The Tiger Warrior

6

Godavari River, India, 20 August 1879

Lieutenant John Howard, Royal Engineers, took off his pith helmet and wiped his brow. The sun was bearing down directly on the deck of the steamer now, and it was deuced hot. The brass helmet plate of the Queen’s Own Madras Sappers and Miners gleamed up at him, lovingly polished by his batman that morning. But it presented an excellent mark for a sharpshooter, and he rubbed his grimy palm into it, and then replaced the helmet on his head. He reached out to touch the metal casing of the paddlewheel, the last spot of shade along the side of the vessel, but the metal was like a furnace. A lump of coal rolled out from under an oilskin in front of him and he kicked it despondently. At least they had managed to get that dry. He had seen speckles of iron pyrites in the coal, and had remembered an alarming demonstration of spontaneous combustion in damp coal at the School of Military Engineering. It would have been a less than glorious end to his first field command, immolated on a sandbar in a godforsaken river gorge in the jungle of eastern India, without ever having fired a shot. He was beginning to realize that war was like that.

He watched a crocodile swim languidly by, seemingly oblivious to the drama unfolding at the river bend, then shifted to face the foredeck of the vessel, pulling his Sam Browne belt around so his holster was out of the way, and keeping his head below the iron plating they had erected as bullet-proofing in the river port at Rajahmundry. He glanced at the nameplate, Shamrock, then at his men. Kneeling behind the plating were a dozen Madrasi sappers, their cartridge pouches open and their Snider-Enfield rifles at the ready. Beyond them was the seven-pounder gun, with canisters of grapeshot and a sponging rod laid alongside. Colonel Rammell had urgently requested mountain pack guns for the mules but instead they had been sent two muzzle-loading field pieces with fixed carriages, useless in the jungle. At the last minute the sappers had installed one on the river steamer, and had devised a block and tackle to keep the recoil under control. Beyond the gun the lascar boatmen were still engaged in a futile effort to kedge the vessel off the sandbar which had held them fast for almost two days now. During the night another boat had come upriver, delivering a replacement officer and taking away some of the sappers broken by jungle fever, but every effort of the crewmen had failed to dislodge the steamer. That was another reason to pray for the return of the monsoon. With the river in full spate, they would float off and be able to continue their voyage upriver to Wuddagudem, where they were supposed to be hacking a road out of the jungle. Their mules were still standing patiently in the lee of the deckhouse, with racks of picks and axes stacked beside them. One of the lascars was there too, lying unconscious on a stretcher. His moans and cries had made the previous night intolerable. The afternoon before, the boatmen had taken the anchor out in the little boat and dropped it a hundred feet away, and the unfortunate lascar had been at the capstan when the hawser had broken and snapped back, mangling his legs. Surgeon Walker had dosed him with brandy and laudanum but there was nothing more he could do. The lascar had been their only casualty of the expedition so far, and Howard was too tired for another night like that. He fervently hoped the man would not last the day.

There was a lazy whine overhead, followed by a dull thump and a puff of smoke from the opposite shore. A copiously moustached figure walked into view from behind the deckhouse and planted himself firmly behind the line of riflemen, his hands behind his back and his heavy Adams revolver drawn. He turned toward Howard, and a bloodshot eye bore down on him from under the peak of his pith helmet.

“Shall we give them a volley, sir? Put the wind up them. Fucking savages.”

“Sergeant O’Connell. Might I remind you we are desired by government to open negotiations to induce the rebels to free the native constables they have taken captive.”

“Poppycock, sir, if I may say so.”

“You may. Meanwhile, hold your fire.”

The moustache twitched. “Very good, sir.”

