The Hosts of the Lord Part 50

So, reaching the summit of this first bulwark of the unattainable, he sat down, breathlessly, beside an upright black stone which showed strangely distinct amid the redness of the surrounding rock; a plain black stone, not three feet high, chipped rudely to a blunt point.

Father Ninian did not need the scattering of dead marigolds and dry basil leaves about its base to tell him that it was a fragment of an older faith than that of the temple below; a faith sterner, purer, founded on a clearer perception of what humanity needed in that search for the lost Paradise; on a closer memory of the cause which lost it.

He laid one hand on the stone almost caressingly, as, holding the pyx in the other, he sat down facing the distant peaks. But there was no cloud upon them. The day had dawned clear and still, and as he sat looking wistfully over the valleys on valleys, the hills on hills, which lay bathed in light between him and the "Cradle of the G.o.ds,"

a sunbeam--still slanting from the curved edge of the eastern plains--caught the jewelled star of what he held, and stayed there.

It was peaceful beyond words. The hurry, the strain, not only of that long eventful night, but of the whole long eventful life, seemed over.

All things seemed behind him. The pa.s.sion, the pride, the courage, the manhood--all things that had made Ninian Bruce what Ninian Bruce had been--where were they?

Only wisdom, only a tender knowledge, seemed to remain.

The clank of steel upon stone roused him, the clank of Roshan's spurs upon the rocks; and Father Ninian turned to see him, a yard or two on the path below, outlined clearly against the distant view of Eshwara, against the world in which Ninian Bruce had lived and loved--the Ninian Bruce whom he had left behind.

Behind!

No! It was Ninian Bruce and none other who was on his feet in a second, a flush on his face--the face that was like the nether mill-stone in its stern pa.s.sion, and pride, and power. For, in a second, the old man's soul was back in a world where a dead woman belonging to him lay waiting for revenge. His hand was on his hidden rapier, as he flung his first word of defiance at the man who had killed her.

"Murderer!"

"Your pupil at that, even!" gasped Roshan, "you began it!--your pupil whom you taught--curse you--"

The words failed him--he paused inarticulate--but the keen eyes and ears opposite him took in his meaning with the swift comprehension which had been Pidar Narayan's always. A sort of contemptuous pity fought with the pa.s.sion of Ninian Bruce's face.

"My pupil, certainly," he a.s.sented. "Have you come to ask me for a final lesson?"

Roshan glared at him. "You understand--you always did--that is the worst. Yes! I have come"--here he laughed wildly--"for what you taught me--fair play and no favour--and I mean to have it." In his fierce excitement he pressed closer, flouris.h.i.+ng his rapier.

"Pardon me," came a cold, courteous voice; "I did not teach you that method of a.s.sa.s.sination, surely? I thought you desired fair play. If so, you might allow me to meet you on equal terms."

Roshan drew back with a flush from the figure which had stood its ground, which looked at him with bitter disdain. He scarcely seemed to recognize it. No wonder! For this was Ninian Bruce himself. Ninian Bruce as he might have spoken to an over-hasty antagonist in the days when he was the most reckless swordsman in Rome, when the world held him body and soul.

The years, his very priesthood, had slipped from him.

"I beg your pardon, sir!" muttered Roshan, standing aside. There was a savage satisfaction in his heart. This man was not old, the odds were equal; there was enough fire and pa.s.sion here to please any opponent.

So, after a pause to lay aside the pyx--it found a strange resting-place on the blunt summit of that upright black stone--a slim, still elegant figure, divested of its priestly robings, took its stand, its back to the hills, its face to the world.

Still upright, still active, with its black _soutane_ caught up and tucked into the sash to give free play to its limbs.

"Now, sir," came the courteous voice, "I am ready."

Something in the proud grace of bearing, the reckless contempt, made Roshan follow suit.

"The sun will be in your eyes," he said, "let us fight lengthwise to the ridge."

"We _will_--by and by!" came that icy voice, as the speaker, without moving, stood on guard. "We can omit the salute. If you are ready, I am."

