‘We bought them with our own matches, sir,’ Robert said. ‘They were for us to eat. We didn’t steal them.’
‘I don’t care who you bought them for, you pink imbecile. They’re sacred. I won’t have beef eaten in my camp. Not by anyone.’ Rao spoke English well, despite his strong accent.
‘Sorry, sir,’ Robert said. ‘We didn’t know.’
‘He’s insulting you.’ Parihar put his hands on his hips. ‘Look at his eyes.’
‘You’re right.’ Rao glared at Robert. ‘Insolence.’
Robert frowned. ‘Sir?’
‘Challenging me, are you?’ Rao’s voice came out shrill. He turned to Wulfric. ‘Arrest them, Sergeant. They shall be flogged.’
Jack had seen enough. He knew exactly what the problem was – he’d seen this scene played out many times before.
He pushed his way through the gathering. ‘Wait.’
Rao looked at Jack and mouthed words silently, as if so shocked he couldn’t think what to say.
Parihar’s face darkened ‘What did you say, boy?’
Wulfric strode towards Jack, his face clenched like a fist.
But Jack held up his hand and spoke to Rao, ‘Sir, there’s been a misunderstanding. It’s our custom to look our superiors in the eye.’
Rao frowned. ‘What?’
‘We Europeans look at our superiors. At least, a bit. This man isn’t insulting you. He thinks if he looks away you’ll think he’s lying.’
Jack had had to explain this many times to new arrivals from Rajthana. When he’d been a sergeant he’d often had to instruct the young subalterns sent to the regiment.
‘Scum.’ Wulfric grasped Jack’s tunic. ‘You’ll be flogged for—’
‘He’s right.’ Siddha Atri slipped out of the shadows, stroking his beard with a spidery finger.
‘Look, Atri,’ Parihar snapped in Rajthani. ‘Rao’s in command—’
‘Wait.’ Rao raised his hand to silence Parihar, then spoke to Atri in Rajthani. ‘Is this true?’
‘Indeed.’ Atri gave a vague smile. ‘European soldiers learn not to meet their officers’ gazes. But this man probably didn’t know.’
Rao’s jaw worked for a moment and his eyes flickered from Jack to the cattle. Finally, he turned to Robert and said in English, ‘Very well. There’ll be no flogging. But I won’t have beef eaten in this camp.’
‘That’s understood now, sir,’ Robert said.
Wulfric grunted and released Jack’s tunic.
‘But if it happens again you will be flogged.’ Rao crinkled his nose and held his handkerchief to his face. ‘Now get these animals away from the camp. The smell is abominable.’
‘You want some beef?’ the cook asked as he lifted the lid of the three-legged pot standing in the campfire.
‘What?’ Robert looked up, his jaw dropping. Then he noticed the glint in the cook’s eye and a smile slid across his lips. ‘I should pop you one for that.’
Everyone around the fire snorted with laughter. Jack chuckled softly, along with Andrew and the rest of the men from Shropshire. Saleem was the only one who was silent – he sat with his knees drawn up to his chin, staring into the flames as if transfixed.
‘Cheer up, Sultan.’ Robert slapped Saleem on the back. ‘It was only a joke.’
Saleem smiled feebly. Robert had taken to calling him ‘Sultan’ as he was the sole Mohammedan amongst the porters, but Saleem didn’t seem to mind.
At Rao’s command, the cattle had been driven back to the village. Robert had then invited Jack and his men to share a meal with him and his work gang.
‘Sorry, everyone,’ the cook said. ‘It’s pottage. No beef. No pork neither.’
As the cook spooned the stew into bowls, Robert leant closer to Jack and said, ‘Thank you for before, wee man. Thought I was in for a beating.’
‘No need to thank me.’
‘You seem to understand these Rajthanans.’
‘A bit.’
‘I can’t make head or tail of them. No beef. And that statue.’
‘They’re a strange lot, that’s for sure.’
Jack heard a snarl behind him. He turned to see Wulfric staggering from the darkness and into the firelight. The Sergeant swayed unsteadily and Jack caught a whiff of ale. Wulfric appeared to be drunk. This was surprising for a Mohammedan, but Jack had known many Saxons who weren’t particularly devout.
