The Concrete Jungle | Page 4

Tuesday evening -- Mr
Robertson being laid up, and Lieutenant Bruce off to Gilgut to procure
supplies for his secret expedition to Lhasa -- when we were interrupted
most rudely at our repast. "Holiness!" The runner, quite breathless with
fear, threw himself upon his knees in front of us. "Your brother . . . !
Please hasten, I implore you!"
His excellency Nizam ul-Mulk looked at me with that wicked
expression of his: he bears little affection for his brutish hulk of a
brother, and with good reason. Where the Mehtar is a man of refined,
albeit questionable sensibilities, his brother is an uneducated coarse
hill-man, one step removed from banditry. Chittral can very well do
without his kind. "What has happened to my beloved brother?" asked
ul-Mulk.
At this point the runner lapsed into a gabble that I could barely
understand. With patience the Mehtar drew him out -- then frowned.
Turning to me, he said, "We have a -- I know not the word for it in
English, excuse please. It is a monster of the caves and passes who
preys upon my people. My brother has gone to hunt it, but it appears to
have got the better of him."

"A mountain lion?" I said, misunderstanding.
"No." He looked at me oddly. "May I enquire of you, Captain,
whether Her Majesty's government tolerates monsters within her
empire?"
"Of course not!"
"Then you will not object to joining me in the hunt?"
I could feel a trap closing on me, but could not for the life of me see
what it might be. "Certainly," I said. "By Jove, old chap, we'll have this
monster's head mounted on your trophy room wall before the week is
out!"
"I think not," Nizam said coolly. "We burn such things here, to drive
out the evil spirit that gave rise to them. Bring you your mirror,
tomorrow?"
"My -- " Then I realised what he was talking about, and what deadly
jeopardy I had placed my life in, for the honour of Her Majesty's
government in Chittral: he was talking about a Medusa. And although it
quite unmans me to confess it, I was afraid.
The next day, in my cramped, windowless hut, I rose with the dawn
and dressed for the hunt. I armed myself, then told Sergeant Singh to
ready a squad of troopers for the hunt.
"What is the quarry, sahib?" he asked.
"The beast that no man sees," I said, and the normally imperturbable
trooper flinched.
"The men won't like that, sir," he said.
"They'll like it even less if I hear any words from them," I said. You
have to be firm with colonial troops: they have only as much backbone
as their commanding officer.

"I'll tell them that, sahib," he said and, saluting, went to ready our
forces.
The Mehtar's men gathered outside; an unruly bunch of hill-men,
armed as one might expect with a mix of flintlocks and bows. They
were spirited, like children, excitable and bickering; hardly a match for
the order of my troopers and I. We showed them how it was done!
Together with the Mehtar at our head, kestrel on his wrist, we rode out
into the cold bright dawn and the steep-sided mountain valley.
We rode for the entire morning and most of the afternoon, climbing
up the sides of a steep pass and then between two towering peaks clad
in gleaming white snow. The mood of the party was uncommonly quiet,
a sense of apprehensive fortitude settling over the normally ebullient
Chittrali warriors. We came at last to a mean-spirited hamlet of
tumbledown shacks, where a handful of scrawny goats grazed the
scrubby bushes; the hetman of the village came to meet us, and with
quavering voice directed us to our destination.
"It lies thuswise," remarked my translator, adding: "The old fool, he
say it is a ghost-bedevilled valley, by God! He say his son go in there
two, three days ago, not come out. Then the Mehtar -- blessed be he --
his brother follow with his soldiers. And that two days ago."
"Hah. Well," I said, "tell him the great white empress sent me here
with these fine troops he sees, and the Mehtar himself and his nobles,
and we aren't feeding any monster!"