The Devil's Guard, page 25
He began to try the sort of blandishments he used to use in the old days when he wanted me to back him in some scheme I didn't like.
"I know your point of view is different from mine, but what harm will it do you to give in? Can't you be generous when it won't cost you anything? I'm not pretending you'd enjoy the life I'm going to lead, but you don't have to lead it and you'll save yourself an awful lot of agony by doing what I ask. I've got to make you crawl to me. These people insist on proofs before they'll teach any further; and they know things I've simply got to know. I'll tell you what, Rammy: you've had a raw deal and something's coming to you. Give in, and I'll not only release you afterward but I'll guarantee to use my stuff to help you in any scheme you like—no matter what it is."
If I might write down how I loathed him, what I wrote would burn the paper. But suddenly it occurred to me that even the sensation of disgust was dangerous—that it was like a poison gas by means of which, in some way that I did not understand, he might undermine my obstinacy and then overwhelm my will. I tried to pity him. I even tried to like him, summoning to mind the days when he had played the banjo to our gangs of niggers to keep them good tempered when we had to accomplish two days' work in one. In those days Rait had been a wonder around a mining camp and he and I together had accomplished things that other men thought impossible.
To avoid his eyes I looked up through the hole in the roof. He believed I was praying, and laughed.
"Do you still think your God is in Heaven?" he sneered. "Do you believe in miracles!"
At any rate, I did believe my eyes. Against the luminous, clear night sky I had seen Grim's face with firelight on it, looking down at me. It was but a momentary glimpse, but I was absolutely certain.
The man in Grim's clothes left the fire and came and stood beside Rait.
"You're an amateur," he sneered. "I turned him over to you ready, but look at his eyes now. Can't you see the change in him? All my work would have to be repeated before you could hope to manage him. You'll have to kill him now. Maybe that will strengthen your own will. Go on, kill him. If it weren't your first case I should make you use your fingers. You may use your knife, but do it slowly and so rid yourself of any squeamishness you have left. What are you—?"
His head split down the middle as a saber struck him from behind. He fell across my legs, and in his place there stood Narayan Singh, teeth flashing, eyes blazing, simmering with passion. His cheek- bones stood out like a skeleton's. He turned on Rait.
"Hello, Narayan Singh!" said Rait. He ducked as the saber swung for him. It missed and Rait leaped backward. He was instantly surrounded by the monks and I could see him groping with his right hand into the long cloak he wore. Then Grim came down by a rope through the hole in the roof and Rait fired pointblank at the two of them—missing, as invariably happens when a man divides his target. With a roar like a wounded tiger's Narayan Singh went headlong at the monks. Rait swung the man whose ribs I had broken in between him and the saber and the point went home. Grim bent over me:
"How are you, Rammy? How's Chullunder Ghose?"
I was puzzled why he did not help Narayan Singh go after Rait. The Sikh had driven all the monks, with Rait cowering in their midst, out through the door and was standing on guard. The dawn was just beginning then to change the color of the sky.
"Are you two alone?" I asked.
"Not we."
Grim walked to where Chullunder Ghose was lying and made noises in his teeth. He tried to pick him up but Narayan Singh glanced over his shoulder and asked:
"Sahib, may we make haste?"
So Grim began to drag Chullunder Ghose toward where I lay, just as another pistol shot directed at Narayan Singh spat through the doorway and a bullet clipped the stone work of the upper gallery.
Chullunder Ghose was totally unconscious. Grim let him drop beside me and then ran toward a closed door on my left hand, underneath the gallery and nearly opposite that other where Narayan Singh stood guard. Grim was wearing an odd-looking costume, but I could not distinguish details. He picked up a heavy stone that had fallen from the gallery and began to smash the clumsy iron lock; it broke after a dozen blows and he opened the door, letting in a blast of icy wind along with the first gleam of sun-light. That door faced due East.
Then he returned to me, and as he stooped I saw he wore a turban made of dark brown silk.