Howard took out a brass and ivory pocket telescope from a pouch on his belt, raised his head slightly over the plating and peered through the telescope at the far bank. There were dozens of them now, streaming down from the village, lean, dark men clad in loincloths, some carrying bows and arrows and others long matchlock smoothbores. He could see that some were more extravagantly made up, their long hair combed and braided forward and embellished with red cloth and feathers. Some of them carried skin drums and brass trumpets. Along the foreshore clusters of men were digging pits in the sand and erecting three bamboo poles in a line against the edge of the jungle. They had lit large bonfires, and the swirling black smoke drifted over the river, obscuring the scene from the steamer. It was unsettling to view, flashes of activity revealed and then obscured in the smoke, impossible to discern the intent. At any moment they might pull out their canoes and mass for attack. Howard turned to the sergeant. “Their last fusillade was up in the air. There’s something odd going on over there. They’re right on the edge of the riverbank, as if they want us to see them, taunting us. If they start aiming at us, you can let fly. On my command. You understand?”

“Sir.” The sun-scorched face stared resolutely forward.

Howard looked out at the scene again. A week ago, washed by the rain, this had been a place of shimmering beauty, the great gorge of the Godavari snaking its way through hills of sparkling green, rising on either side five hundred feet or more, with the ridges and peaks of the Eastern Ghats beyond. But now, it was as if a heavy miasma had risen up from the river and choked the valleys in veils of mist. The river was a lifeline, the only place where the sun burned through, and everywhere else was cloaked, sinister. He could sense the fear and superstition of the spirit world, the hundred gods and demons these people believed lurked in the jungle. His first patrol ashore had deeply unnerved him, and it was not just the rebels waiting in ambush. There was something else there, something that had kept these dark places remote and impervious from the march of progress across the continent. He could understand why their native bearers from the coastal lowlands feared and despised this place, and refused to come with them beyond Rajahmundry. He took a deep breath and raised his eyeglass again toward the reed-roofed village that spread along the opposite riverbank, and the increasing throng of natives who swirled and danced around the fires on the sandy foreshore. He turned to the Indian officer beside him, a ferocious-looking Madrasi in a turban, with piercing dark eyes. He spoke to him in Hindi. “Jemadar, pass the word for Mr. Wauchope, would you?”

“Sahib.”

A few moments later a tall figure ambled out from the deckhouse, carrying a small open book in one hand. He wore dust-colored khaki, the new fad among officers fresh from the northwest frontier, and his puttees were bound with strips of colorful Afghan cloth. He was bareheaded and tanned, with a thick crop of black hair and a full beard. Howard had spoken to him briefly when he had arrived during the night with the reinforcements, hearing the latest news from Afghanistan, but Wauchope had promptly gone to sleep in what counted as the officers’ quarters under a mosquito net beside the deckhouse. Howard was looking forward to having another officer on deck, one who was famously unruffled, just what was needed to keep them all from becoming unhinged by the darkness and sorcery of this place.

Wauchope peered at the tumult on the opposite shore, pursed his lips, then nodded at Howard. He had sharp eyes, intense like the jemadar’s, but with humor in them. “I was looking for the saloon,” he said, with a pronounced drawl. “I have come to realize that this is not exactly a Mississippi River steamer.”

“I never understood why you left America, Robert.”

“My family is Irish, remember.” Wauchope slouched down beside the railing, and fished out a pipe. “Not poor Irish, but landowning Irish of English origin. My father moved us to America because he felt powerless during the famine, and could not bear to return afterward. We have a long tradition of soldiering. For me, it was either West Point or the Royal Military Academy. After having lived through the American Civil War as a boy, I never wanted the possibility of facing my brother on the field of battle.” He tapped his pipe. “I was inclined to seek my glory abroad.”

“I was here in India during the mutiny, you know,” Howard said. “A babe in arms. I don’t remember it and my mother never told me what I saw, but I used to have bad dreams. Not anymore.” He paused, then he gestured at the book. “What are you reading?”

Wauchope deftly struck a match with his other hand and lit his pipe, sucking on it as he flicked the match overboard. He raised the spine of the book toward Howard. “Arrian. The life of Alexander the Great. We found some ancient ruins up beyond the Indus, and I’m sure they’re Greek altars.”

“The frontier’s got you hooked, Robert.”

