Sir Harold and the Hindu King, Part II

SIR HAROLD AND HINDU KING

Part 2 of 5

Christopher Stasheff

The mob of thieves and their captives turned a corner—and almost ran into the city wall. Shea jolted to a stop out of sheer surprise, but a knife-point in his back, and a snarl, motivated him to go forward again. "How are we going to get over it?" he whispered to one of his captors, but the man hissed back, "All shall become evident to the enterprising. Forward!"

Shea gulped and marched, Chalmers beside him. He could have sworn they were going to march right into the wall, and Shea found himself wondering if Chankoor were planning to have them grind their faces into it. "Doc, do you think they'll consider stopping?"

"The question has occurred to me, too," Chalmers admitted. "Perhaps they believe themselves to be invisible."

Shea remembered the incantation for invisibility. "But the guards won't open the gates for invisible men!"

"I do not think it will be the guards who open them," Chalmers returned. "After all, invisible men can still strike blows."

Shea remembered the Wells novel, and shuddered; after the random, senseless slayings he'd seen for no more than a few pieces of minted metal, he didn't doubt that the robbers would not hesitate to kill their way out every night. "Maybe they're just going to loiter around until the gates open at daybreak," he said hopefully. "They can mutter the spell over and over, after all." But the look of skepticism Chalmers gave him was all the comment the notion deserved.

Chankoor fooled them both. He simply walked up to the gate and knocked in what sounded like Morse code—three quick knocks, then two slow. For a moment, everything seemed frozen; Shea even held his breath. Then, slowly, the gate opened. "Magic?" he whispered.

"No," Chalmers said with disgust. "Bribed porters."

Shea stared, then felt a surge of self-anger at his own gullibility. He risked a glance about—and stared. He found himself gazing at the man with the horsehair over his nose! He couldn't see the horsehair in this dim light, of course—it was only a stray moonbeam that had showed it to him in the first place—but he certainly recognized the face. It was Rajah Randhir, and his eyes flared with anger at this betrayal by his own gate guards.

Din pricked Chalmers' neck again; he flinched and said, "I think we had better undertake our own transportation, before these fellows lose patience and leave us by the wayside."

"With our throats slit," Shea muttered. He started walking beside Chalmers, following the stocky moonlighted figure before them.

Out they went, in the midst of a host of thieves and killers. They only walked for about ten minutes before they came to a knot of men milling about in the roadway, talking and laughing, with more joining them from footpaths beside the way every minute. Shea stared. Could the thieves really be so bold, and so busy, that they had worn their own paths? If they were, how could there be anything left in the city worth stealing?

They certainly weren't worried about the sentries at the gate hearing them. The voices were loud, the laughter louder, and here and there a snatch of song. Their guides led them to the center of the mob, which parted to let them through at a muttered, urgent demand from their captors. Looking about for any possible escape routes, Shea happened to catch the rajah's eye. Randhir gave a start of recognition, then gave him a furious glare that as much as promised instant death if Shea dared breathe a word about his not being a genuine thief—but Shea knew how he felt; he wasn't at his most relaxed, himself, surrounded by a pack of outlaws who would probably slip a knife between his ribs as easily as they would hiss him to silence. He tried to look reassuring before the thieves behind him hustled him along.

The crowd stopped parting at a man who was taller than the rest, and strikingly handsome, if you liked lots of beard and moustache. He had muscles, anyway, and his style of dress certainly let it show. After all, a loincloth and turban don't hide all that much.

"Captain Charya," said Chankoor, "we have here two strangers who stumbled upon us as we were leaving the shop of the goldsmith."

He didn't have to be so literal, Shea thought.

"Strangers indeed!" Charya said in a deep, amused voice. "I have never seen stranger!"

"Stranger strangers?" Shea murmured, but Chalmers kicked him in the shin, and he pinched his lips shut.

"They claim to be thieves from a foreign land," Chankoor explained.

"Are you truly?" Charya the captain eyed them keenly, as though he could spot a lie by sight—and maybe he could, if he was good enough at reading posture and attitude. "A high-toper, or a lully-prigger?"

"Uh-h-h-h..." The terms caught Shea flat-footed. When in doubt, stall, he thought, and improvised. "Just another cove in the lorst, Captain."

"Ah! A petty thief!" Charya nodded, satisfied. "How if I told you to mind old Oliver?"

He might have been speaking Hindi, but the spell that gave Shea the ability to understand it was doing a great job of translating it into English idioms. "Why, I'd keep an eye on the moon, to make sure I was done stealing and gone before it rose—but your coves don't seem to worry about that."

