face, I blundered. back into Persian.

"Look, Yakub Beg—I'm sorry, but it cannot be. You know I must go to India, to carry the news of this Russian invasion … this army … I can't risk such news going astray … it's my bounden duty, you see …"

"But there will be no invasion," says he, contentedly. "We will see to that."

"But if we—you—I mean, if it doesn't work?" I cried. "I can't take the risk! I mean—it's not that I don't wish to help you—I would if I could, of course. But if I were killed, and the Russians marched in spite of your idiotic—I mean, your daring scheme, they would catch my people unprepared!"

"Rest assured," says he, "the news will go to Peshawar. I pledge my honour, just as I pledge my people to fight these Ruskis tooth and nail from. here to the Killer-of-Hindus. But we will stop them here -" and he struck the ground beside him. "I know it! And your soldiers in India will be prepared, for a blow that never comes. For we will not fail. The Silk One's plan is sound. Is she not the najud?"

And the grinning ape bowed again in her direction, pleased as Punch.

By George, this was desperate. I didn't know what to say. He was bent on dragging me into certain destruction, and I had to weasel out somehow—but at the same time I daren't let them see the truth, which was that the whole mad scheme terrified me out of my wits. That might well be fatal—you've no idea what those folk are like, and if Yakub Beg thought I was letting him down … well, one thing I could be sure of: there'd be no excursion train ordered up to take me to the coral strand in a hurry.

"Yakub, my friend," says I. "Think but a moment. I would ask nothing better than to ride with you and Kutebar on this affair. I have my own score to settle with these Ruski pigs, believe me. And if I could add one asper in the scale of success, I would be with you heart and soul. But I am no artilleryman. I know something of these rockets, but nothing to the purpose. Any fool can aim them, and fire them—Kutebar can do it as easily as he breaks wind -" that got them laughing, as I intended it should. "And I have my duty, which is to my country. I, and I alone, must take that news—who else would be believed? Don't you see—you may do this thing without me?"

"Not as surely," says he. "How could we? An artilleryman you may not be, but you are a soldier, with those little skills that mean the difference between success and failure. You know this—and think, blood brother, whether we stand or fall, when those ships flame like the rising sun and sink into destruction, we will have shattered the threat to your folk and mine! We will have lit a fire that will singe the Kremlin wall! By God, what a dawn that will be!"

Just the glitter in those eyes, the joyful madness on that hawk face, sent my spirits into my boots. Normally I'll talk myself hoarse in my skin's interest, and grovel all the way to Caesar's throne, but in that moment I knew it would be no use. You see, even with the saliva pumping into my mouth, I knew that his reasoning was right—ask Raglan or the Duke or Napoleon: they'd have weighed it and said that I should stay. And it's no use trying to defeat an Oriental's logic—let alone one who has the fire in his guts. I tried a little more, as far as I dared, and then let it lie, while the coffee went round again, and Kutebar speculated gloatingly on how many Russians he would kill, and Yakub sat with his hand on my shoulder, praising God and giving thanks for the opportunity to confound the politics of the Tsar. And the cause of it all, that slant-eyed witch in the tight trousers, said nothing at all, but sauntered across to a bird cage hanging on the pavilion trellis, murmuring and pursing her lips to the nightingale to coax it to sing.

I sat pretty quiet myself, feverishly trying to plot a way out of this, and getting nowhere. The others got down to the details of the business, and I had to take part and try to look happy about it. I must say, looking back, they had it well schemed out: they would take five thousand riders, under Yakub and Kutebar and Sahib Khan, each commanding a division, and just go hell for leather past Fort Raim at four in the morning, driving down to the beach and cutting off the pier. Sahib Khan's lot would secure the northern flank beyond the pier, facing the Syr Daria mouth; Yakub would take the south side, fronting the main beach, and their forces would join up at the landward end of the pier, presenting a ring of fire and steel against the Russian counter-attacks. Kutebar's detachment would be inside the ring, in reserve, and shielding the firing party—here they looked at me with reverent eyes, and I managed an offhand grin that any dentist would have recognized first go.

The rockets and stands were in a go-down, Kutebar had said; they would have their spies—the impressed labourers who slept on the beach—on hand to guide us to them. And then, while all hell was breaking loose around us, the intrepid Flashy and his assistants would set the infernal things up and blaze away at the powder ships. And when the great Guy Fawkes explosion occurred—supposing that it did—we would take to the sea; it was half a mile across Syr Daria mouth, and Katti Torah—a horrible little person with yellow teeth and a squint, who was one of the council that night—would be waiting on the other side to cover all who could escape that way. Well, it was at least a glimmer of hope; I'd swum the Mississippi in my time.*(*See Flash for Freedom!)