“I’ve put in for the Survey of India, you know. They’ve got a vacancy on the Boundary Commission. I was heading back from the Afghan campaign to tie up my affairs with the regiment in Bangalore when I was diverted here as a replacement.”

“We’ve been dropping like ninepins. Every officer who steps into the jungle is prostrate within a week. It’s the worst fever I’ve ever seen.”

“You seem to have survived it.”

“I was born here, remember? Any child who survives the Bengal summer is set for life.”

“Surgeon-Major Ross in Bangalore thinks it’s the mosquitoes.”

“Of course it is.” Howard swatted his neck, and peered up at the sky. Beyond the hills a black swathe of cloud had appeared, forked by distant lightning. “And we’re not safe from mosquitoes anymore on the river. The monsoon’s pushing them out over us like a pestilential blanket.”

“Pity.” Wauchope drew on his pipe, closing his book. “If you only allowed yourself to be struck down by the fever, you’d be invalided from here and then sent to Afghanistan. That’s where careers are being made. There’ll be no medals out of this place.”

“I’m detailed for the Khyber Field Force. They say the war there isn’t over yet. But I’ve wanted to be near Edward and Helen in Bangalore. Colonel Prendergast has been most understanding.”

“Ah.” Wauchope put his hand on Howard’s arm. “How is your little boy?”

Howard’s face fell. “He’s not good, Robert. He’s been sickly all year. You know what that can mean for an infant out here.”

Howard’s voice hoarsened. “I cherish him dearly. Poor Helen is beside herself.” He turned away, blinking hard, then knelt up again and peered over the plating. He passed his telescope to the other man. “See what you make of that.”

Wauchope glanced at Howard with concern, then peered through the glass at the foreshore. “Good Lord. There must be five hundred of them, maybe more.”

The scene had changed from a few moments earlier. There were now crowds of men milling around the bonfires, and there were gourds, the palm liquor flowing freely. The men with braided hair wielded swirling batons, now weaving them into spirals, now figures of eight and back again. Drums were being beaten, discordant, out of unison, then together in a monotonous beat. Suddenly an extraordinary apparition materialized out of the smoke. A dozen men appeared with extravagant headgear of bison horns, great curved horns that perched precariously on their heads. They wore tiger skins, and their faces were red with kumkum powder. As they came forward the air was rent with shrieking, so loud it set Howard’s teeth on edge. The men advanced in a line toward the riverbank, retreated, then advanced again, kneeling down and pawing the earth in imitation of fighting bulls.

“I believe they are invoking the bloodred god of battle, Manecksoroo,” Howard murmured. “Asking to turn battle axes into swords, bows and arrows into gunpowder and bullets.”

“They have real bulls too,” Wauchope said, passing the telescope over. Howard peered through, and grunted. “So that’s it.” He snapped shut the glass, then turned and leaned back against the railing. “Bull sacrifice. That’s what those pits are for. They mix the blood with grain and throw it into the forest clearings, to induce fertility of the soil. This could go on for hours, until they are stupefied with the toddy.”

“I thought sacrifice had been suppressed,” Wauchope said.

“Human sacrifice, yes, decades ago, but not animal sacrifice, though it’s discouraged.” Howard slumped, suddenly overwhelmed with lassitude. “This is what those idiots at the Board of Revenue don’t understand. I’ve brought Campbell’s book on the suppression of human sacrifice with me. You can read it yourself He says we can’t use morality to persuade a people to give up their age-old customs. Our morality means nothing to them. You have to show them that their life will be improved as a consequence. If you then take away their greatest pleasures, they will return to their old ways. We broke the cycle by showing them their land could be fertile without needing sacrifice. Now a stroke of the pen in Calcutta and it is all undone. It was all lurking just below the surface, just inside the jungle, but now they want us to see it. You can hardly blame them.”

“Tell me about these people.”