"Why should we care?" Charya's grin gleamed in the moonlight. "There's not a soldier in the city that is not afraid of us—any, even the rajah himself!"

At the moment, Shea thought, that just might have been true. "If you have the town sewed up that tight, more power to you." After all, that was just a statement of fact. "But look sharp, Captain, or the lamb-skin man will have the pull of us, and as sure as eggs are eggs, we shall be scragged as soon as lagged."

"Then keep your red rag quiet," grumbled the thief beside him.

"Why should I be the only one?" Shea shot back.

Charya laughed. "Why indeed! All the Watch together would not dare accost us within the city—and outside of it, even less! Still, though, my lads are anxious to wet their whistles, so let us be off to the flash ken, where the morts are waiting. Come, join us!"

He turned away, beckoning, and what could Shea do but follow?

Chalmers paced beside him, muttering, "What manner of foreign language was that?"

"Thieves' jargon," Shea explained.

"And where did you learn it?"

"I've been doing some volunteer counseling," Shea explained, "unpaid—down at the county jail."

"Surely those terms were not American!"

"No, one of the thieves was English," Shea explained. "Besides, some of the language came over with the colonists and hasn't changed since. For example, if a pickpocket says a man carries his wallet on his left prat, that means his left hip pocket."

"Hence the term 'pratfall,' " Chalmers said thoughtfully. "Yes, I see."

Someone jostled Shea from the other side. Turning to protest, he found himself staring at an overly-flattened nose with a horizontal groove across the tip. He shifted his focus up to the glaring eyes of the incognito rajah. "Do not whisper a word of our earlier meeting," he hissed, "or I shall see you scragged indeed."

Shea swallowed heavily, imagining the feel of a hempen noose tightening around his neck. "Don't worry, Your Ma..." In the nick of time, he remembered that he wasn't supposed to know Randhir's real identity. "…your magic secret is safe with us. After all, if you wanted to drop us, all you'd have to do is tell them about our meeting yourself."

"You know I cannot do that without compromising myself!"

"Yes," Shea said, "exactly." He stared into the rajah's eyes until comprehension registered, and the royal lips parted in a grin. "Ah, a point well taken! We have both used the same ruse to keep our heads on our necks, have we not? Nonetheless, be sure you say nothing of me, or I shall bring down their wrath upon you!"

"It's a deal," Shea promised. "You don't betray us, and we won't betray you."

"Well enough." The rajah nodded, satisfied. "See that you keep to it." He drifted away from them.

"What was that all about?" Chalmers asked.

"Just a little mutual-silence pact," Shea told him. "Details later."

Chalmers took the hint, remembering the number of ears available to hear them, and changed the subject. He pointed to a large rodent that scuttled out of sight into a hole in the ground as they approached. "Reassuring sight, somehow."

Shea took his point—it was nice, sometimes, to remember who the real rats were—but Charya saw too, and exclaimed with satisfaction, "Ah! You recognize the rat-hole as a good omen! You must indeed be thieves!" He clapped Shea on the back, sending him staggering, and strode along, singing a merry tune.

As they went, Shea sneaked the occasional glance at the incognito rajah. The man was constantly glancing about him with an intentness that puzzled Shea. Was he memorizing faces for prosecution? Since that included Shea's and Chalmers' faces, the thought gave Shea a cold chill. He tried to ignore the rajah, and hoped he would return the courtesy.

The moon was setting, and Chalmers was beginning to stumble with fatigue, when Charya finally raised a hand to halt his gang. Shea stopped thankfully, leaning against Chalmers, who leaned against him—it had been a long day, starting in 10th Century Russia and finishing past midnight in India. No wonder he was tired, Shea reflected—that was a heck of a long hike. He looked up at the cliff that towered above them, then down at the rain forest at its foot, and shuddered. What else was he going to have to go through before he could rest?

High grass, for one thing; it was up to his knees in this meadow, and they had to hike across to reach the trees on the far side, which was apparently what the robber captain was planning on doing. Through the high grass they went, and Shea was just glad it wasn't late enough for the dew to have fallen—the grass seemed to drag at him badly enough as it was. He was really tired!

Charya put two fingers in his mouth, for all the world like an American schoolboy, and blew a whistle that Shea could have sworn must have blasted the feathers off every sleeping bird in the forest—but the only one that answered was an owl, who was very unlikely to have been sleeping. Charya shrieked back at it; Shea and Chalmers both jumped, but a voice near them murmured, "Be not afrighted; he imitates the jackal's cry—and very well, too."

Shea looked up, startled, and saw that Rajah Randhir had come up just behind them. He wasn't looking at them, though, but at Charya, and very keenly, too.