"Can you crawl?" he asked.
I could not, but I told him I could, because I wanted to stay and watch Narayan Singh.
"Sure! Women and kids first—just like you, damn you!" he said cheerfully and took hold of Chullunder Ghose under the armpits, dragging him heels downward to the door under the gallery.
I remembered the bag then, into which all my belongings, including a pistol, had been thrown, and presently I saw it over near the fire. I called out to Narayan Singh that he would find two pistols in the bag, but he answered over his shoulder that he did not dare to leave his post to go and look for them. So I began to try to crawl, pulling my legs out from under the lifeless body of the man whom Narayan Singh had killed. It makes my flesh creep now to think of how it hurt to cross those twenty feet of floor. When I reached the bag and opened it at last there were no pistols' in it—nothing but my watch, a little money and some odds and ends.
I warned Narayan Singh that the enemy had all the firearms, and as I spoke three shots spat through the doorway and struck slabs of plaster of the wall. The light was probably confusing to a monk unused to firearms.
Then Grim came for me and put his hands under my armpits from behind. I tried to resist. I could see a man with bow and arrows aiming at Narayan Singh and there were six or seven men with swords and daggers ready to pounce on him if the arrow should hit the mark. I told Grim to go and help Narayan Singh, but he began dragging me across the floor toward the door under the gallery. An arrow whizzed within six inches of me, and the next thing I remember we were outside in a bitter wind with the sun shining straight in my eyes.
I was lying on a smooth rock with my back toward the building from which Grim had dragged me and it was extremely difficult to see because of the blinding sunlight on the snow and because my head was swimming, but I got my bearings presently.
The building we had left was on a sort of island—a sheer-sided rock that rose from near the middle of a deep ravine. I could not see beyond the ruined building, but on the side on which I lay there was a narrow natural causeway, resembling a vein of quartz, that formed the only means of access to the flank of the ravine, where it seemed to disappear into a tunnel. The causeway was irregular and there were ice and snow in patches all the way along. Midway Grim was carrying Chullunder Ghose, staggering under the weight.
In the ruined building there was the sort of noise that comes out of a slaughter-house. A moment after I had turned myself slowly in that direction Narayan Singh came out, wiping his saber on somebody's turban. He had no scabbard. He stooped over me and asked whether I could hold the saber, but doubted my ability, so he passed the blood-smeared turban through the hilt and tied it to my waist. Then he hoisted me up on his shoulders, and I was glad he had tied the saber on; the pain would have made me let go of it.
He began to carry me along the causeway and I fainted again, I believe, from the agony caused by the jerky movement and from my own efforts to lie still, head downward over his shoulder.
At any rate, there is a lapse of memory until I discovered myself lying on an ice patch midway along the causeway—possibly two hundred yards away from where we started. I was facing the ruined building, so could see comparatively clearly, with the sun behind me.
My view was from between Narayan Singh's legs. He had resumed the saber and had turned at bay against seven men who were advancing cautiously, their leaders rather hanging back but unable to retreat because the others pushed them forward. Then I heard Grim's voice:
"All right, Narayan Singh."
I was lifted from behind. Grim never was a weakling, but it puzzled me how he had found the strength to do that.
"Sorry if it hurts," he grunted.
He began to carry me, but turned to see whether Narayan Singh was following. He was not; he was facing the enemy, hilt high, his saber looking like a beam of sunlight. The advancing monks were sheltering their eyes under their left arms.
"Retire, Narayan Singh !" Grim called to him, but the Sikh did not move.
"Go thou, Jimgrim sahib!" he shouted back. "There comes one with a pistol."
I could see a man advancing slowly; he was nearly midway between the monks and the commencement of the causeway, framed exactly by the open door a hundred yards behind him. Grim began to set me down, using time and thought to do it carefully, for I am no light weight.
"Will you come, or shall I come and make you!" he demanded.
"Nay! I see Rait!" the Sikh answered.
