The Peshawar Lancers - Plot

Plot

It is October 2025. It has been 148 years since a series of comet impacts rendered life in the northern hemisphere unbearable, forcing the great empires of Eurasia to move south to survive.

Athelstane King is an officer in the Peshawar Lancers, a cavalry and heavy infantry unit guarding the North-West Frontier province of the Viceroyalty of India, in the center of the Angrezi Raj. King, along with his friend, the Sikh Daffadar Narayan Singh, is ordered to go on medical leave after being wounded in battle against border raiders from the Emirate of Afghanistan. King comes from a well-to-do family, with a long tradition of service to the British Empire. King and Singh go to the officer's club near the city of Oxford (formerly Srinagar). King is especially eager to be with his Kashmiri mistress Hasamurti. While at the officer's club, he meets Imperial Political Services agent Sir Manfred Warburton, and an agent from distant France-outre-Mer, Henri de Vascogne. Vascogne is in the Raj to lay the groundwork for an arranged marriage between King-Emperor John II's daughter Sita and the heir to the throne of France-outre-mer. Warburton arranges for King to meet him in Delhi in one week.

Meanwhile, trouble is brewing. Russian Okhrana agent Vladimir Obromovich Ignatieff and Sister of the True Dreamers Yasmini are on their way into the Raj to kill both Athelstane and his sister, Cassandra. On their way there, Yasmini dreams of literally being the Raj's sacred Mahatma Disraeli. Since she can dream of the future (as well as different outcomes), she is able to dream ways around the Imperial patrols. At the same time, Cassandra Mary Effingham King, devoted Whig and brilliant scientist is on her way home to Oxford from Delhi. She is heavily involved on a project to find ways to deflect another meteor, asteroid, or comet from impacting the earth.

Ignatieff, disguised as an impious Muslim, makes a contract with Bengali separatists to kill Cassandra (which they very nearly do; they do kill one of the Raj's best physicists in the process). A group of armed Thuggee try to kill Athelstane King in the Peshawar officer's club, after killing Hasamurti. King decides to leave for Oxford in disguise, but on the train, he is nearly killed again by the Pashtun assassin Ibrahim Khan. When King confronts Khan over who hired him, he makes the connection that a Russian has been sending the assassins. Khan, upon hearing this, swears vengeance at being misled and agrees to follow King.

Athelstane returns to his home in the Vale of Kashmir: Rexin Manor. There, Narayan Singh's father, Ranjit, tells Athelstane the truth behind his father's death. When Athelstane was only four, his father, Eric, was on a mission to the foothills of Afghanistan to investigate a smuggling operation. Warburton and Ranjit Singh were also with him. However, they were led into an ambush, in which Eric was killed. The man who caused it, a self-proclaimed holy man from the Zagros mountains, had a seer. This confirms King's theory. He is sent by his mother to Delhi to find Elias bar-Binyamin, a Jewish financier whom the King family has a mutual debt (or tessera) with, to gain further information. Cassandra, shaken by the death of her friend the physicist, is hired by the palace to play tutor to Sita. This is arranged by Sir Manfred to keep her safe. She meets her brother, the heir to the Lion Throne, Charles and finds herself interested in him.

In Delhi, on his way to the bar-Binyamin residence, Athelstane is met in the streets by Yasmini, who has deserted Ignatieff to help King. She warns him against going down an alleyway, which turns out to be full of assassins from Dai-Nippon. The fight with the assassins spills over into Warburton's residence, where they are defeated. However, when they get there, Warburton has been critically injured by Ignatieff himself. Ignatieff has been joined by another IPS agent, Richard Allenby. Ignatieff and Allenby escape, and then Allenby uses his powers to summon the police. In order to help his friends escape, Narayan Singh stays behind to face the police. Allenby orders Singh taken to his own house for interrogation.

The group then makes their way to Elias residence. As Warburton recovers, Elias tells them the story of how Eric King went to Bokhara to save his son David from imprisonment. Yasmini reveals further details of the Sisterhood of True Dreamers, telling them of a terrible dream kept from the Czar himself. She tells them that if Athelstane and Cassandra King die, then somehow, the King-Emperor and his heir will die. There will be no union with France, and in time, the Empire will be torn asunder by a massive world war and separatist movements. Then, around a hundred years from the present, another asteroid impact will occur, leaving only the rats surviving.

The group, joined by David bar-Elias, goes to Allenby's residence to expose him as a traitor and rescue Narayan Singh. Unknown to them, a second group, including Cassandra, Henri de Vascogne, Sita and her Gurkha bodyguard are attempting to do the same thing. Both groups catch Allenby, Ignatieff, and a cult of Kali worshippers in the middle of a cannibal sacrifice. Sita's Gurkha bodyguard is killed defending them, and David bar Elias destroys Allenby's home with a homemade explosive. Sita and her group are confronted by the King-Emperor himself. He is also making plans for a state visit to France-outre-mer on the Imperial air yacht, the Garuda. To save the King-Emperor's life, Athelstane's group makes a secretive journey to Bombay, killing Allenby when he tries to kill them with aid from local Rabari tribesmen. As the Garuda prepares to take off (with Cassandra on board), Athelstane's group sneaks on.

Ignatieff is also on board the ship, with aid from the captain, a Kapenaar, (resident of the Cape Viceroyalty) who belongs to a radical Afrikaner terrorist group. He manages to take the King-Emperor hostage and reveals that he has planted evidence that Dai-Nippon and the Caliphate have ordered an assassination, to trigger a major war. He blows himself up, killing himself and King-Emperor John (who refuses to give in to the captain's demands) and damaging the Garuda critically. Meanwhile, Athelstane manages to kill Ignatieff in a brutal sword duel, with help from Ibrahim Khan.

Unfortunately, the air yacht is now over a lawless portion of Afghanistan, infested with air pirates. They force the ship down. As the Gurkha guards hold off the raiders, Ibrahim Khan and Sir Manfred are sent to get help. Help does come, in the form of the Peshawar Lancers. The Lancers drive away the raiders, and allow Khan, who reveals himself to be a major prince, to return home with his promised reward pledged to him. The Lancers guide the survivors, including Cassandra, Athelstane, Henri (who has revealed himself as the Prince Imperial of France-outre-mer to Sita), and new King-Emperor Charles III to safety. Charles later marries Cassandra, and Yasmini later marries Athelstane, who had saved her from going mad from her dreams by ending her virginity.