The Tiger Warrior Part 7

"We were camped for the night, deep in the jungle," he panted, squatting down as he reloaded the revolver. His voice was hoa.r.s.e, and he took a few deep breaths to control it. "We were told by our guide that a gang of a hundred rebels was at a nearby village. We marched at three a.m. to surprise them at dawn. Our guide brought us out into a small clearing in front of the village, where we were spotted. He disappeared and we never saw him again. A shot was fired at us, followed by five or six in quick succession. I got the men into skirmishing order and opened fire on the rebels; they quickly retreated into the jungle. Once there, the rebels, knowing their way about, had a decided advantage on us. If only they'd stand and fight in the open, we could put down this rebellion in a week."

"This happens every time we try to engage them," Howard murmured to Wauchope. "Go on."

"We were getting short on ammunition. They were trying to draw us deeper into the jungle. I decided to retreat, and after a lull they followed, keeping up a hot fire on us all the way. Sometimes they were visible as they flitted from tree to tree, and we were able to pick a few off Twice I halted the sappers and confronted the attackers with heavy fire, but they always took refuge behind trees. Altogether we expended over a thousand rounds, but we accounted for only ten of the enemy for certain. Frequently the rebels have been encountered in this way, and got off with small losses in killed and wounded. I think, if our men had used buckshot cartridges, the effect would have been greater."

Howard nodded. "Very well. Put it in your report."

"What's the butcher's bill?" Walker asked.

"Their matchlocks don't have much power beyond about fifty yards. One of the sappers has a ball embedded in his skull."

"Let's be having him then." Walker gave a ghoulish grin and rolled open a pouch of forceps and pliers from his belt, taking out the largest and wiping it on his ap.r.o.n. "A real wound after that stinking mess below."

Hamilton pointed to one of the sappers with a b.l.o.o.d.y bandage around his head and Walker got up. Hamilton then turned back to Howard and Wauchope, his eyes gleaming feverishly. "We did score one small victory though." He nodded at the sapper standing behind him, who dropped a burlap bag containing something heavy at Howard's feet. "Tamman Dora. We shot him in the village yesterday. One of the sappers is a Ghurka and has a kukri knife. Here's the proof."

"Good G.o.d, man." Wauchope recoiled, holding his nose. "It stinks like rotten meat. Get rid of it."

Hamilton kicked the bag aside, then squatted down, looking at them intently. "Apparently he was one of the rebel leaders. This could be just what we need. Show that lot we mean business." He jerked his head toward the riverbank.

"Who told you he was a rebel leader?" Howard said quietly. "Your guide?"

"He was convinced of it. And the man put up a h.e.l.l of a fight. I emptied my revolver into him and he still kept coming."

"You mean the guide who led you into an ambush? Couldn't he just have been using you to settle some old score?"

Hamilton glanced at the bag and then back at Howard, fl.u.s.tered. "Someone else can confirm the identification. Your muttadar"

"You'll be lucky if there's anything identifiable in that bag now," Wauchope said.

"I maintain that we have killed a rebel leader," Hamilton insisted, urgently now.

"Very well," Howard said, pursing his lips. "You must write an account to go in my report to Colonel Rammell, when we finally get off this wretched sandbank." He paused, looking at the sappers, then looked back at the empty boat. "I've just realized. Someone's missing. Where's Bebbie?"

"I was coming to that. Struck down by cholera."

"Alive?"

"Just. You know how quickly it can take a man. He was prostrate by the time we reached a place to hold out near Rampa village. Then the most curious thing happened. He picked up a Koya arrow and managed to cut himself We thought he'd be done for. But the arrow had some kind of paste on it, not the usual poison. Apparently they p.r.i.c.k themselves with it. Within half an hour he was on his feet again. We've all noticed that the natives seem immune to the worst depredations of the fever. But by late evening the effect wore off, and he became delirious. When we marched on the rebels he insisted on staying at Rampa. He wanted to parley with the village headmen. I left four sappers with him and a promise to return. It was all I could do."

"Confound the man," Howard muttered angrily. "If only he'd parleyed with these people six months ago, none of this would have happened." He looked at Hamilton. "You'll have to go back. I won't leave any of our sappers out there. Have your havildar break out another ammunition box and get your men some water."

