Tiger Claws

by John Speed

  Even the decaying heads of her necklace are laughing. Each smiles as the blackening lips expose bright teeth. The liquifying eyeballs pour down the moldering cheeks like merry tears. What can they do but laugh? he thinks. They have come home. All our heads will someday hang around her black neck, strung through the ears, licked by her dangling tongue.

  At last Kalidas returns, kneels before the murti and kisses her black, red-nailed feet. The flies buzz around him when he stands. “Come,” says Kalidas. He helps Lakshman to his feet. “We’ve gotten word.”

  Lakshman’s horse stands saddled in the clearing. “A gift to you, brother,” Kalidas says, nodding to the new silver-studded saddle and matching bridle. “Are you all right, brother? Did she give you a good dose?” Kalidas’s smile is gentle and familiar, and around him his henchmen wear the same encouraging look. They are welcoming him into their brotherhood. He has come home.

  As he helps Lakshman up onto his saddle, Kalidas tells him that Mulana Ahmed sent word: the gold caravan will leave tomorrow. “Tell Shivaji about the ridge behind the pass,” Kalidas says smiling. “That’s where I would wait.”

  “You look very happy, Kalidas,” Lakshman says, liking him.

  “Why not? Has she not given me everything? Even the protection of your lord, I have. Soon I will have more gold than I could spend in the rest of my life. Why should I not be happy?” Kalidas strokes one of the bright silver bosses on the saddle. “Don’t forget to bring my money,” he says, not looking up at Lakshman.

  “I won’t,” Lakshman replies hurriedly. For it seems to him suddenly that Kalidas’s voice is like a threat.

  “I trust you, brother. I want to trust your master as well.” Kalidas lifts his hands to his head. “Follow her commands, brother. She will give you anything. Just do what she asks.”

  “But how will she tell me what she wants?”

  “Always she is talking, talking, talking. No one wants to hear, for they fear her words. Don’t be afraid of what she tells you. However strange it seems, obey! Only listen, listen, listen.” Then Kalidas laughs and slaps the horse’s rump, and Lakshman canters away.

  Lakshman arrives at the Vyasa Pass just as the sun reaches the western horizon. Conditions at the encampment are spartan. No tents, no fires—the horses are kept saddled; bedrolls lie on the bare ground.

  Lakshman gives Shivaji Kalidas’s message: there’s less than a day before the caravan clears the pass. Then he adds Kalidas’s suggestion to ambush the caravan in the rise on the other side of the pass.

  “I don’t like it,” Shivaji says after a moment.

  Lakshman’s good eye twists to Shivaji. “What don’t you like, Shahu?”

  “The place a caravan would most expect an ambush would be as they emerge from the pass. Just the place that Kalidas told us to go. They’ll be ready for a fight. In a fair fight, our three hundred men can never beat their thousand.”

  Lakshman smiles. “Tell me you have an unfair plan.”

  Shivaji’s plan is so difficult that Hanuman begins deploying men immediately. The preparations are huge. Lakshman sees now why Shivaji chose Hanuman to be his chief lieutenant. Hanuman has always been an enthusiastic fool, and that’s exactly what Shivaji’s plan requires.

  What motivates Hanuman is hard for Lakshman to imagine. What motivates the three hundred men is obvious. Shivaji promised them a share in the spoils. He even promised to count out their shares within their sight. Of course, for this, even Lakshman pitches in. He thinks Shivaji’s plan will fail, but he wants his hand out in case it should succeed.

  They work that night and all next day. The sun has begun to slip down the western sky before everything is ready.

  Near the entrance to the pass, Lakshman scrambles to the top of a hill, where Shivaji and Hanuman huddle together. Below them the gold caravan stretches over the twisting mountain road. “Look,” Shivaji says to Lakshman. “You guessed right.”

  Earlier, they’d argued over how the captain would arrange his caravan, its wagons and its guards. Now they see that the forces are arranged much as Lakshman had foretold. “You should always listen to me.” Lakshman grins.

  At the head of the line are rank after rank of lancers, riding four abreast. Behind them come perhaps fifty horse-drawn carts, each surrounded by six horsemen. Then a hundred or more horsemen carrying bows and arrows. Lakshman’s eye gleams. “Just the way we want them, Shahu. Made to order.”

  “The captain will have joined the real caravan: the one coming through our pass. They’re walking right into our hands.”

