by Chris Paton
Jamie rested his chin on the telescope and studied the approach to the rifleman. It looked safe enough, he mused. There was no sign of raiders or any trace of a recent caravan. He pulled out the leather tube and slipped the telescope back inside, pressing the ripcord into the pocket underneath the end cap. Jamie fastened the buckle and slid the tube back inside his greatcoat. Standing behind the boulder, he felt the rifleman’s eyes piercing his own dusty blonde beard. He wondered what the man might have to say, had he the strength to say it.
It took Jamie a further ten minutes to pick his way between the rocks from the boulder to the impaled rifleman. The intensity of the man’s stare did not waver. Jamie made up his mind and hoped he would live to regret his decision. It was time to talk to the man. Who has done this, Jamie wondered. And why here? Loose rocks slipped beneath the soles of his boots as Jamie rested on his heels before the man.
It started to snow.
The dismembered rifleman stared at Jamie as the lieutenant cleared a flat space in the rocks before him. Jamie removed the canvas rifle case from his shoulder and placed it on the rocks. Shrugging off his leather pack, Jamie pulled out the canteen from the side pocket, unscrewed the lid and offered it to the rifleman.
“Are you thirsty?” The man nodded. Jamie leaned forward to dribble a stream of water into the man’s mouth. He pulled back the canteen as the man swallowed.
“No,” the man shook his head. “Enough.” A shiver ran through the man’s torso.
“What happened to you?” Jamie leaned forward, tilting his head and turning his ear toward the man’s mouth.
The man licked his chapped lips. “Who,” he choked on the word.
“Who?”
“Them,” the man swallowed. “Pathaan.”
“Are they here?” Jamie put down the canteen and rested his hand upon the rifle case.
“No.”
“Will they come back? Soon?”
The man shook his head, coughing with pain as he did so. “Snowing.”
“Snowing? They won’t come when it snows?”
“No,” the man blinked in the direction Jamie had come. “Supposed to warn you.”
“Yes,” Jamie gave the rifleman another mouthful of water. “What can I do for you?” The rifleman’s trousers flapped in the wind. Jamie reached out to still them.
“Don’t,” the man closed his eyes. The man’s pupils narrowed when he opened them again. “You a sailor?”
“I never said I was a sailor.”
“Not a soldier.”
Jamie hesitated. “I am with the navy.”
“Why?
“Why am I with the navy? Because of my grandfather, I suppose. He was at Trafalgar,” Jamie sighed.
“Why here?”
Jamie leaned back on his heels. “I am looking for someone.”
“Who?” the man coughed, the spasm shook a fresh dribble of blood from his severed limbs. The blood splashed onto the rocks.
“A man sent here some time ago. Another sailor. A Frenchman.”
“Where?” the rifleman coughed again, his eyes bulging until the fit passed.
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe Adina Pur. Perhaps Cabool.”
“Don’t go to Adina Pur.”
“I have to try.”
“Bad there.”
“The Admiral says this man can save the navy,” Jamie fiddled with a flat stone in his palm. “That he can shed some light on what happened at Trafalgar. Put the navy back in their rightful place. Restore their honour,” Jamie tossed the stone onto the ground, “and regain the Queen’s favour.”
“Queen and country,” the man nodded.
“I have to try. I have nothing to lose.”
“Nothing to lose but your life.”
“Is that why they left you here?”
“Yes,” the rifleman bowed his head.
“What happened to you?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Lifting his head, the rifleman stared at Jamie. “Help me?”
“Anything,” Jamie shuffled closer to the man.
“Find my Aisha.”
“Aisha?”
“Yes,” tears welled in the rifleman’s eyes. “She’s a local.”
“Where should I find her?”
“Caravans leaving Peshawar,” the rifleman blinked down the pass behind Jamie. “That way.”
“I will find her once I have been to Adina Pur. I promise.”
The man shook his head. Blood flecked his lips as he coughed. “Find my Aisha.”
Jamie stood up. “I have to go on.” He picked up his rifle case and pulled out the Baker flintlock rifle. “I can help you.”
“Yes,” the man stared at the rifle. He nodded.
Jamie tossed the case onto the rocks. Holding the rifle in the horizontal position, he pushed the pan open with his right thumb.
“Powder?”
“On my belt.” Jamie swept the tails of his greatcoat aside and fumbled with the powder horn on his belt.
“Wait,” the rifleman looked down, his eyes urgent. “Breast pocket,” he coughed. “For Aisha.”
Placing the horn on the ground, Jamie held his rifle by the barrel as he pushed two fingers inside the rifleman’s pocket. Pinching something soft between his knuckles, Jamie drew a broad strip of lace into the open where it flapped around his fingers in the wind.
“Give it to Aisha.”
“I will,” Jamie stuffed the lace inside the cuff of his fingerless gloves. He picked up the powder horn. Twisting the cap off between his teeth he shook a measure of powder into the pan.
“I’m ready.”
Jamie placed the butt of the rifle between his heels and wrapped a musket ball from the pouch on his belt in a square patch of leather. Forcing the ramrod smoothly into the barrel, he tamped the lead ball and patch into the bottom. Jamie pulled the ramrod out of the barrel and slid it into the pipe on the underside of the rifle. The man stared at him.
