King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of AdventureMundy, Talbot
History
King--of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure
Mundy, Talbot
British -- India -- Fiction; Historical fiction; India -- History -- Sepoy Rebellion, 1857-1858 -- Fiction; Love stories; War stories
She snatched a mirror from a little ivory table--a modern mirror--bad
glass, bad art, bad workmanship, but silver warranted.
“Look in it and then at him!” she ordered.
But he did not need to look. The man on the bed was not so much like
himself as the woman was like her, but the resemblance seemed to grow
under his eyes, as such things do. It was helped out by the stain his
brother had applied to his face in the Khyber. King was the taller
and the younger by several years, but the noses were the same, and the
wrinkled fore-heads; both men had the same firm mouth; both looked like
Romans.
“How did you get that scar?”
She came closer and took his hand, holding it in both hers, and he felt
the same thrill Samson knew. He steeled himself as Samson did not.
“A Mahsudi got me with a martini at long range in the blockade of 1902,”
he said dryly.
“Look! Did he get his from a spear or from an arrow?”
Almost in the same spot, also on the dead man's left hand, was a scar
so nearly like it that it needed a third and a fourth glance to tell the
difference. They both bent over the bed to see it, and she laid a
hand on his shoulder. Touch and scent and confidence, all three were
bewitching; all three were calculated, too! He could have killed her,
and she knew he could have killed her, just as she knew he would not.
Yet what right had she to know it!
“Athelstan!”
She pronounced his given name as if she loved the word, standing
straight again and looking into his eyes. There were high lights in hers
that outgleamed the diamonds on her dress.
“Your gods and mine have done this, Athelstan. When the gods combine
they lay plans well indeed!”
“I only know one God,” he answered simply, as a man speaks of the deep
things in his heart.
“I know of many! They love me! They shall love you, too! Many are better
than one! You shall learn to know my gods, for we are to be partners,
you and I!”
She laughed at him, looking like a goddess herself, but he frowned. And
the more he frowned the better she seemed to like him.
“Partners in what, Princess?”
“Thou--Ismail dubbed thee Ready o' wit!--answer thine own question!”
She took his hand again, her eyes burning with excitement and mysticism
and ambition like a fever. She seemed to take more than physical
possession of him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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