Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

One afternoon, Thomas bought a graceful steel sabre, chased with silver on both sides of the blade: two rampant lions on one aspect, the words ‘The Red One,’ in Urdu, on the other. The next morning, while standing watch, he fancied he saw a quick movement in one of the dolis, a rippling of a curtain that caused a momentary crack. That same night he bought a polished and tufted helmet, nose-guard still stained on the inside by the crusty black blood of its former owner, who no doubt had caught a sniper’s ball through the eye, or a skirmisher’s arrow in the forehead, or a digger’s pick-axe under the chin. Thomas appeared on his next watch resplendent in his new helmet, equipped with the flashy sabre, studiously ignoring the sneers of his fellows, and this time, no doubt about it, there was an unmistakable flutter of feminine interest behind the brocade as the dolis swayed through (the dark-skinned doli-wallahs, sweating and white-eyed, maintaining their steady trotting gait and even chant, HAH-huh-HAH-huh-HAH-huh-HAH-huh’).

Over the next week, Thomas enriched his equipage with a suit of chain mail that covered his whole torso, down to the thighs (with a barely-visible kinking, under the left arm, where there had been a hole); black plate armour that buckled around the body, covering both chest and back; grey steel plastrons that sat snugly over the forearms; dull-grey thigh-pieces with decorative engraving suggestive of leaves and creepers; red cavalry boots, sturdy but soft; a curving dagger with a green jade handle carved in the shape of a horse’s head and neck; a pair of horse pistols minutely etched with gold in an abstract Turkish design; a fawn leather wrist-guard; a composite bow made of wood backed with strips of horn, sinew and leather, varnished and covered with red cloth and tied in the middle and ends with gold thread; a stiff leather quiver and arrows, some tipped with quadrangular or blunt points, others like razor-edged leaves or crescents, and still others in the shape of wolves’ and tigers’ heads that screamed as they flew through the air. At night, in his charpoy, in that border-line area between sleep and wakening, Thomas felt, still, the weight of the metal on his limbs; his dreams were invaded by other men’s pasts, by the memories of things he had never seen or experienced, by languages so foreign that he had never heard the sounds in the words; in his sleep, he relived other men’s agonies, rejoiced with them in the explosion of fertility when the first rains soaked the ground, tasted the ashes of bitterness when loved ones died, worshipped the goddesses of spring, knowledge and small-pox; in the morning, when he first put on his equipment, each piece seemed to speak to him through his fingertips: the helmet hummed with the courage of a cavalryman born to the saddle, the chain mail reeked of the guilt-ridden rage of a rapist, the sabre buzzed with the white-hot, unreasoning rage of a berserker, the thigh-pieces tintinnabulated with the tenderness of a rissaldar well-loved by his men; at these times, Thomas thought he was being driven out of his mind, either by the strength of his infatuation with a girl he had seen only once, or by the anguish of the heat-maddened city. Nevertheless, he persisted; every day he was seen at his post, his huge body hung with the appliances of combat, like some over-equipped incarnation of Mars or — as he thought with his new-found knowledge — Kartikeya; the other men laughed, and one, an ancient Sikh, said, rubbing his stomach and grinning, ‘Ohe, what is this penance in this sun, this weight of metal? Why burn under that chain mail? They won’t get here for weeks, to this den of exquisite delicacy — we’re well-protected here, and this is what they — our fools down there — will fight like lunatics for, like madmen, when those out there come.’ Thomas looked away, towards the dark windows over the Sikh’s head, who went on, ‘Ah, I understand, a private oath, a warrior’s vow. What will you ask for then, when your god appears? Wealth? Love? No, look at you, it will be a soldier’s demand: like Hiranakashyapu, you’ll ask to be invulnerable; let me be deathless, you’ll say, let no man or animal be able to kill me, by day or night, out-of-doors or in; make me, you’ll say, hard as thunder.’ Thomas pushed past him, hearing, far away, ‘Huh-HAH-huh-HAH-huh-HAH-huh-HAH’; the dolis passed, leaving the air redolent with rose-perfume and sweat; Thomas turned, looking for the Sikh.

‘Eh, Iqbal Singh-ji,’ he called, ‘what happened to Hiranakashyapu? In the end?’

The Sikh was standing spraddle-legged on a parapet, urinating, enjoying the sight of his water curving through the sunlight and splattering on the rocks a hundred feet below. ‘He died,’ he said. ‘You don’t know? He killed so many that he thought nobody should worship anyone but him. But his son was a Vishnu-devotee, a most pious, priggish little brat, it sounds like. So Hiranakashyapu told his sister Holika to burn little Prahlad, and, holding him, she jumped into the fire, but she burnt instead. So then Hiranakashyapu drew his sword to kill the boy, and noticed Prahlad looking quite fearless, said, Are you mad, Prahlad said, My Lord is everywhere he will protect, and Hiranakashyapu thumped a pillar saying, Oh really is he here, and Vishnu emerged from the pillar, half-man, half-lion, at the hour of twilight, carried Hiranakashyapu to the lintel, so that he was half indoors and half out, and tore him open.’

Thomas laughed, a small uncertain giggle, and then they both ducked to the ground as a dark object whistled down from the sky, its shadow skimming over them; Thomas landed awkwardly, his body twisted, and looked up into the snarling face of a small dog as it turned through the air, legs stiff and outstretched, it hit the ground and exploded, spraying black fluid and maggots.

’Sisterfuckers,’ the Sikh growled, rubbing at a stain on his pantaloons. ‘Motherfuckers.’

Thomas straightened up, clanking, and gingerly picked his way through the mess to where the dog lay, trailing entrails in which white worms moved slowly; its lips were twisted back from the teeth, the eyes very black and quite impenetrable. ‘Very close,’ he said. ‘Too close.’

‘They’re closer than I thought. They’ll be up here soon,’ the Sikh said. ‘It won’t be long now.’

So, in the height of that summer, in the time near the summer solstice, the Company began catapulting long-dead animal carcasses into the fortress; rotting-skinned calves and evil-smelling goats dropped in long, high arcs, thumping into rocks and dry grass. Now, disease spread; plagues raced through the stronghold, whittling down the already-denuded garrison; now, when red-hot shot set fire to roofs, it fed unopposed, gulping down homes and shops. In his basement room, Thomas was often awakened at night by the flat whump-whump-whump of mortars and confused shouting; he would twist on his charpoy, his legs hanging over the lower edge, mumble, glance sleepily at the armour and arms distributed around the bed in concentric circles (glinting, gleaming despite the darkness) and feeling a huge surge of satisfaction and confidence, fall back into a sleep delightfully burdened by palanquin-riding princesses.

One evening, Thomas swaggered through the bazaar, armed at all points, his long hair oiled, eyes outlined with kajal, a pink flower behind an ear; he walked past blackened gaps in the rows of shops, some still smoking, past empty houses, bedraggled courtesans calling without enthusiasm or hope from upper-storey windows, squeaking pigs feeding on corpses, groups of tea-drinking soldiers caught in that absolute silence that comes from absolute knowledge of impending disaster, streets clogged with debris, weeping children, families staggering under the weight of their quickly-bundled possessions, packs of sleek white dogs, threatening and feral.