Alien Souls/The River of Hate
THE RIVER OF HATE
"The Wrath of the Thunder Gods," the Kafiri hillmen called the river that dropped to the western plains of Afghanistan and over into soft Persia in a succession of overlapping falls like the feathers on the breast of a pouter pigeon, while the Afghan nobles who, armed with the great, carved seal of the Governor of Kabul, came there to levy the quota of young men for the Ameer's army, called it the "River of Hate."
And Kafiri, as well as Afghans, spoke the truth.
For, during three months of the year, the North wind was riding a wracked sky and met the shock of the racing, roaring river, and the thunder crashed from the high ranges, splintering the young pines, occasionally taking toll of human life; and it was hate, even more than the swirling breadth of the river, which divided the villages that squatted on either bank.
South of the river, the Red Village lay spotted and threatening, like a tiger asleep in the sun, while North the flat-roofed houses of the White Village seemed snow flakes dropped on slabs of sullen granite—as sullen as the temper of the people when they looked across and saw the men of the Red Village sweep the whirlpool of the Black Rock with crude, effective net traps made of jungly rattan and hempen ropes; when they saw the catch of fat, blue-scaled, red-eyed khirli fish drawn up on the bank and flopping in the quivering light like dusky flecks of sunshine.
The Black Rock was the fortune of the Red Village.
Forming the end and pinnacle of a chain of ragged, slippery stones that spanned three-fourths of the river's breadth and rose and fell to the rise and fall of the water, it was within fifteen feet of the southern bank, and in winter, when rain had been heavy in the mountains and the River of Hate surged up a man's height in a couple of hours, it acted like a natural dam.
But in summer, when, freed from snow, the higher range limned ghostly out of the purple-gray distance and drouth shrunk the river, the Black Rock peaked to a height of thirty feet and caused the water to drop into a great whirlpool, not far from the Red Village, where it blossomed like a gigantic waxen flower.
Too, it is in summer that the khirli fish, obeying their ancient tribal customs, come from their spawning, and when they return down the River of Hate on their way to the Persian Gulf, they are tired and weary with the many miles. So they lie down to rest in the bottom of the whirlpool of the Black Rock where the fishing rights, by immemorial law, antedating the law of the Koran, belong to the people of the Red Village; and the villagers catch them and feast, while the men of the White Village bemoan their fate and take the name of Allah and—if the Afghan priests be not listening—the names of various heathen gods decidedly in vain.
But they do not fight the people of the Red Village, except with an occasional stone or stick hurled from ambush and not meant to kill. For a law is a law.
When, after seven years service in the Ameer's army—during which he had learned to shoot straight, to substitute a tall black fur cap, worn rakishly over the right ear, for the greasy shawl turban of the Kafiri, to embroider his rough hill diction with flowery Persian metaphor, and to ogle the women in the bazaars—Ebrahim Asif received word that his father, Sabihhudin Achmat, had died, and that he was now chief of the White Village, he went straight to the Governor of Kabul and asked to be released from service.
"My people are clamoring for me," he added in a lordly manner.
The Governor saw before him a young man, not over twenty-five, of a supple sweep of shoulders, a great, crunching reach of arms, a massive chest, and a dead-white, hawkish face that rose up from a black, pointed beard like a sardonic Chinese vignette. He thought to himself that here was a Kafiri, a turbulent pagan hillman indeed; but that seven years in Kabul must have put the Afghan brand upon his soul, and that he might be a valuable ally if ever his lawless tribesmen should give trouble—perhaps, only Allah knew! as a raiding vanguard accompanying an invading British or Russian column, as the little, sniveling, dirt-nosing jackals accompany the tiger.
"Your prayer is granted, Ebrahim Asif," the Governor said. "Return to your own people—a chief. And—" he smiled, "also remember that you are an Afghan, and no longer a lousy hillman!"
"Yes, Excellency!" said Ebrahim Asif.
On the second day out of Kabul he was back over the borders of his own country. On the third, he saw the faint, silvery gray mountain, flung like a cloud against the sky, that marked the western limit of the White Village.
