“What’s that? Such an odd name for a military unit.”
“Couldn’t tell,” Mahesh shrugged. “I doubt any of those sahibs could either. None of them were part of it. They spoke of it like a rumour, but one that has existed in their community for centuries. Rather long for a baseless rumour to last, don’t you think? I also heard the mention of a name. Webster. A woman—they said ‘she.’ When you go back to England, maybe you can keep an eye out for these people?”
“A woman called Webster isn’t much to find one person in all of England,” Anjali smiled, weakly. “About the Strange Regiment—”
“Brigade.”
“—Brigade, well, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“I could only help you so far, I’m afraid,” said Mahesh, despair creeping into his voice. “You see, Anjali, I too think it’s best for you to go back to England. You have friends and professors there. I’ll be fine—the curse doesn’t care for me. I wish I could stay close to you, but I don’t have the means. I can no longer go back to work at the Auckland Hotel—it’s barely a mile from the Imperial Museum, sooner or later I’ll get identified. I’m not sure I should continue to live in Calcutta at all.”
“You should come back with me to Kishangarh.”
“And do what? Live as a servant at my father’s estate, clean his chamber pots every day?” Mahesh gave a bitter laugh.
“You’re his only remaining son,” Anjali protested. “Of the ones we know, anyway. You’re next in line for his title and estate.”
“I should be so lucky!” He laughed again. “Anjali, the next Maharaja of Kishangarh will be the man who marries you. That’s how royal lineage works.”
“I don’t think I’ll marry anyone. I won’t even live long enough to marry.”
“Sleep, Anjali,” Mahesh said softly, placing a cool hand over her eyes, closing them. “You’ve had a devastating day, you aren’t thinking straight. I will keep watch from this chair. In the morning, we’ll switch. We can plan for the future after we’ve had a couple of days’ rest.”
Anjali slept fitfully, dreaming of tigers and a woman’s voice threatening to return and kill her. The pain in her body congealed into fever; she woke up several times shaking, clutching the blanket, drifting back to sleep. When she finally awoke, it was noon. Mahesh was dozing in the chair next to her, dagger gripped close to his chest. She nudged him half-awake, directed him to the bed, and went downstairs to make a phone call home.
Sabarmati dai received the call at the palace in Kishangarh, and Anjali was immediately shaken awake by the volley of questions that were flung at her. “Anjali! Oh, God be thanked—where were you?! I kept calling Sujata’s house all night! They said you did not return home! You did not leave a message! What happened to you—?!”
“Oh, dai, don’t worry, I’m alive, I just woke up—let me catch my breath and I’ll tell you.” And then the suspicion hit. “Why did you call Sujata’s house at night?”
Sabarmati dai told her.
Anjali finished the conversation, replaced the phone, returned to their room, and shook Mahesh awake.
“We must leave for Kishangarh on the first available train,” she told him as he sat up, grumbling and rubbing his eyes. “You’re coming with me. I’m in no state to travel alone.”
“Anjali, I really don’t—”
“There are no more chamber pots to clean.”
He gaped at her, then slowly closed his mouth and said, “Oh.”
THE MAHARAJA OF Kishangarh had died of a heart attack in his sleep the night before, after being tormented by the same nightmare that had chased him for decades. In the empty palace, whose only other inhabitant was an old maidservant who slept in the servants’ quarters, the Maharaja had started screaming in the middle of the night, “She has returned! She has returned! She will kill Anjali too—she will end my line!”
The screams awoke the maidservant, but by the time she lit a lamp and dragged her aged body all the way to the Maharaja’s bedchamber, he had fallen quiet again. She checked and did not find a pulse, then went downstairs and phoned the local hospital for a doctor. By daybreak, everyone in Kishangarh had heard the news.
Like clockwork, Anjali performed the last rites for her father. There were only the three of them in the large, sprawling estate. Even the cooks, the cleaners, the construction men who were hired for the shraddh did not want to linger beyond the needful in their premises; all the guests who visited to pay their regards left immediately after they had eaten, politely declining to spend the night in the Phool Mahal’s many bedrooms.
