Land of Hope and Glory

by Geoffrey Wilson

  Finally, one day in the middle of winter with rain pelting down the outside of the tent, the image became whole and focused in his mind and it suddenly blinded him with light.

  Jhala beamed as Jack opened his eyes. ‘You are now a siddha,’ he said. ‘And also my disciple.’

  Jack felt a surge of pride and bowed low before his master . . .

  But now he found himself flinching at the memory, as if at a raw wound. He tried to sweep thoughts of his old guru aside – they were only distracting him.

  He had to focus on the present, on the task at hand.

  He’d been able to recall the yantra, but would he be able to use it?

  He scratched out the yantra he’d carved in the ground, shut his eyes and straightened his back into the correct posture for meditation. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in a strong stream. He would have to make do with whatever he found about him.

  ‘Your mind is like a rippling pool.’

  The drill sergeant, Jhala, all the yogins repeated this phrase. And it was true. The mind danced and jumped and wouldn’t settle. You could only tame it through yoga.

  The horses about him muttered and shifted. The wind picked up and the timber building creaked.

  He relaxed his muscles and his hearbeat slowed . . . beat after beat . . .

  A stillness settled over him like snow.

  He brought the yantra to his mind and it glowed white on a black background. He tried to hold it still, but his mind’s eye latched on to the upper-left quarter. Each time he pulled his mind’s eye back, his focus clicked back to the upper left.

  After a frustrating few minutes, he finally got the yantra in place. But then a memory of Elizabeth as a child appeared in his head. She was running across a meadow towards him, sunlight washing over her pale skin and her dark hair floating behind her.

  He wrenched his thoughts back to the yantra, but now further memories flooded his mind . . .

  Katelin on her deathbed, blonde hair lank and her weak hand reaching up to him . . .

  Jhala in the gazebo, telling him Elizabeth was due to be executed . . .

  Then the boom of artillery and a flash like sheet lightning. A grey, sodden plain, pocked with shell craters and churned mud and soldiers who lay screaming as they died. The Battle of Ragusa – the Slav War. It had never left him.

  Boom.

  He was running across that plain with the rest of his battalion. William was beside him and Captain Jhala was up ahead with his scimitar raised and glinting in the early morning light. Ahead of them rose an immense earth wall, more than twenty feet high. Their objective was to get over it before the Slavs could butcher them all.

  The wall erupted with gunfire – bright gobbets of flame and bulbs of smoke and a rumble that reverberated across the countryside. Round shot whistled and grape shrieked. A sergeant beside Jack jolted as his chest exploded in a mist of red. A private’s head was knocked straight off by a ball.

  Jack’s breath shortened and his lungs burnt. He had to keep running. The air was so thick with hissing shot he was amazed he hadn’t been hit. He heard someone roaring and then realised it was himself.

  Boom.

  He was falling into the ditch at the base of the wall. Slavs fired down with muskets and the bullets shredded the mud like hail. A writhing mass of the wounded and dying lay at the bottom. He fell amongst the bodies, hearing bellows and screams and shouts. For a moment he was smothered and suffocated by other men tumbling in after him, but then he pulled himself free.

  He caught a glimpse of the ladder men, already in the ditch and raising their ladders against the wall. He struggled to his feet, standing on hands and arms and legs, many still moving. Powder smoke stung his eyes and musket balls whined in his ears. He grasped the nearest ladder and joined the swarm of men rushing up the rungs, wondering now where the hell William had got to.

  Boom.

  He was on the wall and jabbing with his knife-musket at a Slav. The blade slid through cloth and skin and his opponent glared at him with blood bubbling in his mouth.

  Boom.

  He was on the ground on the far side of the wall. A Slav had kicked him in the head and the world now rang and whirled about him as if he were clutching a maypole. Jhala lay beside him, wounded in the shoulder by a musket ball, his breath shivery.

  As Jack tried to sit up, he sensed someone standing nearby. A Slav pointed a musket at him and smiled with yellow teeth. Jack had no weapon – he’d lost his musket when he’d fallen. Jhala was unable to move, although still alive. The battle continued, but in this one spot everything seemed calm. The Slav’s finger rested on the trigger. The musket was fully cocked. Jack shut his eyes. Soon, it would come soon. Now . . .

