Little indeed! for as the gleam of the village clustering about the feet of the fortress rose to view, a sound of shawms and trumpets arose also. But there was no spiral of smoke as yet to tell of fire.
Bijli, responding to the spur, swept on over the more cultivated country. An old canal, dug hundreds of years before by some dead dynasty sent sinuous channels through the fields; high cactus hedges, shutting out the view, formed impenetrable barriers. With irritation at the delay, Akbar had to follow a winding cart track, deep-rutted beyond words--an old way--the old way that made reform so difficult!
The sun at last! Akbar's shadow sped before him, climbing the thorn enclosures, which at a sharp corner barred the way.
If he himself could but so override difficulties.
Ye Gods! Smoke!
Bijli, at racing speed, was round the corner in a second. Before her lay a mud wall, beyond that an open space, a dense crowd encircling a huge pile of wood.
As she rose like a bird to the leap, Akbar saw nothing but a smoking flaming torch in a man's hand.
"Hold!" he shouted "Akbar the King forbids it."
Bijli, over the wall, was treating the crowd, as she was given to treating a squash at chaugan with kicks and bites, and an instant after, Akbar slipping to the ground, stood stern beside the pile.
There was a murmur of sheer surprise; but Akbar had no eyes for anything but the dulled, drugged, acquiescence of a girl's face as, dressed in bridal finery, she sate on the funeral pyre with an old man's head upon her lap.