In a second he was charging straight at the advancing monks. The first three flinched and tried to turn, but there was no room to pass the four who blocked the way behind them. They struggled. One slipped and fell over, screaming as he somersaulted through the sunlit air. Then the Sikh was into them and five more went after the first, the saber licking out like lightning stabs. The last one turned and ran, throwing his weapon away and picking up the skirts of his long cloak.
"Now come!" Grim shouted. But Narayan Singh went in pursuit.
The man with the pistol opened fire and at the third shot hit the monk, who toppled backward and went head-long into the ravine. A fourth shot whistled close to Grim and me. The man was dazzled by the sunlight; he kept bending his head to right and left, shielding his eyes with his left hand. Narayan Singh raced forward and Grim started after him, shouting to him to stop, but before he had gone ten paces the Sikh turned, waved his saber and shouted:
"Rait! I have him!"
He ran on again along the causeway. Rait reloaded and took aim, but the sun glared off the ice and off the quartz-like rock and three shots in succession missed, one splintering the ice near Grim's feet. Then a fourth shot hit the Sikh and staggered him.
His answering shout went echoing among the crags:
"Rung ho!"
Rait fired again. I think he hit a second time, but—up through his forearm—through the throat—and out behind his head the saber went with one of those long lunging thrusts for which Narayan Singh was famous.
"Rung ho!" came the echoing shout again. Narayan Singh clutched air, fell forward on to Rait—writhed—slid—and the two went over, separating as they plunged into the abyss.
Grim glanced up at the sky after a moment.
"Vultures already," he said.
Then he stood still, looking down into the abyss, but some one fired a rifle at us from the ruined building and a group of monks came out through the open door. So Grim said nothing, but hoisted me up on his shoulders again and made all haste toward the tunnel mouth at the causeway's other end—slipping, staggering, stumbling— ten times over we were closer than a hair's breadth of the edge— and when he laid me down at last in echoing darkness he collapsed beside me.
Then I heard a voice in Tibetan: "Gently! Very gently!" I was lifted and laid on a litter, and for a long time I was conscious of a litter swaying under me and of the footfalls and the steady breathing of the men who carried it. Somebody covered my face with a cloth after a while and I believe I slept. I dreamed about a ladder I was climbing—miles high and exactly upright. As I climbed, the lower rungs fell one by one, so there was no way down again. When I reached the top there was nothing there except blue sky and I stood swaying in the wind.
I began to lose my balance, until Grim leaned through the blue above me with an outstretched hand and called to me to jump.
I could not make it, and the last rung of the ladder began cracking underfoot.
Chapter Twenty-Two—The herdsman's halt.
My son, when you have come to a decision between right and wrong, then act, not waiting on approval. If you do right it will add no virtue to the right that friends gave their assent beforehand; rather it will give a false friend opportunity to strengthen his attachment, so that ultimately you may listen to him to your own undoing. If you do wrong it will harm you not at all that enemies rejoice, since proper motive will preserve you in the end and it is well to have our enemies uncovered. Be your own judge. But commit no trespass, watchfully remembering that where another's liberty begins your own inevitably meets its boundary.—From The Book Of The Sayings of Tsiang Samdup
I awoke in a herdsman's hut. A gale was blowing and crisp snowflakes fell through a square hole in the roof into a yak-dung fire that burned on a stone hearth underneath it. I was lying against a partition that divided the hut down the middle; men were talking on the other side of it in low tones, but it was difficult to hear because of the blustering wind, and equally difficult to see because the smoke explored the room in clouds before a little of it found its way out through the hole.
I tried to raise myself but had the sickening experience of feeling too weak. My mouth tasted as if I had been made to swallow medicine, and for a while I was still confused by the vivid dream from which I had awakened. Gradually, however, recollection came, and not long after that I began to distinguish Grim's voice, near my head, between me and the end wall. He was talking English.
