Metal and Magic

by Chris Paton

  The Shah waved his hand. “No, of course not,” he plucked at a pastry from the metal plate in the hands of his fourth wife. “The Tsar would not be so foolish. Not now you know I possess the power of the djinn.”

  Hari leaned forward, tucking his elbows into his side, his forearms resting on his knees. A djinn pit, he shook his head. Oh, British. What have I done? Hari slid the fingers of his left hand inside his robes, they fingered the hilt of the kukri. Shifting his weight upon his knees, Hari gripped the handle of the curved blade. The wailing of the emissary filtered through the wooden lattice covering the windows. Hari lifted his head up sharply and caught the Russian’s eye. Flicking his eyes to the left and right, Hari noted the relaxed stance of the Shah’s bodyguards.

  “The Tsar will be interested in the result of the battle, eminence,” Bryullov bowed once more. “Especially as he wishes me to extend his cordial interests together with the gift of ten mountain guns.”

  “Bah,” the Shah waved his hand at Bryullov. “We have British mountain guns, what will we do with...” he paused at the flap of robes and blur of motion in front of him. Screams from the Shah’s wives distracted him as Hari leaped onto his feet, and kicked the legs out from under first one and then the other of the men guarding him. Bryullov tugged the tails of his shirt free of his trousers and reached for the small flintlock pistol he kept in a band of silk wrapped around his waist. Hari kicked Bryullov in the chest before the Russian had a chance to withdraw the pistol.

  “You’ll never make it out of the city,” Bryullov gasped, staring at Hari beyond the foot the mystic pressed into his chest.

  Hari waved the tip of the kukri in front of Bryullov’s nose. “You need to apply more shoe polish, my friend. Your disguise is wearing thin.” Hari nicked a cut in Bryullov’s cheek an inch long before pivoting upon the man’s stomach and racing to the door.

  “Najma,” Bryullov sat up and pressed his hand to his cheek. “Stop him.”

  Najma ran to the wall of the receiving room. Gripping the barrel of her jezail leaning against the wall, she fished a musket ball from the leather pouch belted above her hips and chased after Hari.

  Squinting in the sun, Hari slowed to get his bearings. The wailing of the emissary quailed under the crack and thump of muskets and artillery pieces; Khaled had begun his defence of the city. Looking beyond the kneeling form of the emissary, Hari searched for the raised entrance to the pit. He saw it, just beyond the entrance to the royal courtyard. Sheathing the kukri, Hari ran toward the pit stopping only when a ball of lightning seared his right shoulder and sent him tumbling to the dirt. The buzz of the shot from Najma’s jezail reverberating about the buildings as Hari rolled on the ground and pushed himself to his feet. He glanced at Najma, catching her eye as she rammed a new musket ball into the barrel. She charged the jezail with seven rapid cranks of the priming handle. Whipping the stock into her shoulder, she sighted along the barrel. The dust at Hari’s feet spun into clouds as he turned and ran toward the pit.

  Najma’s second shot burned a hole in his robes as the ball of charged copper and lead tore into his side just above his left hip. Hari stuttered to the floor just in front of the djinn pit and pressed his hands upon the wound while his body shook. With jerky movements he lifted his robes. Looking down, Hari saw blood, but no exit wound. The lightning ball cauterized the wound, sealing itself inside his body. Looking over his left shoulder, he watched as Najma walked toward him. Casting aside the jezail, she drew a long knife from the curved scabbard belted beneath her belly button. Hari drew the kukri and struggled to his feet.

  “You don’t have to do this, Najma,” blood from Hari’s hip dripped through the fingers of his right hand, splashing on the blade of the kukri twitching in his left hand. “Bryullov is not worth it. Neither is the Tsar.” Hari raised the kukri and pointed to the east. “Do you not remember Gushtia?”

  Tight-lipped, Najma closed the distance between them with careful steps.

  “Do you hear that,” Hari pointed in the direction of the emissary. “It is here to talk; there is no need for violence.”

  “And the soldiers outside the gates?” sidestepping to Hari’s right, Najma gripped the knife in her left hand.

  “Insurance. The Germans want to make good on their promises,” Hari shuffled upon his feet, bending his knees slightly in anticipation of her attack.

  “They have a funny way of showing it.”