"Done." Hamilton nodded to his havildar, who had understood and immediately marched off.

"Now's the time to go, if you have to," Wauchope said languidly, angling his pipe toward the riverbank. "I don't think any of that lot will notice you leaving. The palm wine is flowing freely."

"One of us will accompany you," Howard said.

Hamilton turned to Howard. "I'd like both you and Robert to come. It would be a chance for Robert to go up-country and get a taste of it. And there's something else I want you to see. Robert, you have a bent for things ancient, don't you? And, Howard, you're always going on about old languages?"

Wauchope perked up and knocked out his pipe. "You've found some antiquity?"

"In the shrine. I just stumbled into the entrance for a moment, but you'll have to see."

There was a crackling sound from the foresh.o.r.e, like gunfire but different. Howard took out his eyegla.s.s and peered intently. The Koya were dancing around the fire, tossing in lengths of bamboo. The bamboo was bursting with a bang as the air between the knots expanded. It was a fireworks display, the flaming splinters spraying the air like sparks. Howard caught Sergeant O'Connell's eye and shook his head vehemently. Then the air was rent by a succession of shrieks. He looked again. The dancing was suddenly frantic, joined by drum beating and the blowing of buffalo horns. A naked man appeared, his body daubed profusely with black and white spots, leading a buffalo calf toward the pit by the sh.o.r.e. The animal was bellowing and pawing the ground. Behind them the dancers parted and another man appeared, wearing only baggy dark pantaloons but carrying something gleaming in his right hand.

"Chendrayya," Howard muttered. "Just as the muttadar described him."

"He's got a tulwar," Wauchope murmured.

The man in the pantaloons raised his right hand, revealing the curved sword feared above all others by British soldiers in India, able to cut a man in two in a single stroke. In a flash the sword came down one way and then the other behind the buffalo, cleaving the air. For a split second there was silence, and then a terrible bellow as the calf fell backward off its legs, leaving the feet stuck grotesquely in the sand. Blood spurted from the severed limbs into the pit. The dancers leapt on the calf like a pack of frenzied hyenas, tearing the flesh off with knives and their bare hands. Blood spurted and flowed into the pit, the animal's heart still pulsing even as it was torn from beneath the rib cage. Then the drumbeat began again, slow, insistent. The dancers drew back from the carnage, their heads and arms drenched in blood, and carrying their dripping trophies, slowly circling around. The muttadar on the foredeck began babbling incomprehensibly, then said the same words over and over again in the Koya language, all the time drooling and beating his head, averting his eyes from the scene on the foresh.o.r.e.

"What on earth is he on about?" Wauchope said.

"Meriah." Howard spoke in little more than a whisper.

"Meriah? You mean human sacrifice? Good G.o.d."

Three men were thrust forward to the edge of the pit. They were darker-skinned, wearing the tattered remains of lowland pantaloons, their hands tied behind their backs. They seemed stupefied, unable to stand upright, and were kicked to their knees by the man in body paint. Howard watched in horrified fascination. The captured police constables. There was nothing he could do.

"Sir!" O'Connell bellowed.

Howard suddenly saw something else. "Wait!" he shouted. "There are women and children there! Hold your fire!"

In an instant the tulwar flashed again. Two heads flew off, and blood gushed into the pit. The third constable fell forward, shrieking. The painted man pounced on him and pulled him into the pit, holding the struggling form down in the b.l.o.o.d.y mire until it was still. For a moment there was silence. Then the man stood up, his back to them, facing Chendrayya, and raised his arms outward, blood and mucus falling from his arms in a diaphanous sheen of red.

"That was for our benefit," Howard murmured to Wauchope. "For it to be a true meriah sacrifice, the victim has to be ritually prepared. Those constables were executed. What they did to the buffalo was sacrifice."

"You mean they do that to humans too?" Wauchope said, aghast, his composure gone.

"They supposedly tear their victims to pieces with knives, leaving the head suspended from a pole. No European has ever seen it."

