by John Speed
One pattered backward, arms lifted forward, until he stepped back where she could not see. The other bandit burst upward, spun on his heel, and then leaped into the air, one hand extended outward, the other hand pressed against the hole blown through his chest. Not dancing, Maya realized. Dying. The bandit dove past the elephant in a graceful arc. Then his head struck the edge of the road, and he spun like a pinwheel as he dropped into the fathomless chasm.
But the elephant heaved and Maya spilled backward before she could see the bandit land. Spooked by the attack, the beast lifted his front feet from the ground and waved them in the air. The mahout tumbled into the howdah beside Lucinda. Behind the broken roof they again heard Slipper call for help.
Balanced on his hind legs on the narrow road, the elephant began a slow, colossal turn until he actually faced the side of the mountain. His front feet crawled along the mountain wall, as if he hoped to climb up its face.
"He's trying to turn around, but there's no room!" the mahout shouted. And as if to prove this, the beast lurched backward, and his left rear foot stepped off the road and slipped into nothingness.
Flailing with his forelegs, the elephant crashed down. In the howdah, they tumbled and clung desperately. The women and Slipper screamed.
Somehow the elephant managed to break his fall, and now he clung desperately to the road. But at this place, the road pushed away from the cliff, and so the elephant's hindquarters could find no purchase. His head and forelegs pressed against the mountain face, while his rear legs hung off the road and pedaled uselessly in the empty air.
Maya, without even thinking, scrambled from the howdah, slid over the beast's gray shoulders and fell on the broken road.
There was nothing to hold the elephant from sliding off the road. Though his legs churned in the air, his hindquarters slowly dropped into the chasm. Only the bulk of the beast's belly against the road's edge slowed his slide. His forelegs pawed the sheer black stone of the chasm walls like a dog scratching a door, but found no place to cling.
The howdah had pitched forward and leaned on the beast's great head like a broken hat. "Hurry! Come, come! Hurry!" Maya screamed, reaching for Lucinda, for the mahout. The mahout tried to push Lucinda to safety, but she clung desperately to the howdah's broken railing, looking into the chasm in horror. More gunshots cracked the air. The elephant struggled, and the road's edge crumbled beneath him. He slid backward, squealing like a puppy, eyes wide, trunk straight with terror.
The howdah disappeared. Maya shrieked.
But the elephant did not fall. Somehow the beast managed to hang on with his forelegs, though his belly was following his hindquarters into the chasm. His chin rested on the road between his forefeet, and his trunk swept wildly near Maya, as if he might hold on to her to stop his fall.
Maya could not tell what had become of the howdah. She managed to peer over the road's edge and saw that somehow the howdah still clung to the elephant's back, suspended by a single strap. And she saw Lucinda, Slipper, and the mahout still clinging to it.
Maya staggered forward. The mahout, head bleeding, began to climb to her. Clutching the elephant's bell strap in one hand, the mahout then reached back to Lucinda with the other.
Maya stepped up to the road's edge, between the elephant's right front foot that slipped and struggled, and his gold-banded tusk. "Stop moving!" she told the elephant.
Taut as a bowstring, the mahout strained to lift Lucinda to Maya's waiting hand. The elephant seemed to sense the moment, and let off flailing his useless rear legs, holding breathlessly still.
But just when their hands were inches away, the howdah's straps gave way and Maya, in horror, watched Lucinda spill off into the endless air.
But Lucinda did not drop to her death. Instead she struck an outcropping of rock-not enough to stop her, but enough to slow her down. From there she slid in a hail of gravel to the rock shelf they'd seen earlier. Lucinda collapsed a few feet from the bodies of the scouts.
Maya's thoughts were broken by the cries of the mahout. He was standing on the very edge of the howdah platform, whose straps had tangled at the elephant's rear knees.
Looking tinier than ever, the mahout was struggling to lift Slipper to safety. The eunuch scrambled mindlessly upward, feet nearly knocking the mahout from his precarious perch. Maya leaned over :he chasm, taking the elephant's tusk in one hand for leverage, and reaching as far as she could with her other, still numb from the falling rock.