  “Are the Russians any better? What has Bryullov promised your father? Gold? Trinkets?”

  “It is no concern of yours,” Najma shifted her stance.

  “Think about it, Najma. What would your father do if he were Shah? Listen to the emissary? Treat with the men outside the gates, or kill the only man able to stop them?” Hari pressed his thumb against his chest.

  “You?” Najma laughed. “My father talked about a wandering mystic, one that never practices his religion, just mumbles in the dark. What could such a man do to stop them?” she nodded in the direction of the gates. The rumble of artillery and the pounding of large metal feet increased.

  “Why so bitter, Najma? Is your life so bad?”

  “You know nothing of my life.”

  “Truly,” Hari nodded. “But neither does Bryullov. Ah,” Hari smiled at the colouring of Najma’s cheeks. “He has promised to take you away from all this. Hasn’t he? Perhaps even as far as Russia.”

  “He has talked...” Najma paused at the shriek of wind boring up from the earth.

  Hari flicked his eyes to the pit as the ground trembled, the lid gyrating on top of the pit like the spinning of some giant stone coin. Najma screamed as the lid cracked, splintering shards of stone in the desert air. Splinters of rock shredded Hari’s robes, puncturing his skin as he dropped to the floor, taking cover beneath the raised entrance to the pit. One large chunk of the broken lid whirled into Najma’s chest. She slammed into the ground, the stone flattening the air from her lungs, a cloud of dust immersing her body. Hari looked up as a body of blue smoke sucked stones, pebbles and small rocks from the ground, forming a tail of rock and dust beneath the human form suspended twenty feet above the city.

  “British,” Hari felt his chest tighten as he stared up at his travelling companion, four times larger than life, a look of pure hatred chiselled upon his face.

  The djinni cast its eyes round the city before turning its gaze upon the battle beyond the walls. Blue-skinned and bare-chested, its legs a maelstrom of rock and dust, the djinni, scored the ground beneath it, leaving a wide, deep path as it shrieked toward the gates of the city.

  Hari watched as the djinni slowed to pluck the emissary from its seat in the royal court, hurling it toward the battle clouds drifting toward the city. The emissary’s message, the sole purpose of its manufacture, was whipped from its loudhailer as it wailed into the distance, a sudden puff of smoke the only sign of its landing. Hari pulled open his shirt, exposing the anti-djinn mark as his friend crashed into the gates of the city and stormed into battle.

  Chapter 10

  Adina Pur

  Afghanistan

  December, 1850

  Gunpowder clouds drifted over the Shah’s artillery pieces one hundred yards in front of the city walls. Nazari’s gunners, rivers of sweat running through the soot blackening their faces, stepped back as the British mountains guns belched at the metal mammoths charging toward them. Nazari raised his sword as the gunners swabbed the guns, rammed new charges home and slid heavy grenades into the hot metal barrels.

  “Fire,” Nazari dropped his sword in an arc to the ground. The ground shook as the guns bounced back within sulphurous clouds of gunpowder. A cavalryman riding through the smoke hailed him. Nazari pressed the handle of his sword into the palm of his subedar and signalled the rider to dismount. “Report.”

  “Yes, Subedar Major,” the cavalryman slid out of his saddle. He held the reins of his horse, restraining the beast at the thumping of the guns. “Two of the metal mammoths are stuck in the soft sand on the left si
de of the road.” The man jerked as the horse reeled at the thump of another gun barrage.

  “How many mammoths remain?” Nazari twitched his nose in the cloud of gunfire.

  “Three,” the cavalryman coughed. “Infantry hide behind them. We cannot reach them, and our men are forced to retreat beyond range of our jezails. There are sharpshooters up high on the machines protecting the drivers and men with curious boxes hanging around their necks. The sharpshooters are using some kind of pulse rifle.” He held his horse steady as the guns fired, fewer this time. Nazari turned to his subedar.

  “That was half a battery.”

  “Yes, Subedar Major,” the man, pointed at the guns at the end of the line. “The barrels are too hot. We must wait.”

  “We cannot wait,” Nazari cuffed the subedar on the side of his head. “Piss on the barrels. Fire the guns. Stop them,” he pointed at the mammoths approaching along the shell-pocked road.