The drumbeat began again. The painted man in the pit pulled a heavy dripping garment over his shoulders. Howard could see it was a tiger skin, sodden with blood. The first drops of rain were spattering against the deck of the steamer, and steam from the fires mingled with an efflorescence that seemed to rise from the mangled carca.s.s of the bull and the b.l.o.o.d.y pit beside it. Chendrayya looked across at the steamer, seeming to stare directly at Howard, then turned and made his way up the sandbar to the place where the three poles had been erected earlier. The frenzied dancers in front of him parted, revealing a group of white-clad women around one of the poles. Howard squinted against the mist that swirled over the river. The women were flourishing boughs, and the pole had the effigy of a bird suspended from it, a c.o.c.k. Howard swallowed hard. With a sickening feeling, he realised there was more to come. Three victims, one to each pole, west, middle, east-sunset, noon, sunrise.

"This will not be quick," he murmured to Wauchope.

A man was led out in front of the women, his hair shorn, garlanded with flowers, wearing a clean white garment. His neck was held between a cleft bamboo and he already seemed half-dead, whether from slow strangulation or toddy was impossible to tell. Eager hands reached out to catch the saliva that was drooling from his mouth, smearing it into the red turmeric on their own faces. He was dragged toward the far pole, out of sight in the crowd. The incessant slow drumbeat suddenly rose in a frenzied crescendo, and the group of women around the central pole parted. Howard looked, and nearly retched.

It was a child.

A boy, not much older than his own son, was tied to the pole. His head was lolling like the man's, but his body shuddered, still alive. Four of the women held out his little arms and legs. The man in the tiger skin approached, and picked up a pole, like the handle of an axe. He tapped the boy on the head with it, and then tapped each of the boy's limbs. Only they were not taps. Howard had been seeing everything in slow motion, and as his mind replayed it he saw the little limbs each crack and flop away, broken like boughs of dry wood. The women let go, and the small body flopped like a rag doll from the chain that held his neck. A rope tied to the top of the pole was pulled, and the c.o.c.k began to whirl around and around, followed by the women who circled it. Among the swirling robes there were flashes of blades held in readiness, glinting. The boy raised his head, and Howard was sure he heard crying, the helpless crying of a child, that seemed to reach out to him, that seemed to come from a child of his own.

It was unbearable. Howard reached over and took the Snider-Enfield rifle from one of Hamilton's sappers crouching next to him. It had a repair behind the receiver, a darker piece of wood, but it was sound. He pulled the hammer to half-c.o.c.k, flipped open the breechblock with a sharp turn of his right hand, pulled back the ejector and tipped out the spent cartridge case. He spat on his finger, pushed it into the chamber and wiped out the fouling, then smeared the stinking black residue on the railing. He reached over to the leather case on the sapper's belt and took out the last remaining cartridge. He was acting without thought now, his whole being focused on the mechanical acts of the drill. He dropped the cartridge into the breech and pushed it home, then snapped shut the block. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, pointing the muzzle a few inches below his target. With his right thumb he pulled back the hammer to full-c.o.c.k, and he hooked his forefinger around the trigger. He closed his left eye, and raised the muzzle steadily until the foresight was in line with the notch of the backsight. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he pressed the trigger, without the least motion elsewhere, his eye on the object in his sights.

It was a target, nothing more.

The rifle kicked against his shoulder, but he seemed to hear no sound, as if his senses had frozen the moment before, sealing the image on his retina like a photographic negative. All he felt was a dizzying speed, as if he himself were hurtling at twelve hundred feet per second toward his target. He blinked, and the image was gone. His ears were ringing, and all he could see was a cloud of smoke from the muzzle, and then a swirling maelstrom on the foresh.o.r.e. He let the rifle fall on its b.u.t.t and lurched heavily forward on one knee, desperately trying to stop retching. He heard a bellow from Sergeant O'Connell and then the immense crack of a volley from the line of riflemen beside him. He turned and saw O'Connell's face bearing down on him, flushed, eyes red-rimmed, the very image of Fury unleashed. He saw the lips move, then heard the voice. "That should do it for you, sir. f.u.c.king cannibals." Howard looked around and saw Wauchope staring at him, and he breathed hard. He must stay in control. He straightened up and looked at O'Connell. "There will be h.e.l.l to pay if we cause a ma.s.sacre, Sergeant. The civil authorities will send us out of here in chains. We can only shoot if we're fired on. I'm trusting you to exercise restraint."