Everyone went silent and the only sound was the crackling and spitting of the fire.
Wulfric’s good eye flitted over the group, like a fly searching for a place to land. His bad eye shifted beneath its heavy eyelid and the scar on his cheek glowed white. Finally, his gaze rested on Jack. ‘Ah. There you are.’
He took a few uncertain steps forward. ‘Hiding here, are you, scum? Well, I’ve found you.’ He sniffed the air. ‘Old Wulfric can always smell them. Old Wulfric will always find them.’
‘Just eating our dinner, sir,’ Jack said. How was he going to defuse this situation?
‘Dinner, eh?’ Wulfric stumbled to the fire, lifted his leg and smashed his foot into the pot, almost falling backwards in the process. The pot toppled into the fire, the pottage spilling out and hissing amongst the embers. Sparks flickered in the dark.
‘I’m warning you.’ Wulfric swung his arm to take in the whole group sitting about the fire. ‘Old Wulfric is watching you.’ He turned to Jack, blinking and trying to focus. ‘Old Wulfric is watching you too. I won’t have some English filth causing trouble. No, I won’t have you meddling.’
Jack stared back at Wulfric. His satchel sat next to him, but the pistol was still unloaded.
Wulfric bent his knees and leant in close so that Jack could smell the ale on his breath. ‘Old Wulfric will have you one of these days.’
Jack’s heart beat harder. What would Wulfric do next?
Then the Sergeant lurched upright again, gave the fallen pot a final kick and stumbled away into the darkness, muttering unintelligibly to himself.
They marched for eight days, passing through the valley and then heading north across the open plains and rolling countryside beyond. The air grew colder, but there was little rain and at times a pale sun blinked through gaps in the cloud.
The native Scots continued to avoid the party, although Jack often saw them in the distance: men out hunting with dogs, women walking across fields with pots of water on their heads and children hiding and watching from behind patches of gorse. The villages at first appeared little different from those in England. But after the first two days, they changed. The huts became small and often circular, with dry-stone walls and roofs covered in green turf. The surrounding fields consisted of narrow ridges that rippled like water across the hillsides.
As the days wore on, the party settled into a routine. In the morning, a horn blower would sound the call to wake. The Rajthanans would perform their ritual – their puja – sitting cross-legged before the Ganesh statue. The Saxons – joined by Saleem – would pray in unison. And the porters would pack away the Rajthanans’ tents. Jack and his men would heave the statue on to the back of the wagon. Then the party would march for hours, stopping only occasionally to rest and water the animals. At midday, the batmen would serve lunch to the officers as they sat under the awning. After that, the column would set off once again and they would travel until dusk. Some of the porters would then wash themselves as best they could, don white livery and act as servants for the Rajthanans. Others were paid by the Saxons to cook dinner. Jack and his men would unload the statue and place it on the edge of the camp, as if to keep watch overnight.
Siddha Atri often rode off from the column and Jack saw him standing on hilltops, observing the landscape through a complicated-looking spyglass set up on a tripod. Sometimes Atri and his batman would disappear for much of the day and at other times he sent porters to plant flags on distant slopes. Jack asked Robert what Atri was up to, but the big man merely shrugged. He had no idea either.
Jack did his best to find out mor
e information about the expedition. He talked to Robert and the other porters, but no one knew anything of note. They’d all been told they were going to Mar to find a Rajthanan called Mahajan. That was it.
Jack tried to snoop around near the Rajthanans’ tents in the evenings. He heard scraps of conversations in Rajthani, but nothing of interest. When he realised Wulfric and the Saxons were becoming suspicious, he stopped.
The land buckled the further north they travelled. The Scottish guide, a wiry man almost as tall as Robert, led the party ever deeper into the knotted countryside. He often clambered far ahead, pausing on outcrops to get his bearings and scout the way ahead.
As the ground became more treacherous, the oxen struggled to pull the statue. Two of the wagon’s wheels broke and had to be replaced by Robert and his gang, who seemed as confident repairing Rajthanan vehicles as native carts.
