winked at his mates.
'What the devil d'you mean?' I demanded.
'How many? Come, as a favour to thy old friend.'
'Eh? What's it to you, dammit? Oh, well, let's see … there's the wife, and … er … and, ah —'
'Aye — ye have fornicated more times than I have passed water,' says this elegant fellow. 'And just because they let thee have thy way, didst thou trust them therefore? Because they were beautiful or lecherous — well thou fool enough to think it made them honest? Like enough. This Rani has beglamoured thee — well then, go thou up and knock on her palace gate tonight, and cry ‘Beloved, let me in.’ I shall stand under the wall to catch the pieces.'
When he put it that way, of course, it was ridiculous. Whether she was loyal or not — and I could hardly credit that she wasn't — it didn't seem quite the best time to test the matter, with her state running over at the edges with mutineers. Good God, was there nowhere safe in this bloody country? Delhi, Meerut, Jhansi — how many garrisons remained, I asked Ilderim, and told him the stories I'd heard, and the sights I'd seen, on my way south.
'No one knows,' says he grimly. 'But be sure the sepoys have not won, as they would have the world believe. They have made the land between Ganges and Jumna a ruin of fire and blood, and gone undefeated — as yet. They range the country in strength — but already there is word that the British are marching on Delhi, and bands of sahibs who escaped when their garrisons were overthrown are riding abroad in growing numbers. Not only men who have lost their regiments, but civilian sahibs also. The Sirkar still has teeth — and there are garrisons that hold out in strength. Cawnpore for one — a bare four days' ride from here. They say the old General Wheeler sahib is in great force there, and has shattered an army of sepoys and badmashes. When Shadman brings our horses, it is there we will ride.'
'Cawnpore?' I almost squeaked the word in consternation, for it was back in the dirty country with a vengeance. Having come out of that once, I'd no wish to venture in again.
'Where else?' says he. 'There is no safer road from Jhansi. Farther south ye dare not go, for there are few sahib places, and no great garrisons. Nor are there to the west. Over the Jumna the country may be hot with mutineers, but it is where thine own folk are — and they are mine, too, and my lads'.'
I looked at the ugly villains round the fire, hard-bitten frontier rough-necks to a man in their dirty old poshteens and the big Khyber knives in their belts — by George, I'd be a sight safer going north again in their company than striking out anywhere else on my own. What Ilderim said was probably true, too; Cawnpore and the other river strongholds would be where our generals would concentrate — I could get back among my own kind, and shed this filthy beard and sepoy kit and feel civilised again. Wouldn't have to spin any nonsense about why I'd disappeared from Jhansi, either, in supposed pursuit of Ignatieff- my God, I'd forgotten him entirely, and the Thugs, and all the rest. My mission to Jhansi — Pam and his cakes and warnings — it was all chaff in the wind now, forgotten in this colossal storm that was weeping through India. No one was going to fret about where I'd sprung from, or what I'd been doing. I felt my spirits rising by the minute — when I thought of the escape I'd had, leaving Jhansi in the first place, I could say that even my horrible experience at Meerut had been worth while.
That's another thing about being a windy beggar — if you scare easily, you usually cheer up just as fast when the danger is past. Well, not past yet, perhaps — but at least I was with friends again, and by what Ilderim said the Mutiny wasn't by any means such a foregone thing as I'd imagined — why, once our people got their second wind, it would be the bloody rebels who'd be doing the running, no doubt, with Flashy roaring on the pursuit I tom a safe distance. And I might have been rotting out yonder with the others at Jokan Bagh — I shuddered at the ghastly memory of Ilderim's story — or burned alive with the Dawsons at Meerut. By Jove, things weren't so bad after all.
'Right,' says I. 'Cawnpore let it be.' How was I to know I was almost speaking my own epitaph?
In the meantime, I had one good night's sleep, feeling safe for the first time in weeks with Ilderim's rascals around me, and next day we just lay up in the temple ruins while one sowar went to scout for Shadman Khan, who was meant to be out stealing horses for us. It was the rummest fix to be in, for all day we could hear the bugles tootling out on the plain where the Rani's army was mustering for her own private little wars with Jhansi's neighbours; Ilderim reported in the evening that she had assembled several hundred foot soldiers, and a few troops of Maharatta riders, as well as half a dozen guns — not a bad beginning, in a troubled time, but of course with a treasury like Jhansi's she could promise regular pay for her soldiers, as well as the prospect of Orcha's loot when she had dealt with the Dewan.
