The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [354]
‘You expect to go before then?’ asked Sarji.
‘Not expect,’ corrected Ash wryly. ‘Only hope. Didn't they tell you I was serving a sentence? I'm on attachment; and as I shall have been here a year in March, there's just a chance that the powers in Rawalpindi may relent and send word that I may go back to my own rissala.’
‘What powers are those?’ inquired Sarji, interested.
‘Gods,’ said Ash flippantly. ‘Tin gods that say unto one “go” and he goeth, and to another “come” and he cometh. I received the first order and perforce obeyed: now I hope for the second.’
‘So?’ Sarji was puzzled but polite. ‘And what of Dagobaz? Will you take him with you when you go?’
‘Of course. You don't think I'd part with him, do you? If I couldn't take him any other way, I'd ride him back. But if I'm to be left here to rot for another year, I mean to take him down to Bombay for the races, and the entire Regiment are planning to put their shirts on him.’
‘Shirts?’
‘Money. They are going to bet every rupee they can lay hands on.’
‘Ah! I too. I shall go to Bombay with you and I shall back you with a lakh of rupees for your first race, and make a fortune!’
‘We all will. You and I and your great-uncle the Risaldar-Sahib, and every man in the Regiment. And afterwards Dagobaz will have a silver cup as big as a bucket to drink out of.’
Ash's opinion of the black horse was shared by many; though not by Mahdoo, who refused to see anything admirable in the animal and openly regretted its purchase.
‘I believe that you care more for that Child of the Pit than for anyone else,’ complained Mahdoo crossly as Ash, returning at dusk after an evening ride, fed Dagobaz with sugar before sending him back to the stables. ‘It is not fitting to give one's heart to an animal, who has no soul.’
‘Yet Allah made horses for our use,’ retorted Ash, laughing. ‘Is it not written in the Koran, in the Sura of the War-Steeds… “By the snorting of
war-steeds which strike fire with their hooves as they gallop to the raid at dawn, and with a trail of dust split the foe in two: man is ungrateful to his Lord! To this he himself shall bear witness.” Would you have me ungrateful for such gifts as these, Cha-cha?’
‘I would have you spend less time talking to a brute-beast, and more on those who have your welfare at heart. Such as Hamilton-Sahib, to whom, as I know well, you have sent only one short letter since the day that you acquired that son of perdition.’
Ash started and had the grace to look guilty: ‘Have I not? I did not realize… I will write to him now, tonight.’
‘First read what he has to say. This came by the morning's dâk, but it seems that you were in too great a hurry to glance at your letters before you went off to that creature's stable. This thick one is, I think, from Hamilton-Sahib; and we also, Gul Baz and I, would like news of him and of our friends in Mardan.’
He proffered a brass salver bearing half-a-dozen letters, and Ash snatched up the bulkiest, and tearing open the envelope, carried it into the lamp-lit bungalow to read it:
‘The cavalry have been having a damned dull time of it lately,’ wrote Wally, ‘but the infantry, lucky devils, have been having no end of larks. I can't remember if I told you about that trouble with the Jowaki Afridis over the Government suddenly deciding to stop bribing them (sorry, I believe I should have said “paying them an allowance”. Wah illah!) in return for keeping open the road through the Kohat Pass, and offering them an equivalent sum for safeguarding the Khushalgarh road and telegraph line.
‘They didn't take to the idea at all, and after a bit they began to make their displeasure felt by plundering and burning villages and attacking escorts and police stations. Then they burned down a bridge on the Khushalgarh road and that seems to have got the Powers-that-Be on the raw – a sort of last straw on their august shoulders. They decided that the Jowaki jokers must be given a sharp rap over the knuckles, and, I regret to say, that was just about all it was. A quick dash into Jowaki territory