1 a vizier's daughter - Hazara.net

44
A VIZIER’S DAUGHTER – A TALE OF THE HAZARA WAR
pause to consider what was going on. That the y were then met by some
half-demented fugitives, flying anywhere – the y cared not in which
direction – from their blackened hearths, where all the y had held most
dear la y soaked in blood, or roasted on funeral piles, the size of which
would have done honour to a dead sovereign.
* I once asked an Afghan, in no way connected with this story, what sort of
a man Colonel F erad Shah had been. For answer he threw up his hands above
his head and exclaimed: “Oh, that creature was not a human being at all – he
was a b ear. No – worse – for when a bear kills, he does it to defend himself,
or to provide himself with food; but that man killed that he might have the
pleasure of witnessing human terror and suffering in all its most agonising
forms. He and his dogs were fit companions for one another.”
CHAPTER IX
A FATHER’S DECISION
“WHAT’S in this letter, brother?” Wali Mohamed asked the Vizier one
morning, soon after the latter had returned from his expeditio n. “It’s a
letter from Colonel Ferad Shah, the commander of the Afghan forces,
but I can’t rightly make it out, and I don’t exactly understand what the
messenger is tr ying to tell me either. He talks in a language I don’t
quite understand , half Pashtu, it seems to me. Something about a girl
you read it and see what you can make of it.”
“A letter form Ferad Shah! That can mean no good to any of us,”
Ghulam Hossain replied anxiously. “We shall have to sound the call
and assemble the men in force. The Ameer meant what he said