  As the captain’s section of the caravan enters the pass, the sun casts dark shadows across the stony road. The sun is going down. The vanguard of Bijapuri lancers crowds together where the road narrows. The captain shouts for everyone to move quickly.

  The wagons struggle over the ragged stone of the mountain road, wheels groaning and creaking. They’re slower moving than the lancers, and soon a large gap has formed. And behind the wagons, the archers clump together, jostling against each other, since it’s hard for them to move as slowly as the wagons.

  The wagons have just reached the midpoint of the pass when chaos explodes all around them.

  A loud bang echoes from the canyon walls on either side of the road. Suddenly a half-dozen horses and their riders fall into a crumpled heap. Those standing nearby find themselves splattered by blood, by chunks of meat and bone. Horses rear and run madly, screaming, their wounds still smoking. Another bang. More horsemen fly into the air as their horses disintegrate beneath them.

  Smoke billows through the narrow passage. The smell of gunpowder and burnt flesh swirls around the chaos. The horses begin to dance, eager to run, pitching their riders. Fallen men scramble to avoid the hooves of their terrified mounts.

  The cannon blast away again, leaving a score of horses and their riders dead, and dozens bleeding and wild.

  “They’re firing chains!” shouts someone over the screams of wounded. The remaining archers, who expected only to be firing arrows at a rear attack, now wheel their horses around and drive for the rear in panic.

  More cannon fire. Screaming horses fall in a heap, pinning their broken riders. Unable to turn, the wagon horses run forward in a frenzy as another cannon blasts. The horses of the third wagon try to climb over the wagon ahead of them. They all spill over, and the upended wagons land in a heap against the jagged rocks.

  All this has taken only seconds. Before the lancers can turn their mounts, an avalanche of boulders pours down. The phalanx collapses beneath the stones. Shouts and screams, crash and clatter, these echo in a jumble from the bluffs. Another cannon booms. Smoke billows out in brown, caustic clouds.

  Then from the bluffs where the rocks crashed down, come high-pitched war cries: Har, har, mahadev! Har, har, mahadev! A hundred men, two hundred, some on ponies, come sliding down.

  Soon the wagons are surrounded. The lancers are cut off from the wagons. The wagon guards try to form a line, but in vain. On their nimble ponies, Shivaji’s soldiers dart toward them and dash away, attacking with lance and sword, and deadly arrows. Each time they leave a few more dead behind, then they circle and attack again.

  Hanuman begins to shout orders. All the wagon guards have fallen; most are dead. Riderless horses trample the bodies of the living and the dead alike. “Archers, archers!” Hanuman bellows. “Form a line!”

  Less than three minutes have passed. The Marathi archers fire a rain of arrows. Lakshman, his lance bloody, is the first to reach a wagon. He heaves aside the canvas cover and exposes a dozen sacks. Dropping his lance, he slashes of the top of one with his serpent dagger and peers inside.

  “Sand!” he screams, in a voice so loud that the others stop and look at him. He lifts the sack and pours its contents out in a brown cascade. He tries another and another. “Nothing but sand!” He runs down toward the rear of the convoy. Shivaji is trying to organize a rear guard against the fleeing Bijapuri archers. Lakshman reaches Shivaji and grabs him by the shoulder
. “There’s nothing here but goddamned sand! We attacked the wrong convoy!”

  Shivaji looks at Lakshman for a moment, then tries to turn away, but Lakshman will not let him. He spins him around again, swinging his dagger toward Shivaji’s face. Shivaji is fast enough to block the blow: with the hilt of his gauntlet sword Shivaji cracks Lakshman against the ear.

  When Lakshman lifts his head, his ear is ringing so badly he can see the pain. He staggers to his feet and stares at Shivaji, trying to decide if he should drive his dagger in the bastard’s back. But he does not. He growls and lurches back down the road.

  In his pain, Lakshman sees the situation with icy clarity. All around is chaos and disaster. To the east, Shivaji is screaming at bowmen who are pelting the retreating Bijapuris with showers of arrows. But they’re quickly running short of arrows. When they run out, Lakshman thinks, the Bijapuris will regroup. They outnumber us, and we’ll all die.

  Hanuman’s men are firing arrows at any of the Bijapuri lancers foolish enough to attack. The lancers die by ones and twos, but there are hundreds of them. It’s only a matter of moments before the lancers regroup and try an all-out assault, Lakshman thinks.