When all was said and done, Anjali told Mahesh, “I will need an estate manager. My studies at Oxford are not yet complete, and you’ve told me yourself that I would be safer in England.”
Mahesh stared at his feet, shuffled them.
“No one else will accept my employ, Mahesh. I am a cursed woman. Your mother is a fine housekeeper, but I need someone who can speak and read English, manage accounts, execute our relationship with the British government. You can charge any salary you want—I don’t care for the inheritance anyway, I may not even live to enjoy it. Find yourself a wife, fill these dreary rooms with your family. Call yourself Mahesh Singh Rathore if you want. No one will be happier than me if you do. You’re the only family I have left in the world.”
Mahesh looked her straight in the eye—a gaze so hard that Anjali almost staggered. “Promise me you’ll find this Strange Brigade, and that Webster woman,” he said. “Promise me you’ll move heaven and earth until you find them—you won’t go down without a fight, won’t sink into despair and let this curse kill you. You will teach yourself everything you need. Only then will I agree to be your servant again.”
“Brother,” she said.
“Whatever,” he shrugged. “I’m not the one getting jumped by tigers out of random tapestries.”
Anjali’s face split into a grin. “I promise.”
WITH THOSE WORDS in her head and her newly acquired dagger sheathed and tucked underneath her overcoat, Anjali Singh Rathore stepped out of the airport in London a week later. It was a new year, and the world was about to change.
The Island Of Nightmares
Patrick Lofgren
THE CAVE ENTRANCE yawned wide, like a mouth emerging from beneath the skin of the earth to swallow the hunting party. Above it was a slab-faced cliff as high as Mt. Fuji with none of the peak’s grace, rising in stark answer to the jungle. Here the canopy ended: no more trees the size of battleships, spiders the size of tanks, endless violence invited by too much life living on top of itself. The cliff wall was clear and sterile.
Inside the cave the air sharpened. Water followed Lieutenant-Commander Hachirō Shimizu and his captors into the cave mouth, dropping through a cleft in the rock into some deeper trough where it guided them through the dark with its endless gurgling. Though there was no longer a sky above them, Hachirō felt his claustrophobia ease. The jungle canopy was a crueler mistress than any cave could be.
Though he was a prisoner, he was not bound. There was no need for it. Hachirō and his men had been disarmed, denied the opportunity to end their own lives honourably or to take the islanders with them into death. Escape offered only a slow and painful death at the hands of the jungle. A captor guided him on each side, propping him up with their shoulders, using their spears as crutches to make his weight easier to bear. One was black, the other white. Their teeth were filed to points, to better tear at raw flesh. Their eyes had a yellow, sickly, sheen. They were thin, though Hachirō knew they’d eaten recently.
There were twenty men in the hunting party, one beast of burden the size of a trolley car with bamboo gibbets woven into its shaggy, dirty fur, and a great lacertilian monster bound to a sledge. Hachirō’s men hung in the gibbets. Some were dead, their bodies slumped against the bamboo cages like bratty children made to wait too long; others still lived, by turns catatonic and submissive or howling against their fate. All of them were Hachirō’s men. All of the
m had looked to him, once, for guidance, for advice, for leadership. He was their commanding officer, had sailed with them for years. He’d dreamed of leading them to glory and instead he’d led them here, to die as food stock instead of samurai.
It was called the Island of Nightmares, and it was a land of myth. Many at High Command doubted the island even existed; and they were not fools for the belief. No ship had ever returned from the storm-wracked waters rumoured to conceal the island, between Vietnam and the Philippines. But if there was an island, and if that island could be occupied, then it would be a perfect staging ground for the invasion of Southeast Asia.
Hachirō had been a student of the Nanshinron all his life, and Japan had finally chosen that path, abandoning its foolish ambitions for the Siberian wastes. His great nation’s fleets were unleashed upon the world to begin the work of building the Co-Prosperity Sphere, of wresting the Pacific from colonial hands. European occupation had turned Asia into a cesspool, and Japan would be the divine wind that scraped their cloying grasp away. Asia would be the jewel it was always meant to be, with an Emperor to guide it.
