It was a red trail.
In one spot lay a sepoy pierced through by a lance, and with half
of the lance-shaft still standing upright in him. That had been bad
art--sheer playing to the gallery! Juggut Khan had run him through
and tried to lift him on the lance-end for a trophy. It was luck
that saved the day for him that time, not swordsmanship.
But a man who has done what he had done that day may be forgiven.
There lay nine other men behind him where his lance was left, and
each of them lay face upward with a round red hole in his anatomy
where the lance had entered.
And from the point where he had broken his lance and left it, up to
where a self-appointed guard had refused at first to open the city
gate for him, there was a trail that did honor to the man who taught
him swordsmanship. One man lay headless, and another's head was only
part of him, because the sword had split it down the middle and the
two halves were still joined together at the neck.
There were men who claimed afterward that of the twenty-three who
lay between his lance-shaft and the city gate, some five or six had
been slain in brawls and looting forays.
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