The Tiger's Prey

by Wilbur Smith

  He picked a loose piece of stone off the parapet and let it fall into the void below where they stood.

  ‘Ever since my grandfather started his war, the Mughals dismissed us as bandits. “Rats in the attic,” they called us. I have seen how rats, when they have nothing else to eat, will devour each other. Perhaps the Mughals were right, that’s what we are.’ He never once raised his voice or allowed any emotion to inflect it.

  ‘You triumphed over the mightiest empire in the world,’ Tom pointed out.

  ‘Have you ever seen a Mughal cavalryman?’ Shahuji did not wait for a response. ‘Their horses are the biggest and strongest mounts that exist. They are bred that way, for the weight of a cavalryman and his armour is immense. Our horses are small, light-footed beasts made for mountain paths and quick escapes. We never fought the Mughals in open battle. When they sent armies against us, we let them pass, and then harried their supply lines. When they besieged our fortresses, we let them in, then burned our crops and slaughtered our own livestock so that the occupiers would starve. That is how we wage war. Against a fortress such as Tiracola, we would smash ourselves to pieces.’

  ‘Have you no pity?’ Francis protested angrily. ‘My aunt has already suffered for weeks at the hands of those pirates. Would you leave her to die in that dungeon?’

  Shahuji gave him an impassive look. ‘As a boy I was sent as a hostage to the court of the Great Mughal. I lived my whole childhood there. Every morning for eighteen years, I woke wondering if my guards would cut me down; and every evening, I went to bed unsure if I would see another dawn.’

  ‘I did not know that,’ Francis dropped his gaze, chastened.

  ‘When I was eleven, the Great Mughal captured my father. My father refused to do homage, so the Mughal had him torn limb from limb by a pack of hunting dogs. He made me watch. Then he made me sit at his right hand at the celebratory banquet. So, you see, I know what it is to be a prisoner.’

  Francis mumbled an apology. Tom bowed his head in acknowledgement. Now he understood why Shahuji could discuss the ruin of his kingdom with such bloodless calm. Growing up a hostage, a sword always inches from his neck, he must have learned to bury his emotions so deep they might never come to the surface.

  ‘I do not ask for sympathy,’ Tom began.

  Shahuji said nothing, but his eyes flickered with impatience.

  ‘But I believe our interests have aligned.’

  Ana joined in the discussion, ‘The pirate Angria supports your aunt, and her son the pretender, in your civil war. If you are ever to unite your kingdom, you must destroy Angria first.’

  ‘My father wore out the Mughals. I will defeat Angria the same way – by attrition. Tiracola is impregnable.’

  Tom grunted with exasperation. ‘Every man I meet says that. Has anyone ever attacked it?’

  ‘No one who has lived to tell the tale,’ said Shahuji with the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Give me an army, and I will break open the fortress for you and for my family.’ Tom spoke flatly.

  ‘I have heard you are well-schooled in withstanding a siege. Are you so confident you can prosecute one as well?’

  Tom saw the look Shahuji gave him, and finally began to get a measure of the man. The siege of Brinjoan had been fought hundreds of miles away, in a distant kingdom and under a false name, yet Shahuji knew of it, and knew Tom had been there, though he had only arrived that morning. Tom could not help but be impressed.

  ‘Did you ever hear of another pirate named al-Auf?’ Tom asked.

  ‘The evil one,’ Shahuji translated effortlessly from the Arabic. Growing up at the Mughal court, he must have learned the language fluently. ‘I confess I have not.’

  ‘That is because he died many years ago. Until his death, he was the most feared pirate in the Indian Ocean. Even the mighty ships of the East India Company were not safe from him. He ravaged their trade from a great fort on the island of Flor de la Mar, defended with mighty batteries and a garrison of a thousand pirates. Men said that it was impregnable, too. But my father and I burned his fleet and broke open the fort. I myself severed al-Auf’s head from his shoulders.’

  It was the last battle Hal Courtney had fought. He had lost his legs in the explosion that blew open the gate, and soon gangrene had set into his wounds. But Tom did not mention that.