"All the same," he said, "I should like to tell Jeff why you could not help us more definitely than you did. When Jeff comes to he will learn that your men brought litters, waited for Narayan Singh, and me to rescue him and the babu, and then carried them all the way to this place. And I know my friend Jeff. He will ask why you could do that but couldn't help in the actual rescue. I'm not questioning your actions; I'm simply asking what to say to him."
"Tell him the plain truth," said Lhaten's unmistakable voice. "You may say we don't take life for any reason."
There was a pause. Then Grim resumed: "He'll take my word for that, I don't doubt. But, as I say, I know him; he will feel as sorry about Narayan Singh as I do—very likely worse. He isn't demonstrative but—"
"I know," Lhaten answered. "He loves his friends, but he hasn't understood yet that death strengthens friendship rather than reduces it. We all die. We all meet again—some of us with fewer limitations and more knowledge. It was no harm that Narayan Singh should die fighting. Better that than be killed in a brawl or in an unjust cause, as so many soldiers die. Rait undoubtedly would have shot you and your friend Ramsden if Narayan Singh had not prevented."
"What makes you sure of that?" asked Grim.
"Knowledge," said Lhaten. "If you think a minute you will know too. Did you ever know a criminal to spare old friends who are ashamed of him? He hoped to be the perfect criminal, yet in his heart he knew he had neither the intelligence required for that nor yet the courage. He was in the hands of little dugpas, of the sort who aspire to be big ones but lack imagination. Those are as jealous as snakes. Their whole venom is jealousy and they had poisoned what was left of him. He hated you and Ramsden because he had failed. Didn't you hear Ramsden talking in his sleep—how he cried out that Jimgrim had died believing him an untrue friend? I don't doubt Rait had told him that."
"Well," said Grim, "when Ramsden wakes up he will ask why, if you and your brotherhood know so much, you didn't protect us all from those black rascals. He'll say it was strange that you let me be knocked down and stripped before you stirred a finger, and still more strange that you let them be taken prisoners and carried off. What shall I answer him?"
"The plain truth."
"I don't know the truth of it," said Grim, "except that certain individuals have been kind enough to order you to protect us in all ways possible."
"In all ways possible," Lhaten's voice repeated. "But would you ask a musician to make inharmonies in order to teach music to you? Or must you think in terms of music before the musician's thought can reach yours?"
Grim seemed to be thinking that over. When he spoke at last I could almost see him smile:
"Do you think that explanation would be any use to Jeff? He likes his eggs fried both sides, with the date on 'em."
"If he can't understand, he must fail, that is all," said Lhaten. "Like any true musician, or poet, or sculptor, we are always doing our best to stir humanity. But artists can only reach such people as respond to the artistic impulse; others seem to look, or seem to listen, but the art means nothing to them and they either mock or misinterpret. We think thoughts. We breathe out principles. The dugpas interfere in every detail of the lives of those whom they have in submission—and the poor fools call it luck, or the act of God, or providence. You see, the dugpas have persuaded a great number of people that neither they, nor we, exist; so, although crime, madness, suicide and discontent are on the increase, they who have authority ascribe it to all causes but the right one. Nevertheless, you may have noticed that benevolence and altruism and a spirit of inquiry also are increasing, in quantity as well as quality. That is because it makes no difference whatever what a man's religion or his politics may be; a principle is universal, and whoever apprehends one lives it, or begins to live it—until presently it bursts the bonds of his religion or his politics, exactly as a tree root bursts the rock in which it grew. It is the object of the dugpas to prevent men from grasping principles. I assure you, those were very little, unimportant dugpas who had caught Rait and who attacked you; they were like the criminals who murder at the bidding of the unsuspected hierarchies that infest civilization."
"Well and good," said Grim, "we all know there are master criminals who hardly ever get caught. But what am I to tell Jeff Ramsden? If I should ask him he would go the limit. His religion is friendship, if you can call that a religion. He would rather see a friend through to a finish, even when he doubts the outcome, than turn aside and make a profit on his own account. I don't want that. I would rather he should see the thing as I do and go forward on his own responsibility."