“They’re Koya,” Howard said. “Descendants of the ancient Dravidian inhabitants of India, here at the time of Alexander the Great. But you couldn’t get a greater contrast to the civilization of the Mughals or the Sikhs. These people are more akin to your Red Indians. They hunt in the jungle and burn small clearings for crops. Hardly any of them have a notion of the world outside.”

“Maybe no bad thing,” Wauchope murmured, drawing on his pipe. “Do we have their language?”

“I possess a slight colloquial knowledge of the vocabulary. But we have our interpreter, who tells me about their customs.” Howard jerked his head toward a small, wiry man of indeterminate age sitting cross-legged on the foredeck, his skin deeply tanned and wearing only a white loincloth. His hair was dark brown, almost auburn, curly like his straggle of beard, and his face was wizened. In one hand he was holding a bow and arrows, and in the other a tubular section of bamboo about a foot long. His only embellishment was a gold chain hanging from the top of one ear to the lobe, with a small pendant dangling below. He was smoking a cheroot, and his eyes seemed dazed.

“He’s half-cut on palm wine,” Howard said. “It can’t be helped. It’s their lifeline during the monsoon. That’s what this rebellion is all about. How much did Colonel Rammell tell you?”

Wauchope shook his head. “I only had time to report my arrival at the field force headquarters in Dowlaishweram. The boat with the sapper reinforcements was already waiting to take me upriver. And Rammell and his adjutant were both prostrate with fever. Like almost all the other officers.”

Howard exhaled forcibly. “Well here’s the nub of it. If some imbecile on the Board of Revenue hadn’t decided to impose a tax on palm toddy, then we wouldn’t be here. That, and the native policemen. For months at a time the only outside presence among these people has been the constables, lowlanders the hill people despise. The British superintendent of police and the agency commissioner hardly ever come up here because of the jungle fever. The constables are free to intimidate and exploit the hill people as lowlanders always have done. And now that we need them, they’re worse than useless. Hardly a man of them can be got to smell gunpowder. The rebels’ first act was to capture half a dozen of them. It’s good riddance as far as I’m concerned.”

A ragged volley erupted from the riverbank, but no sound of bullets overhead. “Matchlocks again, Sergeant. Hold your fire.”

Wauchope peered over the metal plate at the smoke. “Where do they get their powder?”

“When I took my first party into the jungle last week, I searched a village and seized their guns, all matchlocks,” Howard replied. “The women were making saltpeter by urinating into bags of manure suspended over pans, and then letting the liquid that seeped out crystallize. Ingenious, really. They’re always burning jungle to open up new patches for cultivation so they have plenty of charcoal, and sulphur they get from traders. The powder’s pretty poor, but it’s good enough for small game. Some of them also get powder and ball from the lowland moneylenders who enslave them in debt. But I fear they now have a new source of weapons.”

A bullet smacked against the smokestack of the steamer, causing an almighty clang, followed by a sharper crack from the shore. “Speak of the devil.” Howard peered through his glass again. “An old East India Company percussion musket, native police issue. Some of the constables have supplied the rebels with arms and ammunition in return for their own safety. The police really are perfectly useless. They can be trusted to do nothing, they are disobedient and insubordinate. But Government wishes us to employ them. That’s what happens when a war is run by clerks in Calcutta. And there’s another problem. In the infantry regiments deployed in the field force, there are sepoy officers who still can’t use maps properly, even the rudimentary ones we’ve made of this place. Without a map and bearings you’re lost in the jungle. But all of our sappers are excellent map readers. So here we are, the Queen’s Own Sappers and Miners, employed as infantry and police. It really is a most lamentable state of affairs.”

“What’s the quality of the official maps?”

Howard snorted. “That’s the final rub. We’ve had to make them up as we go along. When Lieutenant George Everest came here in 1809 with the Great Trigonometric Survey, they hadn’t even set up their trig posts on the hills before they were all struck down by fever. Half of them perished, and Everest never came back. This place is a great black hole smack in the middle of India. It may as well be Baluchistan, or the depths of central Asia.” He glanced at the foredeck, and saw O’Connell glaring at him, his lower lip quivering. “Very well, Sergeant, bring your men to the ready. Another ball in our direction and you can open fire. First volley above their heads. Wait for my command.”

