by M. M. Kaye
As he ate he thought of the ritual making of the chuppatti that he had witnessed last night, and of stories that he had heard of food prepared in time of plague with special incantations being taken out and left beside the roadside in the belief that any passer-by who picked it up would carry away the infection from the house or village. Was that the meaning of the making of the chuppatti? The symbolic ridding of the community - of Oudh - of the misfortunes that had befallen it?
A flock of parrots fluttered up from the edge of the stream and screeched indignantly away between the trees as Alex emerged from the jungle and bent to scoop the water up in his cupped hands, and a line of egrets flapped overhead, chalk-white against the blue sky, making for the distant river. Alex dried his hands against the full Pathan trousers, and mounting, rode out of the jungle and into the warm evening light.
He made considerably better time over the next twenty miles or so, for the horse appeared to have benefited from its rest. The sun plunged below the horizon and a sharp sweet smell of wood-smoke stole across the plain, and presently a little chill wind arose, a precursor of the cold weather and a promise of cool nights. Alex wrapped a length of cotton cloth about his throat and shoulders, and as the swift dusk swallowed up jungle and plain, and the ghost of the wedge-shaped moon gathered strength in the darkening sky, he settled himself down to ride hard, using all the skill he possessed to coax the best speed from his shoddy mount.
It was late and the road was white in the moonlight as he neared the little town of Pari. He had covered over eighty miles since he had left Khanwai before dawn that day, and only a matter of some six or seven more separated him from the river that formed the border between Oudh and Lunjore. Once across the river, an hour’s ride would bring him to the cantonments and Lunjore city that lay barely ten miles from the border.
The road that had run for the past few miles in the shadow of over-arching trees ran out into an open plain dotted with tussocks of tall grass and the sparse shadows of thorn trees, on the far side of which a few warm pinpricks of light marked the outskirts of Pari. The plain lay milky in the moonlight, patterned by the misshapen shadows of the grass clumps and an occasional outcrop of rock that loomed tall and sharp-edged against the night sky. Something moved in the black shadow of the rock and Alex reined in hard as Niaz rode out into the open.
Niaz did not speak, but catching the mare’s bridle he turned her off the road. He was breathing quickly and the flanks of his own weary beast were white with foam and heaving as though it had been ridden to exhaustion.
‘Thou canst not go forward,’ said Niaz, speaking in a whisper as though even in that wide plain he feared to be overheard. ‘The word has gone out against thee. There were men in Pari asking if any had seen a Pathan horse-dealer - one Sheredil, a man of the Usafzai. Some matter of a stolen horse - or so they said. I rode on through the town and circled back two koss through the crops and the grazing grounds, so that none should see me: but this horse is spent. If thine will still carry thee, turn back and ride for the village by the walled tank where the three tombs stand beside the road. There is another path to the southward from there, through the jungle. It is a long way and a rough one, but—’
He stopped suddenly and turned his head, listening. There was a faint rhythmic sound from somewhere far out on the plain. ‘ Horses!’ whispered Niaz. He slipped from the saddle and the next instant Alex was beside him. They ran back to where the road crossed a gully, dragging the unwilling horses with them, and turned up it, stumbling among the stones and the water-worn boulders. The sides steepened as it curved back at a right angle, and they were hidden.
Alex whipped the cloth from about his shoulders and pulled a fold of it about his horse’s head, and saw Niaz drag off his turban and use it to bandage the jaws of his own exhausted beast. The sound of its laboured breathing was intolerably loud in the silence, and Niaz wrenched the girths loose and thrust the reins into Alex’s hands: ‘Keep them still. I would see who comes.’
He turned and crept back down the gully, and for a moment or two Alex heard the stones click and rattle and then there was a silence in which he could hear only the wheezing of the weary horse and, presently, the swift clop of hooves and a muffled jingle of bridles. The mare lifted her head and shivered and her bridle chinked. Alex threw an arm about her neck and held her head against him and she stood quietly. The sound of hoof-beats came nearer and then they were clattering among the dry stones of the gully, breasting the slope on the far side, and were past and fading once more into the silence.