  “Yes, Subedar Major.” Handing Nazari his sword, the subedar jogged down to the end of the line. Nazari watched as the men, one by one, dropped their pantaloons and pissed. The barrels spat and steamed with each arc of urine, the men wrinkling their noses as they emptied their bladders, lifted their pantaloons and secured them about their waists.

  “You,” Nazari pressed his finger into the chest of the cavalryman. “Ride back and rally the cavalry. Charge through the legs of the enemy and take out their infantry.”

  “A suicide charge?” the man paled.

  “You can die for the Shah in front of Allah, or I can have you flogged over the barrel of a steaming mountain gun.” Nazari stabbed the point of his sword into the ground between the cavalryman’s feet. “Which is it?”

  “I will carry out your orders, Subedar Major.” Pulling himself into the saddle, the cavalryman reined in his horse at the renewed barrage of shells belching out of the piss-drenched guns. Nazari watched the man ride away and surveyed the battlefield.

  He stared at the mammoth walkers stuck in soft sand, their crews digging while the sharpshooters covered them with musket fire and lightning pulses from above. They must have been trying to go around the city, Nazari thought. Walking forward and standing on the earth embankments between two gun emplacements, he wafted smoke from his face to observe the movement of the enemy along the road. The metal beasts, armoured with huge rusted plates upon iron ribs, loosely resembled their prehistoric namesakes minus the trunks. Either side of the driver, the mammoths’ ears were cupped to seat the sharpshooters and their spotters, two men in each ear. The drivers pushed levers back and forth, sitting in cushioned seats suspended upon thick coiled springs to lessen the shock waves pounding through the rusted iron skeleton of each mammoth. They are too high for my marksmen, and the mountain guns are having no effect.

  Leading the column of three mammoths, a single emissary, its partner mangled by a lucky shell from one of Nazari’s guns, weaved along the road. Standing behind the mammoth driver, a man followed the progress of the emissary, fiddling with elongated levers protruding from a box secured to a harness on his chest.

  Nazari turned to order his men to fire on the road, in front of the emissary, but the order never left his lips. Nazari stared at the wailing missile hurtling through the air above him and his men. Twisting his body, he followed its flight as the emissary from the city arced into the path of the lead mammoth, smashing into the driver’s cockpit. The walker swayed. Leaning to the right it tumbled onto the side of the road raising a cloud of dust that blinded those behind it. Nazari smiled as his men raised a cheer. A new salvo burst forth from Nazari’s guns, the cavalry charging in the wake of the shells that slammed into the innards of the downed machine. More cheers as smoke and flames licked at the machine and flaming human figures poured from beneath the armoured plates only to be swept up on the points and blades of the cavalry’s scimitars.

  “Cease fire,” Nazari turned to the gunners. As he stepped down from the embankment he stared at the blue figure crashing through the gates and shrieking toward them. “Djinn,” Nazari shouted as he fumbled at the buttons on his tunic. “Djinn,” he ripped open his shirt and exposed the clockwise spiral mark upon his chest. Dropping their charges and falling to their knees, the gunners tore their long, sooty shirts up and over their heads to expose their own marks. As the djinni shrieked over their heads, Nazari remembered the cavalry. “You and you,” he grabbed two of the gunners closest to him. “Fire the djinn flare.” As the men readied the gun, he ran to the top of the embankment and searched battlefield for his cavalry. “Hurry.”

  The djinni tore up the road, collapsing the riders at the rear of the cavalry charge within his arms, tossing man and horse high into the air. Nazari heard the wet thuds as the cavalrymen and their horses screamed into the ground. The djinn flare cracked in the sky above the cavalry and the remaining riders, those that heard the crack and saw the glitter of green fireworks, dismounted and ripped at their clothes to reveal the djinn mark. The slower riders and those busy engaging the enemy were swept up in the djinni’s crushing embrace. They fell, comrades and enemies alike, their bones and bodies crushed side by side in the dust and rocks outside the city.

  ҉

  Hari pulled off his robe and cut off a long strip with the kukri. Pressing the dusty cloth into the wound in his side, he bound it with the sleeves of his shirt tied together at the cuffs. Wounds from stone splinters bled on his bare chest as Hari sheathed the kukri and staggered over to where the warlord princess moaned in the dirt. Bending at the knees, he knelt by Najma’s side, calling her name as he lifted the slab of stone from her chest. Najma shuddered, her breathing ragged and wild.

