"That would be General Sir Bindon Blood," said Learoyd. "He’s the chief of staff."
"What sort of men is he"" said Delaney.
"Is this an officer asking an enlisted man his opinion of another officer"" Learoyd said, grinning.
"No," said Finn, smiling, "this is merely one soldier asking another’s opinion of a mutual superior."
"Ah, I see," said Learoyd. "Well, in that case, what you think of Brigadier-General Sir Bindon Blood will depend entirely upon your personality. As far as his qualities as a soldier are concerned, they’re absolutely first rate. You share a common heritage in that you’re both Irish, though I daresay his clan is probably a great deal older than yours, sir. The general came out of the Indian Military College at Addiscombe, so he’s more than well enough prepared for service on the frontier. He first held a commission in the Royal Engineers and came to India in ‘71, where he saw active service with the Jawaki Expedition. He then went to fight in the Zulu War in ‘79, followin’ which he fought in the Afghan War. Then off to Egypt with the Highland Brigade and a right set-to at Tel-el-Kebir. Khedive’s Star, medal and clasp and the third class of the Medjidic. Back in India again, he reorganised the Sappers and Miners and was appointed chief of staff to Sir Robert Low. He’s put in a hard thirty-seven years of soldierin’, plays a keen game of polo, and has taken game from wild pig to tiger in these parts. There’s some that like him, some that don’t, but you won’t find any to dispute that Cap’n Blood’s one damned fine soldier. "
"Cap’n Blood"" said Andre."I thought you said he was a general""
" ‘E is, mum," said Mulvaney. "We call ‘im Cap’n Blood ‘cause ‘e’s descended from the ruddy pirate o’ the same name. "
"And right proud ‘e is of it, to boot," said Ortheris.
"If an army’s to be sent to fight the bloody Pathans, then Blood’s the man to lead it," Learoyd said, with a chuckle. "I don’t envy you the task you’ve set yourself, Father. The tribes are restless, and it’ll be hard preachin’ to them when you’re English, if it’s the English they’ll be fightin’."
"But it isn’t I who will be fighting them," said Lucas. "I’m not a soldier, but a man of God."
"The mullahs may ‘ave a thing or two to say ‘bout that as well," said Ortheris. "You’re forgettin’, Father, you’ll be more than just a rival to ‘em. You’ll be a rival who can give the tribes the benefit o’ modern medicine, which no fakir or ‘oly man can do."
"That’s true enough, Father," said Learoyd. "The mullahs will want you out. Failin’ that, they’ll doubtless want you dead. You’d be vastly better off settin’ up shop in an army fort and havin’ the sick people come to you, rather than goin’ out and doin’ your doctorin’ and preachin’ in the hills."
"But then I wouldn’t know what’s happening in the hills, would I"" said Lucas. "The only tribes people who’d come to a fort would be those who were desperately ill and could make the journey. No, if a missionary is to succeed, he has to go out among the people."
"Then all I can say is good luck to you, Father," said Mulvaney. "There’s strange rumblin’s up in the ‘ills, and you mark me words, there’ll be the devil to pay before we make an end of it."
"What do you mean"" said Andre.
"You’ll find out soon enough, miss," said Learoyd. "And when you do, you might well wish you’d taken my advice and gone back to Simla. "
Chapter 3
General Sir Bindon Blood paced back and forth across the floor, his hands clasped behind his back, his eyes seeming to stare off into infinity as he spoke. He was a striking, robust figure of a man, dressed in khakis and highly polished riding boots. He bore himself erect and his slightest movement reflected a charismatic magnetism. Even his pacing seemed dramatic. Despite the sweat stains on his uniform blouse, he seemed to be completely unaffected by the oppressive heat. He had either grown accustomed to it or had simply decided that it wasn’t going to bother him.
"As a physician, Father," he was saying, "you would certainly be most welcome to acccompany us on the march. We shall be traveling with three full brigades, and we can doubtless expect casualties, not only from hostiles, but from the rough terrain we shall have to cover. Moreover, we shall have to cover it in a hurry. Yet I would dissuade you, if I could, from your plan of leaving us to travel amongst the tribesmen. In that regard, the timing is most unfortunate."
"How so, General"" said Lucas.
"We are in the middle of a situation which could lead to a full-scale frontier war, Father," General Blood said. " I have just received a telegram from the adjutantgeneral in India, appointing me to the command of the Malakand Field Force and instructing me to proceed at once to the relief of the garrison at Chakdarra. They are hard pressed, very hard pressed indeed. The army here on the frontier is continually faced with one insurrection after another. We must hold the Khyber Pass because it is the most direct route into India, and so there is ceaseless fighting in that great rift. Now, word reaches me that some new mullah, an Afridi holy man named Sayyid Akbar, is preaching jehad and recruiting thousands of tribesmen into his Ghazi army to prepare for the Night of the Long Knives. We must also hold the Malakand Pass because we need to keep the road to Chitral open. We must keep the road to Chitral open because some dunderhead decided that holding Chitral was essential to our Forward Policy. And so it goes, one dustup after another, simply because politicians look at points upon a map and make their decisions in utter ignorance of the character of the land or of its people. Meaning no disrespect, Father, but I fear you may have made the same sort of mistake. I wonder if you are fully aware of what it is you plan to undertake. I wonder if you know anything of the country.
"The land we’re going to is a savage wilderness. The Himalayas are nearly four hundred miles in breadth and more than sixteen hundred in length. The westernmost ranges of these mountains, the Hindu Kush, are all that divide our Eastern empire from territory controlled by Russia. The land has been cracked by time and gouged by torrential rainfall. It has been ravaged by ice and snow and baked by a merciless sun. Rainfall has cut mammoth gutters called nullahs into the silt deposits of the valleys. Sometimes these are great dry cracks in the land which form gorges up to one hundred feet deep and several hundred yards wide. Often they have streams flowing through them-not the sort of streams you see in our English countryside, but devilishly cold, fastflowing mountain rapids which, with the slightest degree of additional rainfall or snowmelt, become roaring and torrential rivers which can sweep you off your feet and dash you to pieces on jagged rocks. The mountains above the valleys are steep and rockstrewn, difficult to climb even for a seasoned alpinist.
"The inhabitants of these regions are utter savages. Tribe wars upon tribe. Khan attacks khan. Bloodfeuds are as common as trollops in Piccadilly. You take the ferocity of the Zulu, add it to the craft of the American redskin and the marksmanship of the Boer, and you have your Pathan, a violent, murderous aborigine. Every man jack of them is a soldier. Each one goes about armed to the teeth. And they dearly love to fight. We have a sizable number of them in our own forces, a mixed blessing at best, for like as not they’ll desert us whenever the mood strikes them and turn the Martinis we issue them back on us. Yet we cannot afford to do without them. We require the manpower; we need their skills and knowledge of the terrain. So long as we feed them regularly and give them something of a better standard of living than they can expect to find with their own tribes, as well as provide them with a license to kill with impunity, chances are they’ll remain with us and fight well for us, even against their own people. Such is the character of those you hope to convert to Christianity. They are a murderous, ignorant, and superstitious people, easily roused and well-nigh impossible to pacify.