"Give me your hand!" screamed the eunuch.
"I can't move it!" she cried. "My arm is broken."
For all his size, Slipper shinnied up the elephant's neck, grabbing rolls of gray skin in his pudgy fists. With the mahout pushing him from below, he climbed with unexpected vigor. His tiny eyes nearly popped from his head. The eunuch reached the great beast's neck and grabbed Maya's numbed hand.
As he twisted and pulled, feeling returned to Maya's shoulder, and her arm exploded in agony. Pain seared through her and darkness swarmed across her eyes. Somehow she managed to hold on. Slipper, scrambling past her, stepped on her leg when she fell to the ground.
The elephant at that moment gave a small lurch backward, as though something were tugging on his tail. His eyes gaped so wide Maya saw them ringed with white. He let out a tiny sound, like the sigh of a frightened child.
"Hurry!" Maya called, grasping the tusk once more and leaning toward the mahout. "Hurry now!" The mahout stretched to his full length, reaching his hands toward her.
But at that moment, the elephant slipped again, his forefeet and chin sliding backward just an inch, and on his back the mahout staggered, grabbing a gray ear to break his fall. "Please!" Maya shouted, reaching toward him.
But the final slide had begun. The elephant's tusk began to move, and Maya herself dropped to the ground to keep from falling with it.
She watched as the elephant's wide eyes softened, then closed. Then he slipped backward, slowly but smoothly, until only the tips of his forefeet and his trunk remained on the road, like a child peering over a table. Hopelessly Maya reached toward the mahout, and he for her.
Then the elephant dropped silently into space, his huge legs waving slowly as he hurled downward through the open air. The mahout pressed his cheek against the elephant's gray head, and looked at Maya as he fell.
She turned away so she wouldn't see the end, and covered her ears so she would not hear. When at last she stood and looked around her, she heard Slipper's high-pitched whimper, and also the shouts of the men. They were pointing to the ledge where Lucinda had fallen.
A bandit on a skinny mountain pony rode along that ledge. How had he gotten there? He looked up to the guards and gave a loud, taunting laugh, then wheeled his pony to where Lucinda lay. He jumped off and pressed a hand against her heart. Satisfied that she was alive, he threw her over the pony's back, and leaped on the saddle behind her.
A bowstring twanged, and an arrow clattered against the stones just inches from the bandit's head. "Put up your weapons," Da Gama screamed. "You might hit the girl!"
The bandit's laugh turned into an animal-like howl. He pushed his pony toward the edge of the ledge. Maya screamed, and the bandit then looked up at her. She saw his eyes gleaming like a demon's. Then he jammed his heels into the pony's flanks. There was a kind of a trail down the chasm walls, nearly impassable, but somehow the bandit twisted and turned his pony along it in an endless slide.
When he reached the stream at the bottom of the chasm, Lucinda's white dress looked like a dot of paint in the shadows.
The bandit waved in triumph as he galloped off.
Lucinda dreamed she was back in the nursery, rocking.
Sometimes she dreamed herself cradled in Helene's warm arms; sometimes she dreamed she rode her painted hobbyhorse. The constant rocking rhythm felt so comforting.
She woke to find herself slung across the back of a sweat-foamed pony. A thick arm curled around her waist. Her head bounced against the pony's flank and with each footfall pounded with exquisit
e pain. Somehow she managed not to cry out. Some undiscovered part of her, desperate for survival, warned her.
She tried to gather her wits. Where was she? What had happened? The last thing she remembered was clinging to the broken howdah as the elephant slipped from the road. The haze around that memory began to clear: before that, she recalled, bandits cast stones upon them from above. But hadn't their attackers been shot?
For a moment she imagined that she was being carried to safety.
Then at one particularly rough step, she let her head flop as if unconscious, to face the rider's leg. The saddle and the stirru told her all: cracked leather and dry wood, the saddle of a bandit, not the tended livery of the horsemen of the caravan.
Lucinda kept her head down and bit back the pain. That her captor did not know she was awake was an advantage, she reckoned, and she would need every advantage she could muster.