"You put that boy out of his misery, sir," O'Connell said. "That took uncommon courage, sir. G.o.d bless you."

Howard felt faint, and turned quickly back to the rail, holding it tight. Wauchope took out his revolver, spinning the cylinder to check that the chambers were loaded. He shoved it back in his holster and put his hand on Howard's shoulder. "Now's the time to go and find our sappers and Bebbie," he said quietly. "O'Connell's volley dropped the devils who had been tormenting that little boy, but the rebel leader and the rest had already moved to the other two victims. I fear the sacrifice has taken place. But the rebels are too far gone with toddy to see us go. They're perfectly besotted."

Walker came up from where he had been operating on the wounded sapper, wiping his hands on his ap.r.o.n. "Those who aren't dead drunk will be going home with their pound of flesh," he said. "They have to bury their offering in their own plot of land before nightfall, to ensure the efficacy of the sacrifice. They will be dispersing far and wide to their villages."

Hamilton looked at Howard. "Well?" Howard fingered his own holster, and looked again across the river. His mouth felt dry, and his heart was fluttering. He was not sure what he had just done, or if it was a horrible dream. He took a deep breath and nodded. "Very well. The jemadar and Sergeant O'Connell can look after things here." He glanced up the deck to the muttadar, who was cowering beside the seven-pounder gun, clutching his bamboo tube. "And the muttadar can come with us. He can bring his precious cargo. Even if Bebbie's beyond our help, at least we can uphold our end of the bargain." He looked up at the wall of black cloud that was now towering over them, and felt the drops of rain on his face. "It's time we got his sacred idol back where it belongs. And got our sappers the h.e.l.l out of there."

Lieutenant John Howard hitched up his sword and eased himself back against the burnt stump of a tamarind tree, then drained the last of his water bottle. He had watched the dozen Madrasi sappers take up position around the edge of the jungle clearing, and now he could relax for a moment. He swatted at a mosquito that had bitten through the thin cotton of his uniform, which was soaked with sweat and clinging to him like a second skin. The smear of blood on his leg could have come from the mosquito or from the myriad small cuts where the jungle gra.s.s had slashed his face and arms as if with knives. He was grateful to Surgeon Walker for insisting that he bind his calves and ankles with puttees of coa.r.s.e cloth. Even so he knew that any open wound out here could be bad news, and he hoped they were back on board the river steamer under Walker's watchful eye before any virulence set in. He pulled out his fob watch. Four hours to sundown. Another hour and they would turn back. He knew with utter conviction that they could not survive the night out here.

He put away the watch. His right hand was still shaking, the hand that had pulled the trigger less than an hour before, and he clenched it into a fist, willing it to stop. With his other hand he unfastened his holster flap and extracted his Colt revolver, checking the cylinder to see that the percussion caps were still firmly lodged on each chamber.

"You ought to get yourself a cartridge revolver, you know." The officer squatting alongside had been eyeing him with concern, and Howard realized that Wauchope must have seen his shaking hand.

"My father used this to defend us during the mutiny. It worked then. Call it superst.i.tion."

"If it wasn't for the noise giving us away, I'd be sorely tempted to use mine on those dogs," Wauchope said. "In Afghanistan I saw a pack of wild hounds rip a wounded man to pieces in seconds."

Howard holstered the revolver, then looked around the clearing. They were in a patch of tangled thorn and scrub that had once been a native Koya clearing, abandoned after the soil had become exhausted and now reverting to jungle. At intervals half a dozen dogs sat silently watching them, long, lean beasts like the dogs the regiment kept for shirkar, for hunting fowl and small game in the hills around the cantonment at Bangalore. These were hunting dogs too, and had paced silently alongside them as they made their way up from the riverbank along the jungle path, through dense groves of tamarind eighty, even ninety feet high, festooned with huge creepers and vines dripping with condensation. It had been eerily quiet all the way, as if the beasts and birds of the jungle were in limbo, uncertain whether the monsoon was about to break over them, whether to cower down or to burst out in their usual deafening cacophony. Or perhaps they were fearful of another presence, the evil spirits the muttadar said lurked in the jungle after a sacrifice, waiting while the natives returned to their villages with their b.l.o.o.d.y strips of flesh - spirits that would only be sated when the offerings were buried.