Half a dozen silhouettes rose from the long grass about them.

Shea couldn't help a start of apprehension, and for a minute, he thought he was seeing ghosts—anything could happen in a magical universe, after all—but he recovered from his surprise, and realized they were just men, though big ones, and armed to the teeth—literally; one of them was biting his spare knife, his hands being full with sword and shield. But he took the knife out without letting go of the shield—nice trick, that—and demanded, "What do we offer when Kali demands tribute?"

"A melon," Charya replied.

Chalmers stared, but behind them, Rajah Randhir hissed, "Ah! The password!"

It must have been, for the guard challenged again, "Then where is your melon?"

Charya tapped the side of his head.

The guard bowed. "Proceed, my captain." He stepped back, and the guards sank down into the grass again as smoothly as though they were sinking into the earth itself.

"They are cautious indeed," Randhir breathed.

"Yes, if they're going to check the password even with the captain himself," Shea agreed.

"They aren't really Thuggee, are they?" Chalmers asked nervously.

"Worshippers of Kali, who offer her human lives?" Randhir shook his head ever so slightly. "I think not. They are thieves, and though they may murder, it is only to gain the gold in their victims' purses. No, they worship Kartikeya."

Shea hoped he was right.

"You know a surprising amount, for foreigners," Randhir said, eyeing Chalmers narrowly—but the psychologist was saved from a reply because, just then, they passed in among the trees, and Randhir had to turn to chop secretly into the bark of a tree as they passed. The action triggered realization in Shea—the rajah was blazing his path! His constant scrutiny of his surroundings wasn't shiftiness or fear—he was memorizing landmarks! He was planning to escape, then come back with an army!

They walked for another ten minutes; then the trail opened out into a large clearing, but the light of the moon was blocked by a huge sheet of rock that reared up at the far side of the glade like a butte in the desert—or like a painter's canvas, because the bottom ten feet or so were decorated with vermillion handprints. Shea wondered what they signified, but the psychologist in him decided he didn't want to know.

Charya walked up to it and bowed low, then knelt and pulled up a tuft of grass. He beckoned, saying, "Come, new boy! Aid me here!"

Shea started to step forward, but Rajah Randhir brushed past him and stooped to help the robber captain. They heaved, and Shea saw they were both holding on to an iron ring.

"Replace your divots," Chalmers muttered.

As they heaved, a trapdoor opened in the ground. A shaft of light poured out, and a hubbub of voices drowned the night noises. Some of the voices were shouting, some singing loudly and off-key, and beneath them, Shea definitely heard the clink of glasses. Some of the voices, he was quite sure, were female.

"This is the ken," Charya said. He turned, stepping down into the hole, and commanded, "Follow me!"

Shea's hair stood on end, but the rajah very calmly stepped down into the hole as Charya sank from sight, and the robber behind Shea growled, "Hurry up! I thirst!"

"If they're eager for it," Chalmers murmured, "it can't be all that dangerous."

Shea nodded reluctantly and stepped forward. As he came to the hole, he saw a ladder stretching downward. It was made of bamboo and looked entirely too flimsy to hold him, but both the captain and Randhir looked to be heavier than he was, so he swallowed heavily, braced a hand against the trapdoor, and stepped down onto the ladder. It held—it didn't even sway—and he descended a rung at a time, Chalmers following him.

He stepped off and turned around to find himself in a large cave with troughs of water against the walls and suits of silk and fine cotton hanging on racks. Charya began to wash away his night makeup, and Shea's hair tried to stand up as he realized part of what was flowing off the man's hands was dried blood. Randhir started washing, too, then stood back and watched philosophically as the robbers filed down off the ladder and went to wash off the dirt and brick-dust of the night's work—and the dried blood. That done, they took off their turbans, and Shea found out why the fabric rose so high—it was concealing a heap of hair. The men started to comb out their long, disheveled, dusty locks, then to rearrange them and wind clean, colorful turbans around it. Recoiffured, they turned to anointing their clean skins with perfumed oil.

"Come, strangers! Refresh yourselves!" one man cried.

"A chance to acquire local dress, Harold," Chalmers muttered, and Shea called, "Why, yes, thanks! Don't mind if I do!"

As he washed, Shea kept an eye on the men around him. Some had long, slender daggers hung to lanyards lashed around their waists, some had little bags slung under their left arms, and some, oddly, wore kerchiefs around their necks.

As they finished dressing, the gang members leaped through a curtained archway with whoops of delight. Charya took his time, though, robing himself in splendid brocade over silken trousers, and Shea wasn't about to go through the curtains ahead of him. Nether was Chalmers, of course, and it didn't surprise Shea to see that Randhir waited upon the robber-captain's pleasure, too. He began to suspect that Charya was dawdling, and sure enough, most of the gang had gone before he led the way through.