After a moment or two he released the mare’s head and unwound the cloth from about it, and she blew heavily through flaring nostrils and stamped uneasily among the water-worn pebbles. A stone clattered and a shadow moved on the wall of the gully, and Niaz was back: ‘We are too late,’ he said quietly. ‘There is no going back.’
Alex had not yet spoken and he did not speak now. He drew out the small pistol he carried slung about his neck, and moving out into the moonlight checked the loading and then tucked it into his wide leather belt where his hand could rest upon the slender butt. Niaz nodded approvingly as he rewound his turban.
‘I do not think there will be more upon the road,’ he said. ‘They will look for thee to enter the town. We will ride on for half a koss and then turn away from the road and make a circle through the fields. It is on the far side that we shall find it difficult, for there is only one place where the river may be crossed - by the bridge of boats into Lunjore - and that will be watched.’
‘We will deal with that when we have the town behind us,’ said Alex. ‘Can that beast bear thee?’
‘Needs must,’ said Niaz with a laugh. They led the horses back onto the road and mounting again rode on into the moonlight towards the distant town.
Fifteen minutes later they turned off the road and went at a foot-pace, the horses picking their way wearily between rocks and tussocks of grass, and presently they were skirting the cultivated land to the south of Pari. A pariah dog barked at them as they crossed a shallow irrigation ditch where Niaz’s horse stumbled and all but threw him, and a second dog and another and another took up the shrill challenge until the night rang to the yapping chorus. Niaz dug his heels savagely into his horse’s flanks and urged it forward at a shambling trot down a dusty path that skirted a cactus hedge, and Alex could hear him cursing under his breath.
A watchman, perched in a ramshackle machan in a mulberry tree to scare the deer and wild pig from the crops, shouted hoarsely and discharged an ancient fowling piece. The pellets rattled through the leaves and something like a red-hot knife sliced into Alex’s arm and he felt the warm blood pour down it and wet the fingers of his left hand. Then water glimmered in the moonlight and they found themselves on a narrow track bordering the marshy margin of a jheel that stretched away and to the left.
The frenzied barking of the pariah dogs died away behind them as the track curved north again under the shadow of a steep bank topped by a towering hedge of cactus, and presently came to what appeared to be a dead end, for the bank and the cactus hedge bent sharply at a right angle, barring their path and continuing on in an unbroken line towards the glimmering stretches of the jheel. Niaz drew rein in the shadows and slid to the ground. ‘There is a lane ahead,’ he whispered. ‘Thou canst not see, for it runs—’ He stopped suddenly. ‘Art thou hit?’
‘It is only a flesh wound,’ said Alex, and dismounted awkwardly.
Niaz rolled back the sodden sleeve. A raw-edged fragment of the scrap-iron with which the watchman’s gun had been loaded had ploughed through the fleshy part of the arm midway between shoulder and elbow, making an ugly jagged tear that bled freely. Niaz ripped two strips of cloth from Alex’s turban and making a pad of the first bound the wound skilfully. ‘And the lane?’ said Alex.
‘It runs back to the right; there, by the turn of the bank. It was not watched when I came by this way, but it may be that there are watchers now. Wait here while I go forward to see.’
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br /> He vanished silently into the shadows and Alex waited, listening to the many night noises and calculating the chances of survival. A breath of wind rattled a dead and dried cactus leaf, jackal packs bayed the moon, and from the edges of the jheel frogs croaked in noisy and monotonous chorus while an occasional clucking proclaimed the presence of water-birds feeding further out from the shore.
Niaz returned as noiselessly as he had gone, his shod feet making no sound on the soft carpet of the dust: ‘The path is shut’ - his voice was barely a breath of sound. ‘They have run a cart across the far end and there are two men there. Perhaps three.’
Alex said: ‘And the jheel?’
‘It would take us until morning to cross it, if we were not drowned among the weeds. Moreover, we could not swim the horses.’