“Sir.” O’Connell instantly barked an order in Hindi and the line of rifles came up to the horizontal along the deck railing, followed by the clicks of hammers being pulled back to full-cock. O’Connell was positively chomping at the bit, breathing like a bull ready to charge.

“I had a look at your native fellow when I came on board.” Wauchope pointed his pipe at the man. “The pendant in his ear’s a Roman coin, you know. Do you remember when we were cadets, I took you to the coin room in the British Museum? It’s very worn, but I think it’s from the time of the Roman Republic, possibly Julius Caesar.”

“You come across them around Bangalore, and farther south,” Howard said. “Edward’s ayah has one, a gold coin. I’m told the Romans traded them for pepper.”

“Who is he, anyway, our Koya friend?” Wauchope angled his pipe again.

“He’s a muttadar, a local headman from Rampa, the village that gives its name to the district. He holds some kind of grudge against Chendrayya, the leader of the revolt. The muttadar acts from motives of self-interest. Once satisfied on that point, his time and labor have been most zealously and indefatigably given, when he’s been sober enough.” Howard lowered his voice. “He’s also a vezzugada, a sorcerer. The Koya know nothing of the Hindu religion. They worship deities of their own, ancient Dravidian gods, animistic gods and goddesses. Tigers, hyenas, buffalo. Sometimes the deities possess people, who are known then as the konda devata. Sacrifices are made to a dread deity called Ramaya. That hollow bamboo he’s holding supposedly contains some kind of idol, the supreme velpu. He calls it the Lakkala Ramu, and it’s rumored to be ornamented with eyes of olivine and lapis lazuli. He won’t show it to anyone. It’s supposed to be kept in a sacred cave, a shrine near Rampa village, to placate the deity. The muttadar took it from the shrine when he fled Chendrayya and came to us. But now the deity needs it back, and is apparently becoming agitated. Our side of the bargain is to help the muttadar replace it.”

“Will you keep your promise?”

“Of course. We need to instill fear among the rebels, and confidence among those who are well-disposed toward us.”

“Quite so.”

There was a sudden commotion and a curse, and a hatch into the hold opened behind them. An indescribable smell wafted out, followed by a burly man stripped to the waist except for a luridly stained apron. He was only a few years older than the two subalterns, the same age as Sergeant O’Connell, and like O’Connell sported the long sideburns fashionable among a previous generation.

“Surgeon Walker,” Howard said, looking at the man with concern. “How goes it in the black hole?”

“Most of the men have had repeated malarious attacks, and are in a very debilitated state.” Walker spoke with the hard consonants of his birthplace, Kingston in Upper Canada, and six years at the Queen’s University in Belfast. “There are serious after consequences-enlarged spleen, anemia, partial paralysis, extreme emaciation, disorders of the stomach and bowels, and other complaints of a grave nature. Many of the men are passing through the hot stage of a febrile paroxysm, and their sufferings and distress are painful to witness.”

“That vile odor?”

“Indeed. A singular putrid efflorescence.” Walker wiped something unpleasant off his hand onto his apron. “I’m here for a breath of fresh air. Is Lieutenant Hamilton back yet?”

Howard shook his head and pulled out his fob watch. “He’s been gone a full twenty-four hours now. He doesn’t have provisions for any longer.” He turned to Wauchope. “One of the muttadar’s men informed us that Chendrayya had been seen in Rampa village about five miles north of here. I sent Hamilton out with what remains of G Company, only 22 men. It was a risk, but we’ve rarely encountered the rebels in gangs of more than 10 or 20. Until now, that is.”

“Let’s hope Hamilton doesn’t walk into that lot,” Wauchope murmured, jerking his head toward the riverbank.

Howard grunted. “I just wish he hadn’t taken the infernal Bebbie with him.”

“Who?”