But the more I considered the thing, the more appalling it looked. Indeed, my mind was already running on a different tack entirely: if I could get a horse tonight, and ride for it—anywhere, but south towards Persia for preference, where they wouldn't expect me to go—could I make a clean getaway? Anywhere else, I'd have chanced it, but south was pure desert—for that matter, it was all bloody wilderness, on every side—and if I didn't lose myself and perish horribly, I'd be run down for certain. And blood brother or not, I couldn't see Yakub Beg condoning desertion. Even the beach and the rockets offered a little hope—it couldn't be worse than Balaclava, surely? (God, what a fearful thought that was.) So I looked as steady as I could, while those grinning wolves chuckled over their plan, and when the Silk One broke silence to announce that she personally would go with Kutebar's detachment, and assist with the rockets, I even managed to join in the hum of approval, and say how jolly it would be to have her along. One thing tribulation teaches you, and that is to wear the mask when there's nothing else for it. She gave me a thoughtful glance, and then went back to her nightingale.

As you can guess, I slept fitfully that night. Here I was again, with my essentials trapped in the mangle, and devil a thing to do but grin and bear it—but it was such madness, I kept swearing to myself as I thumped the pillow. Once on a day I'd have wept, or even prayed, but not now; I'd never had any good from either in the past. I could only sweat and hope—I'd come through so much, so often, perhaps my luck would hold again. One thing I was sure of—the first man into the water tomorrow night was going to be H. Flashman, and no bones about it.

I loafed about my tent, worrying, next morning, while the camp hummed around me—you never saw so many happy faces at the prospect of impending dissolution. How many of them would be alive next day? Not that I cared—I'd have seen 'em all dead and damned if only I could come off safe. My guts were beginning to churn in earnest as the hours went by, and finally I was in such a sweat I couldn't stand it any longer. I decided to go up to the pavilion and have a last shot at talking some sense into Yakub Beg—I didn't know what I could say, but if the worst came to the worst I might even chance a flat refusal to have anything to do with his mad venture, and see what he would do about it. In this desperate frame of mind I made my way up through the village, which was quiet with everyone being down in the camp below, went through the little archway and past the screen to the garden—and there was Ko Dali's daughter, alone, sitting by the fountain, trailing her fingers in the water, with that damned kitten watching the ripples.

In spite of my fearful preoccupations—which were entirely her fault, in the first place—I felt the old Adam stir at the sight of her. She was wearing a close-fitting white robe with a gold-embroidered border, and her shapely little bare feet peeping out beneath it; round her head was the inevitable turban, also of white. She looked like Sheherazade in the caliph's garden, and didn't she know it, just?

"Yakub is not here," says she, before I'd even had time to state my business. "He has ridden out with the others to talk with Buzurg Khan; perhaps by evening he will have returned." She stroked the kitten. "Will you wait?"

It was an invitation if ever I heard one—and I'm used to them. But it was unexpected, and as I've said, I was something wary of this young woman. So I hesitated, while she watched me, smiling with her lips closed, and I was just on the point of making my apology and withdrawing, when she leaned down to the kitten and said:

"Why do you suppose such a tall fellow is so afraid, little sister? Can you tell? No? He would be wise not to let Yakub Beg know it—for it would be a great shame to the Atalik Ghazi to find fear in his blood brother."

I don't know when I've been taken more aback. I stood astonished as she went on, with her face close to the kitten's:

"We knew it the first night, at Fort Raim—you remember I told you? We felt it even in his mouth. And we both saw it, last night, when Yakub Beg pressed him into our venture—the others did not, for he dissembles well, this angliski. But we knew, you and I, little terror of the larder. We saw the fear in his eyes when he tried to persuade them. We see it now." She picked the kitten up and nuzzled it against her cheek. "What are we to make of him, then?"

"Well, I'm damned!" I was beginning, and took a stride forward, red in the face, and stopped.

"Now he is angry, as well as frightened," says she, pretending to whisper in the brute's ear. "Is that not fine? We have stirred him to rage, which is one of the seven forbidden sins he feels against us. Yes, pretty tiger, he feels another one as well. Which one? Come, little foolish, that is easy—no, not envy, why should he envy us? Ah, you have guessed it, you wanton of the night walls, you trifler in jimai najaiz.*(*Illicit love.) Is it not scandalous? But be at ease—we are safe from him. For does he not fear?"