‘That may be no loss! There will be a watch kept for a mounted man and the horses may well be recognized. Though it is true that without them—’ He was silent for a moment or two, his eyes ranging along the banks and the cactus hedges above them. But the banks were steep and the cactus hedge impenetrable to anything larger than a mongoose. He thrust the reins at Niaz and said: ‘Wait while I see.’
He walked soft-footed in the shadow of the bank and found, as Niaz had said, that the bank that apparently took a sharp-angled turn to the left was not the same bank as that which they had followed, but another that cut across it. The two banks turned back towards the town and ran parallel for about thirty yards, forming a narrow steep-sided lane. A country cart had been backed into the mouth of the lane at the far end, and Alex could hear a murmur of voices and see a gleam of firelight. He crept forward to within a dozen feet of the cart and observed with satisfaction that it carried a bale of fodder slung beneath it between the clumsy wheels, and that a blanket hung down between the shafts to provide a rough screen for a small fire of dung-cakes that smouldered on the ground in front of the cart and warmed the feet of the watchers. Two men squatted beside it and were apparently playing cards by its glow, and a third man leant against a wheel and appeared to be asleep. There was just room for a man to pass between the cart and the left-hand bank, but not for a horse. Alex wriggled backwards with infinite caution and presently rejoined Niaz.
‘It is easy.’
He outlined a plan in a few terse sentences and Niaz nodded: ‘We will try it. If it comes to the worst they are only three to our two, and out of three there is always one who runs away.’
‘We cannot allow even one to run away, or the alarm is given. Give me five minutes.’ Alex turned and crept back the way he had come.
19
The lane was inches deep in dust and even the long-thorned fragments of dead cactus with which it was strewn only pressed deeper into it under Alex’s feet, while the faint snap of their breaking was drowned by the purr and bubble of the hookah and the slap of the falling cards. A dozen yards short of the cart he flattened himself against the ground once more and began to crawl forward inch by inch, the end of his turban wrapped about his nose and mouth as a protection against the choking dust. Then he had reached the cart and was under it, shielded from view by a bale of fodder and the hanging blanket, with his head barely a foot from the legs of the man who leant against the off-side wheel and less than a yard from the two card-players who muttered, cursed, coughed and drew by turns at the hookah.
The dust and the acrid smoke of the dung-fire penetrated even through the folds of turban cloth and tickled Alex’s nostrils unbearably, and the wound in his arm throbbed painfully. A procession of ants crawled across his legs and a host of night-flying insects, attracted by the glow of the fire, fluttered and crept about his face. The slow minutes seemed like hours and he had begun to wonder if some mishap had befallen Niaz when at last he heard the sound he had been waiting for. A voice - a raucous and untuneful voice that sang an obscene ballad enumerating in detail the charms of a certain Delhi courtesan.
The song, interrupted by hiccoughs, came nearer, and the card-players broke off their game and turned to listen, while the dozing sentinel roused himself and unslinging his musket held it at the ready.
‘It is only some drunkard from the town,’ growled one of the card-players. ‘Ohé! Who comes? Thou canst not pass. The road is closed. Go back, O servant of Bhairon!’
‘Go back?’ hiccoughed the newcomer. ‘Wherefore? And since when has this path been closed to honest men?’
‘It is an order of the new Government,’ said the man with the musket.
‘What zulum!’ (oppression) First it is a wandering pig of a Pathan whose horse thrusts me into the jheel so that I am besmired with mud, and now the road is closed against me so that I—’
The man with the musket gripped Niaz and dragged him into the light of the fire. ‘What is that you say? What Pathan?’
‘He is back on the road there. May his horse fall into the jheel and drown. He desired to know where he might obtain a fresh mount, his own being spent. But what do I know of horse-dealing? A song is better. Let us sing together, thus - “O moon of Beauty …”’
‘It is the very one!’ said the man with the musket. ‘Hush, fool! Does he come this way?’
‘Who?’
‘The Pathan, O owl!’
‘How should I know? He sits by the path while his horse grazes. Must I indeed go back? What if he should beat me? Pathans be men of evil temper and this one is angry.’
