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

the saddle and held me fast.

      “What’s this?” says I, trying to brave it out. “We are friends, on our way to Jallalabad. What do you want with us?”

      “The British are everyone’s friends,” grins he, “and they are all going to Jallalabad – or were.” And his crew cackled with laughter. “You will come with us,” and he nodded to my captors, who had a thong round my wrists and tied to my own stirrup in a trice.

      There was no chance of putting up a fight, even if all the heart had not gone out of me. For a moment I had hoped they were just broken men of the hills, who might have robbed us and let us go, but they were intent on holding us prisoner. For ransom? That was the best I could hope for. I played a desperate card.

      “I am Flashman huzoor,” cries I, “the friend of Akbar Khan Sirdar. He’ll have the heart and guts of anyone who harms Bloody Lance!”

      “Allah protect us!” says the jezzailchi, who was a humorist in his way, like all his lousy kind. “Guard him close, Raisul, or he’ll stick you on his little spear, as he did to the Gilzais at Mogala.” He hopped into my saddle and grinned down at me. “You can fight, Bloody Lance. Can you walk also?” And he set the pony off at a brisk trot, making me run alongside, and shouting obscene encouragement. They had served Hudson the same way, and we had no choice but to stumble along, jeered at by our ragged conquerors.

      It was too much; to have come so far, to have endured so much, to have escaped so often, to be so close to safety – and now this. I wept and swore, called my captor every filthy name I could lay tongue to, in Pushtu, Urdu, English, and Persian, pleaded with him to let us go in return for a promise of great payment, threatened him with the vengeance of Akbar Khan, beseeched him to take us to the Sirdar, struggled like a furious child to break my bonds – and he only roared so hard with laughter that he almost fell from the saddle.

      “Say it again!” he cried. “How many lakhs of rupees? Ya’llah, I shall be made for life. What was that? Noseless bastard offspring of a leprous ape and a gutter-descended sow? What a description! Note it, Raisul, my brother, for I have no head for education, and I wish to remember. Continue, Flashman huzoor; share the riches of your spirit with me!”

      So he mocked me, but he hardly slackened pace, and soon I could neither swear nor plead nor do anything but stumble blindly on. My wrists were burning with pain, and there was a leaden fear in my stomach; I had no idea where we were going, and even after darkness fell the brutes still kept going, until Hudson and I dropped from sheer fatigue. Then we rested a few hours, but at dawn they had us up again, and we staggered on through the hot, hellish day, resting only when we were too exhausted to continue, and then being forced up and dragged onwards at the stirrups.

      It was just before dusk when we halted for the last time, at one of those rock forts that are dotted on half the hillsides of Afghanistan. I had a vision of a gateway, with a rickety old gate swung back on rusty hinges, and beyond it an earth courtyard. They did not take us so far, but cut the thongs that held us and shoved us through a narrow door in the gatehouse wall. There were steps leading down, and a most fearsome stink coming up, but they pushed us headlong down and we stumbled on to a floor of mixed straw and filth and God knows what other debris. The door slammed shut, and there we were, too worn out to move.

      I suppose we lay there for hours, groaning with pain and exhaustion, before they came back, bringing us a bowl of food and a chatti of water. We were famished, and fell on it like pigs, while the big jezzailchi watched us and made funny remarks. I ignored him, and presently he left us. There was just light enough from a high grating in one wall for us to make out our surroundings, so we took stock of the cellar, or dungeon, whichever it was.

      I have been in a great variety of jails in my life, from Mexico (where they are truly abominable) to Australia, America, Russia, and dear old England, and I never saw a good one yet. That little Afghan hole was not too bad, all round, but it seemed dreadful at the time. There were bare walls, pretty high, and a roof lost in shadow, and in the middle of the filthy floor two very broad flat stones, like a platform, that I didn’t like the look of. For above them, swinging down from the ceiling, was a tangle of rusty chains, and at the sight of them a chill stabbed through me, and I thought of hooded black figures, and the Inquisition, and torture chambers that I had gloated over in forbidden books at school. It’s very different when you are actually in one.

      I told Hudson what I thought of them, and he just grunted and spat and then begged my pardon. I told him not to be such a damned fool, that we were in a frightful fix, and he could stop behaving as though we were on Horse Guards. I’ve never been one to stand on ceremony anywhere, and here it was just ridiculous. But it took Hudson time to get used to talking to an officer, and at first he just listened to me, nodding and saying, “Yes, sir,” and “Very good, sir,” until I swore with exasperation.

      For I was in a funk, of course, and poured out my fears to him. I didn’t know why they were holding us, although ransom seemed most likely. There was a chance Akbar might get to hear of our plight, which was what I hoped – but at the back of my mind was the awful thought that Gul Shah might hear of us just as easily. Hudson, of course, didn’t understand why I should be so horrified at this, until I told him the whole story – about Narreeman, and how Akbar had rescued me from Gul’s snakes in Kabul. Heavens, how I must have talked, but when I tell you that we were in the cellar a week together, without ever so much as seeing beyond the door, and myself in a sweat of anxiety about what our fate might be, you will understand that I needed an audience. Your real coward always does, and the worse his fear the more he blabs. I babbled something sickening in that dungeon to Hudson. Of course, I didn’t tell him the story as I’ve told it here – the Bloody Lance incident, for example, I related in a creditable light. But I convinced him at least that we had every reason to fear if Gul Shah got wind that we were in Afghan hands.

      It was difficult to tell how he took it. Mostly he just listened, staring at the wall, but from time to time he would look at me very steady, as though he was weighing me up. At first I hardly noticed this, any more than one does notice a common trooper looking at one, but after a while it made me feel uncomfortable, and I told him pretty sharp to leave off. If he was scared at the fix we were in, he didn’t show it, and I admit there were one or two occasions when I felt a sneaking regard for him; he didn’t complain, and he was very civil in his speech, and would ask me very respectfully to translate what the Afridi guards said when they brought us our food – for he had no Pushtu or Hindustani.

      This was little enough, and we had no way of telling how true it was. The big jezzailchi was the most talkative, but mostly he would only recall how badly the British had been cut up on the march from Kabul, so that not a single man had been left alive, and how there would soon be no feringhees left in Afghanistan at all. Akbar Khan was advancing on Jallalabad, he said, and would put the whole garrison to the sword, and then they would sweep down through the Khyber and drive us out of India in a great jehad that would establish the True Faith from Peshawar to the sea. And so on, all bloody wind and water, as I told Hudson, but he considered it very thoughtfully and said he didn’t know how long Sale could hold out in Jallalabad if they laid proper siege to it.

      I stared at this, an ordinary trooper passing opinion on a general’s business.

      “What do you know about it?” says I.

      “Not much, sir,” says he. “But with respect to General Elphinstone, I’m powerful glad it’s General Sale that’s laying in Jallalabad and not him.”

      “Is that so, and be damned to you,” says I. “And what’s your opinion of General Elphinstone, if you please?”

      “I’d rather not say, sir,” says he. And then he looked at me with those grey eyes. “He wasn’t with the 44th at Gandamack, was he, sir? Nor a lot of the officers wasn’t. Where were they, sir?”

      “How should I know? And what concern is that of yours?”

      He sat looking down for a moment. “None at all, sir,” says he at last. “Beg pardon for asking.”

      “I should damned well think so,” says I. “Anyway, whatever you think of Elphy Bey, you can rely