Kutebar was undoubtedly right—this one should have had the mischief tanned out of her when she was knee-high. I stood there, wattling, no doubt, and trying to think of a cutting retort—but interrupting a conversation between a woman and a cat ain't as easy as it might seem. One tends to look a fool.

"You think it a pity, scourge of the milk bowls? Well … there it is. If lechery cannot cast out fear, what then? What does he fear, you ask? Oh, so many things—death, as all men do. That is no matter, so that they do not cross the line from 'will' to 'will not'. But he fears also Yakub Beg, which is wisdom—although Yakub Beg is far away, and we are quite alone here. So … still he wavers, although desire struggles with fear in him. Which will triumph, do you suppose? Is it not exciting, little trollop of the willow-trees? Are your male cats so timorous? Do they fear even to sit beside you?"

I wasn't standing for that, anyway—besides, I was becoming decidedly interested. I came round the fountain and sat down on the grass. And, damme, the kitten popped its face round her head and miaowed at me.

"There, brave little sister!" She cuddled it, turned to look at me out of those slanting black eyes, and returned to her conversation. "Would you protect your mistress, then? Eyah, it is not necessary—for what will he do? He will gnaw his lip, while his mouth grows dry with fear and desire—he will think. Oh, such thoughts—there is no protection against them. Do you not feel them touching us, embracing us, enfolding us, burning us with their passion? Alas, it is only an illusion—and like to remain one, so great is his fear."

I've seduced—and been seduced—in some odd ways, but never before with a kitten pressed into service as pimp. She was right, of course—I was scared, not only of Yakub Beg, but of her: she knew too much, this one, for any man's comfort, and if I knew anything at all it wasn't just for love of my brawny frame and bonny black whiskers that she was taunting me into attempting her. There was something else—but with that slim white shape tantalizing me within arm's length, and that murmuring voice, and the drift of her perfume, subtle and sweet as a garden flower, I didn't care. I reached out—and hesitated, sweating lustfully. My God, I wanted her, but -

"And now he pants, and trembles, and fears to touch, my furry sweet. Like the little boys at the confectioner's stall, or a beardless youth biting his nails outside a brothel, and he such a fine, strong—nothing of a man. He -"

"Damn you!" roars I, "and damn your Yakub Beg! Come here!"

And I grabbed her round the body, one hand on her breast, the other on her belly, and pulled her roughly to me. She came without resistance, her head back, and those almond eyes looking up at me, her lips parted; I was shaking as I brought my mouth down on them, and pulled the robe from her shoulders, gripping her sharp-pointed breasts in my hands. She lay quivering against me for a moment, and then pulled free, pushing the kitten gently aside with her foot.

"Go find a mouse, little idleness. Will you occupy your mistress all day with silly chatter?"

And then she turned towards me, pushing me back and down with her hands on my chest, and sliding astride of me while her tongue flickered out against my lips and then my eyelids and cheeks and into my ear. I grappled her, yammering lustfully, as she shrugged off the robe and began working nimbly at my girdle—and no sooner had we set to partners and commenced heaving passionately away, than up comes that damned kitten beside my head, and Ko Dali's daughter had to pause and lift her face to blow at it.

"Does no one pay heed to you, then? Fie, selfish little inquisitive! Can your mistress not have a moment to pleasure herself with an angliski—a thing she has never done before?" And they purred at each other while I was going mad—I've never been more mortified in my life.

"I shall tell you all about it later," said she, which is an astonishing thing to hear, when you're at grips.

"Never mind telling the blasted cat!" I roared, straining at her. "Dammit, if you're going to tell anyone, tell me!"

"Ah," says she, sitting back. "You are like the Chinese—you wish to talk as well? Then here is a topic of conversation." And she reached up and suddenly plucked off her turban, and there she was, shaved like a Buddhist monk, staring mischievously down at me.

"Good God!" I croaked. "You're bald!"

"Did you not know? It is my vow. Does it make me -" she stirred her rump deliciously "- less desirable?"