  A tearing shout. He opened his eyes. William burst through the powder smoke and smacked into the Slav. Time moved forward again. The two men fell and tussled. William had a dagger out in a second, jabbed, missed, jabbed again and caught the Slav in the stomach. The Slav released his grip and his face contorted. William shifted his grip on the dagger, then plunged it into the man’s chest. The Slav fell forward and flapped about like a caught fish.

  William stood over Jack, grinning as he wiped his dagger on his tunic.

  Jhala moved, moaned softly. ‘Well done, Private Merton. Well done.’

  Boom . . .

  Jack flung his eyes open. The dark stables swirled about him. He could hardly breathe, pain stabbed his chest and his heart was beating so frantically he was sure it would stop at any moment.

  He rasped down some air, but his heart still thrashed within his ribs. He took a few deep breaths. And finally his heartbeat eased.

  He sighed and rolled on to his back, lying in the musky darkness, panting heavily. The pain in his chest subsided to a dull ache and he wiped the sweat from his forehead with his shaking arm.

  He hadn’t been able to hold the yantra still in his mind, but he’d got close for a split second, and that had been enough to make his wound blossom.

  That was a bad sign.

  He took a deep, ragged breath. It was going to be difficult to use his power. And if he couldn’t do that, he couldn’t track William.

  And Elizabeth would die.

  5

  ‘How much further?’ Sengar was sitting on his horse and scouring the hills and forests rolling away in all directions.

  They’d been riding since sunrise along a goat track that meandered unevenly across the downs. Now it was mid-morning, clear and hot, and they still hadn’t reached the railway line.

  ‘Not far now, sir.’ The guide, a hunched man with wide eyes and long oily hair, was riding an old mule that could manage little more than a trot.

  Sengar sucked on his teeth and examined his pocket watch. ‘You said that an hour ago.’ He was converting to European time.

  ‘Yes, sir. This way.’

  The guide nudged his mule forward. Sengar, clenching his reins until his knuckles whitened, followed, with his batman and Kansal just behind.

  Jack rode ahead of the cavalrymen and he could hear Sergeant Lefevre muttering in one of the French dialects, none of which he’d ever been able to understand.

  The countryside had become progressively wilder the further they’d travelled from Pentridge. Jack had seen few signs of habitation and the forests swelled unchecked over the slopes. Deer watched from within the trees and the open ground was clotted with gorse.

  His thoughts whirled. He tried to convince himself that when the time came he would find a way to use his power, but he knew it would be difficult. He’d slept badly again, but he hardly noticed the tiredness as a wiry alertness had overtaken him.

  After half an hour, they skidded and slipped down an escarpment thick with trees and finally came out at the train line. The tracks glinted and slid away between the heavily wooded slopes of a gully. Trees had been felled to clear the way, but that must have been several years ago as branches were starting to reach out towards the tracks again. Clumps of grass bubbled between the wooden sleepers.<
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  ‘Up that way.’ The guide pointed north-west along the line.

  ‘Where exactly?’ Sengar asked. ‘Show us.’

  The guide nodded and led them along the tracks.

  Trees swarmed down both sides of the gully: birches, elms, oaks, all bedecked with vines. Jack heard the hum of bees and the liquid tinkle of birds. He tried to adjust to tracker-thinking. He had to both expand and sharpen his focus, reading the movement of leaves, the sudden burst of silence from the birds, the faint scents that tinted the air. The world thrummed with signs and markings and portents and he had to be alert to them all.

  Faintly, he smelt sattva. The train line, as usual, followed a strong stream.

  The guide stopped at a point where a cutting formed a wall of earth, brambles and tree roots to the right of the tracks. He pointed at the train line without saying anything.

  Jack rode forward until he was beside Sengar. The tracks were undamaged, but streaks of soot, coal and fragments of metal radiated out in a wide circle across the bottom of the gully.

  The sun beat down and Jack felt sweat trickle beneath his tunic. Could he bring himself to track William? Would he even be able to do it?