For an instant Roshan hesitated, realizing what the life that he meant to take had been, what the man himself whom he meant to kill had been and was. The man whose figure stood out like a black shadow against the distant blue of the hills; and as he realized the fine fibre of his enemy, a sense of powerlessness to touch, to harm him, kept Roshan motionless.

"Shall I count five, and give you a start?" The question came with a shrug of the shoulders.

The taunt told. Roshan pulled himself together, and stood on guard also. But the sense of powerlessness was intolerable; he lowered his rapier for a word more--a word to raise his own self-esteem.

"I warn you," he said haughtily, "that the sun is in your eyes. That I have learnt more than you ever taught me--that _this_ is to the death."

"It could scarcely be anything else, could it?" came the instant reply, in a voice that vibrated harshly, like a harpstring struck to its fullest, "with a dead woman between us! Engage, you devil, or I will kill you as you stand!"

Roshan gave a short, sharp cry, like a wild beast. The next instant the curious hiss of two meeting blades sliding along each other was the only sound. It is a strange sound, which, to the listeners, the onlookers, seems to say "hush" to the whole world.

"_Hush_--hush--_sh_--_sh_."

Then, short and sharp as that cry of Roshan's, came another sound; the beaten, baffled clash when steel meets steel instead of flesh.

Roshan, with an inward curse, gripped his rapier closer. He had almost been disarmed,--disarmed in that first encounter. Strange that he should have forgotten his foe,--forgotten the deadly insistence of the master's blade, slack as a snake in curves, firm as a vice in grip.

Then that almost invisible turn of the wrist which had so nearly done for him. He had forgotten--these, in years of meaner adversaries. He remembered them now, and would not forget again. And he had such things; ay! and more, in reserve for himself.

So had his master; in reserve for both of them, if needful. And the knowledge that it _would_ be needful came to Ninian Bruce at the first touch of his adversary's sword; for there was that in it which told the old hand that the young one was a master's also.

"My pupil has improved," he said quietly, as, abandoning the attack, he parried Roshan's furious onslaught with scarcely a motion of the hand, held level to his heart.

That he could do. But the other must surely come in the end, since he was old, and Roshan young. If in the end, therefore, why not now? The sooner the better.

A minute after the sun was no longer in Pidar Narayan's eyes. As he had said, they were fighting lengthwise to the ridge; and he drew back, choosing his ground, until under his feet he felt the dead marigolds, the withered basil leaves that lay about the upright stone,--that strange pedestal on which the star-shaped pyx stood as on an altar, glittering in the sun-rays.

He seemed to see it, to feel it, standing there between the world below and those faint, far peaks. And the eyes which had seen so much felt they need see no more.

"_Sta' alerta, Signor!_" he cried jibingly, flinging himself savagely forward. "And may the Lord have mercy on your soul," he added in a lower tone; as, in an attack which held in it all the wildness, the fire, the pa.s.sion of his youth, he drove Roshan back a step,--one step down the faint slope on which he had counted.

A fierce lunge or two, a swift parry, and then,--then an inch beyond safety--given purposely--yielded room for the _riposte_ he sought from that other rapier.

It came with a quick cry of triumph, as Roshan felt that thin, cold steel slide silently on through a dull, faint resistance. A cry that ended in a gasp, as the hand which held the rapier dropped for a second, then flung itself upwards.

For Pidar Narayan had given the _reprise_; and '_L'Addio del Marito_'

had done its work.

So, for an instant--held upright by the lingering force of the old man's hand--the two stood within a sword's length, their faces glaring at each other,--stern, implacable, the one in death, the other still in life.

Then the strength, the life, ebbed; the balance between it and death wavered, and Ninian Bruce, overborne by his enemy's dead weight, sank to his knee, then backwards.

But his hand still gripped the rapier. So Roshan Khan's body, as it fell forward, slithered down the sharp blade, sending a little jet of crimson blood backwards, till it stopped with a dull thud upon the hilt.

So he lay, face downwards, beside the old man, whose face looked skyward; whose head rested among the withered marigolds and the sweet, dead leaves of the basil, which generations and generations of pilgrims had offered to an unknown wisdom on their way to the "Cradle of the G.o.ds."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE TRUTH