“Assistant commissioner for the Central Provinces.” Howard paused, trying to control his temper. “Because government in its wisdom decided that this is a police action, all of our forays into the tribal agency are supposed to be led by a civil officer. Some are decent fellows, fine shots. Mr. Bebbie is decidedly not one of those. He gave us a lecture before we set out. How climate will always prevent this being the seat of prosperous industry or great commercial enterprise. How the Koya are a degenerate race, sunk in the depths of ignorance and superstition. How it is his duty to teach them the value of a moral obligation, and our duty not to upbraid them with the past but to inaugurate them with a better future. His lecture was a magnificent display of language united to a grievous perversion of the facts. It failed to conceal the truth that he’s never bothered to come up here into his jurisdiction before and is permanently prostrate with fever. A more worthless specimen and perfectly useless leader of men I have not seen.”

“I’m sure Hamilton will keep him in his place,” Wauchope murmured with a smile, slouching back against the side of the boat and lighting his pipe again.

“Our muttadar is convinced that one of those men over there on the riverbank is Chendrayya, the rebel leader,” Howard said. “If so, Hamilton has been led into a vipers’ pit by Bebbie. I told Bebbie not to trust their guide, but Bebbie will not listen to God Almighty, let alone to a mere sapper subaltern.” Howard closed his eyes. Another musket ball smacked into the funnel. He opened his eyes, nodded at Sergeant O’Connell, and raised his left arm. Then, sensing a commotion on the river, he quickly peered through his glass again. “Hold your fire!” he shouted. “I think I see Hamilton.” They all followed his gaze. Half an hour earlier he had ordered the steamer’s boat out into the river ready to pick up the returning party, and now they could see the boat coming around a sandy bluff at the river bend, concealed from the village. The four lascar seamen were pulling like fury against the current. In the middle was a throng of Madrasi sappers with their bayonets fixed, and the pith helmet of a British officer was visible at the stern. Behind them on the sandy bluff, loinclothed men with long matchlocks began to materialize out of the jungle and they heard cries and a ragged crackle of musketry. White smoke rose where the rebels had been firing and joined the river mist, briefly concealing both the boat and the rebels. When the smoke cleared the rebels had gone from the bluff, and Howard caught a glimpse of the last of them running along the sandbank toward the throng below the village, brandishing their matchlocks and whooping and hollering. A few moments later the boat had pulled around to the protected lee side of the steamer. There was a clatter as the men disembarked and came on deck, immediately slumping down below the railing. They reeked of sweat and sulphur, and looked exhausted. Hamilton, the last on board, made his way over to where Howard and the others were standing. He took out his Adams revolver and swung out the cylinder, dropping the empty cartridge cases. His hands were shaking, and his face was streaked with the greasy residue of gunpowder. He looked drawn, but exuberant. He was the youngest subaltern on the Madras establishment, and this was his first taste of the sharp end of soldiering.

“We were camped for the night, deep in the jungle,” he panted, squatting down as he reloaded the revolver. His voice was hoarse, and he took a few deep breaths to control it. “We were told by our guide that a gang of a hundred rebels was at a nearby village. We marched at three a.m. to surprise them at dawn. Our guide brought us out into a small clearing in front of the village, where we were spotted. He disappeared and we never saw him again. A shot was fired at us, followed by five or six in quick succession. I got the men into skirmishing order and opened fire on the rebels; they quickly retreated into the jungle. Once there, the rebels, knowing their way about, had a decided advantage on us. If only they’d stand and fight in the open, we could put down this rebellion in a week.”

“This happens every time we try to engage them,” Howard murmured to Wauchope. “Go on.”

“We were getting short on ammunition. They were trying to draw us deeper into the jungle. I decided to retreat, and after a lull they followed, keeping up a hot fire on us all the way. Sometimes they were visible as they flitted from tree to tree, and we were able to pick a few off Twice I halted the sappers and confronted the attackers with heavy fire, but they always took refuge behind trees. Altogether we expended over a thousand rounds, but we accounted for only ten of the enemy for certain. Frequently the rebels have been encountered in this way, and got off with small losses in killed and wounded. I think, if our men had used buckshot cartridges, the effect would have been greater.”