On the morning of the fourth, he was sitting on a raised earthen platform in the communal council hut of the village where his ancestors had been hereditary rulers since before the shining adventure of Shikandar Khan, he whom the Christians call Alexander the Macedonian, his rifle across his knees, and a naked, pot-bellied boy of ten fanning him with a silver-handled yak tail, stolen during some raid into Tibet. He was holding a perfumed, daintily embroidered handkerchief to his nose.
On the bare mud floor, below the platform, squatted the men of the village, some thirty in number, in a confused heap of sun-and-dirt-browned arms, legs and patched multi-colored garments.
Ebrahim Asif, remembering the days of his childhood when his father had occupied the seat of chief which to-day was his, turned slightly to the left. Directly in front of him squatted an old man whose name was Jarullah. His face was like a gnarled bit of deodar wood beneath a thatch of bristly, reddish hair.
Ebrahim Asif pointed at him.
"Jarullah," he said, "you are the oldest. Let me hear what wisdom, if any, the many years have brought you."
"It is not money we want," muttered Jarullah.
Then, embarrassed he knew not why, he checked himself. His roving eyes sought his knees and he coughed apologetically, until a young man, lean, red-haired, with pock-marked vulpine features and bold gray eyes, stepped forward, pushed Jarullah unceremoniously aside, and squatted down in his place.
Over his shoulder, he pointed through the doorway, at the River of Hate, and the hissing whirlpool of the Black Rock, and beyond, at the Red Village, that seemed stiff and motionless in the quivering heat as if forged out of metal. Only at the bank were signs of life—the men pulling in the nets sagging with their shimmering load. Occasionally, a high-pitched, exultant yell drifted thinly across.
"Our bellies are empty, Chief," the young man whose name was Babar, said sulkily, "while they—" he spat—"the people of the Red Village—"
Ebrahim Asif rose, picked up his rifle by the shoulder strap, and walked toward the door.
"The old feud, eh?" he asked. "The feud over a potful of stinking khirli fish? By the teeth of the Prophet—on whom peace—I shall spice their mid-day meal with a couple of bullets and a rich sluicing of blood!"
But Jarullah stepped into his path and laid a trembling hand on his shoulder.
"There is the law, Chief!" he cried in a cracked, excited whine. "The fishing rights of the southern bank belong to the Red Village. Remember the law of the Kafiri!"
"There is no law for Afghans," smiled Ebrahim Asif.
"Right!" shrieked the old man. "There is indeed no law for Afghans! But you are a Kafiri, Chief. You must keep sacred the ancient law of the tribes—" and an angry, clucking chorus rose from the squatting clansmen.
"The ancient law! The ancient law!"
Ebrahim Asif was utterly astonished.
Quite instinctively he had picked up his rifle. Quite instinctively he had decided to send a few bullets whiz zing to the opposite shore. It would be perfectly safe. For the only firearms that ever came into Kafiristan were those of the Ameer's ruffianly soldiers, soldiers either on active duty or, like himself, released from service, and he knew that for many years past no man of the Red Village had been drafted into the army.
Thus he was perfectly safe in announcing his presence to them with a charge of lead and, later on, of coming to terms: a fair half of the khirli catch to his own village—otherwise bullets and blood.
It was simple as sublimely simple, as sublimely brutal as his whole philosophy of life.
But they had spoken about the law—the ancient law
The young man with the pock-marked, vulpine face—Babar—had seemed the most manly of them all.
"What do you say, Babar?" he asked, and the other mumbled piously, "It is the law. The fishing rights of the southern bank belong to the Red Village."
Ebrahim Asif shook his head. He stalked through the doorway, while the villagers looked after him, stolid, sullen. He walked up to the River of Hate.
The men of the Red Village were still fishing, peaceful, undisturbed, serenely safe. One looked up, squinted against the light with sharp, puckered eyes, and seemed to see the rifle in Ebrahim Asif's hand. But he paid no attention to it. To him, too, there was the ancient law.
And, suddenly, out of the nowhere, a heavy weight dropped on Ebrahim Asif's soul.
"Yes," he murmured, "there is the law—for us Kafiri—" and he tossed the rifle into the swirling, foaming water.
Late that night, as he sat alone in his father's hut, which was now his, scraps of memory came to him. Piece by piece he put them together.