  ‘Well?’ Sengar asked.

  Jack ignored the Captain and climbed off his horse. He crouched and studied the ground. The black marks from the explosion were far darker and thicker to the left side of the tracks – the bomb had clearly been thrown from that direction.

  He trod lightly away from the line, but at first saw nothing. It was the worst time to be tracking – the sun was high overhead and the shadows were short, making any prints difficult to spot. But finally, as he scanned the surroundings, he noticed an indentation in the grass around ten feet away. He approached this slowly, as if it were a venomous snake – he didn’t want to disturb any other signs that could be near to it. As he came closer he made out the half-moon curve of a horse’s hoof print.

  ‘Sir,’ the guide said behind him. ‘If you don’t mind, I should be getting back to Pentridge.’

  ‘You’ll go nowhere,’ Sengar said. ‘Even once we find the trail we’ll still need a guide.’

  The guide was silent for a moment. ‘I’d like to help, but I was told only to lead you to this place. I need to get back.’

  ‘You’ll stay where you are.’

  The guide’s mule spluttered. Jack stood and looked back. The guide licked his lips, his gaze shifting from Sengar to the cavalrymen, who stared back, cold and impassive.

  ‘Carry on, Casey,’ Sengar said.

  Jack went to continue but stopped as the guide began fumbling about in his tunic. It took Jack a second to realise what was happening. The guide tore out a pistol and, with his eyes bulging, fired at Sengar. The weapon gave an echoing crackle – it sounded almost too loud for a pistol – and a glob of smoke emerged. The guide’s hand was flung back: the firearm seemed to have kicked harder than he’d expected.

  Sengar’s horse reared up on its hind legs and gave a high-pitched squeal. The Captain gripped the reins and tried to control the animal, but so far as Jack could see he hadn’t been hit.

  The cavalrymen wrenched out their pistols as the guide lined up another shot. The guide pulled the trigger and the hammer clicked down—

  Nothing happened. The pistol must have fired off all its rounds at once.

  Lefevre roared and the cavalrymen spattered a volley at the guide. The guide jerked as he was hit and the mule screamed, rolled its eyes and fell with its legs twitching, bright wounds along its side.

  The guide lay trapped under the mule, injured but not yet dead, straining to free himself with hands streaked with blood.

  ‘Hold your fire,’ Sengar shouted as the French prepared to shoot again. He’d regained control of his horse, but his eyes simmered and his moustache was stretched thinly.

  The cavalrymen lowered their weapons. But a second later Jack heard the pop of a musket and a chime near to him as a bullet hit a rail. More pops followed and a patter of bullets through leaves. The ground puckered and rattled as the missiles struck.

  They’d been ambushed.

  The Frenchmen shouted and their horses danced beneath them. Smoke puffed from the trees covering the left side of the gully, but the undergrowth was too thick for Jack to see the attackers. Bullets whispered past him – evil sprites. He leapt over the tracks and fell against the wall of the cutting, between two tree roots, but this provided little protection.

  Damn Sengar for not giving him a weapon.

  The French fired blindly up the slope. Lefevre’s top lip curled into a snarl. Kansal tried to aim at something with his pistol. In a matter of seconds, five cavalrymen had thudded to the ground.

  Bullets sizzled into the earth wall near Jack’s head. He ducked down as far as he could. A tree root next to him was slashed open with a crack. His heart raced and his chest felt heavy.

  He caught a powerful waft of sattva. Why could he smell sattva so strongly?

  Sengar sat still on his horse, mouthing words silently, eyes closed. Suddenly the light in the gully went dim, as though cloud had passed before the sun. But when Jack looked up, the sun was still bright. Wind coursed through the trees, shaking branches and rippling leaves. The smell of sattva grew stronger. The French were unnerved and slowed the pace of their firing – perhaps even they could smell sattva now.

