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Updated: June 20, 2025
"Rukn-ud-din and the hotties are halted till you come up, for fear the enemy should be waiting for them at the other end of the defile. I'll retreat upon you gradually, and keep these beggars back." "All right!" and Gerrard and his men, now on more open ground, were able to urge their horses to something beyond a walk.
Rukn-ud-din pondered sagely this most undeserved aspersion on Gerrard's sincerity. "It is well thought of," he said. "Moreover, it seemed to me but now that I heard a cry or gasp. What if it were Jirad Sahib's voice calling to us, and we have failed him?" "We will succour him at once," said Amrodh Chand.
No, there they are. Sold again!" Pride forbade Rukn-ud-din and Amrodh Chand to testify any alarm at the place where they found themselves, but they hustled their willing captives to the front of the cage with great celerity, hastened by the growls which proclaimed that the lions had been awakened by the light.
Rukn-ud-din and Amrodh Chand had already been informed that their services were desired that night, and at the appointed time they slipped away from their quarters into the darkness and joined the two Englishmen.
They could hear nothing of the advance Rukn-ud-din thought he had detected, and Gerrard, concluding that the man's ears had deceived him, was about to suggest returning to the camp, when a distant flash of lightning, such as had been playing on the horizon during the earlier part of the evening, lit up the landscape, and showed a company of horsemen riding cautiously away from the city.
"Aye; men will mock at our beards," said Rukn-ud-din bitterly. "Has Jirad Sahib forgotten all that has passed?" Amrodh Chand's head approached his comrade's closely. "I think Jirad Sahib has remembered our vow. Did he not make us swear that after this night the place should be to us as though it was not? What, then, of to-night?"
There was something familiar in the aspect of the leader, and when he rode past the saluting-point Gerrard recognised him at once. It was Rukn-ud-din, and of the two companies which he led one was composed of Rajputs, and the other of the faithful remnant of the Agpur bodyguard.
"That for the mercy of the Sarkar!" was the answer, as a vicious cut was made in Gerrard's direction from the floor, but Rukn-ud-din warded it off, and seizing the tulwar as it fell from the severed hand of the man who had wielded it, gave it to his commander.
"The sum was not a great one, to maintain the warriors from her father's state who have vowed their swords to her vengeance, as well as those who have remained faithful to their lord's memory, but it will suffice for a month or two longer," added Rukn-ud-din; "and it is the word of her Highness that this will be long enough. The time is near at hand."
Only, if there is no news of Sher Singh's seeking support in the north, and bringing an army against us, remember what I have said." "It is well. We will remember," said Gerrard. "Say nothing of this to any one, unless it be to Amrodh Chand." "It is an order, sahib." Rukn-ud-din received leave to depart, and melted silently away. Gerrard looked at Charteris again.
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