Turning around, Jamie walked away from the rifleman. It’s the least I can do for him, Jamie reasoned. I’ll make it quick. Tugging his fingerless gloves at the wrists, Jamie shifted his grip on the rifle. Resting his little finger on the hammer spring, he levelled it. Moving his right thumb onto the cock, his four fingers under the guard, Jamie looked at the rifleman.
“Find my Aisha.”
“I will,” Jamie rested his cheek on the rifle, closed his left eye and shot the rifleman in his temple. The man’s head rocked back and then slumped forward as the report of the Baker rifle echoed down the pass. The snow tickled Jamie’s cheek as he lowered the rifle. He sat down and leaned his back against the boulder.
҉
Crouched on a mountain path running parallel to the pass and looking down upon the river plain, a dark figure wearing the rough maroon robes of a travelling mystic pinched a modified rosary bead between his finger and thumb. He stood, took two steps, moved two beads and stopped to crouch again, measuring his progress with the rosary. The tails of the man’s robes collected snowflakes and dust. The chill wind blowing from the top of the pass teased the man’s black beard and licked at the dark curls of hair poking free of his dusty turban. He turned at the sound of stones trembling down the mountainside. A markhor goat. Its beard longer and wiser than the mystic’s. The man winked at the goat and resumed his slow passage along the path. Four steps, four beads. He crouched. His attention, when not distracted by phantom voices on the mountain wind and the foraging of goats, was firmly fixed upon the passage of another traveller – a mechanical being – striding across the plains below the path. The thing was tireless, maintaining the same robotic pace and the same fixed path for more than six hundred and twenty two beads of the mystic’s rosary. The mystic shook his head and wondered. This one is different, he thought. The last two were not as advanced as this one. The mystic stood and walked a distance of thirty beads before he heard the single shot of a musket.
Echoing between the sides of the mountain, the report of the shot startled another markhor ont
o the narrow path. It bounded out of the rocks and into the mystic, tumbling the man onto the lee side of the mountain. He dropped his beads. They slid on the scree slope below the path. The mystic pulled himself back onto his feet. Searching for his beads he caught sight of the mechanical being walking the plains along the river below him. He had not stopped. It was as if the shot had never been fired. The mystic gave up on his beads and hurried along the path in the direction of the shot. It was not long before his path merged with the pass where he caught sight of a second man crouched before a strange figure on a stick.
҉
Snow flurried along the pass as Jamie sat, eyes closed, and contemplated the life of a political agent at large in Central Asia. Not what I imagined I would be doing, he mused.
Jamie stood. He brushed his palm over the rifleman’s face and closed the dead man’s eyes. Lifting the man beneath his armpits, Jamie tugged his body free of the bloody stake. He lay the rifleman’s body on the ground and began gathering stones to surround it. He took off his greatcoat, heaving several armfuls of rocks and large stones on top of the rifleman’s mutilated body before venturing further and further away in search of more rocks. The snow thickened as Jamie placed the last rock on top of the burial mound. He pushed the bloody stake through a hole in the centre of the mound, grimacing as it pressed upon the soft body beneath. Stepping away from the mound, Jamie pulled on his greatcoat.
Jamie turned at the sound of shifting rocks. He scrambled for his rifle and jammed the stock tight into his shoulder.
“You should not have done that, British,” the mystic walked into Jamie’s sights.
“Stand back. Back or I will fire,” Jamie thrust the barrel of the rifle forward.
“Your bandook,” the mystic pointed at the rifle, “is not loaded.”
“You don’t know that,” Jamie pulled back the hammer spring. “Are you going to risk it?”
“Life is full of risks,” the mystic loosened his robes as he sat down in front of Jamie. The lieutenant flicked his eyes to the pommel of a large blade sheathed at the mystic’s waist. “It is not me that is gone bapoo,” he twirled his finger in circles by his temple. “But you,” the mystic shrugged and readjusted his turban.
“Are you saying I am mad?” Jamie lowered his rifle.
“The Pathaan left this man here with no thought to him surviving, British,” the mystic pointed at the dead rifleman. “Now they know someone else goes here. And now they know who,” he pointed at the rocky grave. “Another British. Who else would take the time to bury a dead man?”
“He wasn’t dead when I found him.”
“No? He would have been soon. Look there,” the mystic pointed at birds circling the pass. “Afghan Vultures – very big, easily spotted.”
“They wouldn’t have killed him.”
“No, but neither would they have waited until he was dead before eating him.”
Jamie stared at the mystic. “Are you with them? The Pathaan? Your skin is brown.”
The mystic shook his head. “Are there not many brown people in your army, British?”
“I keep telling people,” Jamie scowled. “I am not in the army.”
“My mistake.”
“Where is your pack?”
“I have little need for a pack. I have nothing to carry that cannot fit in this satchel. The mystic tugged at a shoulder strap beneath his robes. “Is that your pack?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have food in it?”
“Some.”
“Then I suggest we eat of it on the way through the pass together.”
“What makes you think we are travelling together?” Jamie leaned the rifle against the boulder and walked to his pack.