  Behind Shahuji, a ray of sun pierced the cloud and lit up the mist, like the glow of cannon fire in the smoke of battle. Tom looked at the rajah, but his smooth face gave nothing away.

  He seemed to reach some decision. He straightened, and called over Tom’s shoulder. Turning, Tom saw half a dozen retainers standing at the back of the balcony, though he was certain they had not been there earlier. The servants bowed, and gestured to Tom and his companions to follow them. Evidently, the interview had finished.

  ‘What did he say?’ Francis asked Ana, as they were escorted back inside the palace.

  ‘He announced he wishes to go hunting.’

  Francis stopped short in the corridor. ‘We came to make war, not hunt,’ he protested.

  ‘You do not understand,’ said Ana. ‘The one is preparation for the other. The rajah is considering your proposal, but he is allowing himself options. When he summons his lords for the hunt, they will bring their retainers, their captains, and their arms. He is assembling his army, without committing himself. Also, success in the hunt will be a good omen for battle.’

  ‘And if the hunt is unsuccessful?’

  Ana shrugged, ‘Let us pray that it is not.’

  Over the next few days, from where Shahuji lodged them in the palace, they watched dozens of bands of armed men climb the treacherous road up the mountainside. Soon the castle rang with the sounds of a great host, while the elephants trumpeted from their stables at the foot of the cliff, and the horses kicked up their heels and frolicked in their paddocks.

  Tom chaffed at the delay. Shahuji was a generous host: he sent them plentiful food and drink, served by beautiful attendants with inviting smiles. But the Courtneys were not allowed to leave the precincts of the palace. Tom sent the serving girls away and spent hours at the window, watching the legions assembling. When he tired of that, they played chess. Francis was a tolerable player, Tom had played since he was a child, so the main conflict was between him and Ana.

  ‘If only taking a castle were as easy in real life,’ she said, as she swept Tom’s rook off the board. The pieces were all carved from ivory, beautifully detailed, unlike any set Tom had ever played with previously. All the pieces were shaped like elephants or gods or common soldiers, with ever more elaborate distinctions of rank.

  Tom retaliated by attacking swiftly with his queen. In quick succession, he took two pawns, a bishop and her rook – then found his king isolated.

  ‘You play like an Englishman,’ said Ana, amused. ‘Like all the hat-wearers. You charge in, and do not fear for the consequences. The Indian way is to wait and be patient.’

  She picked up her knight, kissed it and took his queen with it.

  ‘Patience is so pathetic,’ Tom told her. His bishop slithered across the board into the square guarded by his knight, and brought her king under attack, leaving it with no avenue of escape.

  ‘Checkmate.’ He smiled at her.

  On the morning of the hunt, Shahuji’s attendants fetched them, and carried them on palanquins down the mountain, and some miles through the jungle to Shahuji’s hunting lodge, which was a many-storeyed pagoda set in a walled garden by a limpid lake.

  As boys, Tom and Francis had both been hunting and shooting on the High Weald estate. The routines were familiar: the gathering of the beaters, the blare of horns and the excitement that charged the air as the hunters assembled. However this was on a different scale to anything they had seen before. The beaters numbered in the hundreds. Musicians played trumpets and stringed instruments, and serving girls gave them cups of arak spiced with cinnamon, and trays of dates and almonds. Elephants stood placidly, munching the great bundles of leaves t
heir keepers fed them. They carried ornately decorated boxes mounted on their backs, which Ana told them were called howdahs.

  ‘That is how we will ride out,’ she said.

  Francis stared at the huge animals. ‘Is it safe?’

  ‘Considerably safer than coming eye to eye with a tiger,’ she assured him.

  The beaters, armed with sticks and small axes, trooped off into the forest. The others waited as the morning wore on. The musicians had stopped playing; the laughter and talk had lapsed to a few quiet conversations. The loudest sound was the elephants, masticating their leaves. All the hunters watched the forest, and listened expectantly.

  ‘Should we not mount up and chase the tiger?’ Francis wondered.

  Ana put this question to the rajah.