‘Let us go,’ said one of the card-players, his hand on the handle of a serviceable-looking knife. ‘There is a price on his head. Stay by the cart, Dunnoo, and let none pass. And thou, O son of a noseless mother, remain thou here until we return, and if it be that thou hast not spoken truth concerning the Pathan thou shalt suffer a sore beating.’
‘Why should I not speak truth?’ demanded Niaz, tripping over his feet and sitting down heavily in the dust. ‘It is as I have said. He sits by the jheel and curses his gods. If I may go no further I will sleep here. One place is as good as another.’
He staggered to his feet again and yawned largely; a yawn that broke off into a hiccough as two of the men turned and disappeared down the lane. Presently the remaining sentinel turned back to squat by the fire. There was the sound of a dull blow, a coughing grunt and a thud, and Alex crawled out from under the cart and beat the dust off his clothes.
The man who had been addressed as Dunnoo lay face downwards by the smouldering fire and Niaz was composedly replacing a long-hafted knife in its sheath and concealing both in the folds of his clothing.
‘I said there was to be no more killing,’ said Alex angrily.
‘He is not dead,’ said Niaz, rolling the man over with his foot. ‘I used the hilt only, and these pūrbeah pigs have thick heads. It may be that he has a crack in the skull, no more. Do we go now? It will be a long journey on foot.’
‘All the more reason to go on horseback,’ said Alex. ‘Even a spent horse may travel swifter than a man. We will wait. Those two will be back soon, and I think that they will bring us the horses.’
He stooped above the unconscious man and began swiftly to strip off his outer clothing, donning them himself while Niaz bound and gagged the man and rolled him out of sight under the cart.
Ten minutes later the other two returned, leading, as Alex had surmised, the horses that they had found grazing by the jheel. ‘We could not find him. But there were two horses and we have brought both away. He cannot get far on foot,’ said the man with the musket, edging his way between the wheel and the steep bank of the lane. He crumpled and fell as Alex’s fist took him under the jaw, and a choked cry from the rear of the cart showed that Niaz had risen from beneath it and struck down a second victim.
‘Pah! It is easy,’ said Niaz with scorn, ducking under the wheels and reappearing. ‘We must pull this thing clear, else the horses cannot pass.’
They dragged the cart forward, and having led the horses out of the lane, tied up the two groaning men (the first had still not moved) and bundled them into the cart. ‘It would be better to kill them,
’ said Niaz judicially, ‘then they can tell no tales.’
‘There has been enough killing. They will not be found until morning and we shall be across the river by then.’
‘Mayhap,’ grunted Niaz pessimistically. ‘But there is the bridge to be crossed.’
The brief period of rest appeared to have put new life into the jaded horses and they made good time along the moon-splashed road towards the river, but Alex’s arm had begun to stiffen, and from the pain that it gave him he realized that the jagged scrap of metal that had caused the wound must still be embedded in it. He would have to get it out soon or it would fester.
Less than an hour’s riding brought them the smell of the river, and they led the horses off the road and tethering them in the jungle went forward on foot to reconnoitre. The unmade road became rougher and more sandy and the air cooled perceptibly and smelt of wet sand and stagnant shallows. There was a square mud toll-house where the road ended, and behind it, screened by plantains and bamboo, lay a meagre huddle of huts that housed the family of the toll-keeper and the bridge guard. Pedestrians were not required to pay a toll, which was only levied on carts and wheeled vehicles whose approach was audible from a considerable distance, and the toll-house was in darkness. Alex and Niaz kept to the shelter of the trees on the far side of the road, and gave it a wide berth.
The near bank was low and fringed with casuarina scrub, and the white sands and wandering shallows stretched far out into the moonlight. But beyond the sands and the shallows the river ran deep and wide, bounded on the far side by a steep bank and a solid wall of jungle. A raised stone causeway ran from the Oudh bank to the edge of the deep water where a bridge of boats spanned the main arm of the river, but there was no sign of life on or near it, and it lay open and innocent in the waning moonlight, creaking to the sluggish pull of the slow-moving current.