Flashman and the Mountain of Light: From the Flashman Papers, 1845-46 by George MacDonald Fraser

Author:George MacDonald Fraser [Fraser, George MacDonald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction, comedy
ISBN: 9780679400714
Publisher: A.A. Knopf
Published: 1991-03-27T05:00:00+00:00

Flashman And The Mountain Of Light

“It’ll take management, no denying. As I said, an interesting little war.” He tossed another billet on the fire, and rose. “When it’s over, and you’re back in Lahore with the British peace mission - you can tell me all about it.”

My first thought, as I sat by the fire with my head in my hands, was: this is Broadfoot’s doing. He’s planned the whole hideous thing, start to finish, and kept me in the dark till the last moment, the treacherous, crooked, conniving, Scotch . . . political! Well, I was doing him an injustice; for once, George was innocent. He might welcome the war, as Gardner had said, and have a shrewd notion that Jeendan was launching the Khalsa in the hope of seeing it wrecked, but neither he nor anyone else in Simla knew that the Sikhs’ two leading commanders were under her orders to give the whole game away. Nor could he guess the base use that was being made of his prize agent, Lieutenant Flashman, late 11th Hussars, in this hour of crisis.

The notion that I should be the messenger of betrayal had been another inspiration of Jeendan’s, according to Gardner. How long she’d had me in mind for the role of go-between, he didn’t know; she’d confided it to him only the previous day, and he and Mangla would have brought me my marching orders that same night - if I hadn’t been away gallivanting with the Khalsa and Goolab and the merry widow. Most inconsiderate of me, but all’s ill that ends ill - here I was still, ankle crocked and guts fermenting with fright, meet to be hurled into the soup in furtherance of that degenerate royal doxy’s intrigues, and no way to cry off that I could see.

I tried, you may be sure, pleading my ankle, and the impossibility of taking orders from any but my own chiefs, and the folly of venturing again among enemies who’d already toasted me to a turn - Gardner answered every objection with the blunt fact that someone had to take Lal’s plans to Gough, and no one else had my qualifications. It was my duty, says he, and if you wonder that I bowed to his authority - well, take a squint at the portrait in his Memoirs; that should convince you.

I’m still not sure, by the way, exactly where his loyalties lay. To Dalip and Jeendan, certainly: what she ordered, he performed. But he played a staunch game on our behalf, too, and on Goolab Singh’s. When I ventured to ask him where he stood, he looked down that beak of a nose and snapped: “On my own two feet!” So there.

He had Jeendan’s infernal scheme all pat, and after I’d had a couple of hours’ sleep and Jassa had rebound my swollen ankle, he lined it out to me; horrid risky it sounded.

“You ride straight hence to Lal’s camp beyond the Sutlej, with four of my men as escort, all of you disguised as gorracharra.

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