Howard felt he was in the grip of an overactive imagination, tipped into some kind of unreason he could scarcely control, and he closed his eyes. It was the first glimmerings of fever, perhaps, an unfamiliar state for him. He looked at the dogs again, and felt his bile rise. Hunting dogs, but gorged on carrion of the most b.e.s.t.i.a.l kind, their maws still glistening red and dripping. The shrieking mob had left them the bones and gristle by the riverbank, and the dogs had remained behind, lapping at the b.l.o.o.d.y mire in the pit. For a dreadful moment Howard felt as if the dogs were here for him, as if his act in pulling the trigger had not dispelled the awful ritual but made him part of it, as if he had become a sacrificial priest who might provide another ghastly feast before the day was done.

"It's hopeless," Wauchope said. "I fancied I saw a heliograph flash a moment ago, but it must have been a trick of the eye, a brief ray of sunlight on wet vegetation. There's no chance now." He began folding away the instrument in front of him, a wooden tripod with a small mirror on top and a lever for tilting it to flash Morse code. Howard snapped back to reality, and opened his compa.s.s. He took a bearing, then shook his head. The champagne quality of the jungle air recorded by Lieutenant Everest sixty years before only came after the deluge, and that had yet to happen. When they had halted in the clearing ten minutes earlier, an attempt at heliograph signaling had seemed possible, with the jungle-shrouded hilltops still visible through the mist in the valleys. But now a heavy fog had descended and the damp penetrated everywhere, even condensing in the bores of the sappers' rifles. He glanced at Wauchope. "Were it not for the prodigious vegetation the Shamrock should still be within our line of sight," he said. "But according to Hamilton, from now on we drop down into the jungle beside a stream until we reach the village. You may as well stash the heliograph here. It's no use to us now."

Another figure in khaki and a pith helmet came up through the tangled vegetation, then stooped over at the edge of the clearing to pick up something from the ground. His eyes were ringed with exhaustion, and Howard wondered if he had been right to let Hamilton lead them back to this place so soon after his arduous escape from the rebels. Once again he let his anger with a.s.sistant Commissioner Bebbie course through him, the sustaining emotion that seemed to keep him level. If it had only been Beddie who had needed saving, they would have left him to the tigers and hyenas, but the fact that he had four sappers guarding him made it imperative that they do all they could to mount a rescue.

Hamilton slumped beside them and tossed out a handful of spent Snider cartridges. "This is the place all right. This is where we stopped and gave them a volley," he panted, his voice dry and hoa.r.s.e. "We dropped three, maybe four, but they took their fallen and bolted into the jungle." He looked intently at Howard, his eyes strange, burning, the beginnings of fever. "We use rifles and bayonets the length of halberds, deploying infantry tactics designed for the field of Waterloo. We need smoothbore carbines, buckshot, revolvers, knives. We need to follow them into the jungle, track them down, kill them as a beast kills its prey. We need to play their game but get better at it, let animal instinct take over from decency. We need to become savages."

Howard looked at him. "Most of all, we need to find the wretched Bebbie and get out of here. You say you can't choose between the trails ahead?"

"We were being pressed back. Only now do I realize there are three trails up the valley out of this clearing. We'll have to trust the muttadar" He jerked his head toward the semi-naked figure squatting by himself on the edge of the clearing, his head swathed in the maroon turban Beddie had given him as a sign of government authority, his hands clutching his precious length of bamboo. Howard took a deep breath, and looked hard at Hamilton. Perhaps they were all becoming unhinged. Per haps it was the fever. He saw the yellow eyeb.a.l.l.s, the blanched cheeks. He remembered Surgeon Walker's words. A low fever of the malignant, lingering type. He felt a sudden chill, and a shiver ran through him. His hand was still shaking. He hoped to G.o.d it was just his nerves. He looked at Wauchope. "All right. Tell the havildar to keep the men five paces apart. Rifles at half-c.o.c.k. And remember, these people can track us like tigers."