On the morning of the ninth day since leaving Dun Fries, Rao summoned everyone to a clear patch of ground just outside the camp. He stood on top of a boulder, his scimitar hanging at his side and a rotary pistol in a holster attached to his belt. The wind shuffled his tunic and from time to time he placed a handkerchief over his nose and breathed through it.
He spoke in Arabic and then repeated himself in English. ‘Men, I have been informed by our guide that we are now passing into more dangerous territory. The tribes north of here are not like those to the south. They will not have seen army troops before. We will be as strange to them as they are to us.
‘There is no need to fear them necessarily. Should they attack, we shall deal with them swiftly. Their primitive weapons will be no match for our muskets. But be on your guard.’
The men were dismissed and within half an hour the column was moving out once again, the vehicles rattling along the crude track.
For the whole of that day, they saw not a single other person. The natives, if they were anywhere at all, remained hidden. Siddha Atri still occasionally rode away from the party, but he remained closer than before and always within eyesight.
A wall of dark mountains appeared in the distance, rising above the foothills. The wind blowing down from the slopes contained a trace of ice.
‘The Highlands,’ Robert said. ‘Never thought I’d get to see it.’
‘And Mar’s up there somewhere,’ Jack said.
‘Aye. Somewhere in there.’
Pain wormed across Jack’s chest. It was faint, but stronger than it had been for weeks. Kanvar’s cure would wear off in less than three weeks now and the injury was getting worse.
In the late afternoon, as shadows clutched the landscape, the ruins of an ancient castle appeared ahead, rising like a giant claw from the summit of a hill. The outer wall had crumbled in several places, revealing an inner bailey overgrown with grass and weeds. Two broken towers poked above the wall and slabs of half-buried stone lay scattered across the slope.
Wulfric called a halt and the soldiers and porters set about making camp on a stretch of grassland at the base of the hill. After unloading the statue, Jack stood staring up at the castle for a moment. Twilight had set in and the broken stonework was indistinct against the blue-black sky.
‘A strange sight, don’t you think?’ Robert had walked up beside Jack.
Jack nodded. ‘I’ve been thinking about it. Since we got to Scotland we’ve seen no large towns, no castles, no monasteries, no cathedrals. Just tiny villages. And then there’s this castle up there. What’s left of it anyway.’
‘Aye. There were once castles in Scotland. There were kingdoms in the lowlands, just like in England. But the kingdoms fell apart long ago. The castles crumbled. There’s nothing left now but ruins.’
Jack had never heard this. ‘Why did the kingdoms fall?’
Robert shrugged. ‘Couldn’t tell you. I’m no scholar. Can’t even read.’ He frowned. ‘A monk did tell me once that when the Moors came, we Scots were cut off from everything else. We weren’t Mohammedans like the rest of Europe. We weren’t part of England. We were left on our own. And our kingdoms withered and died . . . That’s what this monk said anyway.’
Jack was silent. The wind gave a reedy moan as it whipped across the hillside.
It was strange to think that once kings, queens, knights and courtiers had inhabited the castle. Perhaps at the bottom of the slope there’d been a town, with people in it who lived a life similar to the English.
And yet now it was all gone. Forgotten.
‘Look!’ one of the porters shouted.
‘I see it,’ another cried out.
Porters and soldiers scurried to the edge of the camp to see what was going on. Jack and Robert picked their way around the tents and arrived at the bottom of the hill, where a small crowd had gathered. Several porters were pointing excitedly up the slope.
Rao, Parihar and Atri strode over from the direction of the officers’ marquees.
‘What’s going on?’ Rao asked Wulfric.
Wulfric pointed up into the darkness. ‘Look, sir. Up there.’
Jack stared hard, but even with his abnormally good eyesight he saw nothing at first. Then he noticed a dark shape moving about halfway down the scarp. Further to the left was another shape. Then another.
About fifty hunched figures were creeping down the incline. As they came closer, the firelight picked them out and a murmur rippled through the crowd below.
‘Lord Shiva!’ Rao said.
