The Flashman Papers: The Complete 12-Book Collection. George Fraser MacDonald

as though it were all for the best.

      “I’m grateful to you, sir,” says I, “for your timely assistance. You shall be rewarded – all of you – and …”

      “Indeed we will,” says Gul Shah. “Stand him up.”

      They dragged me to my feet, twisting my arms behind me. I told them loudly that if they took me back to the cantonment they would be handsomely paid, and they roared with laughter.

      “Any paying the British do will be in blood,” says Gul Shah. “Yours first of all.”

      “What for, damn you?” I shouted.

      “Why do you suppose I stopped the Ghazis from quartering you?” says he. “To preserve your precious skin, perhaps? To hand you as a peace offering to your people?” He stuck his face into mine. “Have you forgotten a dancing girl called Narreeman, you pig’s bastard? Just another slut, to the likes of you, to be defiled as you chose, and then forgotten. You are all the same, you feringhee swine; you think you can take our women, our country, and our honour and trample them all under foot. We do not matter, do we? And when all is done, when our women are raped and our treasure stolen, you can laugh and shrug your shoulders, you misbegotten pariah curs!” He was screaming at me, with froth on his lips.

      “I meant her no harm,” I was beginning, and he struck me across the face. He stood there, glaring at me and panting. He made an effort and mastered himself.

      “She is not here,” he said at last, “or I would give you to her and she would give you an eternity of suffering before you died. As it is, we shall do our poor best to accommodate you.”

      “Look,” says I. “Whatever I’ve done, I beg your pardon for it. I didn’t know you cared for the wench, I swear. I’ll make amends, any way you like. I’m a rich man, a really rich man.” I went on to offer him whatever he wanted in ransom and as compensation to the girl, and it seemed to quiet him for a minute.

      “Go on,” says he, when I paused. “This is good to listen to.”

      I would have done, but just the cruel sneer told me he was mocking me, and I fell silent.

      “So, we are where we began,” says he. “Believe me, Flashman, I would make you die a hundred deaths, but time is short. There are other throats besides yours, and we are impatient people. But we shall make your passing as memorable as possible, and you shall tell me again what it is like to die. Bring him along.”

      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, Flashman. 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 dwarf’s 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 substance. 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.