Flashman Papers 3-Book Collection 2: Flashman and the Mountain of Light, Flash For Freedom!, Flashman and the Redskins. George Fraser MacDonald

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      Where the bath had been there was a flat expanse of rough stone, filling the cavity like a huge plug flush with the surrounding tiles. From that monstrous square of rock great rusty chains snaked up, clanking to and fro, into a gaping hole in the patterned ceiling. Foam was gushing up in a curtain from the narrow fissures between the fallen slab and the sides of the bath, washing over me in a wave, and even as I stared in horror it continued to ooze out, pink at first and then a hideous crimson. Beyond the bath the second Kashmiri was cowering against a pillar, her mouth wide in scream after scream. She turned and ran, water flying from her bare body, and then stopped dead, her shrieks changing to a terrified wail.

      Three men were standing just clear of the shadows on that side, drawn scimitars in their hands. They wore only loose grey pyjamy trousers and great wide hoods so deep that their faces were invisible; the girl shrank away from them, blubbering and covering her face; she slipped and fell on the wet tiles and tried to scramble away while they stood like grey statues, and then one stepped forward, lightly hefting his sword, she bounded to her feet, screeching as she turned to run, but before she’d gone a step his point was through her back; it came out like a ghastly silver needle between her breasts, and she pitched forward lifeless on the stone block. Then they were flitting towards me in dead silence, expert assassins of whom two skirted wide to take me in flank while the third came straight for me, his blood-smeared blade out before him. I turned to run, slipped, and came down headlong.

      Cowardice has its uses. I’d be long dead without it, for it’s driven me to try, in blind panic, ploys which no thinking man would even attempt. A brave man would have scrambled up to run or fling himself at the nearest enemy bare-handed; only Flashy, landing arse over tip on one of the little piles of gear discarded by the Kashmiri girls, would have grabbed at her pathetic tinsel bow, snatched a dart from its quiver, fumbled it gibbering on to the string and let fly at the leading thug as he came leaping over the girl’s corpse at me, swinging up his scimitar. It was only a fragile toy, but it was tight-strung, and that small shaft must have been sharp as a chisel, for it sank to the flights in his midriff and he twisted howling in mid-air, his scimitar clashing on the tiles before me. I grabbed it, knowing I was done for, with one of the flank men driving at me, but I managed to turn his thrust and hurl myself sideways, expecting to feel his mate’s point searing into my back. There was a yell and clash of steel behind me as I landed on my shoulder and rolled over and up, slashing blindly and bawling like an idiot for help.

      Wasted breath, for it had arrived. The other flank man was desperately trying to parry the sweep of a Khyber knife in the hand of a tall robed newcomer – which with a scimitar is rather like opposing a pea-shooter to a rifle. One slash and the scimitar blade was a shattered stump, another and the thug was down with a cloven skull – and the man whose thrust I’d parried leaped back and was off like a hare, dodging for the shadows. The robed apparition turned from his victim without undue haste, took one long stride and brought over his sword-arm like a fast bowler, letting the Khyber knife go; it turned once in the air and drove into the fugitive’s back, he hurtled against a pillar, clinging to it with that dreadful cleaver imbedded in his body, and slid slowly to the floor. Twenty seconds earlier I’d been having my knees washed.

      The robed man strode past me, recovered his knife, and cursed as blood splashed his coat – and only then did I realise it was a crimson garment in the tartan of the 79th. He stalked back, hunkering down to wash his blade in the water lapping over the tiles, and surveyed the shambles where the bath had been, the great rock that filled it, and the dangling chains.

      “Well, I’ll be a son of a bitch,” says he. “So that’s how they did for old lady Chaund Cour. No wonder we never saw the body – guess she didn’t look like much with that on top of her.” He stood up and barked at me. “Well, sir? You aim to stand around bollock-naked and take your death of cold? Or would you prefer to make tracks before the coroner gets here?”

      The words were English. The accent was pure American.

      a “Durbar”, as Flashman employs it, means variously an audience of royalty, the durbar room in which audience is given, and the Punjab government (e.g. “Lahore durbar”).

      b Lit. “Lord of the land”, i.e. Sir Henry Hardinge.

      c Sweeper.

      d Foreigner.

      e Kunwar=the son of a maharaja, and kunwari is presumably the female honorific.

      f “Lord of War”, i.e. Gough.