Half an hour later they squatted down beside a trickling stream deep in the jungle. Since leaving the clearing they had descended into a dark tunnel of foliage, all sense of the sky blotted out by the thick canopy. It was a pestilential place, infested with clouds of mosquitoes that seemed to rise from every stagnant pool, bird-sized spiders that leapt into the men's hair every time a helmet was removed, and leeches that lurked in every damp spot and attached themselves without the slightest provocation. Now it was as if they had come up for air, the sky visible above them in patches of dark cloud lit up with distant flashes of sheet lightning. Howard wiped his dripping face and pushed his water bottle into a brackish pool in the stream. Suddenly a shot rang out. Howard dropped the flask and unholstered his revolver, jerking upright. Hamilton was standing a few yards ahead with his own revolver leveled at the ground. A giant cobra had slid across the path, and Hamilton had foolishly shot it. Howard cursed him under his breath for the noise. And it was only wounded. The cobra leapt up, bouncing and writhing around like a demented dancer, and attached itself to the leg of one of the sappers. The man shrieked and fell insensible to the ground. Hamilton unsheathed his sword and decapitated the snake. The muttadar gestured wildly, then vanished into the jungle and quickly reappeared chewing a ball of green matter, which he forced into the sapper's mouth. Within seconds the sapper opened his eyes, sat bolt upright and began hyperventilating, his breathing calming down as he was held by two other soldiers.

Howard looked in some astonishment at the scene, rea.s.sured himself that the sapper truly was recovering, then reholstered his revolver and began filling up his bottle again. The muttadar watched him do it and then bounded up and pushed his hand away, and pointed at the khukri knife in the belt of one of the sappers. Howard looked at him quizzically, then nodded at the havildar, who leveled his big percussion pistol at the muttadar and gestured for him to go ahead. The muttadar took the khukri and went over to a grove of thick-stemmed bamboo growing on the stream bank. He tapped the nearest one just above a knot with the back side of the khukri, and they heard a dull sloshing sound. He stood back and swung the khukri at the bamboo, slashing it sideways to avoid creating splinters. A cupful of clear sparkling water gushed out onto the ground. The sappers quickly came up behind him, holding out their empty canteens as he went from trunk to trunk, expertly slashing with the razor-sharp blade.

"Give the water first to Sapper Narrainsamy," Howard said in Hindi. "We need him to be able to walk."

He watched the sapper who was leaning against a tamarind root, being pa.s.sed a water flask by the havildar. Now Howard looked around apprehensively. The sound of the gunshot and the shriek had ignited the jungle, and the few cautious chatters and peeps had become an explosive cacophony of screeches and yelps and howls. Somewhere in the background came the throaty rumble of a tiger, rising to a mighty roar that shook the ground. The dogs that had been with them all along suddenly bolted, yipping frantically and disappearing into the jungle. The sappers all dropped their canteens and grasped their weapons. The muttadar fell to the ground in a ball, shaking and moaning and chanting a mantra to himself, words that Howard had heard him say before.

"He says it's a konda devata, a possessed female in the shape of a tiger," Howard murmured to Wauchope. "She'll devour anyone staying in the forest at the time of a sacrifice. It's she who should lick the blood of the sacrificial victims, not the dogs."

"A real tiger is enough for me," Wauchope muttered, revolver in hand.

"Sorcery and superst.i.tion," Howard said in Hindi, nodding sternly at the havildar and speaking a few words of rea.s.surance to the sappers who had taken fright. He remembered his own nervous imagination in the jungle clearing, but he steeled himself to dispel it. They were all depending on him. He looked at the streambed, and then at Hamilton. "Do you recognize this?"

Hamilton nodded. "We left Bebbie and the sappers about half a mile upstream from here. The stream was nearly dry when we came down, but it's a narrow defile and will become a torrent with the rain. The jungle on either side is impenetrable. You can see the sky through the canopy. It's nearly black. We need to move."

