Peter Dickinson - Tulku

‘Tie your horses,’ said the Lama Amchi. ‘We will go and investigate your predicament a little further. The thought comes to me that in itself it is perhaps a sign.’

He spoke softly and kindly, as though a confrontation with the savage tribesmen from the forest were a problem such as a scholar might meet in his books.

They found Lung waiting with his back towards them at the point where the cliff began to tilt from the vertical and became an immensely steep slope. Rollo had lost his baskets, and was standing on the path with his head bowed, snorting at the thin air for breath. Lung seemed to hear or sense the newcomers and swung round with the shot-gun rising to his shoulder. Theodore, half-hidden from Lung by the Lama Amchi, scrambled a little up the slope.

‘These are friends,’ he called in Mandarin. ‘They have come to help us.’

Lung lowered his gun, stared in astonishment at the Lama Amchi, and bowed deeply.

‘Revered and honoured Sir,’ he said in Mandarin. ‘We are peaceful travellers but we are attacked by violent men. Pray condescend to make room for us under the umbrella of your benign protection.’

The Lama Amchi didn’t answer, but strode past him and Rollo and on down the path. A shot snapped through the whistling air.

‘Who is this? What does he want?’ whispered Lung as Theodore reached him.

‘I don’t know. Something about a search, and signs, but I think he’ll help us cross the bridge.’

With the jostling escort they followed the Lama Amchi down until he halted where a small ridge made a level and they could all crowd round to watch the scene below. About two hundred yards down the slope Mrs Jones was sitting on Sir Nigel’s back, facing the woods with her gun half raised. For a moment the rest of the drear expanse seemed empty, and then, a hundred yards beyond her, Theodore noticed a movement, and another further to the left, and another beyond that. The attackers had spread themselves into a wide curve and were creeping up the hill towards her, using what cover they could from tussock and outcrop.

Lung put his hand to his mouth and gave a shrill yell. Mrs Jones twisted in the saddle, stared for a moment, then waved an arm, nudged Sir Nigel round and came cantering up the path. The horse’s huge lungs laboured and his ears were flat on his head. Twice he almost fell, but Mrs Jones somehow hauled him up and kept him going. Behind her the attackers rose to their feet and came trotting up the hill, some of them waving weapons. Theodore hadn’t realized there were so many of them – more than twenty, he thought.

‘These are not here for vengeance,’ muttered Lung. ‘Some are from other tribes. Look at their dress. They are here for loot, mere bandits, brought by chatter of gold.’

Mrs Jones at last let Sir Nigel slow to an exhausted walk.

‘What’s up?’ she called.

‘Holy Lama on search,’ called Lung in English. ‘Maybe help. Missy cover face, please.’

She had been riding with her veil thrown back, no doubt for better shooting. Obediently she twitched it into place as she brought Sir Nigel round once more so that she could face down the slope. The attackers came on steadily, but as the slope tilted they bunched towards the path, so that by the time they were fifty yards away they were trotting up in a ragged file, silent, panting, but still tireless.

‘That’s close enough,’ said Mrs Jones. ‘I’ll stop ’em there.’

She was raising her rifle as she spoke. The men on the path jostled to a halt.

‘Do no violence,’ said the Lama Amchi. ‘I will speak with these foolish people.’

‘Missy, holy Lama say no shoot,’ called Lung.

‘I might have to,’ she said. ‘I been aiming to miss so far, but . . . Hey! Stop him, somebody. Oh, why didn’t one of you stop the old goat?’

It was too late. The Lama Amchi was striding down the path with the confident long pace of a man used to steep places. His followers whispered uneasily but stayed where they were. A bolt clicked.

The attackers closed to a tight cluster and waited to meet the old man. He halted a few feet away from them and spoke, too far off now for Theodore to hear words, or even language.

‘I can’t pick the beggar out,’ cried Mrs Jones. ‘Shout to him to watch out, Lung.’

Even as she was speaking Theodore saw metal glimmer, shoulder high, somewhere near the middle of the bunch, a pistol barrel. He couldn’t tell whose hand was holding it, but in the thin air and slowed time of helpless watching he saw the clumsy flintlock hover over the pan. The Lama’s robe flapped violently in a sudden gust, so that for a moment the old man seemed to waver, to separate into two images at the instant when the shot cracked and the dark smoke puffed among the faces. On the ridge there was one quick gasp of horror, followed by a wild yell as the Lama’s escort broke into a charging rush down the hill, waving their weapons and leaping from tussock to tussock, screaming like animals. The Lama stood still, apparently unharmed, but in front of him the bunch of bandits broke and ran streaming down the path, jostling and stumbling, though they must have outnumbered the attackers two to one.

‘Missed at that range!’ said Mrs Jones. ‘Thank Heavens!’

‘Lama make himself two men,’ whispered Lung. ‘Missy no see?’

‘I saw a bit of rotten awful shooting,’ snapped Mrs Jones. ‘Now I suppose we better try and make a good impression on His Reverence.’

The Lama Amchi had stood unmoving while his escort charged past him, then turned and come striding up the hill. He looked neither sad nor exhilarated as he approached. Beyond him the escort had caught up with the hindmost bandits and were hewing at them as they ran. The bandits made no attempt to turn and protect themselves. Already two bodies lay on the hillside.

Mrs Jones slid gracefully from the saddle and gave a little curtsey, but the Lama turned to Theodore.

‘These are your companions, child?’ he said in his twanging Mandarin.

Theodore made formal introductions.

The priest gazed for a while at Lung, who faced him uneasily and seemed relieved when the old man turned away. Mrs Jones stood her ground until the creased, blue-veined hand rose as if to pluck her veil; then she backed politely away, raising the veil as she did so, and stood answering his gaze with her own. The sounds of the valley – the hiss of the wind, the growl of the river in its gorge, the cries of fighting men down across the slope – all dimmed, became almost part of some other scene as the world closed in to make a sphere of calm around the group by the path. Intangible energies flowed, as if round the twin poles of a magnet, creating and maintaining this sphere until, like duellists or dancers at the end of an encounter, Mrs Jones and the Lama bowed their heads to each other and turned away.

‘Now we will return to the bridge and prepare to cross,’ said the Lama.

9

TIBET. THE YAK-DRIVERS they had met on their way to the valley had said that there was no real border. The Lama waved a vague hand eastward and explained that two whole provinces had been stolen by China a hundred years before, so Theodore’s party had really been travelling through Tibet for many days. But for Theodore the border lay, sharp as a shore-line, at the bridge. From then on the grammar of all things, large and small, changed. There was the change from stillness to travel, from the simple triangular relationship with Mrs Jones and Lung to the far more complex pressures of the Lama and his half-hostile escort. There were the yaks, brooding, slow-paced, utterly alien; even their drivers, who drank their milk, ate their butter, wove their hair and wore their hides, seemed to have no feeling for them.