Talbot Mundy

Told in the East Talbot Mundy

Publisher Marketing: A Blood-red sun rested its huge disk upon a low mud wall that crested a rise to westward, and flattened at the bottom from its own weight apparently. A dozen dried-out false-acacia-trees shivered as the faintest puff in all the world of stifling wind moved through them; and a hundred thousand tiny squirrels kept up their aimless scampering in search of food that was not there. A coppersmith was about the only living thing that seemed to care whether the sun went down or not. He seemed in a hurry to get a job done, and his reiterated "Bong-bong-bong!"-that had never ceased since sunrise, and had driven nearly mad the few humans who were there to hear it-quickened and grew louder. At last Brown came out of a square mud house, to see about the sunset. He was nobody but plain Bill Brown-or Sergeant William Brown, to give him his full name and entitlements-and the price of him was two rupees per day. He stared straight at the dull red disk of the sun, and spat with eloquence. Then he wiped the sweat from his forehead, and scratched a place where the prickly heat was bothering him. Next, he buttoned up his tunic, and brushed it down neatly and precisely. There was official business to be done, and a man did that with due formality, heat or no heat. Contributor Bio:  Mundy, Talbot Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon) (April 23, 1879 - August 5, 1940) was an English writer. He also wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt. Born in London, at age 16 he ran away from home and began an odyssey in India, Africa, and other parts of the Near and Far East. By age 29, he had begun using the name Talbot Mundy, and a year later arrived in the United States, starting his writing career in 1911. His novel King of the Khyber Rifles is set in India under British Occupation. The long buildup to the introduction to Yasmini and the scenes among the outlaws in the Khinjan Caves clearly influenced fantasy writers Robert E. Howard and Leigh Brackett. His related Jim Grim series, which has mystical overtones and part of which is available over the web from theosophical sites, ran in Adventure magazine before book publication. Mundy was associated with Theosophy's movement and helped popularize the legend of the Nine Unknown Men in the West. He wrote many other books and stories, including Hira Singh and a number of stories about Tros of Samothrace, a Greek freedom fighter who aided Britons and Druids in their fight against Julius Caesar.