  Sengar took on a strange glow. Only it wasn’t a glow, but a sharpening of his appearance, as if he were coming into focus through a spyglass. He opened his eyes – they were diamond-bright. He held his right hand before him in a fist and the air just beyond it crinkled as in a mirage. The wind stopped. For a moment there was a sharp silence in the gully and everything seemed still. Then the wavering air formed into a twenty-foot globe and throbbed into orange flame. The fireball roared and boiled and the heat scoured Jack’s face. The cavalrymen’s horses reared and whinnied.

  Sattva-fire. Jack was sure.

  Sengar bellowed something, opened his hand and the flaming ball flew straight at the slope, slashed through the trees and exploded with a peal that flung Jack back against the cutting. Branches, clods of earth, soot and sparks shot upwards. Trees cracked open and shrivelled with flame. Black smoke billowed and swayed and soon hid most of the slope.

  Jack blinked dust from his eyes. The explosion had been as powerful as ten shells going off at once. Only a siddha could do something like that.

  ‘It must be the rebels. After them!’ Sengar leapt from his horse, drew his scimitar and charged into the smoke, his green turban bobbing for a second, then vanishing.

  The French gave a joint cry of ‘Allah is great!’, jumped to the ground and raced after the Captain, leaving behind a couple of men to guard the horses. Kansal followed, struggling to draw his scimitar, which seemed to have caught on something.

  Jack lurched up and stumbled across to the other side of the gully. His heart pulsed in his ears. He couldn’t see much through the smoke, but he could hear shouts and the crackle of muskets. He started up the tree-shrouded slope – he didn’t know why. Did he want to see if William was there? Did he think there was something he could do to save his friend?

  The smoke coiled thick within the forest and he couldn’t see more than a few feet before him. He had to cling to branches and bushes as he clambered up the steep incline. He slipped at one point and slid down a short distance on his knees before he got up and carried on. His chest was taut and the smoke was bitter in his throat. He could hear his own breathing, loud and ragged.

  He passed the edge of the smouldering crater left by the explosion. Trees lay dashed to the ground, their charred limbs stretching up like the masts of a shipwreck. Flames crackled and slithered about the perimeter.

  His wound quivered. He remembered the sattva-fire striking him in the chest and he hesitated for a second. Was he afraid?

  Then he heard shouting and shooting further up the scarp, and he took a breath and pressed on. A memory wasn’t going to stop him.

  A bullet smac
ked into a tree trunk next to him, ripping a hole in the bark. He dived behind some brambles and waited for a moment, listening. Nothing. Shocks of pain coursed across his chest. Darkness welled before his eyes and he fought to stop himself from passing out.

  Damn his injury.

  He coughed violently, wiped the dribble away from his mouth. He had to pull himself together.

  After a few minutes he climbed to his feet and peered over the brambles. The smoke had cleared a little and he could see the shifting lace of the undergrowth spread out across the forest floor. He waited for a minute more, and when nothing happened he stood up straight.

  There was a crunch nearby, a step on fallen leaves. He froze. Barely thirty feet away stood a man with a musket pointed straight at him. His heart juddered. The man wasn’t a Frenchman or a Rajthanan – no uniform.

  Jack prepared to jump for cover. But then – like a punch in the chest – he recognised the figure.

  It was William. A little older, of course, and with his head shaved, but unmistakeable.

  William’s face creased as he stared along the musket’s sights. Then he frowned and lowered the weapon. Puzzlement snaked across his forehead. He went to call out something, but was interrupted by a couple of pistol shots that sent bullets whistling through the woods to the left. He slid behind a tree.

  More pistol shots. Jack saw two Frenchmen leaping over shrubbery as they ran across the slope towards him.

  William stepped back further, looked at Jack, frowned again, then slipped into a patch of dense bushes and vines. In a second he’d vanished.

  ‘Where’d he go?’ one of the Frenchmen shouted.

  ‘That way.’ Jack pointed up the slope in a different direction from the one William had taken – he didn’t know why. It was instinctive. He couldn’t help but try to protect his friend, even as he was betraying him.

  As the French charged off in the wrong direction, Jack scrambled over to where William had disappeared. He spotted a set of broken twigs. Just beyond them was a footprint in the damp ground and then the obvious sign of brambles pushed aside. He started along the trail. Maybe if he could talk to William and explain, then . . .