The island had never been mapped and no ship had ever returned, but no ship sent before was a Fubuki-class destroyer, the most advanced warship afloat, besides maybe the carriers sliding out of Japanese shipyards even now. The Admiralty believed Hachirō could accomplish his mission, could return to civilization with the information needed to build a base on the island. He had believed it too. Now, just a week after landing, thoughts of Japan and Asia and conquest and glory all felt distant and foolish. He knew he would never see his home again; he would join the men in gibbets soon enough.
THE HUNTING PARTY travelled deeper into the cave and Hachirō felt with each step like he was being swallowed by a creature too great to comprehend. The heavy, shaggy beast pounded the rocky floor, a steady metronomic rhythm guiding the party deeper and deeper into the belly of the island.
As they walked, the men of the hunting party spoke in a harsh, alien language like nothing Hachirō had heard. Their skin ran the spectrum from obsidian to porcelain, and though they all bore the marks of the island’s cruelty, they clearly had no common origin. Their ancestors had no doubt shared Hachirō’s ambitions; their nations had dreamed of conquering not just the known world but the unknown. They were the lost and forgotten sailors of a thousand nations, who had, in their time, nursed the hubris that let them believe they would master the nightmare. They lived in a world of endless consumption, of man eating man, eating beast, eating man, eating insect, eating man in a vicious chain where nothing could live or grow or blossom.
The fates of these men, of their ancestors, made him sick with shame and fear. All of them had at one time thought they would do this great thing. Maybe they believed themselves at the centre of history, or exempt from the suffering that afflicted others, or maybe they’d simply been following orders. Whatever the case, they had all come to this island and their crews had died here, eaten either by the island’s titanic monsters or the descendants of their predecessors.
The party pushed deeper into the cave, leaving behind the sodden stench of the jungle and pressing into the cool, clean, sharp-scented air of the cave. Soon they lost the last daylight and lit torches. The fires painted ghosts on the cave ceiling, and as they travelled deeper into the chasm, the walls slowly fell away. The flickering light across the uneven stone grew more distant until, somewhere on the journey, the party became a star set adrift in the murky black.
They stopped at a sort of hovel and yoked the giant beast of burden on the edge of a subterranean lake where bioluminescent fish traced circles beneath the surface. The hunters bound Hachirō’s legs and stuffed his mouth with a filthy gag. He was placed on his knees next to one of the logs set as benches around a fire pit. Dirt caked his body and grit shifted under his knees and bored against his bone. He was disgusting, and the feeling of being tethered to such a wretched vessel sickened and saddened him.
The hunters left him kneeling as they fed the beast, bled the great lizard to keep it weak, and started a fire in the center of the pit.
He closed his eyes, letting exhaustion wrap its arms around him for a moment. When he opened them, the men and the beast and the lizard were gone. He was clean, still kneeling before the fire. All around him, the Milky Way carved the sky and the Earth. He had no sense of proportion or space. He could only feel the sharp gravel on his knees, the warmth of fire on his face.
A man approached from the gloomy distance. He wore a naval uniform, with brown leather boots and wraps tightly binding his shins to keep jungle water from seeping in. He didn’t carry his gun, but a sword hung in its scabbard from his waist. He approached and sat next to the lieutenant. In the light of the fire Hachirō could see it was Hara, a boy from Hamada barely old enough to enlist. He’d joined up, dreaming of sailing the open ocean, fighting serpents and ship-eating whales. He’d died first upon landing, of a snake bite that swelled his ankle into a soft, bloated mass. He’d died in sight of the beach and their ship.
The boy sat down next to Hachirō, looked him in the eye, wiped a tear from the lieutenant’s cheek.
“What do you have to cry about?” he asked.
Hachirō wanted to answer, but the gag in his mouth kept him from anything besides a mumble. This boy had trusted him and he’d failed. They’d dreamed of Empire and Hara died not in battle for a grand cause, but of an animal bite. It was simple and sad and humiliating.