He remembered how, years ago, when he had been a naked, sun-burned child with a red turban cloth wound about his shaven poll, his father, Sabihhudin Achmat, had been guide to a Kashmere rajah who had come North to hunt the thick-pelted, broad-headed tigers that drift into Kafiristan in the wake of the Mongolian snows. The rajah had brought a large retinue of servants, and one evening they and their master and his father had whispered together.
They had set to work, under the rajah's guidance. All night they had worked, with little Ebrahim looking on open-mouthed, using odd bits of steel and wire taken from the rajah's voluminous baggage, and wood and stones and spliced ropes and rattan.
About midnight they had sneaked out of the house and through the sleeping village, to the bank of the River of Hate, carrying between them a strange contrivance that seemed round and heavy. Hours later, his father had returned, drenched to the skin, but triumphant.
Today, Ebrahim Asif knew that the strange contrivance the Kashmere men had fashioned that night and which his father had put in a hole of the Black Rock, below the surface, was a water wheel to change the main current of the whirlpool, for since then he had seen many such wheels.
And when the next drouth had shrunk the river and the khirli fish had returned from their spawning, when the people of the Red Village had swept the whirlpool of the Black Rock, day after day, they had caught no more than a lean handful of skinny, smelly dagger-fish, while the men of the White Village, wondering, yet obeying their chief's command, had gone down to the northern bank where the fishing rights were theirs and had set to work with improvised gear.
The catch had been huge; and for weeks, they had eaten their fill of khirli spiced with turmeric and sesame, while the people on the opposite shore had be moaned their fate and had rubbed empty wrinkled stomachs.
Only the hereditary chief of the Red Village, Yar Zaddiq, a shrewd, elderly man, over six feet in height, with gray hair that had once been reddish-brown, a biting tongue and doubting, deep set eyes, had suspected the hand of man and, late one night, when the water was very low, had swum over to the Black Rock at the risk of his life and had investigated.
He had called for help. The wheel had been torn out, and a few days later, four miles up the river, accompanied by several of his clansmen, he had chanced upon Sabihhudin Achmat and had beaten him terribly.
After that, there had been no more catching of khirli fish on the northern bank, and the old hate of White Village against Red had grown a thousandfold.
The days that followed were drab and listless.
Ebrahim Asif stalked through the village in his best, most braggart Kabuli manner.
But, for the first time in his life, he was aware of a strange sensation which, had he been a westerner, he would have correctly analyzed as self-consciousness.
He said to himself that these were his people, that they had put their grievances before his feet trusting to his wisdom and strength—and their greatest grievance was the matter of the khirli fish, the matter of the River of Hate. Willing and ready he had been to help them, he continued his thoughts angrily, but they had tied his hands with their babble about the ancient tribal laws; he had tossed his rifle into the water—and—what did they want him to do?
They supplied him with food and tobacco and bhang as was his right, since he was their chief. But it was all done grudgingly, as a drab matter of duty.
Yet there was little open complaint; just an undercurrent of muttering and whining. Only the young man, Babar, put it into words one day.
"You are the Chief," he said. "You must help us!"
Simple enough words. But, somehow, they seemed to Ebrahim the final, unbearable stigma.
"Do you want me to attempt the impossible, O Abuser of the Salt, O Son of a Burnt Father?" he cried. "Do you want me to make noises with my ears and catch the wind of heaven with my bare hands, O Cold of Countenance?"—and he beat Babar with the flat of his saber till the blood came.
After that, the people of the village, his own people, trembled when he passed. And in all Kafiristan there was no man more lonely than he.
Thus he took to roaming the hills up and down the River of Hate, climbing to the higher range where, caught in crevices, the snow lay clean and stainless beneath the crisp air, down abrupt precipices, and into thick forests of spruce and beach where the dry leaves lay in intricate, wind-tossed, fox-red patterns fretted with delicate green shadows; and one day, returning past the natural bridge that marked the line between the two villages and where, years earlier, his father had been beaten by Yar Zaddiq, he saw a young girl standing there, poised lightly upon narrow, sandaled feet, and looking out upon the foaming River of Hate.
She turned as she heard his approach and stared at him fearlessly, and he stood still and stared back.