  A cannon shot echoes through the pass. Lakshman turns to see that Shivaji has aimed a couple of cannon at the fleeing archers. A cluster of shot whistles mere inches over his head, over the wagons and riders, over the heads of Hanuman and his Marathi men. Then Lakshman hears the screams of the Bijapuris on the other side.

  As the echo of the cannon’s roar fades, an awful silence rings in Lakshman’s ears. “Why are your handth empty?” he hears a voice whisper, a woman’s voice.

  Lakshman spins around, trying to find the source of the whisper. “Do you not thee that hammer?” the voice lisps again. Near his feet he spies a Bijapuri battle hammer and picks it up, threading his hand through the heavy leather thong.

  “Thtrike him,” says the voice. Lakshman sees a few feet away a Bijapuri gasping in agony, trapped beneath his broken, dying horse. “Thtrike him!” the lisping voice insists, and now of course, he knows whose voice he hears, and why it lisps. He sees the wide-eyed terror of the Bijapuri as the iron hammer falls. His head implodes with a wet thwack.

  Lakshman looks down at the hammer lodged in the Bijapuri’s skull, the Bijapuri’s twisted, broken face, the blood and brain splattered on his pants. “What have I done?” he asks himself. He tugs the hammer free and staggers forward, self-loathing growing in his chest. In an agony of anger, he swings the hammer around his head once more, and smacks it viciously into the side of an overturned wagon.

  The hammer splinters the wood with a loud crack. As Lakshman wrenches it free, he sees a glint of brightness. His eye widens, and he begins to batter the wood, again and again. Chips and splinters fly in all directions as the boards fragment under his blows. And then it spills out, looking almost a liquid; a river of golden coins flowing from the hammer hole, forming a puddle around Lakshman’s feet.

  It takes Lakshman a moment to realize what’s happened, a moment, but no more. Then he falls to his knees and begins to shovel coins into his pockets, laughing, rubbing them on his face like cool water. “Hey, Shahu!” he yells. “I found it! They hid it in the wagon sides!”

  His shouts can barely be heard over the clamor of the battle. But soon Marathis all around him are leaping off their horses, tearing at the wagon sides with lances and swords, battering them with maces and bare hands. A pond of gold spills from the wagon. The Marathis scoop up the coins. Emptying the sacks of sand, they fill them with treasure.

  CHAPTER 22

  Word reached Bijapur in the middle of the night: A lone horseman, exhausted, covered with ash and mud after riding from the Vyasa Pass, carried the tale.

  The story swept through the city like a fire. By dawn the nobles had gathered at the palace.

  Gongs and trumpets blare; the dais door opens. The sultana appears, like a green tent gliding over the marble dais to the silver throne. Behind her comes the bony old eunuch Whisper, guiding the heir, still yawning, to a place beside his mother.

  “He’s coming,” Wali Khan announces, lifting his silver-headed staff.

  The throng of nobles grows quiet. The rear door of the Diwan-i-Am bangs open, its echo booming from the marble dome above.

  Afzul Khan strides in, shoving General Shahji before him. His hands are bound, and he staggers drunkenly as Afzul Khan thrusts Shahji forward with his huge, hamlike hands. The nobles open a path, wincing as they see the bruises on Shahji’s face. Shahji stumbles in gracelessly; lurching into a cluster of sneering nobles, and falling to his knees.

  “I have brought the traitor as I promised, madam,” Afzul Khan growls, and the room explodes in cries for vengeance. Wali Khan raps his silver-headed staff against the dais steps. The roar’s echo lingers.

  Shahji, facedown on the cold marble floor, hears but cannot see Wali Khan descending from the dais. “Surely this treatment is unnecessary, General Khan,” he says hoarsely.

  Grabbing Shahji’s collar, Afzul Khan lifts him effortlessly from the floor. “How should a villain be treated, O Wise Vizier?” Afzul Khan snarls. He lets go, and Shahji’s face smacks the floor.

  “He is the queen’s commander,” Wali Khan says feebly, and again is greeted by furious shouts.

  “That was a mistake, O Grand Vizier,” says Afzul Khan, “but one which can be remedied.”

  “Let him speak,” says the sultana’s muffled voice. But Afzul Khan doesn’t move.