Hara drew his blade and for a while the two of them sat and watched while the fire painted its steel surface. Hachirō hoped the moment would never end. Then Hara stood and Hachirō thought the boy might kill him, but instead the younger man cut his bonds and held the sword out for Hachirō to take. Hachirō lifted it, his hands shaking, though he couldn’t tell if it was from weakness or fear.
“Cut me down,” Hara told him. “You killed me already. Finish your work.”
“No,” Hachirō said. “No, I tried. I tried to help build something great.”
“You failed.”
“No!” Hachirō cried, and slashed at Hara with his sword. The boy crumbled with the blow, turning to dust and dispersing into the wind. His blade followed him, evaporating in Hachirō’s hands like a longing held too tightly.
“No, no, no!” Hachirō cried, and would have gone on crying; but he realized it wasn’t he who was screaming the words but someone else. Though they used his mouth, they did not have his voice, and their fear was an immediate, bodily thing he did not feel.
Hachirō woke, suddenly back on his knees, bound and gagged. The Milky Way remained for a moment, like the afterimage of a gunshot burned on the inside of an eyelid.
The hunters were pulling a man down from one of the gibbets, loosening the hempen ropes that tangled it to the beast and unlocking the cage. Hachirō couldn’t tell who the man was. Sickness and starvation and exhaustion rendered all his crew into husks of their former selves, robbed of individuality and spirit.
The islanders could have chosen someone else. They could have pulled down one of the sailors who had expired earlier in the day—they could have cooked one of the dead—but they didn’t just want a meal. They wanted something fresh and afraid.
When they brought the man closer to the fire, Hachirō recognized Kimura, a conscript assigned to his ship just a month before it left Japan. The man didn’t like the sea, threw up constantly and came to Hachirō every few days with a new transfer-request-form. Hachirō hadn’t liked him.
Now, they were removing his fingers, and Hachirō wished he’d taken Kimura’s requests seriously. Perhaps they could have left him at the last port. There might not have been time to replace him. The ship might have had one less man to lose.
The hunters sucked the fingers dry before placing them in a small metal basket over the fire. Then they slit the man’s throat, collecting his blood in a bucket before tying him to a stake and rolling his corpse over the fire. One of the men brought over a bag of rice and packed the grains i
nto bamboo shoots before filling them with water and setting them over the fire to cook. Hachirō began to retch, and one of the hunters undid his gag and removed him from the circle to empty the pathetic contents of his stomach away from their food.
The hunter didn’t bother replacing the gag when he brought Hachirō back, and Hachirō showed his appreciation by keeping quiet. They spoke in their strange, violent language, laughing and growling and making finger puppets as they told each other stories while their food cooked. Hachirō followed none of it, though at times he thought they spoke a word or two of Japanese.
When the meat was cooked they cut it from the body in thin strips and shovelled rice into bowls along with blood from both the man and the lizard. When all the rest had been fed, one of the hunters offered a bowl to Hachirō. He shook his head and the man removed the slice of flesh. Cannibalism aside, the hunter hadn’t polished the rice. It looked fat and soft and was a dirty flesh colour. He wouldn’t have eaten it in the most civilized circumstances.
The man shrugged as though he didn’t care whether Hachirō ate or starved, and gave the bowl to one of the others. The hunters brewed a thick broth and told stories around the fire deep into the night. Hachirō wondered what it was that allowed these men to take such pleasure in each other when they had just murdered and devoured a man. How was it their compassion for one another was not extended to his crew? Why had that line been drawn, between man and prey? What could he do to move where the line fell?
THEY WOKE HIM with water drawn from the lake, pouring it over him. The dirt that stuck to his face like a second skin softened, and he felt a momentary relief so strong he could almost weep. He felt like he’d been caged and was just now being allowed to stretch his limbs. The hunter poured clean water into his mouth, letting him drink slowly until the water skin was emptied. The party began to move on. Hachirō walked unaided for a while, until his bones softened and his muscles grew brittle again.
The True History of the Strange Brigade Page 18
