David Gibbins - The Tiger warrior

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 foreshore. He let the rifle fall on its butt 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. Fucking 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 hell to pay if we cause a massacre, 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. God 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 apron. “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 hell 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 grass 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 coarse 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 superstition.”

“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 bloody 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 bestial 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 bloody 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 compass. 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.”