They came out into a huge cavern, lighted by torches fixed to the stone walls—and if they gave off light, they gave off smoke as well, but that didn't matter much, because the floor was crowded with men sitting cross-legged with water pipes before them and bumpers of something alcoholic by their sides. Carpets of every kind, from the choicest tapestry to the coarsest rug, were spread out under the smokers, and were strewn with bags, wallets, weapons, heaps of booty, and here and there, a grappling couple—for there were women among the men, carrying trays and mugs, and dispensing kisses as freely as food and drink. Here a thief made a ribald comment at a waitress, and she answered him back with both sauciness and earthiness. Here and there a waitress gave a shriek of delight—at least, Shea hoped it was delight—as one of her "customers" pulled her down from a contest of wits to a wrestling match.

A pretty young woman saw Charya and struck a gong beside the archway. At its brazen note, all the robbers stopped what they were doing and turned to him, clapping. The captain stood there with a glittering grin, drinking in the applause. As it slackened, he threw out an arm toward the Rajah—and, incidentally, Shea and Chalmers—and cried, "Make shanti to our new companions!"

"Shanti!" the robbers cried with one voice, and suited the action to the word. Randhir smiled and bowed to them. Watching him in the lamplight, Shea could only think it was lucky for him that the light was so dim—even this close, he couldn't make out the horsehair that flattened his nose.

"What of the score of the evening, Captain?" one man called out.

Charya grinned. "I've scarcely had time to count it all—but I have numbered the bags of loot. There are twenty, and at a guess, we have hauled more booty tonight than ever before!"

The robbers gave shouts of approval, applauding and hooting.

"Eat, drink, and be merry!" Charya cried. "You have earned it!"

The robbers answered with a shout of agreement and settled down to some serious debauchery.

But even the most decadent must grow sleepy, and these particular debauchers had put in a hard night's work before they began debauching. It took four or five hours, but the flaring torches began to burn out, and one by one, the robbers began to nod, then to lie down and pull up a cushion for a pillow. Some rolled themselves up in the rugs and covered their heads; all fell asleep right where they lay. They dropped off by twos and threes, until only the thieves right next to the wall were still sitting upright, and that was only because they were leaning back against it. Even they were nodding drowsily or leaning to one side; they might have been technically awake, but they were too stupefied with opium or hashish to really be aware of anything.

Shea and Chalmers still sat with the Rajah, not feeling at all safe, the more so because they were among the few still awake. "Feign drowsiness," Randhir muttered to them, "or our heads will be forfeit." He wrinkled his nose at the smell of the smoke coming from Shea's hookah. "What manner of hashish is that?"

"One that couldn't stupefy a mouse." Shea didn't bother telling the king that he had chanted a singing commercial for a brand of cigarettes while he was lighting up.

A servant woman strolled by them, looking about for anyone needing attention. She glanced at the rajah, then looked again, staring in alarm. Randhir tensed for action, but the woman gave a quick, furtive glance about her, then knelt down by the rajah and busied herself tidying up about him. "Majesty!" she hissed. "O Rajah! How came you with these wicked men?"

Shea looked up, affronted, but Chalmers murmured, "She means the thieves, Harold, not necessarily us."

"You, too!" the woman said. "If you are with the Rajah, you must be his guards, or at the least, men of goodwill. Do you run away as fast as you can, Majesty, or they will surely kill you when they awake."

"Many thanks for kind wishes, woman," Randhir answered, his voice as low as hers, "but I do not know the way; this cave is a veritable maze, and I could not say how to find the trapdoor. In which direction am I to go?"

"Follow me!" the woman hissed, and stood up, hands full of dirty goblets. She threaded her way through the confused mass of snorers. The Rajah followed, walking as lightly and deftly as a tiger. Shea followed, trying to put his feet exactly where Randhir had, with Chalmers behind him. An inch to the left or right, and he would have stepped on the sleepers, who were likely to resent being awakened so suddenly and unpleasantly. He had a notion that they would show their resentment with knives or clubs, and wasn't eager to try to reason with them about channeling their aggressions.

The woman pulled the curtain aside, and they stepped into the robing-room again. There stood the ladder, rising up from the floor to lean against the foot-thick rim of the hole.

"Here stands your escape," the woman whispered. "Go now, my Rajah, and quickly!"

"I shall remember you for this," Randhir promised her. "You shall be rewarded."

"The only reward I crave is rebirth in a higher caste, my rajah, and to that I bend my efforts as well as I may. Forget your lowly handservant, and go!"