  ‘You cannot simply venture into the jungle and seek a tiger,’ he explained. ‘You must lure him out. My men have tethered water buffaloes at different places in the forest. When a tiger comes for the kill, they will inform us, and then we will go to that place.’

  Shahuji was in a happier mood that morning, more relaxed than he had been in the palace. Though he still bore himself with the same dignity, he could not hide his pleasure and excitement in the hunt. Tom could imagine how the freedom of the forest, the simple pursuit of man against beast, would appeal to a man who had spent more than half his life as a noble prisoner.

  Then a messenger ran in to the clearing in front of the lodge. He was drenched with sweat and panting for breath. He babbled out his message, and then he collapsed to his knees.

  Shahuji turned to his guests, his face lighting up with excitement. Already, the attendants were readying the elephants and guns, and making the final preparations.

  ‘The tiger has made his kill,’ they shouted to each other.

  Tom had shot more elephants than he could count, but this was the first time he had ridden on one. It was smaller than the great African elephants he was accustomed to, but still majestic: a big bull with a crimson caste-mark painted between his eyes that gave him a wise, almost human air. Out of habit, Tom found himself sizing up the tusks, and calculating how much they would fetch in Cape Town.

  The mahout, the driver, patted the elephant’s flank to make it kneel. Tom stepped onto the animal’s outstretched hind leg, then onto his haunch and finally into the howdah. A young boy clambered in carrying a pair of fine firelocks with silver chasing. Tom squinted down the barrel, and saw it was rifled for greater speed and accuracy.

  The mahout vaulted over the elephant’s head like an acrobat, settled on the neck and tucked his knees behind the beast’s ears. He barked a command in a high, lilting voice, and the elephant lumbered to his feet. Tom looked back and saw that Francis and Ana had climbed onto their own animals, while the Rajah led the way in a magnificent howdah with gilded woodwork and a cloth-of-gold awning.

  Tom soon got used to the elephant’s rolling gait as it stamped through the jungle. He marvelled at the animal’s ability. If a branch threatened to catch the howdah, the elephant would reach up with his trunk and snap it off. Sometimes, where the way became narrow, he pushed over whole trees to make a wider path. When the way became boggy, he lowered his head and felt the ground with his trunk for the safest footing.

  After a few miles, they crested a ridge and came down into a gully, formed by a dry river bed. They followed it another mile or so, winding through the jungle. In the mud and river sand, Tom read the tracks of many varieties of animals. Monkeys screeched from the trees; jungle fowl preened themselves at the river’s edge. A muster of peacocks flew low overhead, their necks gleaming brilliant sapphire-blue in the sunshine. The sight gave Tom a pang, as it reminded him forcefully of the jewel in the pommel of the Neptune sword.

  The rajah called a halt, at a place where a dry stream met the river bed. The elephants knelt, and the hunting party dismounted. Tom stretched his legs and looked around, scanning the undergrowth for any sign of their prey.

  Shahuji missed nothing. ‘Have you ever hunted the tiger before?’ he asked, through Ana.

  ‘I’ve hunted lions.’

  Shahuji nodded. ‘I have seen lions. The Great Mughal kept them for his pleasure at the court in Delhi. But the tiger is more dangerous. He is larger, stronger and fiercer. The lion hunts in packs, but the tiger hunts alone, so he must be stronger and more cunning. I have seen a tiger kill a buffalo and pick it up in her jaws like a cat carrying a mouse.’

  He saw the sceptical look on Tom’s face. ‘Once, in Delhi, the Mughal arranged a fight between a lion and a tiger. It was the talk of the palace: all the nobles arrived in great excitement to see such a contest. When the beasts were unleashed in the arena, every man was on his feet.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Francis.

  ‘The tiger killed the lion with a single swipe of his paw. His claw severed the artery in the neck, and he bled to death.’ Again, Tom saw Shahuji’s ghostly smile, the most emotion he ever permitted himself. ‘The emperor was furious. You have never seen so many disappointed amirs and jagirdars.’

  While he spoke, his attendants had unstrapped the royal howdah and unloaded it from the elephant’s back. They carried it between them to a tall tree, where they rigged ropes and hoisted it ten feet into the air, so that it came to rest on the outspread branches. They erected a ladder beside it.

