The Khyber Connection (TimeWars 6)

“Oh, not a bit of it,” said Churchill. “It didn’t appear as though the 4th Hussars were going to get in on any of this, and like any young fool, I was looking for trouble, I suppose.” He grinned. “ I seem to have found a good deal of it. Should make for some smashing reporting.”

“Fancy yourself a writer, do you?” Finn said.

“More than mere fancy,” Churchill said. “I’m already beginning to make something of an income at it, but I hope to do far better. True, I’m rather young, but then there’s that fellow Kipling who’s making such a big success, and he’s not much older than I am. Still, he writes this romantic nonsense, and I have ambitions to do more serious work.”

“Perhaps you’ll be famous someday,” Finn said, smiling inwardly at the earnestness of this serious young man. “Maybe this experience will turn into a book for you.”

“I’ve already been giving that some thought,” said Churchill. “Give the people back home some idea of what’s happening here, more than merely dispatch writing—a detailed analysis of the Forward Policy and its effects, as well as of the military applications in carrying it out. Then perhaps the gentlemen MP’s will know whereof they speak when they rise to address the Frontier Question on the floor of Parliament.”

“Sounds like a worthy ambition,” Finn said, thinking that if the book were ever written, this youngster would probably find a way to make even the Malakand campaign seem deadly dull. To be so serious at so young an age! If the army didn’t knock it out of him, he’d wind up a professor at a tiny college, or one of those ivory-tower historians forever buried in the stacks of some musty library. It seemed a shame. He was a nice young fellow. Here he was, in the midst of what would probably be the one great adventure of his lifetime, and all he could think of was the overall question, the grand perspective.

“You find the idea dull, don’t you?” said Churchill, watching him intently.

“Well, no, I didn’t say that—”

“You didn’t have to,” Churchill said. “It was clearly written in your face. I am an excellent judge of character. And I judge that diplomacy is not quite your forte. You’re the sort of man who usually says exactly what he thinks.”

“Well, now that you mention it, the way you put it did seem rather … well, rather dry,” said Finn lamely.

“Dry,” echoed Churchill. “Well then, I shall endeavour not to make it dry. I will see how my dispatches are received. If the reaction to what I write for the Daily Telegraph is not favourable, then I will not attempt to write the book. Rest assured, sir, I have too high a regard for the English people to subject them to inferiority. Good night to you.”

In the fort’s infirmary, Lucas and Andre had been working non-sto

p since the relief column arrived. The marksmanship of the Pathans had taken its toll in gaping holes and shattered bones from the lead balls fired by the jezails. The different calibers of the weapons produced a wide variety of wounds. The jezail rifles of the Ghazis were all handmade, some .45 caliber, some .50, some even larger, such as the .75 and .80 caliber “wall guns” which were either fired from bipods or from a rest position on a sangar wall.

Many of the wounds had been inflicted by captured British weapons, such as MartiniHenry and Lee-Metford rifles. The latter, which fired the new dumdum bullet, were particularly troublesome in the hands of the enemy. When one of these rounds hit a bone, it would expand, mushrooming out and tearing through everything in its path. If the victim wasn’t killed, if the bullet struck an arm or leg, the result was usually the loss of that limb. Under the direction of Lieutenant Hugo, Lucas and Andre had performed a number of such amputations, and the infirmary was running dangerously low on morphia and chloroform. By nightfall both Lucas and Andre were exhausted. They could only imagine what it must have been like for Hugo.

“I think the two of you could do with some rest,” the doctor said. “The most serious cases have been tended to, and the others will keep for a time. Besides, my arm’s not quite so numb anymore and I can move it about some. I should be fit as a fiddle in another hour or so. “He took a flask from his pocket. “There’ll be more of the same tomorrow, I can guarantee you. Here, for medicinal purposes.”

He handed them the flask and they each took a pull at it. “Thanks,” said Lucas, sitting down in a wooden chair. He sighed. “I don’t know how you’ve managed up till now.”

“One does what one must,” said Hugo, smiling tightly. “Perhaps now, after seeing all this, you can better appreciate your position, Father. There’ll be no going out into the hills to preach the word until these hostilities are done with.”

“That could take months,” said Lucas.

“It could,” said Hugo. “Meanwhile you’re needed by your own. There shall be work aplenty for you two at Chakdarra, when we reach them. Speaking of which, Father, I think you should have this.”

He handed Lucas a revolver.

“I can’t take that,” said Lucas, wanting to badly but knowing that staying in character meant he had to refuse.

“I’m not asking you to shoot anyone with it,” said Hugo. “That will be a matter for your own conscience. But I’ve seen what happens when Pathans get hold of a man. They cut him to pieces or else take him back to camp and have sport with him there.”

“I appreciate the gesture, Doctor,” Lucas said, “but I couldn’t possibly carry a gun.”

“I can,” Andre said. She took the revolver.

“Do you know how—” Hugo began, then stopped when he saw her quickly break the weapon open and check it. “Yes, I can see that you do. Useful skill for a woman to possess, especially in these parts. Well, go on now, you two. Get something to eat. You’ll need all your strength tomorrow.”

Sharif Khan received the emissaries in the main room of his house. Flanked by his chief bodyguards and lieutenants, TIA agents masquerading as Afridi tribesmen, Phoenix waited for the two emissaries to bow to him before he returned their greeting.

He noted that they carried ornate khanjars, tapering eight-inch daggers with carved and inlaid hilts, as well as Khyber knives—the deadly charras—the long knives of the Pathans. The charras had heavy, single-edged, wide blades over twenty inches long which tapered gradually from the hilt to a sharp point at the end. The hilt, like those of the smaller knives, was without a guard, and had a slight projection on one side, by the pommel. The knives were encased in leather scabbards and worn thrust through the sashes, similar to the way Japanese samurai carried their swords. The men also carried the ubiquitous jezails, the curved-stock matchlock rifles which were frequently converted with captured English flintlocks. The barrels were long and slender, the stocks inlaid with silver plate. The weapons were as much a show of finery as force—the single most prized possession of an Afridi, when thus handsomely crafted, was evidence of wealth and status.

“The Most Holy, Mullah Sayyid Akbar sends greetings to the warlord Sharif Khan,” said one of the emissaries. “He wishes to know why Sharif Khan has not responded to the call of the Prophet to rid our land of the infidel firinghi.”

“Convey my most respectful greetings to His Holiness, Sayyid Akbar,” said Phoenix, “and inform him that I have received no call to which I could respond.”

The emissary looked at him with puzzlement. “is the khan not aware of the flame that sweeps the land?” he said. “All the tribes are gathering for the Night of the Long knives. The time is ripe to slay the invader. They are weak and powerless before the strength of the jehad. How can the khan be ignorant of this?”