Part 24 (1/2)

Understanding, Macnaghten scrambled to his feet.

His horse waited at the edge of the crowd. He started toward it, but Akbar Khan came up behind him and caught him by both arms.

”I cannot allow you to return to your cantonment,” he said politely.

”Trevor, Lawrence, Mackenzie!” The Envoy's frightened voice barely carried as far as the trio of officers behind him, but it was too late.

Akbar's face had changed. ”Begeer! Begeer! ”Begeer! Begeer! Seize them!” he cried, his features distorted, his voice tight and shrill. Seize them!” he cried, his features distorted, his voice tight and shrill.

In an instant the crowd of tattered onlookers shed its silence.

With a high triumphant yell, the mob closed in on the four Englishmen. Many hands gripped Sir William Macnaghten, and held him motionless. Jostling tribesmen s.n.a.t.c.hed away the British officers' weapons, and pinned their arms behind their backs.

Caught in the storm, all but one of Macnaghten's native escort pushed their way through the struggling crowd and bolted, headlong, from the scene. The remaining man, a mustachioed Rajput sepoy, lunged toward Macnaghten, but before he had reached the Envoy's side, a sword sliced through the back of his neck. He dropped, gurgling, to his knees, his half-severed head lolling to one side, but a single dreadful wound was not enough to satisfy the Sirdar's warriors. Knives raised, they fell on him. While he still breathed, they hacked his limbs, one by one, from his body.

Macnaghten sagged against his captors, his face gray with shock, his spectacles askew. His top hat lay on its side at his feet. He opened his mouth to speak, but whatever he said was lost in the din around him.

Someone shouted orders. The three British captains were frogmarched to a group of waiting horses, and forced to mount pillion behind three of the chiefs.

Thwarted by the loss of their quarry, the mob surged toward the horses, swords and knives in hand. ”Do not spare the accursed!” they screamed, slicing with their knives at the three captains, who now clung to the chiefs for protection. ”Kill the infidels! Shed their blood! Do not let them escape!”

As they worked to free themselves and their captives from the crowd, the three chiefs turned upon their own people. ”Leave them,” they shouted, laying about them with heavy swords, causing several men to stagger backward, spurting blood. ”Leave our hostages to us!”

The three horses surged to a gallop. A moment later, Captain Trevor lost his grip on his captor and fell, shoulder-first, onto the icy ground. In an instant, a dozen members of the pursuing mob stood over his p.r.o.ne body, long knives rising and falling.

Behind them, Akbar Khan and a stocky, richly dressed man manhandled Macnaghten down the slope toward the river, so forcefully that the Envoy's feet dragged behind him like those of a condemned man.

He was indeed condemned. As Akbar's chiefs galloped away with the two surviving captains, Macnaghten's last, helpless cry followed them across the snow.

”Az barae Khuda! For G.o.d's sake!” he screamed hoa.r.s.ely, as the yelling crowd closed in. For G.o.d's sake!” he screamed hoa.r.s.ely, as the yelling crowd closed in.

”SOMETHING IS wrong,” Nur Rahman said sharply. He turned and stared nervously behind him. ”Something has happened there,” he added, pointing north, along the road. ”I can feel it.”

Mariana frowned. The last of the stream of tribesmen had pa.s.sed them only a moment earlier, thin shawls billowing in the icy breeze. Beyond the river and its brick bridge, the busy city beckoned.

In no time, the three of them would be in the labyrinthine alleys of Kabul, with its cobbled streets and tempting markets, on their way to Haji Khan's house.

”What do you mean?” she said irritably, turning to look. ”Why must you always-”

Nur Rahman gasped aloud. ”They are coming back,” he cried, pointing. ”Look! The fighters are returning!”

A hand to her eyes, Mariana peered into the distance, but all she saw was a thick, advancing crowd of men, whose raised voices proclaimed important, unintelligible news.

They seemed to take up the whole road. Their shouting echoed across the flat valley.

Other travelers had also seen them. An old man on a mule paused uncertainly, as if waiting for instructions. A pair of Uighur tribesmen with goatee beards were already coaxing their horses into the knee-deep snow at the side of the road.

”I see them coming,” Mariana agreed, ”but what have they to do with us?”

Yar Mohammad, too, had stopped. He, too, looked back, a hand on the donkey's neck.

Nur Rahman looked rapidly from side to side, as if he were seeking an escape route. ”We must not enter the city,” he said decisively. ”There is no telling what will happen there once the crowd returns. And we must not turn back to the cantonment, for they have blocked the way.”