With the second dawn came Shadman himself, cackling at his own cleverness: he and his pals had laid hands on six horses already, they were snug in a thicket a couple of miles from the town, and he had devised a delightful plan for getting another half dozen mounts as well.
'The Hindoo bitch needs riders,' says he. 'So I marched into her camp on the maidan this afternoon and offered my services. 'I can find six old Company sowars who will ride round Jehannum and back for a rupee a day and whatever spoil the campaign promises,' says I to the noseless pig who is master of her cavalry, 'if ye have six good beasts to put under them. 'We have horses and to spare,' says he, 'bring me your six sowars and they shall have five rupees a man down payment, and a carbine and embroidered saddle-cloth apiece.' I beat him up to ten rupees each — so tomorrow let six of us join her cavalry, and at nightfall we shall unjoin, and meet thee, rissaldar, and all ride off rejoicing. Is it not a brave scheme — and will cost this slut of a Rani sixty rupees as well as her steeds and furniture?'
There's nothing as gleeful as a Pathan when he's doing the dirty; they slapped their knees in approval and five of them went off with him that afternoon. Ilderim and I and the remaining three waited until nightfall, and then set off on foot to the thicket where we were to rendezvous; there were the first six horses and a sowar waiting, and round about midnight Shadman and his companions came clattering out of the dark to join us, crowing with laughter. Not only had they lifted the six horses, they had cut the lines of a score more, slit the throat of the cavalry-master as he lay asleep, and set fire to the fodder-store, just to keep the Rani's army happy.
'Well enough,' growls Ilderim, when he had snarled them to silence. 'It will do — till we ride to Jhansi again, some day. There is a debt to pay, at the Jokan Bagh. Is there not, blood-brother?' He gripped my shoulder for a moment as we sat our mounts under the trees, and the others fell in two by two behind us. In the distance, very black against the starlit purple of the night sky, was the outline of the Jhansi fortress with the glow of the city beneath it; Ilderim was staring towards it bright-eyed — I remember that moment so clearly, with the warm gloom and the smell of Indian earth and horse-flesh, the creak of leather and the soft stamping of the beasts. I was thinking of the horror that lay in the Jokan Bagh — and of that lovely girl; in her mirrored palace yonder with its swing and soft carpets and luxurious furniture, and trying to make myself believe that they belonged in the same world.
'It will take more than one dead rebel and a few horses to settle the score for Skene sahib and the others,' says he. 'Much more. So — to Cawnpore? Walk-march, trot!'
He had said it was a bare four days' ride, but it took us that long to reach the Jumna above Haminpur, for on my advice we steered clear of the roads, and kept to the countryside, where we sighted nothing bigger than villages and poor farms. Even there, though, there was ample sign of the turbulence that was sweeping the land; we passed hamlets that were just smoking, blackened ruins, with buzzing carcases, human and animal, lying where they had been shot down, or strung up to branches; and several times we saw parties of mutineers on the march, all heading north-east like ourselves. That was enough to set me wondering if I wasn't going in the wrong direction, but I consoled myself that there was safety in numbers — until the morning of the fourth day, when Ilderim aroused me in a swearing passion with the news that eight of our party had slipped off in the night, leaving only the two of us with Muhammed Din and Rafik Tamwar.
'That faithless thieving, reiving son of a Kabuli whore, Shadman Khan, has put them up to this!' He was livid with rage. 'He and that other dung-beetle Asaf Yakub had the dawn watch — they have stolen off and left us, and taken the food and fodder with them!'
'You mean they've gone to join the mutineers?' I cried.
'Not they! We would never have woken again if that had been their aim. No — they will be off about their trade, which is loot and murder! I should have known! Did I not see Shadman licking his robber's lips when we passed the sacked bungalows yesterday? He and the others see in this broken countryside a chance to fill their