“You are on your way to Adina Pur, are you not, British?”
“The Pass leads to Adina Pur, and beyond,” Jamie shrugged his pack onto his back and retrieved his rifle. Sliding it into the rifle bag, he slipped it over his shoulders. “I could be going anywhere.”
“I was ordered to keep an eye out for a British lieutenant of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy. You look like a man that fits that description.”
“Ordered? Who are you?”
“My name is Hari Singh.”
“Yes?” Jamie shook his rifle. “And? Who exactly is Hari Singh?”
“I can tell you as we walk,” Hari twisted around to look up the pass. He turned to Jamie. “We must hurry if we are to catch him, British.”
“Catch who?”
“You have not seen him?” Hari stood. Dusting snow from his shoulders he walked toward Jamie and closed his fingers around the lieutenant’s arm. “I was warned that you were young. I was not told you were stupid.” Hari tugged at Jamie’s arm guiding him along the path past the last resting place of the rifleman. “You have your mission and I have mine.” Stopping at a vantage point overlooking the river watershed, Hari pointed at a figure striding along the path alongside the river. “Do you see him?”
“Yes,” Jamie brushed snow from his face. “Barely.”
“That man is not a man. That thing is a metal machine, an emissary on its way to Adina Pur. If we do not stop it, British, if we cannot foil its mission, the world will be at war within a year.”
“What war?”
“Truly, you are stupid,” Hari sighed.
“I am not in the habit of being called stupid,” Jamie pulled himself free of the mystic’s grasp.
“And neither are you in the habit of wandering the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan. If you were, you would know never to fire your weapon when travelling unless you are in fear of your life. And never to leave tracks that even a goat herder could follow.”
“I couldn’t leave him like that.”
“No, British. But you must pay the price now. We must hurry,” Hari pointed at the emissary. “That brimstone demon must be stopped.”
“Supposing I agree, and that I choose to trust you,” Jamie paused. “Just how on earth do we stop it?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Hari grinned. “Let us find out.”
Chapter 2
The Khyber Pass
Afghanistan
December, 1850
The snow tumbled from the clouds, swirling at the feet of the two men as they strode to a vantage point on the narrow path running alongside the Khyber Pass. Jamie stopped and tugged the length of lace the rifleman had begged him to take from his pocket. Smoothing his sleeve up toward his elbow, he tied the lace around his left forearm.
“You mean to keep it, or give it to someone?” Hari sat on a boulder, the snow curling about his beard in sticky flakes.
“I don’t intend to keep it,” Jamie pulled his sleeve down and clapped his hands together. Cupping them, he blew on his fingers.
“Then what will you do with it, British?”
“That depends,” Jamie brushed snow from his beard. “You said I had just signed my own death warrant. It seems to me, it would be prudent to make just one decision at a time, not get ahead of myself.” He readjusted the rifle case around his neck and shoulder, the butt end hanging down by his right hip. Jamie stared at the mystic. “You seem determined to travel with me.”
“For your own protection, British,” Hari stretched. He checked the laces of his covered sandals and wrapped his robes tightly around his body.
“For my own protection?” Jamie shook his head. “I did not expect to meet anyone along the pass. Not anyone claiming to be connected to my part of the world, at least.”
“Truly, you know little of the area,” Hari clasped his hands in front of him.
“Who are you, Hari Singh? Who do you work for? Why should I trust you?”
“All very good questions, British,” Hari’s teeth flashed. Smoothing his palm over his beard, he stared at Jamie. “Would it surprise you to know we work for the same master?”
“Admiral Egmont?”
“Queen Victoria, although my Egmont goes by the name of Mr. Smith.” Hari waved his hand toward the pass and be
gan picking his way around the larger boulders from the vantage point back onto the path. Jamie cinched the straps of his rucksack taut beneath his arms and followed the mystic. “Smith is the one that told me to look out for you.”
“You were looking out for me?”
“Those were not his exact words,” Hari grinned. “Your mother would not approve of his exact words.”
“It has been a long time since I last saw my mother,” Jamie shrugged his pack higher onto his shoulders. “She is unlikely to approve of many of the things I have done.”
“Well,” Hari smiled. “There is little we can do about that, eh? Come, British,” Hari pointed to the pass where it widened. “We can make good time now. Let us get down to the pass proper.”
Jamie fell in step beside the mystic, his hobnail boots clacking on the rocks.
“We will have to do something with your boots, British.”
“My name is Jamie. And what is wrong with my boots?”
“You sound like one of those metal caterpillars, like those the engineers have on the banks of the Indus. Abominations, and loud. The Pathaans will know you are coming a mile away if we don’t get rid of your boots.”
“Never mind about my boots. Who is Mr. Smith and how did he know I would be here?”
“There is little that Mr. Smith does not know. Your Admiral Egmont telegraphed the Office of Indian Cartography and begged a favour of my master.”
“A favour?” Jamie swore. “He asked Smith to look out for me, didn’t he?”
Hari laughed. “You are learning, British.”
“And what makes you qualified to look out for me?”
“Me?” Hari stopped. Taking a step backward, away from Jamie, he stretched his arms wide. “You doubt me, British? Truly?”