”No!” Mariana protested. ”We must go on. The city is right here, in front of us, and Haji Khan's house is not far from the gate. We'll be there long before the crowd arrives. I need a chicken for my aunt's soup,” she added plaintively, ”and you yourself said that Muns.h.i.+ Sahib needs your company.”

She sighed impatiently. What was the matter with the boy? Did he have some mad reason to prevent her from seeing her muns.h.i.+?

Aunt Claire had especially wished for grapes ”Hurry,” Nur Rahman shouted. ”There is no time!”

Ignoring the stares of their fellow travelers, he lifted the skirts of his chaderi and sprinted forward, toward Yar Mohammad and the donkey. The animal's reins in one hand, and Yar Mohammad's sleeve in the other, he tugged them both into the snow, gesturing for Mariana to follow.

The man on the mule, the Uighurs, and a family whose half-dozen women and children had been stuffed onto four camels, had also left the road. All of them waited, their eyes on the advancing crowd.

”Turn away,” Nur Rahman ordered sharply. ”Do not look.”

Snow had packed itself into the tops of Mariana's boots and drenched her thin cotton trousers and the hem of her chaderi. Fearful of the real terror in Nur Rahman's voice, she turned from the road, her hands to her ears.

The crowd was upon them. Its collective voice resembled the din made by the river of men that had pa.s.sed Haji Khan's door on the morning of Alexander Burnes's death.

Was this new mob as murderous as that one? Unable to stop herself, Mariana turned to look.

Packed shoulder to shoulder, a column of several thousand men advanced toward them, filling the roadway, shouting unintelligibly and firing weapons into the air.

She glanced at Nur Rahman, and saw that his chaderi was trembling, as if his whole body were shaking. The old man steered his mule farther off the road. Only Yar Mohammad showed no sign of worry. He stood straight, his bony face impa.s.sive, the donkey's reins dangling from his fingers, as the mob flowed toward them, faces contorted with a kind of joy, light gleaming on the blades of their long knives.

Mariana searched about her, but there was nowhere to hide, only an expanse of dirty snow, and leafless trees full of whistling wind.

What was that, impaled on a long stick above the heads of the mob? Was it really a top hat, its brim half torn off? And what was that that followed the hat, also on a stick? It looked like a cannon-ball, only- By the time Mariana understood what it was, there was no time to turn away, or even to lift the face-covering flap of her chaderi. There was only time to bend over and vomit helplessly into the unclean snow at her feet.

But,” Adrian Lamb argued later that afternoon, ”General Elphinstone is telling everyone that Sir William and his companions have been removed to the city for further negotiations.”

The ashen-faced subaltern who stood before Mariana's uncle was no more than a boy. He shook his head. ”No, sir,” he said mournfully, ”Akbar and Aminullah Khan have murdered Sir William and Captain Trevor, and have taken Lawrence and Mackenzie away. They have already paraded Sir William's head and limbs in the city. His torso is now hanging from a meat hook in the Char Chatta Bazaar. I heard this from an irregular native cavalryman whose brother-in-law saw it all.

”They are ma.s.sing at the Pul-e-Khishti now, waiting for our counterattack,” he added.

Adrian Lamb exchanged a glance with his a.s.sistant, and then got to his feet. ”Thank you, Harris,” he said grimly, ”I am glad you came to me at once. And now, if anyone needs me, I shall be conferring with General Elphinstone and Brigadier Shelton.”

Twenty minutes later he and Brigadier Shelton stood over the bed where General Elphinstone lay bundled and s.h.i.+vering. Faint shouts and thudding of musket fire floated in through the closed bedroom shutters.

”Are you telling me,” Adrian Lamb inquired tightly, s.h.i.+fting his gaze from the general to his second-in-command, ”that there is to be no no retaliatory attack upon the city, even now, after Sir William's revolting, disgraceful murder?” retaliatory attack upon the city, even now, after Sir William's revolting, disgraceful murder?”

”We are,” barked Shelton.

”And we are to sit on our heels and do nothing, even with our troops sufficiently enraged to storm and carry the city of Kabul and arrest Akbar and Aminullah?”

”We are hopelessly outnumbered,” the general wheezed from his bed. ”It is only by sheerest luck that we have so far managed to escape a devastating attack by thousands of yelling tribesmen.

”Surely,” he added, pointing a trembling finger toward the window, ”you can hear the horrible din they are raising even now outside the city walls. I understand they are ma.s.sed near the Pul-e-Khishti, screaming and firing into the air. They may storm our gates at any moment.”