They traveled slowly now, scarcely faster than a man might walk, thrusting through high grass that grew along the bank of the brown, turbulent stream. It occurred to Lucinda that it was the same stream she'd seen from the chasm's edge. If she'd fallen from that height, it was no surprise that her head hurt.
The pony's chest thrust the grass aside, but with each step the blades snapped back and stung her face. The rider slapped the pony with a long switch, digging his heels furiously into the animal's flanks; even so, the animal could hardly go faster. The rider whipped the pony only out of hatred, Lucinda sensed.
I am lost, she thought. Her head throbbed. Nearby, Lucinda heard the rushing stream, and realized how thirsty she was.
Suddenly the man leaped from the saddle without waiting for his pony to stop. He tied the reins to a nearby tree and strode around the small clearing. Lucinda feigned unconsciousness and watched.
He was small and squat with a filthy turban and a scraggly beard. A long knife hung from the sash of his dust-stained robe.
Two more men appeared, also dressed in filthy clothes, so similar they might have been a uniform. One had long mustaches instead of a beard, but otherwise they resembled each other. Maybe all three were brothers. They spoke oddly accented Hindi, not what Lucinda was used to, but she could make out enough to understand.
The rider fell to his knees before the others. "It was horrible," he wailed, his voice cracking, "Hamfist and Rat Tail got killed. I nearly died myself. Where are the others? Don't tell me they're dead, too?"
"Take it easy. We'll recover soon enough. Then we'll get revenge," the mustached one said.
"Was there no treasure?" snarled the other. "What have you brought there on your pony?"
"A farang woman. I captured her."
"She's not dead?"
"Not yet. We can ransom her."
"Or take revenge," the mustached one suggested.
"Or both," said the other.
"I can't do it, not now," the rider wailed. "Not with my brothers' death 1 11 cries in my ears.
"Rest then," the mustached one said. "We will revenge them for you."
As the mustached bandit headed for the pony, Lucinda willed herself to act. With all her strength she pushed off the pony's back, intending to run. But she slipped on the wet jagged gravel at the stream's edge and collapsed, twisting her ankle. She saw that her hands were bleeding. She rolled onto her back just in time to see the mustached man run toward her.
"Look who's awake!" he cried. He flung himself down and grabbed a handful of her hair, twisting it until Lucinda whimpered. She thrust out her bleeding hands, hoping to scratch his eyes, when she heard a cold dull ringing sound. Somehow she recognized it at once, a steel blade unsheathed, and before she could move, she felt a blade pinching her throat.
Lucinda got very quiet. The splashing of the wild stream against its banks mixed with the wheezing of the bandit, the smell of the moist earth mingled with his horrid breath.
"No one's going to hurt you," the bandit said. His pig eyes gleamed.
"She's a farang! She don't understand!" the other bandit called.
"Give me a hand," the mustached one answered.
A new world of helplessness spread before Lucinda. It's one thing to be helpless as one tries to lace a corset or to mount an elephant, quite another to be helpless as a bandit pushes a black steel knife against the flesh of your throat while his brother comes to join him.
"What's under those things?" the seated one asked, nodding to her skirts.
"Legs, I expect," the other answered. He threw the skirts toward Lucinda's face, then pawed through her petticoats. "Shit, what is all this?"
"Just use your knife, idiot," the seated one cried, lifting himself to see better and unconsciously pressing his knife blade harder against Lucinda's throat. She could smell his skin, sweating with excitement.
"Shut up," said the other. Lucinda heard again the ring of steel, and felt a cold blade slide along her torso. The blade sliced through her petticoats and corset. She felt damp air on her naked belly. The bandit's thick fingers gripped her thighs.
"Nice," he whispered, his eyes widening. "You did good!" he called to the one who'd brought her, who still knelt sobbing a :.ittle way off.
"Shouldn't we wait for the others?" he sniffed.
"Plenty for everyone," muttered the other as he knelt at Lucinda's feet. "Hold her still."
Behind her head, the mustached one jerked forward to place his knees on her shoulders. "Feel that?" he whispered, sliding the flat of the blade softly on the skin of her neck.