Howard led them forward. At first the gradient was tolerably level, and the streambed was firm sand and stones. Here and there outcrops of deep red sandstone broke through the bank on either side, and giant moss-and fern-covered boulders forced them to struggle up the bank and back down again to the streambed. As the gradient increased the streambed narrowed into a small ravine, the eroded sandstone banks on either side rising twenty feet or more above their heads. They could now see evidence of the previous monsoon, where the river had threshed over the rock in a raging torrent, leaving uprooted trees and rolling rocks down the bed. The banks were too high to climb now, and Howard knew they stood no chance if the monsoon broke. Already there were flashes of forked lightning and distant peals of thunder. The wild beasts seemed to be howling in concert with the elements, sometimes jarringly discordant, sometimes to the same beat, like a devilish orchestra tuning up, a preamble to the unleashing of the heavens that would surely come.

Howard tried to ignore his fear and struggled on, a few yards ahead of the others. As he rounded a boulder, something rolled down the muddy bank just in front of him. It was a red gourd the size of a human head, and he kicked it forward unthinkingly. As he did so he saw a marking. He sloshed ahead, turned it over then quickly stamped his foot into it before the sappers could see. It had been a crude representation of a man hanging on a gallows. The muttadar had told him about these. They were more than just a warning. They were beacons to the konda devata, meant to attract the evil spirit like the smell of dead meat to a hyena. Howard's heart was pounding, and he looked up at the impenetrable wall of the jungle above the riverbank, blinking away the drops of rain. He could see nothing. But it was not only a tiger that was stalking them. They were close to the village, and there were others in the jungle, flitting forms. He looked ahead along the boulders to where the streambed rose into a tumbling rapids, and he fancied he saw a child, a form in a shawl with arms outstretched, beckoning him. He caught his breath. He must be hallucinating. He remembered the riverside scene, what he had done, and the image was gone. He struggled forward until he reached the base of the rapids. The stream was already rising against them, a red-brown torrent where it cut through the sandstone. Two freshly felled trees on either side were exuding dark-red sap that stained the banks. It was as if he were walking into a gush of blood. He wondered if he was being drawn into a world of sorcery and horror that he had made his own when he pulled that trigger. He half-fell forward, then suddenly sank up to his waist. He was caught just in time by Wauchope and Hamilton, who had come up behind him.

"I should have remarked on it," Hamilton gasped breathlessly. "The waterfall had liquefied the streambed and it's like quicksand. We had the devil's own time getting down here. Under those choked-up leaves and ash it's a death trap."

"How close are we now?" Howard said, struggling to keep collected.

"Just over the waterfall. There's a bridge, and then we're on the trail from the village to the shrine. We left Bebbie and the sappers in a clearing just in front of it."

"We're being followed," Howard said.

"That gourd? I saw you look at it," Wauchope said.

"Why don't they kill us?" Hamilton said. "They could shoot us like pigs in a slaughterhouse."

Howard looked at the muttadar, who had been scampering over the boulders with natural agility and had materialized silently beside them, his precious bamboo container held tight. "I think it's the muttadar. He's a sorcerer and even though the rebels know he's betrayed them, perhaps there's some kind of spell that prevents them from harming him."

"His idol?" Wauchope said.

Howard nodded. "That's the only reason he's here with us, and has led us this far. He's as terrified as all these people are of the jungle demons, the konda devata, but I believe he knows he will be allowed safe pa.s.sage back to the shrine to replace what he had taken. And because we've dared to go into the jungle among the spirits that haunt it after the festival, they might think we have some kind of supernatural power ourselves."

"They are utterly irreclaimable savages," Hamilton muttered, his face now flushed with the fever. "The only supernatural power they'll get out of me is a volley of lead from our Sniders."

"Hold this." Wauchope handed Howard the end of a rope he had taken from the haversack of one of the sappers, and leapt up onto the boulder at the base of the waterfall. He held his sword out of the way and climbed nimbly from rock to rock, paying out the rope. He stopped at the top, some thirty feet above them, just visible in the mist, and gestured with his free arm for them to follow. Over the next ten minutes they all clambered up after him one by one, the sappers with their rifles slung over their backs and going barefoot. At the top was a small bamboo bridge over the shingly steambed, and they trooped across it into a clearing surrounded by patches of feathering reed. About fifty yards ahead the jungle began again, rising high over another rocky hillock. The havildar suddenly gesticulated and one of the sappers ran forward, toward a small cl.u.s.ter of fellow sappers with bayonets fixed, visible below a boulder on the far side of the clearing. There was a sudden scream of warning in Hindi from one of them, but it was too late. The sapper had disappeared without a sound. The others cautiously went forward, Hamilton and Howard in the lead, and they peered down.

