Across the Satluj from Anandpur was a village called Bajroor, and it had a small fort in it.
The people who lived there had worked out something convenient. Travellers had to pass that way. If you robbed a traveller and he came back with friends, you could simply go inside your little fort and shut the door, and there was not much anybody could do about it.
So they robbed people for years, and got away with it for years.
Then one day they robbed a group of Sikhs who were on their way to Anandpur.
Those Sikhs went on and arrived with nothing, and told Guru Gobind Singh Ji what had happened.
And Guru Ji said nothing at all.
A day went by. Then another day. Nothing.
Then, quite suddenly, he gave the order to go to Bajroor.
This time no horsemen. They crossed the river and came up towards the village on foot, in rows.
The villagers saw them coming and understood exactly who they were and why they had come. So they got up onto their roofs with their guns, and some of them ran into the fort and started firing from up there, and others stood at the village gate with guns in their hands, which was clever of them.
The Khalsa came on anyway.
Their commanders gave the word and they went forward fast. Some of them were hit and went down. The rest kept going through the gunfire until they were close enough that guns were no use to anybody, and after that it was hand to hand, and the villagers could not hold them for a minute.
They broke, and ran into their houses.
And the Singhs came right up to the gate of the little fort, the one that had always been the answer to everything, and the men inside it looked down and understood that this time it was not going to save them.
So somebody found a piece of white cloth and put it up over the wall.
And the Khalsa stopped.
Not slowly. Not after one more push, or one more shot, or one last bit of settling up for the men who had gone down on the way in.
The white flag went up and they stopped, because that is what they had been taught, and that teaching held even with their blood up and the gate in front of them.
Then the men came out of the fort, all of them, and bowed at Guru Ji's feet.
He gave them three things to do.
Pull down that fort yourselves, he said.
Give back every coin you took from those Sikhs.
And promise me you are finished with robbing people.
If you go back to it, he said, what comes next will be worse.
They agreed to all of it, and it was done, and the Khalsa walked home to Anandpur.
After that the roads round there were safe. Sangats could come and go and nobody troubled them, and ordinary travellers who had nothing to do with any of it found they could get through Bajroor with their goods.
Bhai Sahib puts one quiet line at the end of this sakhi, and it is worth keeping.
These, he says, were the battles the Khalsa fought: the ones fought to take away the suffering of ordinary people.
Not for land. Not for treasure. Not to make anybody afraid of them.
To make a road safe, and then to go home.