She was sixteen years of age. Her small slender body, just budding into the promise of womanhood beneath the thin, fringed, brown and gray striped fustian robe that covered her from her neck to just below her knees, was perfect in every line. Her parted, braided hair was light brown and as smooth as oil, her eyes were gray with intensely black pupils, and her nose straight and short. There was a sweet curve to her upper lip and a quick, smiling lift at the corners.
The smile rippled into low, gurgling laughter when she saw Ebrahim Asif bow deeply before her with clasped hands, as she had seen the men of her village salaam to the Ameer's swashbuckling emissaries.
He straightened up. With unconsciously graceful ease he put his hand on the heavy, carved silver hilt of his sword and looked at her squarely.
And his words, too, were square and clear, yet tinged with a certain reckless, boisterous good humor, a certain swaggering bravado.
"Your name, Crusher of Hearts!"
Again the girl laughed.
"I am Kurjan," she said. "I am the daughter of Yar Zaddiq, Chief of the Red Village, who, it is told, once gave your father a sound beating."
"Then—you know my name?" he rejoined, flushing darkly.
"Evidently, Ebrahim Asif!" came her mocking reply. "The fame of your splendor has traveled many miles, also the tale of how wisely you rule your own people, how you fill their stomachs with khirli fish—how they love you, O great Afghan—"
But, suddenly, she checked the flow of words and turned to go when she saw the man's insolent, black eyes fixed upon her with a calm, uncontrolled expression of admiration and desire, and instinctively she drew in her breath and clasped her right hand against her heart, as unhurryingly, he stepped up to her.
"Kurjan, daughter of Yar Zaddiq," he said very gently, "I am not an Afghan, though my dress is that of the Kabuli and though my lips have forgotten the proper twist and click of my native tongue in the many years I have spent away from home. I am a Kafiri, a hillman of hillmen and—" suddenly his voice peaked up to a high, throaty note, like the cry of an eagle circling above a frightened, fluttering song bird—"I love like a Kafiri!"
And, before she had time to run or defend herself, his great arms were about her, crushing her against his massive chest so that the long braids of her hair swept the ground behind her.
Very slowly, as if reluctantly, he released her.
"Go back to your father," he continued as she stood there, panting, a rush of unknown sensations, shyness, mixed with fear and a strange, tremulous, paining delight, surging through her body. "Tell him that a man has come to the River of Hate. Tell him that to-night I shall come to his house to demand you as my wife. And—as to you, Crusher of Hearts—tell yourself when you lie on your couch, that I love you—that there is a sweetness and strength in my soul which is known to your soul only!"
And he walked away, his saber clanking behind him; and he did not turn once to look back at her.
Kurjan did not know if it was the strange, sweet shyness which had come to her so abruptly, or fear of her father's terrible, raging temper which sealed her lips. At all events, she did not say a word of what had happened to her when she reached home. Courteously she bowed to her father who was resting his huge old gnarled body on the earthen platform, and stepped through the curtain into the back part of the house where the women crouched over the crimson charcoal balls of the cooking fire.
Thus, hours later, when night had dropped as it does in the hills, quickly, like a black-winged bird, and when Ehrahim Asif had gone up the river, crossed the natural bridge, and passed through the silent Red Village to the house of Yar Zaddiq, he found the latter unprepared for his coming.
But his first words explained the purpose of his visit. "I am Ebrahim Asif, the son of Sabihhudin Achmat, Chief of the White Village," he said with nonchalant dignity. "I have decided that your daughter shall be the mother of my sons. Hasten the wedding, old Chief. For I am an impatient man who does not brook denial or contradiction, and my young blood is sultry with passion."
And, calmly, he squatted down and helped himself to the other's supply of finely shaved bhang, conscious, by the rustle of the curtain that shut off the back part of the house, that Kurjan was looking at him.
She was standing very still, her heart thumping violently. Quickly, imperceptibly, the knowledge floated down upon her that she loved him. Anxiously, she waited for her father's reply.
When Yar Zaddiq looked up his words dropped smooth and even, as stones drop down a glacier.
"So you are Ebrahim Asif—" his lips curled in a crooked smile, exposing the toothless gums stained with opium and tobacco—"the son of him whom once I beat grievously with sticks—as a dog is beaten with thorn sticks—?"
"You—and your tribesmen! A dozen against one!"
"I could have killed him with my bare hands. I, alone! I was stronger than he!"