"Good G.o.d, no," Hamilton whispered. "I knew this was here. I should have warned them. I am not in my right mind."

A horrible gurgling sound came from below, then stopped. Howard leaned over, feeling nauseous. A tiger trap. The hole was deep, at least ten feet, and stakes of fire-hardened bamboo rose out of the ground. The sapper had fallen in a seated position, and a stake had caught him in the nape of his neck and driven right through his skull, a b.l.o.o.d.y spike that thrust a foot or more above his turban. The force of the impact had nearly decapitated him, and his neck was stretched out grotesquely, the rest of his body skewered on the bed of spikes in front. Howard swallowed hard, then stood back to let the other sappers see. He took the havildar aside and had a quiet word with him in Hindi before turning to Wauchope and Hamilton.

"I asked him to recover the rifle and ammunition," he said. "They'll want to take him out and bury him."

"That will be an odious task," Wauchope murmured.

"They will not leave him here like this," Howard said. He turned and walked toward the other side of the clearing, his anger rising. Bebbie now had even more to account for. But he saw that they were too late. The four sappers of the detachment, those Hamilton had left to guard Bebbie, were kneeling, with bayonets pointing outward, around a crude bamboo palanquin. On it was a sweat-drenched, half-covered body very far from being alive. Howard knew how cruelly the cholera could ravage a person's appearance, but this was ghoulish in the extreme. The face was gray and the mouth was lolling, full of congealed blood. He came closer. It was not quite right. Bebbie's eyes had clearly come out, only to be pushed crudely back in. As Howard approached, holding his nose against the smell of feces, he saw the explanation. A large hole perforated the middle of Beddie's forehead.

The havildar followed and spoke rapidly to the four sappers, pa.s.sing them his water bottle, then let them speak in turn. Howard listened, then turned to Hamilton and Wauchope, his anger still palpable despite the grim finality of the scene. He jerked his thumb at the corpse. "That fool ordered the sappers into Rampa village to parley with the rebels. Their native guide had told him the rebel leader Chendrayya was there. One of the sappers went through the jungle to the edge of the village for a reconnaissance. He saw at least four hundred rebels ma.s.sed, maybe more. I believe they were the party we saw join the throng by the river. The sapper returned and reported to Bebbie. The sappers had seen what the rebels had done to the captured police constables. The ones we saw executed by the river are not the only victims. Two more were murdered here in full view of the sappers last night, just outside the shrine. But Bebbie still ordered the sappers to go back to the village."

"He must have been delirious," Wauchope said.

"You didn't know this man," Howard said, gritting his teeth. "But before they could go, they were attacked. Shots were exchanged. Bebbie was. .h.i.t and killed."

Wauchope knelt close to the corpse, and peered at the gaping blue hole in the forehead. He lifted up the head, raising a swarm of black flies from the sticky mess below. The back of the head was blown off, and fragments of skull were stuck to the ground. He looked up at the other two officers. "That's no musket ball," he said quietly. "That's a Snider bullet. I've seen what our rifles do in Afghanistan."

Howard looked down at the wound, and swallowed hard. He looked at his right hand. It was still shaking. He thought for a moment and then turned to address the havildar in Hindi. "An unfortunate business. He would not have lasted with the cholera anyway. Have them bury him on the spot. And rea.s.sure our sappers that they will not be required to parley with the enemy."

"Sahib." The havildar addressed the four men, who nodded at Howard and reached for the collapsible shovels on their haversacks. Howard looked back at the body with contempt. "If he'd done his job this rebellion would never have happened."

"Word will get out that he was shot," Hamilton murmured.

"A musket ball. It is as the sappers describe. They were attacked. That goes in the report," Howard said determinedly.

"If you ever get a chance to make one," Wauchope said. "What do we do now?"