The figures were men, but they looked more animal than human. Their hair was long and matted, their beards wild, and grease and dirt streaked their faces. They wore huge brown cloaks that were as shaggy as bearskin, and simple tunics that reached to their knees. Their legs were bare and their shoes were nothing more than roughly sewn animal hide.
Most of them held spears, but a few carried bows and arrows. Crude amulets hung from chains about their necks, the metal clinking and rattling as they moved.
A few of the Saxons slung their knife-muskets from their shoulders and pointed their weapons up the slope. The approaching natives froze, crouched and spoke softly to each other.
‘Put your muskets down,’ Rao said.
The soldiers looked back at Rao, confused.
‘Down!’ Wulfric shouted.
The men flinched and lowered their weapons.
The natives spoke further, then began descending the slope again. They approached as tentatively as cats. When they were about a hundred feet from the bottom of the hill, they halted. A tall man, who appeared to be the leader, handed his spear to another then crept ahead with his hand outstretched, palm open, as if to show he wasn’t carrying a weapon.
‘Talk to him,’ Rao said to his Scottish guide.
The guide wove his way to the front of the gathering and stepped slowly up to the tall native. The guide spoke in a strange language, his voice slipping between being soft and harsh, as if he were whispering and clearing his throat in turn. Both he and the native then squatted on their haunches and talked some more. During the conversation, the guide drew something from a bag and handed it to the native.
Finally, the guide stood and called across to Rao. ‘He says he is Chief Morgunn mac Ruadri vic Cannech of the Grym tribe. He comes in peace and grants you permission to pass through these lands. In exchange he wanted fire sticks.’
Rao frowned. ‘Fire sticks?’
‘Matches, sir,’ the guide said. ‘He says he’s heard of them but never seen them. He knows of the land of the Mar tribe. He says it’s to the north, but far, many days. He also says the lands north of here are dangerous, full of hostile tribes.’
The soldiers and porters shuffled and murmured on hearing this.
Rao held up his hand. ‘Enough. You will give me a full report in my tent. Tell the Chief that we thank him for his permission and we wish him and his tribe good health and long lives.’
The guide nodded, squatted and spoke again to the Chief, who replied with a few words, then slipped back to his men. The natives crept quickly back up the slope and in less than a mi
nute had slid away into the dark.
‘Hostile tribes?’ Saleem said as they walked back to the other side of the camp.
‘That’s not all the Chief said.’ Robert’s expression was sombre.
‘What?’ Jack came to a stop. ‘You understood?’
‘Aye,’ Robert said. ‘He was speaking Gaalic. I ken it well enough. Some people speak it in the south too.’
‘What else did he say, then?’ Saleem fidgeted with the hem of his tunic.
Everyone in the small group – Jack, Saleem, Andrew and a few of the other porters – stared at Robert.
The big man licked his lips and scratched his beard. ‘He said we must beware Mahajan. He’s heard Mahajan’s a demon who’s risen from the mouth of hell. His men have taken over Mar and are spreading their power to the neighbouring lands. They carry the sign of the skull on their chests.’ He pressed his hand to his breast. ‘They are evil. They torture and kill people. He said we must not go to Mar. We must turn back and go home.’
Everyone went silent. Saleem swallowed so loudly Jack could hear it.
Jack glanced up at the ruins at the top of the hill. The outer wall was like a row of broken, rotting teeth. ‘Well, I was told only desperate men would come on this journey. We must all be desperate.’
The men chuckled. As Jack had hoped, his words had eased the mood.
‘Aye.’ Robert grinned. ‘We must be mad. But if I’m going to be mad I’d rather do it with you lot than anyone else.’
8
The call to rise drifted across the camp, the horn’s sound frail and uncertain as it echoed in the empty valleys. They all woke. The Rajthanans did their puja before the Ganesh statue and the Mohammedans prayed in rows, standing, kneeling and prostrating themselves in turn. Then they all ate breakfast and packed away the camp. Within an hour and a half they were off once more, marching deeper into the Highlands.
The day was clear, save for a few blotches of cloud, but the air was cool and a chill wind whispered down the slopes. The hills swept like great waves about them, while the higher mountains gathered ahead, the tallest peaks dusted with snow and veiled by mist.
The Place of Dead Kings Page 11