  ‘This will be our machan,’ said Shahuji. ‘Our hide.’

  They climbed the ladder. The servants had rigged two howdahs side by side, one for Tom and Shahuji, and one for Francis and Ana. The gun-bearers and other servants perched in the branches behind them, all of them constantly scanning the jungle from their raised viewpoint.

  ‘The tiger likes to follow the water courses,’ Shahuji explained. He pointed to the place on the opposite bank where the stream joined the river. ‘If the beaters drive him correctly, he will come out there.’

  Tom began to understand why the hunt was such fine preparation for war. With over eight hundred men spread across miles of jungle, all hunting an unseen prey, communication was paramount. If one portion of the line moved too quickly or too slowly, it would create a gap for the tiger to slip through. If the tiger changed course, the whole line would have to wheel about. The understandings that developed, the practice in transmitting orders between the different commanders and manoeuvring the units, would be priceless in battle.

  The mahouts led the elephants away. ‘They will join the beaters,’ Shahuji explained. ‘They are trained to take branches in their trunks and clash them against the trees, to make a noise to frighten the tiger.’

  They settled down to wait. A symphony of birdsong rang through the forest. Insects buzzed about them and crawled over their skin. Tom stayed as still as possible. A nilgai, a small-horned antelope, grazed along the river bed. Tom sighted his gun on it, but did not waste the shot.

  ‘I have a previous history with Angria,’ Shahuji said suddenly. ‘Perhaps you know of it?’

  Tom shook his head.

  ‘Before Angria became a pirate, he was a captain in my navy. With the Mughals pressing us hard by land, the sea was our one refuge, vital for our supply and communication. Then, when we needed him most, Angria spied his opportunity. He mutinied, took his ships and crews, and overthrew our garrison on Tiracola. From there, he scoured the coast, seizing our fortresses and capturing our ships, while we were too hard-pressed by the Mughals to retaliate in strength. I can never forgive him, for in his greed, he nearly destroyed our kingdom, in order to make his own lawless empire of the sea.’

  Shahuji’s fingers drummed on the stock of his gun.

  ‘Yet, I was willing to forgive him. For the sake of the kingdom, I would have put aside our quarrel. I sent emissaries, under a banner of truce, to offer peace. Do you know what he did?’

  Even the memory made his face grow pale with anger.

  ‘He sent my men back. He had put out their eyes, and branded their foreheads with his sign. So deep, you could see the mark burned into the bone of their skulls. So deeply h
ad he burned them that their brains were damaged, and they were like little children again; unable to talk, and incontinent, so that they soiled their clothing.’

  Tom tried not to think of Sarah and Agnes in the hands of such a man.

  ‘It would gladden my heart to see Angria trampled by elephants,’ Shahuji went on, ‘as the Great Mughal sometimes executed his prisoners in Delhi. But I will be candid with you. You see me on a golden throne, amid hundreds of courtiers, and you think I am a great man.’

  He thumped his fist on his chest. ‘I am a great man. I have taken the sacred thread, and I am the Chhatrapati, the emperor of the Marathas. And yet …’ A mournful expression flitted across his face. ‘Beyond my palace, my power is not what it ought to be. In a civil war, every man’s loyalty is in play. If I attacked Tiracola, and failed, it would strike a mortal blow against my authority.’

  ‘Guy Courtney makes the same argument,’ said Francis. ‘He would rather men believed him to be strong, than risk his dignity proving it.’

  He spoke ardently, but Shahuji did not take offence. ‘When you are older, you will understand that the appearance of power is often more real than its substance.’

  ‘But if you have power, and do not use it, it is no power at all,’ said Tom.

  Shahuji did not answer. A new sound had penetrated the din of the jungle, a percussive clanking like a thousand blacksmiths hammering on their anvils. Tom wondered if it might be some unknown species of bird. Then, from Shahuji’s reaction, he realized it must be the beaters, tapping their axe heads to drive the tiger towards the machan. To Tom, it was merely noise, but from the way Shahuji listened he could see the rajah was following the sound precisely, working out exactly how the hunt was progressing.