  “Djinni?” she gasped, her eyes flickering from side to side.

  “Gone,” Hari pointed to the field of battle beyond the gates. “That way.”

  “Bryullov?”

  Hari shrugged. “With the Shah?” He moved his fingers to Najma’s face. She flinched. “Splinters,” Hari opened and closed his thumb and finger before her. “I want to pull them out.”

  “Yes,” Najma breathed.

  “Don’t move.” Hari removed fourteen splinters from Najma’s face and forehead. He pulled down her shirt to reveal her shoulders. “More splinters,” Hari smiled. “I won’t go any further.” Najma closed her fingers around Hari’s wrist. She flicked her eyes to her chest. “What? Are there more?”

  “Yes,” Najma shivered. “They hurt.”

  “All right,” Hari opened Najma’s shirt, the cotton sticky with blood. He tugged three long splinters from Najma’s left breast, a fourth from her right. Najma closed her eyes, tears trickled down her cheeks and splashed into the dust in dark circles. “It’s all right, Najma,” Hari buttoned Najma’s shirt. “You are going to be all right.”

  Najma opened her eyes as Hari stood. “Don’t leave,” she gripped the hem of Hari’s pantaloons hanging above his ankle. “Don’t leave me to die alone.”

  “You are not dying, Najma,” Hari smiled.

  Najma fumbled in her pocket and pulled out the watch. “Take this.”

  Hari knelt and closed his fingers around Najma’s hand. “You keep it. “I need to go out there. I need to find my friend.” Hari pulled free of Najma’s grip. Walking around her, he turned in the direction of the broken gates of Adina Pur.

  Bryullov charged out of the Shah’s receiving room. He stopped short at the sight of Hari.

  “She is over there,” Hari pointed toward Najma. “She fought bravely,” he added before turning his back on the Russian and continuing down the street. Bryullov continued past him, swearing in Russian as he crouched in the dirt by the side of the wounded princess.

  “Wait,” Bryullov stood. Reaching into his pocket he pulled out Jamie’s locket and threw it to Hari. “Give it to your friend, if you find him.”

  “Thank you,” Hari hung the locket around his neck and picked his way through the rubble to the gates. The remains of the heavy doors hanging from their hinges twisted in a fresh breeze blowing from the east.
Stooping to pick up a cavalryman’s jacket that had blown up against the wall, Hari pulled it on and buttoned it. He tugged the jacket tail on the right up and over the pommel of his kukri.

  A troop of men, guns and horses trotted toward him. Their anti-djinn marks exposed, they carried foreign trophy rifles slung across their bare chests. Forcing Hari from the road, they laughed and cheered with the joy of victory. Hari walked on, circling the pits and shell holes zigzagging the road ahead of him.

  He found Nazari standing in front of an eviscerated mammoth a quarter of a mile from the splintered gates of the city. Its bones and gears gathering dust in the breeze, the plates of metal skin peeled and discarded hundreds of feet away in all directions.

  “Subedar Major,” Hari stopped by Nazari’s side.

  “Ah, Nightjar,” Nazari picked at the lapel of Hari’s jacket. “You have chosen a side, at last.”

  “There are no sides today,” Hari pointed at the piles of cavalrymen wearing the colours of the Shah.

  “An acceptable sacrifice. Allah will reward them. The city is saved.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?” Nazari frowned. “Oh, yes. Your Englishman.” He pointed to the east. “He went that way. Remember, he belongs to the Shah, now.” Nazari patted Hari on the shoulder as he walked past him. “You can keep the jacket.”

  Hari walked around the skeleton of the mammoth, and past the next. As the road continued he passed three more, each more disfigured than the rest, as if the djinni’s rage increased the further it travelled from the pit.

  Battle dust from the road silted into Hari’s covered sandals. Three miles beyond the gates he stopped to remove them and brush the dust from his feet. Resting in the middle of the road, Hari slid his fingers between his toes and looked up at the cry of a hawk shooing vultures from a spot just above the lookout post. He pulled on his sandals and climbed the path up the mountainside. Hari followed the hawk’s cries to a boulder stained at the base with blood. Peering around the boulder Hari lifted his arm to fend off the hawk only to have it grip his wrist. The hawk beat the cool evening air into Hari’s face as he stared at the body of the boy at his feet.