"But to-day you are old—and I am young. Your body is withered, while my body is bossed with muscles as the night sky is with stars," Ebrahim Asif said in a gentle voice, while his fingers toyed with the crimson cord of his sword, an action the significance of which was not lost on the older man.
And so he smiled.
"It is thus," he asked, "your wish to marry my daughter?"
"Yes."
"But—there is the ancient enmity between Red Village and White—"
"Over a potful of stinking khirli fish. I know." Ebrahim Asif waved a great, hairy hand. "But there will be no more babbling and jabbering and foolish quarreling after I have married your daughter. I am my late father's only son, and she—" negligently, with his thumb on which shone a star sapphire set in crude silver, he pointed at the curtain where she stood—"she is your only child. Let peace be the dowry of our wedding, peace between your village and mine, a forgetting of ancient hatreds, a splitting of future profits. Let us put aside the old enmities as a clean man puts aside soiled linen. In the future we shall divide the khirli catch evenly between your people and mine."
Yar Zaddiq laughed in his throat.
"Ahee!" he cried. "It is I who gives all the dowry. And what will you give, young Chief?"
"I?" Ebrahim Asif raised an eyebrow. "Where hate has died, no room is needed to wield a sword. Where strength goes to the making of pea:e, no violence is needed to strike a dagger blow. Where quarrel is buried, no fertilizer is needed with which to grow friendship. But—I am an honest man! I shall make the bargain even, so that nobody may complain and that none of your people may say that you are unwise. Your daughter shall be mine! Half the khirli catch shall be my people's. And I, on my part, shall lend to your people the help of wisdom which I learned amongst the Afghans. And after your death—which Allah grant be not for many years—I shall rule both villages."
He rose and bowed with grave courtesy.
"I am an impatient man," he went on. "My heart plays with my passion. Let the wedding be the next time I set foot in the Red Village. Come. Give oath."
He stood still and looked at Yar Zaddiq who, too, had risen. For several seconds, the older man did not speak. His stubborn resolve that never, as long as he was alive, should Ebrahim Asif marry his daughter, that never, until the end of time, should his people cede to the White Village one tenth, not one hundredth part of the fishing rights which were theirs according to the ancient law, stood firm; but his opponent's equal resolve hacked at his faith like a dagger.
"Give oath!" repeated the other, touching the hilt of his sword, and then Yar Zaddiq spoke.
"You shall wed my daughter the next time you set foot in the Red Village," he said solemnly. "I swear it upon the Koran!"
But Ebrahim grinned boyishly.
"And yet I have heard," he said very gently, "that you men of the older generation, converted to Islam at the point of the sword, are not the stout Moslems you claim to be. Thus—swear by the gods of our people, our own people! Swear by the ancient gods of the Kafiri!"
And again he toyed with his sword, and again the old chief, a great bitterness bubbling in his words for the Moslem oath meant nothing to him—swore that the next time Ebrahim set foot in the Red Village, he should wed Kurjan. By Ogun, god of sunshine, he gave oath, and by the three thunder gods; by Woggun, the god of the mid-week, and by Khanli, the grim god on whose forehead is an ivory horn from which hangs the fates of men; and finally by Gagabudh, the jeweled god of the mountain glens who, alone of all the gods, is immortal and whom even Time cannot slay.
And Ebrahim Asif, well satisfied, went out into the night, courteously avoiding speech with Kurjan though, during the last words, she had stepped fully into the room.
She looked after him. "I shall follow him," she said in a low voice. "I love him. He is brave and arrogant and cruel. There is passion in his heart and strength in his arms. I love him. He is brave."
Quite suddenly, Yar Zaddiq laughed.
"Yes, little daughter," he said. "He is brave. But—" he burst into high-pitched, senile cackle, "it is not wisdom he has learned amongst the Afghans! Not wisdom!"
"Except the wisdom of love!" murmured Kurjan as she left the house and looked into the dark. "The wisdom of love—which is simplicity—and arrogance—and strength!"
Love had come to her. She knew the lore of the Red Village and of the White, the old feud, the bitter, sullen enmity; but, somehow, Ebrahim Asif was neither of the Red Village nor of the White. He seemed to her the very spirit of the land, serenely brutal, resolutely pagan to the core of him, but a man!