"My God, no!" I cried, and fell to again with a will, but every time I became properly engrossed, she would stop to chide the cat, which kept loafing around miaowing, until I was near crazy, with that naked alabaster beauty squirming athwart my hawse, as the sailors say, and nothing to be done satisfactorily until she had left off talking and come back to work. And once she nearly unmanned me completely by stopping short, glancing up, and crying "Yakub!" and I let out a frantic yelp and near as anything heaved her into the fountain as I strained my head round to look at the archway and see—nothing. But before I could remonstrate, or swipe her head off, she was writhing and plunging away again, moaning with her eyes half-closed, and this time, for a wonder, the thing went on uninterrupted until we were lying gasping and exhausted, in each other's arms—and the kitten was there again, purring censoriously in my ear.

By then I was too blissfully sated to care. A teasing, wicked-minded sprite she might be, but Ko Dali's daughter had nothing to learn about killing a chap with kindness, and one of my fondest recollections is of lying there ruined in the warmth of that little garden, with the leaves rustling overhead, watching her slip into her robe and turban again, sleek and satisfied as the kitten which she picked up and cuddled against her cheek. (If only the English dowagers of my acquaintance could know what I'm remembering when I see them pick up their gross fat tabbies in the drawing-room. "Ah, General Flashman has gone to sleep again, poor dear old thing. How contented he looks. Ssh-hh.")

Presently she got up and went off, returning with a little tray on which there were cups of sherbet, and two big bowls of kefir—just the thing after a hot encounter, when you're feeling well and contented, and wondering vaguely whether you ought not to slide out before the man of the house comes back, and deciding the devil with him. It was good kefir, too—strangely sweet, with a musky flavour that I couldn't place, and as I spooned it down gratefully she sat watching me, with those mysterious dark eyes, and murmuring to her kitten as it played with her fingers.

"Did cruel mistress neglect her darling?" says she. "Ah, do not scold—do I reproach you when you come home with your ears scratched and your fur bedraggled? Do I pester you with impertinent questions? Mmm? Oh, shameless—it is not proper to ask, in his presence. Besides, some little evil bird might hear, and talk … and what then? What of me—and Yakub Beg—and fine dreams of a throne in Kashgar some day? Ah, indeed. And what of our fine angliski? It would go hard with all of us, if certain things were known, but hardest of all with him …"

"Capital kefir, this," says I, cleaning round the bowl. "Any more?"

She gave me another helping, and went on whispering to the cat—taking care that I could hear.

"Why did we permit him to make love, then? Oh, such a question! Because of his fine shape and handsome head, you think, and the promise of a great baz-baz*(*An indelicate synonym for virility.)—oh, whiskered little harlot, have you no blushes? What—because he was fearful, and we women know that nothing so drives out a man's fear as passion and delight with a beautiful darling? That is an old wisdom, true—is it the poet Firdausi who says "The making of life in the shadow of death is the blissful oblivion …'?"

"Stuff and nonsense, beautiful darling," says I, wolfing away. "The poet Flashman says that a good gallop needs no philosophic excuse. You're a lusty little baggage, young Silk One, and that's all about it. Here, leave that animal a moment, and give us a kiss."

"You enjoy your kefir?" says she.

"The blazes with the kefir," says I, putting down my spoon. "Here a minute, and I'll show you."

She nuzzled the kitten, watching me thoughtfully. "And if Yakub should return?"

"Blazes with him, too. Come here, can't you?"

But she slipped quickly out of harm's way, and stood slim and white and graceful, cradling the kitten and smiling at it.

"You were right, curious tiny leopard—you and Firdausi both. He is much braver now—and he is so very strong, with his great powerful arms and thighs, like the black djinn in the story of es-Sinbad of the sea—he is no longer safe with delicate ladies such as we. He might harm us." And with that mocking smile she went quickly round the fountain, before I could stop her. "Tell me, angliski," she said, looking back, but not stopping. "You who speak Persian and know so much of our country—have you ever heard of the Old Man of the Mountains?"

"No, by jove, I don't think I have," says I. "Come back and tell me about him."

"After tonight—when the work has been done," says she, teasing. "Perhaps then I shall tell you."

"But I want to know now."

"Be content," says she. "You are a different man from the fearful fellow who came here seeking Yakub an hour ago. Remember the Persian saying: 'Lick up the honey, stranger, and ask no questions'."

And then she was gone, leaving me grinning foolishly after her, and cursing her perversity in a good-humoured way. But, do you know, she was right? I couldn't account for it, but for some reason I felt full of buck and appetite and great good humour, and I couldn't even remember feeling doubts or fears or anything -much—of course, I knew there was nothing like a good lively female for putting a chap in trim, as her man Firdausi had apparently pointed out. Clever lads, these Persian poets. But I couldn't recall ever feeling so much the better for it—a new man, in fact, as she'd said.