The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [434]
‘I bought one for each of them,’ explained Gobind in an aside to Ash as he adjusted the girths, ‘but this is the better of the two, so I have left the other behind, which is no loss – we cannot cumber ourselves with spare horses. If the Rani-Sahiba will be pleased to mount –?’
They rode out of the grove and circled back across the dusty plain towards the entrance of the valley, where the walled city stood like a vast block of sandstone in the centre of the valley mouth. The sun had not yet sunk behind the hills, and because here their route lay west they rode directly towards it. Its glare dazzled the eyes of both riders and horses and the heat rose in waves from the stony ground and beat against them – and Ash had forgotten about that nameless merchant of Bhithor who had been a great traveller, and had brought back from foreign parts the secret of how men could speak to each other over great distances with the aid of small shields of polished silver.
Even if he had remembered it would not have helped much – except that he might have been warned. As it was, riding into the eye of the setting sun and half blinded by its glare, he did not see the brief flicker from a high rooftop in the city, or the one from the walls of the right-hand fort, that could be translated as ‘Message understood’. And Sarji, who did see them, supposed them to be only sunlight flashing on a window-pane or the burnished barrel of a cannon.
Neither of them was ever to know how their escape came to be discovered so soon, though the explanation was very simple, and proved that Manilal's advice on the score of killing their prisoners had been sound. A gag, however efficient, does not prevent a man – or a woman – from making a certain amount of noise, and when six people combine to moan in chorus, the noise they produce is not inconsiderable. The captives were unable to move but they could moan, and they did so to such good purpose that before long one of the guards below, on his way up to the top storey of the chattri from where he hoped to obtain a better view, stopped to listen as he passed the curtained entrance, and supposing the sound to come from the Junior Rani, could not resist twitching it very slightly aside and putting his eye to the crack.
Within minutes all six were free and pouring out a wild tale of murder, assault and abduction. And shortly afterwards a score of soldiers set off in pursuit, guided by the long, betraying cloud of dust that Ash and his companions had raised as they rode away, and that showed like a white streak across the face of the plain. The chances of overtaking the runaways were slight, for they had too good a start and should have got clean away. But as luck would have it, one of the bodyguard had been provided with a signalling shield and charged with keeping in touch with the city and the forts in order to report the safe arrival of the funeral cortège. He now made use of it to flash a warning to both that said, in effect – Enemy. Five. On horseback. Intercept.
The signal was seen and acknowledged, and though the hilltop forts could do little, the city took immediate action. There were no more than a handful of troops within its confines that day, the majority having been called on to keep a clear pathway for the funeral procession or sent to control the crowds at the burning-ground. But the few who had remained on guard at the palace were hastily rounded up and dispatched at full gallop to the Hathi Pol, the Elephant Gate, with instructions to cut off a party of five horsemen who were presumed to be making for the border.
But for a zealous gunner in the right-hand fort, they would have done so, as by now the fugitives were riding through the gap between the hillside and the northern wall of the city, and were as yet barely level with the Mori Gate. Having not seen the signals,