“Whither?” one whispered to him.
“To Khinjan!” he answered; and that was enough. Each whispered to the other, and they all became fired with curiosity more potent than money bribes.
When he halted at last and dismounted and sat down and the stragglers caught up, panting, they held a council of war all together, with Ismail sitting at King's back and leaning a chin on his shoulder in order to hear better. Bone pressed on bone, and the place grew numb; King shook him off a dozen times; but each time Ismail set his chin back on the same spot, as a dog will that listens to his master. Yet he insisted he was her man, and not King's.
“Now, ye men of the Hills,” said King, “listen to me who am political-offender-with-reward-for-capture-offered!” That was a gem of a title. It fired their imaginations. “I know things that no soldier would find out in a thousand years, and I will tell you some of what I know.”
Now he had to be careful. If he were to invent too much they might denounce him as a traitor to the “Hills” in general. If he were to tell them too little they would lose interest and might very well desert him at the first pinch. He must feel for the middle way and upset no prejudices.
“She has discovered that this mullah Muhammad Anim is no true muslim, but an unbelieving dog of a foreigner from Farangistan! She has discovered that he plans to make himself an emperor in these Hills, and to sell Hillmen into slavery!” Might as well serve the mullah up hot while about it! Beyond any doubt not much more than a mile away the mullah was getting even by condemning the lot of them to death. “An eye for the risk of an eye!” say the unforgiving Hills.
“If one of us should go back into his camp now he would be tortured. Be sure of that.”
Breathing deeply in the darkness, they nodded, as if the dark had eyes. Ismail's chin drove a fraction deeper into his shoulder.
“Now ye know--for all men know--that the entrance into Khinjan Caves is free to any man who can tell a lie without flinching. It is the way out again that is not free. How many men do ye know that have entered and never returned?”
They all nodded again. It was common knowledge that Khinjan was a very graveyard of the presumptuous.