"May this good deed bring you great karma," Randhir said, and climbed up the ladder. Shea followed, reflecting that the woman was clearly a slave; she was doing the best she could to fulfill her dharma, her role in the order of the universe, but certainly had no choice in being maidservant to a gang of thieves.

Randhir crowded himself up against the trapdoor, hunched over; Shea wondered, but as the Rajah straightened with a grunt, heaving up, he saw the sense in the man's strategy; the heavy stone trapdoor swung up ever so slowly—but the ladder dipped and swayed, and Shea clung for dear life, thinking that the rung on which the rajah stood had to snap, it couldn't possibly hold against such pressure...

It did hold, though, and with a final thrust, Randhir straightened. The door shot up, then fell open with a thud that made Chalmers wince. Randhir climbed up and out of the hole, then turned to heft the trapdoor closed...

…and saw Shea's head just above the opening. "What," he hissed, "are you still here?"

"And just as eager to get out of here as you are." Shea sidled over to the edge of the ladder, lifting one foot off to leave as much free room as possible, and beckoned to Chalmers, below the rim where Randhir couldn't see it. "We need to get out in a bad way, because if those bad men find out we're not bad too, then we're going to be in bad trouble."

Chalmers squirmed up past him.

"You put me in a dilemma," Randhir said, scowling. "If you are truly thieves, you could raise the alarm and bring down an ambush upon me, for surely there must still be guards about!"

"If I were a thief," Shea retorted, "I would have raised the alarm long ago, and they would have killed you while they had you in their hall."

"There is some sense in that," Randhir allowed. "Still, I cannot... Ho! Stop, you!"

But Chalmers threw himself over the rim of the hole and rolled out from beneath the trapdoor.

"Tricked!" Randhir snapped. "By Indra, if I suffer you to... Pah!"

The last was said in disgust as Shea rolled free, too, then rose, dusting off his hands. "Can I help you lower that thing? It won't do any of us any good if it goes 'boom' as it falls."

Randhir stood a moment, irresolute, Shea's offhanded offer taking him by surprise. Then he sighed and accepted the fait accompli. "Aye, it is well thought. Aid me, then, for the trap has grown heavy during this chatter."

Shea laid hold of the iron ring too, and together they lowered the trapdoor until it closed with a muffled thud. Then Randhir cast about him, doubled over, searching. Shea was just about to ask what was going on when the Rajah straightened with a soft exclamation of satisfaction, holding the plug of grass in his hand. He tamped it carefully back over the iron ring.

"He does replace his divots," Chalmers muttered to Shea.

"Sure he does," Shea whispered back. "He owns the whole golf course!"

"Come—away!" Randhir whispered, and turned to plunge back into the woods.

Shea hurried to catch up with him and said, keeping his voice low, "I think you said something about there maybe being guards still posted?"

"We shall deal with them when we must." Randhir drew his dagger. "If we are going to travel together, we must know one another. I am Matun."

Shea held his face neutral for a moment, thrown by the alias—then realized that a man in disguise certainly wasn't about to use his own name. "I'm Shea, and my friend is Chalmers."

"Shea and Chalmers—well met." Randhir gave them each a curt nod. "Let us hurry now! We would be well advised to be clear of this wood while it is still dark!"

"And the sentries sleepy. You are very brave," Chalmers said, coming up on his other side, "but this very night, we have learned an incantation that makes people invisible."

Randhir halted. "Why, so we have! Indeed, I made shift to memorize it as soon as I heard it! But can I remember it now?"

"We should be able to, between the three of us," Shea said, "but will it work if we don't cover ourselves with oil?"

"The coconut oil was to aid the robbers in slipping through tight places," Randhir told him, "and to prevent a man of the Watch from gaining a hold on them. Still, you may be right; we can only attempt it."

"There were gestures that went with it," Chalmers informed him, "like this." He made a circle above his head, then drew his hand flat down in front of his face, palm toward his eyes, and on down along his whole body. "Do that as we recite!"

They all pantomimed as they chanted the words together. They were meaningless, incomprehensible, but Shea felt sure that if he had ever learned Sanskrit, they would be poetry of the highest order. He looked up at Chalmers and Randhir...

Just in time to see their forms waver, grow transparent, and disappear. "I can't see you at all!"

"Nor I you," Chalmers' voice answered out of thin air, "nor His Majesty."

Shea looked closely at the space where the rajah had been. Sure enough, he was completely invisible. No, wait... there was a gleam of light, a ray, a straight line...

The horsehair. Randhir really ought to do something about that.

TO BE CONTINUED...