Unknown - The Devils Children

“You are right,” said Uncle Chacha. “We must be quick and careful when the time comes. And we must be ready to run away if we fail.”

The council shambled on, going over the same points several times, but slowly reaching the practical business of sentry duty and scout duty. At last they all dispersed to the tense charade of pretending to be innocent farmers while watching every hedge and hollow in case it should hide an ambush, and at the same time planning a murderous onslaught on an army more than twice their size. There was one false alarm that day: the enemy spy, sneaking up the line of trees in the dusk, turned out to be Mrs. Sallow, bedraggled and terrified but determined to know whether her son was safe. She sat in silence by Mike’s straw, but after supper Nicky wheedled out of her some useful news of the robbers’ arrangements.

Next day tempers were short with lack of sleep. The men took turns to rest, but some had to be on show for the benefit of the robber spies who lurked along the hillside; they thought they spotted three of these, but had to act as if they hadn’t.

In the dark hour after the third midnight a whisper went round the farmyard. The women turned out with swords and spears to stand sentry, while the raiding party stole up the hill; fifteen grown men, and four lads. And Nicky. If the first phase of the attack succeeded, somebody would have to keep the rescued children from squealing panic, or the sleeping robbers would be woken and the second phase ruined. And that would have to be Nicky.

She thought she was the youngest of the long line creeping through the dark, until a hand took hers. It was Ajeet. None of the men noticed the extra child.

The wide loop round the village, taken at a stalker’s pace, with many pauses, lasted hours, but they were still too early.

In that first faint grayness when the birds begin to whistle in the copses, they struck.

VII

BLOOD ON THE SWORDS

NICKY LAY on her stomach on the chill bank of a ditch; or perhaps it was the beginnings of a stream, for her legs were wet to the knee, despite the dry spell they’d been having. To left and right of her, like troops waiting to attack from a trench, was the tiny Sikh army. The blackness of night seemed no less than it had been, but now she could be sure of the hulk of the barn; the big house, over to her right, was still an undistinguishable mass of roof and treetops and outbuildings. She was rubbery cold, and thankful that the Sikhs (full of the sensible instincts of campaigning) had made her wear twice the clothes she’d thought she’d need.

In the dark ahead of her Uncle Chacha was stalking the sentry. Two of the robbers slept in the barn, taking turn and turn to watch outside while the other slept by a brazier. An oil-soaked torch was ready there, which the inside man could thrust into the brazier and bring to crackling life. Dry straw, dry hay, dry brushwood were heaped along the tarred timber of the walls; and there were two wicked cars there, whose tanks would explode if the fire blazed hot enough. The whole room was a bomb, and above it slept the children. (Mrs. Sallow had told them these details, because the robbers had shown the mothers of Felpham their precautions on the very first morning.) The Sikh scouts had studied the movements of the sentries; and the first thing was to catch the outside one just before the time for the last changeover. About now, in this dimness . . .

Only the nervy ears of the watchers in the ditch could have caught that faint thud. There was no cry. Shadows shifted to her left — Uncle Jagindar and the risaldar stealing forward. Three short raps and a long pause and two more short raps was the signal the sentries used. It had to be given two or three times, so that the man inside had time to know where he was — sleeping in a straw-filled barn by a brazier, with forty terrified children in the loft above.

The raps came loud as doom through the still, chill air. The watchers waited. Then the signal again. And . . . but it was interrupted the third time by creaking hinges.

Now there was a cry, but faint — more of a gargling snort than any noise a man makes when he means something. But a meaning was there and Nicky shuddered in the ditch: there is only one sure way of keeping an enemy silent, the Sikhs had insisted, and that is to kill him. The hulk of the barn altered its shape: a big door swinging open: but no orange glow from fire beginning to gnaw into hay and timber. The army rose from its trench and crept toward the barn, Kewal and Gopal carrying plastic buckets filled from the ditch. In the doorway they met Uncle Jagindar and the risaldar carrying the brazier out on poles, while Uncle Chacha walked beside them holding a piece of tarpaulin to screen the light of it from any possible watcher in the house. Kewal and Gopal threw the water in their buckets across the piled hay and went back for more. The robbers had also kept buckets of water ready by the brazier (though they hadn’t shown the Felpham women this precaution) and one of the uncles scattered their contents about.

Nicky felt her way up the steep stair and slid back the bolt of the door. The door rasped horribly as she edged it inwards, and she looked down to see whether the noise had worried the Sikhs; but only Gopal and Ajeet stood in the grayness that came through the barn door. The others must already be stealing off across the unmown lawn toward the big house.

Inside the loft a child, children, began to wail. Nicky stood on the top step, gulping with rage at her own stupidity — she should never have climbed to the loft until a child stirred. But it was too late now. She pushed the door wide and stepped in.

The loft stank. Five windows gave real light. Dawn was coming fast. Sleeping children littered the moldy hay, in attitudes horribly like those of the two dead robbers on the grass outside the barn. But three were already woken to the nightmare day, and wailing. Nicky put her finger to her lips. The wailing stopped, but the wailers shrank from her as though she’d been a poisonous spider. More of them were stirring now — older ones.

“It’s quite all right,” said Nicky. “We’ve come to help you.”

The words came out all strange and awkward. Nicky wasn’t used to being hated and feared.

“Go away!” said a red-headed girl, about her own age.

More children were moving. A six-year-old boy sat suddenly bolt up, as though someone had pinched him; he stared at Nicky for five full seconds and began to screech. Some of them were standing now, but still cowering away from her. A babble like a playground rose — this was wrong, awful, dangerous. Everything depended on keeping the children quiet until the attack on the house had started.

“Shut up!” shouted Nicky, and stamped her foot. There was a moment’s silence, then the noise began to bubble up again, then it hushed. Ajeet walked past Nicky as though she wasn’t there, right to the end of the stinking loft, turned, settled cross-legged onto a bale and held the whole room still with her dark, beautiful eyes. Just as the silence was beginning to crumble, she spoke.

“Be quiet, please,” she said in a clear voice. “I am going to tell you a story. Will you all sit down please?”

Every child settled.

“There was a tiger once which had no soul,” said Ajeet. “All day and all night it raged through the forest, seeking a soul which it could make its own. Now, in those forests there lived a woodman, and he had two sons . . .”

Her hands were moving already. The jungle grew at her fingertips, and through it the tiger stalked and roared, and the woodman’s sons adventured. Nicky saw a child which had slept through the din wake slowly, sit up and start listening, as though this were how every morning of its life began. Terrified of breaking the spell, Nicky tiptoed to a window.