“Didst thou ever sing for her?” he asked, and the man turned round to stare at him as if he were mad, King saw then a blood-soaked bandage on the right of his neck, not very far from the jugular.
“When she sings we are silent! When she is silent it is good to wait a while and see!” he answered.
“Hah!” said King. “Was that wound got in the Khyber the other day?”
“Nay. Here in Khinjan. I had my thumb in a man's eye, and the bastard bit me! May devils do worse to him where he has gone! I threw him into Earth's Drink!”
“A good place for one's enemies!” laughed King.
“Aye!”
“A man told me last night,” said King, drawing on imagination without any compunction at all, “that the fight in the Khyber was because a jihad is launched aleady.”
“That man lied!” said the guard, shifting position uneasily, as if afraid to talk too much.
“So I told him!” answered King. “I told him there never will be another jihad.”'
“Then art thou a greater liar than he!” the guard answered hotly. “There will be a jihad when she is ready, such an one as never yet was! India shall bleed for all the fat years she has lain unplundered! Not a throat of an unbeliever in the world shall be left un-slit! No jihad? Thou liar! Get in out of my sight!”