They dragged me from the room, along a passage, and I roared for help and called Gul Shah every filthy name I could lay tongue to.
He strode on ahead, heedless, and presently threw open a door; they ran me across the threshold and I found I was in a low, vaulted chamber, perhaps twenty yards long. I had half-expected racks and thumbscrews or some such horrors, but the room was entirely bare.
The one curious feature of it was that half way it was cut in two by a deep culvert, perhaps ten feet wide and six deep. It was dry, and where it ran into the walls on either side the openings were stopped up with rubble. This had obviously been done only recently, but I could not imagine why.
Gul Shah turned to me. 'Are you strong, Flashman?'
'Damn you!' I shouted. 'You'll pay for this, you dirty nigger!'
'Are you strong?' he repeated. 'Answer, or I'll have your tongue cut out.'
One of the ruffians grabbed my jaw in his hairy paw and brought the knife up to my mouth. It was a convincing argument. 'Strong enough, damn you.'
'I doubt that,' smiled Gul Shah. 'We have executed two rascals here of late, neither of them weaklings. But we shall see.' To one of his crew he said: 'Bring Mansur. I should explain this new entertainment of mine,' he went on, gloating at me. 'It was inspired partly by the unusual shape of this chamber, with its great trench in the middle, and partly by a foolish game which your British soldiers play.
Doubtless you have played it yourself, which will add interest for you, and us. Yah, Mansur, come here.'
As he spoke, a grotesque figure waddled into the room. For a moment I could not believe it was a man, for he was no more than four feet high. But he was terrific. He was literally as broad as he was long, with huge knotted arms and a chest like an ape's. His enormous torso was carried on massive legs. He had no neck that I could see, and his yellow face was as flat as a plate, with a hideous nose spread across it, a slit of a mouth, and two black button eyes. His body was covered in dark hair, but his skull was as smooth as an egg. He wore only a dirty loincloth, and as he shuffled across to Gul Shah the torchlight in that windowless room gave him the appearance of some hideous Nibelung dragging itself through dark burrows beneath the earth.
'A fine manikin, is he not?' said Gul Shah, regarding the hideous imp. 'Your soul must be as handsome, Flash-man. Which is fitting, for he is your executioner.'
He snapped an order, and the dwarf, with a glance at me and a contortion of his revolting mouth which I took to be a grin, suddenly bounded into the culvert, and with a tremendous spring leaped up the other side, catching the edge and flipping up, like an acrobat. That done he turned and faced us, arms outstretched, a disgusting yellow giant-in-miniature.
The men who held me now dragged my arms in front of me, and bound my wrists tightly with a stout rope. One of them then took the coil and carried it across to the dwarfs side of the culvert; the manikin made a hideous bubbling noise and held his wrist up eagerly, and they were bound as mine had been. So we stood, on opposite edges of the culvert, bound to ends of the same rope, with the slack of it lying in the great trench between us.
There had been no further word of explanation, and in the hellish uncertainty of what was to come, my nerve broke. I tried to run, but they hauled me back, laughing, and the dwarf Mansur capered on his side of the culvert and snapped his fingers in delight at my terror.
'Let me go, you bastards!' I roared, and Gul Shah smiled and clapped his hands.
'You start at shadows,' he sneered. 'Behold the sub-stance. Yah, Asaf.'
One of his ruffians came to the edge of the trench, bearing a leather sack tied at the neck. Cautiously undoing it, and holding it by the bottom, he suddenly up-ended it into the culvert. To my horror, half a dozen slim, silver shapes that glittered evilly in the torchlight, fell writhing into the
gap; they plopped gently to the floor of the culvert and then slithered with frightening speed towards the sides. But they could not climb up at us, so they glided about their strange prison in deadly silence. You could sense the vicious anger in them as they slid about beneath us.
'Their bite is death,' said Gul Shah. 'Is all now plain, Flashman?
It is what you call a tug-of-war - you against Mansur. One of you must succeed in tugging the other into the trench, and then - it takes a few moments for the venom to kill. Believe me, the snakes will be kinder than Narreeman would have been.'
'Help!' I roared, although God knows I expected none.
But the sight of those loathsome things, the thought of their slimy touch, of the stab of their fangs - I thought I should go mad. I raged and pleaded, and that Afghan swine clapped his hands and yelled with laughter. The dwarf Mansur hopped in eagerness to begin, and presently Gul Shah stepped back, snapped an order to him, and said to me:
'Pull for your life, Flashman. And present my salaams to Shaitan.'
I had retreated as far as I could go from the culvert's edge, and was standing, half-paralysed, when the dwarf snapped his wrists impatiently at the rope. The jerk brought me to my senses; as I have said before, terror is a wonderful stimulant. I braced my boot-heels on the rough stone floor, and prepared to resist with all my strength.
Grinning, the dwarf scuttled backwards until the rope stretched taut between us; I guessed what his first move would be, and was ready for the sudden jerk when it came. It nearly lifted me off my feet, but I turned with the rope across my shoulder and gave him heave for heave. The rope drummed like a bowstring, and then relaxed; he leered across at me and made a dribbling, piping noise. Then he bunched his enormous shoulder muscles, and leaning back, began to pull steadily.
By God, he was strong. I strained until my shoulders cracked and my arms shuddered, but slowly, inch by inch, my heels slithered across the rough surface towards the edge of the trench. The Ghazis urged him on with cries of delight, Gul Shah came to the brink so that he could watch me as I was drawn inexorably to the limit. I felt one of my heels slip into space, my head seemed to be bursting with the effort and my ears roared - and then the tearing pain in my wrists relaxed, and I was sprawled on the very edge, exhausted, with the dwarf prancing and laughing on the other side and the rope slack between us.
The Ghazis were delighted, and urged him to give me a quick final jerk into the culvert, but he shook his head and backed away again, snapping the rope at me. I glanced down; the snakes seemed almost to know what was afoot, for they had concentrated in a writhing, hissing mass just below me. I scrambled back, wet with fear and rage, and hurled my weight on the rope to try to heave him off balance. But for all the impression I made it might have been anchored to a tree.
He was playing with me; there was no question he was far the stronger of us two, and twice he hauled me to the lip and let me go again. Gul Shah clapped his hands and the Ghazis cheered; then he snapped some order to the dwarf, and I realised with sick horror that they were going to make an end. In despair I rolled back again from the edge and got to my feet; my wrists were torn and bloody and my shoulder joints were on fire, and when the dwarf pulled on the rope I staggered forward and in doing so I nearly got him, for he had expected a stronger resistance, and almost overbalanced. I hauled for dear life, but he recovered in time, glaring and piping angrily at me as he