"A man of men!" she said to him one whirling, golden afternoon when she met him amongst the frayed basalt ridges of the farther hills and lay panting in his crushing embrace. "A man of men—with the bowels of compassion of a striped tiger!"
"You have spoken true words, Dispenser of Delights," Ebrahim Asif agreed naïvely. "I am indeed a man such as with whom any other chief would be proud to have a quarrel."
"And such as any other woman might—" she slurred and stopped; and he held her close.
"That, too, is the truth, little musk rose," he said calmly. "Often have I dragged my crackling sword through the bazaars of Kabul, and black eyes of Afghan women and maids stared at me through close-meshed veils—and, perhaps, there may have been hooded eyelids raised quickly in sign of promise—and hope—and—ahee!—reward. But—" and with a great gesture he dismissed the past as if it had never existed—"they passed into the dark, like gray djinns of evil. They left no trace, no heartache. There is only you in all the world, heart of my heart, and my soul is a carpet for your little feet. Step on it. Step on it with all your strength! For I am strong, strong!"
"My father, too, is strong. And he hates you. He speaks of you to me—though I do not reply. He curses you—"
"Allah!" Ebrahim Asif laughed and snapped his fingers. "Your father is a barren mule, bragging about the horse, his father. He is a toothless she-wolf—and presently I shall set foot on the soil of the Red Village and claim you."
"When, heart o' me?" she whispered.
And the answer came low and triumphant. "To-morrow, Crusher of Hearts!"
And, the next day, in the White Village, the conches brayed and the gongs were beaten; the young men danced over crossed daggers, and the unmarried girls drowned their heads with the dowers of the hillside and the forest.
For that morning, Ebrahim Asif had called the villagers to full durbar and had given them the good news. There had been uncouth rejoicing.
Only Jarullah had struck a discordant note.
"Beware, young Chief," he had said, following Ebrahim from the council hut. "Yar Zaddiq has a forked tongue. His father was a hyena, and his mother a she-devil," so he warned.
"Possibly," the other had laughed. "But, whatever his ancestry, his curse has not descended to his daughter. She is a precious casket filled with the arts of coquetry. Too, she is strong and well turned of hip and breast. She will bear me stout men-children."
And now he was in his house, adorning himself as becomes a bridegroom; for he had decided that he would wed Kurjan that very night.
He curled and oiled his beard; he drew broad lines of antimony down his eyelids; he heightened the color of his lips by chewing betel; he stained his finger tips crimson with henna; he wound an enormous green muslin turban around his fur cap; he arranged well the folds of his waistband; he perfumed his body from head to toes with pungent oil of geranium, a small bottle of which had cost him a year's pay to Kabul.
Then he threw a peach-colored silk khalat, embroidered with cunning Persian designs in gold thread, over his broad supple shoulders, picked up his sword, and stepped out on the threshold where Jarullah was squatting.
"Jarullah," he said, "to-morrow morning I bring home the bride. See that a feast is being prepared. I myself shall bring some fat khirli fish, the pick of the catch. As to you, have the women roast a sheep, well stuffed and seasoned with condiments. In there, amongst the boxes I brought from Kabul, you will find many things, spices of India and the far countries, strange sauces, and exquisite Chinese confections compounded of rose leaves and honey. Let the feast be worthy of the bride—and do not steal too much."
Jarullah overlooked the laughing insult of the young chief's last words. He clutched the hem of Ebrahim's khalat. He was terribly in earnest.
"Take care, young master," he whined, "lest evil befall you. You are brave, and trusting. But neither with bravery nor with trust can you knit the riven, lying tongue of such a one as Yar Zaddiq. Take along a dozen stout fighting men. Do not go alone."
Ebrahim smiled as he might at a babbling child.
"What avail is a rotten plow to a sound ox?" he asked casually. "What shall talkers do when there are no listeners? What is the good of lies when truth is the greatest lie?"
With which thoroughly mystifying words, he walked away in the direction of the natural bridge that linked the two villages. Evening was dropping.
Steadily Ebrahim Asif kept on his way, along the northern bank of the river, well within sight of the southern, so that his peach-colored khalat flashed like a flame in the rays of the dying sun; and he laughed softly to himself at the thought that, doubtless, sharp eyes in the Red Village were watching his progress from bowlders and trees.