"She don't understand a word!" the other told him.
"She gets the idea."
Lucinda could look up and see the mustached bandit's face, puffed and sweating, blotting out the sky. Or she could look between her legs, and watch the other struggling to pull down his pants. She chose to close her eyes.
"Come on, come on," she heard the bandit above her yell.
"Give me a second!" the other replied.
"What's taking so long!"
"I'm not hard yet!"
"Goddammit! Then let me go first!"
"No!"
Suddenly the weight came off Lucinda's shoulders. She looked up to see the mustached bandit leaping toward the other, knife in hand. As the two brothers wrestled, she dragged herself along the stream bank, no longer conscious of the pain in her hands or head, or the gravel tearing into her back.
"Look what you've done now! She's getting away!" the kneeling one cried out.
Their fight was forgotten as the bandits came back to Lucinda, now panting and grimed with sweat. Lucinda's efforts had only served to move her to a place less comfortable, if possible. A sharp-edged rock poked into her shoulders. Her head hung limply backward-she was too exhausted to hold it up.
At least they had let go of her hair.
"Hold her down while I go," the mustached one said. She watched him tugging on the tiny sausage between his legs.
The other bandit swung over her to sit on her chest. He put a knee on each of her shoulders, and pressed his heavy buttocks against her corseted breasts. "Hey, look. I can have her mouth!" he said.
"If you're not too soft for that, too," the mustached one answered. "Now hold her while I get it hard."
Lucinda felt his sausage rubbing on her thighs, and kicked out as hard as she could. She must have hit something, for the man groaned. A heavy fist slammed into her belly.
For the first time, as if the pain had freed her voice, Lucinda cried out.
"That's right," the bandit sitting on her shoulders said. "Open wide. I've got something for you."
Then his head dropped to the ground beside hers. Its eyes rolled back in a kind of ecstasy: its lips throbbed though no sound came.
Above her, blood exploded in a fountain from the bandit's now headless neck.
Lucinda clamped her eyes shut against the spray of blood. The bandit's lifeless body fell across her.
Blinking through the blood that fogged her eyes, she looked up, and to her wonder saw Pathan.
He walked past her without a glance, c
urved sword raised, advancing slowly on the mustached bandit, who scooted on the ground, pants down, hands raised, whimpering. Pathan moved with stately slowness, with unearthly calm.
"Behind you," Lucinda said.
The third bandit had stopped crying. He raced forward with a shrill war cry, a long knife in his outstretched hand.
As though moving in water, Pathan turned to face him. With an unearthly languor, he dropped to one knee. Pathan's curved sword arced slowly along the bandit's leg, and a chunk of thigh sailed through the air like a child's ball. The bandit's knife slipped harmless past Pathan's ear, and the bandit fell first to his knees, then in screaming agony to his belly.
Ignoring for a moment the mustached bandit, who struggled to pull his pants back over his bare ass, Pathan closed on the fallen man, step by slow step. Raising his sword with both hands like an ax, he brought the blade down across the bandit's spine. The body shuddered at Pathan's feet.
Pathan had to place a foot on the man's back in order to remove his sword. Meanwhile the mustached bandit, his pants on at last, half-ran, halfcrawled toward the tethered pony.
How can Pathan move so slowly, Lucinda wondered. The bandit was frantic: fumbling at the pony's bridle until he finally remembered his knife. He cut the traces and leaped on the saddle just as Pathan arrived.
The bandit wheeled, waving his long black knife, but Pathan stood as if frozen. His sword seemed barely to move, yet somehow as the pony galloped past him, the bandit's hand fell to the ground by Pathan's feet, still clutching the knife.
The bandit screamed at the sight of his bleeding stump as he galloped off. Pathan reached down and threw the severed hand into the water.
Then there was only silence, and the rushing sound of the stream against the rocks.
Lucinda became aware of the bandit's blood growing sticky on her face, of the weight of the headless body that had fallen across her legs. What should a woman do, knowing that a severed head lies inches from her own? Lucinda stared into the clouds, but the memory of the dead bandit's face would not go.