  Then Whisper, thin as a dry, old reed, comes to his mistress’s side. There’s something unnerving in his look. Afzul Khan slowly lifts his foot from Shahji’s head. As he steps away, his heel clips Shahji’s ribs, as if by mistake. Shahji’s body lifts up, and then flops to the floor with a thud.

  “Well?” the sultana says after long, uncomfortable wait.

  Shahji lifts his head. “I have done no wrong. I have in all things done my duty.”

  The nobles groan in protest, bravely shaking their fists. Wali Khan bangs his staff for silence. “There is the matter of your son, commander …,” the vizier says.

  “I know him not,” Shahji growls. The nobles cry out. Some pretend to tear their exquisite, fragile garments.

  “You know him, liar,” Afzul Khan bellows. “He is your puppet, that is clear. You have played us false, traitor!”

  “Madam, I beg you …,” Shahji whispers.

  Surely she cannot hear him in the midst of all those voices, but she lifts her hand, hidden under the tent of her robes. “The queen will speak! The queen will speak!” rasps Whisper. Only when Afzul Khan raises his huge arms does the crowd grow quiet.

  “We know your son, commander,” says the queen. “First he stole our forts. But now he takes our very blood, commander! He has stolen the year’s allotment! We are ruined!” Her words mingle with the shouts of the assembled nobles until Afzul Khan again signs for silence.

  “This is Shivaji’s evil, not mine, madam. I begged you to attack him.”

  “That was all talk, fool! You should have acted!” bellows Afzul Khan. He appeals to the queen. “Are we to think that foolish child has acted alone? Achieved success by luck alone? No one is that lucky! It is obvious who assisted him!” Afzul Khan kicks Shahji so savagely his body flips over like a sack of sand.

  “This is not true,” gasps Shahji. Blood stains his teeth.

  Afzul Khan is set to strike again, when the sultana cries out “Stop! What good does it do to kick him, general?”

  Then Afzul Khan lifts his chin ever so slightly toward the dais, ever so slightly nods. The boy playing at his mother’s feet sees his uncle’s nod. Instantly he stands. “Silence, silence!” Afzul Khan calls out. “The heir would speak!”

  “The heir is but a boy!” Wali Khan protests.

  “We’ve heard enough from the son of this traitor,” Afzul Khan sneers. “Let us hear what the son of our sultan may say.”

  Though the sultana reaches out to stop him, her little boy moves to the silver r
ail.

  “Let him be sealed, uncle,” the boy’s thin voice pipes.

  “What did he say?” bellows Afzul Khan dramatically, holding out his arms to the other nobles.

  “I said, let him be sealed!” shouts the boy.

  “Let him be sealed!” Afzul Khan howls. “Let him be sealed!” Soon all the nobles take up the cry. The boy sultan slips beneath the silver rail to stand near Afzul Khan, his upturned face shining.

  “What has he done to deserve this? Who will be next, Afzul Khan?” the vizier calls out. But the mob of nobles is already on the move.

  “No!” Shahji cries as Afzul Khan hauls him to his feet. “No!” he screams again as Afzul Khan drags him from the audience hall.

  The boy sultan, laughing and pointing, chases along behind. The noblemen follow after them like yapping dogs.

  The alcove has walls of dark brick and a moldy smell, for there are only shadows here. Manacles black and heavy hang from bolts embedded in the walls. Afzul Khan fits these over Shahji’s wrists.

  “You shall be sealed, traitor,” Afzul Khan intones. “We shall send letters to Shivaji. If he wants to save you, let him come here. Let him bring our gold. Or I shall go and take it from him. With these hands, I swear it!” He turns back to Shahji with a sneer. “Your son shall decide, general. I shall be happy either way.”

  “Will he be sealed, now, uncle?” the boy sultan asks, his small hand reaching into Afzul Khan’s huge fist.

  Afzul Khan looks down fondly. “Yes, sealed, but slowly, little one. One brick an hour. You will watch him die. Find the mason,” he snarls to a nearby guard. “Make sure the bricks are large.”

  “Have you seen Shivaji?” Hanuman asks, walking to Bala’s room. Trelochan shakes his head.

  Everyone wants to see Shivaji. But in the three days since he has returned to Poona, bringing with him in triumph the Kalyan allotment, Shivaji has scarcely showed his face. “Maybe he’s with Sai Bai,” Trelochan suggests. “Do you think he’s all right, Hanuman? He seemed very distraught at the funerals, don’t you think?”