Half a mile below the natural bridge, he disappeared behind the shoulder of a basalt ledge that jutted out from the river and entered a thick clump of dwarf acacia.
Five minutes later, the watchers of the Red Village saw once more the braggard sheen of peach-colored silk—and Yar Zaddiq whispered a last word to the Kafiri who crowded at his heels as jungle wolves to the tiger's kill.
Another ten minutes. The sun was hissing out in a sea of blood. The heavens were melting into a quiet night of glowing dark-violet with a pale moon peaking its lonely horn in the North, and up at the natural bridge where the two villages met, there was the sudden yelling of war cries, the rattle of stones, the throwing of thorn sticks,—and, above the noise, Yar Zaddiq's voice stabbed out as, flanked by the pick of his fighting men, he hurled himself upon the peach-colored khalat before its wearer had had time to cross the bridge.
"When you set foot in the Red Village, Ebrahim Asif! I swore it! By the Koran did I give oath, and by the ancient gods of the Kafiri! When you set foot in the Red Village! True I am to the double oath!"—and his stick came down, tearing a great gash in the bridegroom's silken finery, brought from far Kabul.
The men of the Red Village closed in, with exultant, savage shouts.
Night had dropped, suddenly, completely, as it does in the tropics, with a burnous of black velvet.
Nothing was visible except the shadowy, fantastic outline of a dozen human bodies balled together into a tight knot, heaving, straining, wrestling, pulling down their lonely opponent as hounds pull down a stag.
But the lonely man fought well. Time and again he jerked himself loose. Time and again his sword flashed free and tasted blood.
Time and again he drove his assailants before him towards the boundary of the Red Village.
But always, rallied by Yar Zaddiq's warring shouts, they hurled themselves back at him before he had a chance to cross the line.
And then came the end.
A jagged rock crashed on his head and he fell down, unconscious, bleeding from a dozen flesh wounds, curled up like a sleeping dog, his right hand across his forehead as if to ward off the blows of Fate.
Yar Zaddiq bent over him.
"You are a brave man, Ebrahim Asif," he said quite gently, "and doubtless you were a swashbuckler and a brawler in the tumult of the packed Kabul bazaars! Doubtless the gods have dowered your heart with stanch courage and your body with the strength of bunched muscles! But there is no wisdom in your soul, young Chief. Ahee! Your caution is as uncertain as a Tartar's beard, as rare as wings upon a cat!"
He laughed.
But, with utter, dramatic suddenness, just as the moon stabbed down with a sharp wedge of silvery light that brought the features of the unconscious man into crass relief, his laugh changed to a howl of disappointment and rage, cracked, high-pitched and ludicrous.
He kicked the prostrate form with all his might, turned, and rushed back across the bridge as fast as his gnarled old legs would let him, while his clansmen, wondering, astonished, cluttered after him.
Stumbling, falling, cursing, he ran through the night. His withered lungs beat like a hammer. But he kept on, along the southern bank, towards his house that sprang out at him with warm, golden lights.
With his last ounce of strength he hurtled across the threshold—and there, by the side of Kurjan, one arm around her waist, the other gesturing some flowery words of love he was whispering in her ear, sat Ebrahim Asif, in the ragged clothes of Babar, drenched to the skin, but happy, serene, supremely sure of himself.
Languidly he looked up and greeted the old man who was speechless with rage and fatigue.
"Have the women prepare me a meal," he said, "a khirli fish, carefully boned, and spiced with tumeric, also a goblet of tea, steaming hot. For it was cold swimming the River of Hate above the whirlpool of the Black Rock, and it is not right that the bridegroom should sit shivering at the wedding."
Then, casually, he asked:
"Did you by any chance kill that youth of my village—ah—Babar who changed clothes with me in the acacia clump below the bridge?"
"No—no—" stammered Yar Zaddiq; and Ebrahim Asif sighed contentedly.
"Good, by Allah and by Allah!" he said. "There are the makings of a man in that youth—once I shall have taught him the shining wisdom I learned at Kabul—"
And, dreamily, with Kurjan's head on his shoulder, he looked through the open door where the night was draping the River of Hate in her trailing cloak of purple and black.