Howard nodded. “Very well. Put it in your report.”

“What’s the butcher’s bill?” Walker asked.

“Their matchlocks don’t have much power beyond about fifty yards. One of the sappers has a ball embedded in his skull.”

“Let’s be having him then.” Walker gave a ghoulish grin and rolled open a pouch of forceps and pliers from his belt, taking out the largest and wiping it on his apron. “A real wound after that stinking mess below.”

Hamilton pointed to one of the sappers with a bloody bandage around his head and Walker got up. Hamilton then turned back to Howard and Wauchope, his eyes gleaming feverishly. “We did score one small victory though.” He nodded at the sapper standing behind him, who dropped a burlap bag containing something heavy at Howard’s feet. “Tamman Dora. We shot him in the village yesterday. One of the sappers is a Ghurka and has a kukri knife. Here’s the proof.”

“Good God, man.” Wauchope recoiled, holding his nose. “It stinks like rotten meat. Get rid of it.”

Hamilton kicked the bag aside, then squatted down, looking at them intently. “Apparently he was one of the rebel leaders. This could be just what we need. Show that lot we mean business.” He jerked his head toward the riverbank.

“Who told you he was a rebel leader?” Howard said quietly. “Your guide?”

“He was convinced of it. And the man put up a hell of a fight. I emptied my revolver into him and he still kept coming.”

“You mean the guide who led you into an ambush? Couldn’t he just have been using you to settle some old score?”

Hamilton glanced at the bag and then back at Howard, flustered. “Someone else can confirm the identification. Your muttadar”

“You’ll be lucky if there’s anything identifiable in that bag now,” Wauchope said.

“I maintain that we have killed a rebel leader,” Hamilton insisted, urgently now.

“Very well,” Howard said, pursing his lips. “You must write an account to go in my report to Colonel Rammell, when we finally get off this wretched sandbank.” He paused, looking at the sappers, then looked back at the empty boat. “I’ve just realized. Someone’s missing. Where’s Bebbie?”

“I was coming to that. Struck down by cholera.”

“Alive?”

“Just. You know how quickly it can take a man. He was prostrate by the time we reached a place to hold out near Rampa village. Then the most curious thing happened. He picked up a Koya arrow and managed to cut himself We thought he’d be done for. But the arrow had some kind of paste on it, not the usual poison. Apparently they prick themselves with it. Within half an hour he was on his feet again. We’ve all noticed that the natives seem immune to the worst depredations of the fever. But by late evening the effect wore off, and he became delirious. When we marched on the rebels he insisted on staying at Rampa. He wanted to parley with the village headmen. I left four sappers with him and a promise to return. It was all I could do.”

“Confound the man,” Howard muttered angrily. “If only he’d parleyed with these people six months ago, none of this would have happened.” He looked at Hamilton. “You’ll have to go back. I won’t leave any of our sappers out there. Have your havildar break out another ammunition box and get your men some water.”

“Done.” Hamilton nodded to his havildar, who had understood and immediately marched off.

“Now’s the time to go, if you have to,” Wauchope said languidly, angling his pipe toward the riverbank. “I don’t think any of that lot will notice you leaving. The palm wine is flowing freely.”

“One of us will accompany you,” Howard said.

Hamilton turned to Howard. “I’d like both you and Robert to come. It would be a chance for Robert to go up-country and get a taste of it. And there’s something else I want you to see. Robert, you have a bent for things ancient, don’t you? And, Howard, you’re always going on about old languages?”

Wauchope perked up and knocked out his pipe. “You’ve found some antiquity?”

“In the shrine. I just stumbled into the entrance for a moment, but you’ll have to see.”

There was a crackling sound from the foreshore, like gunfire but different. Howard took out his eyeglass and peered intently. The Koya were dancing around the fire, tossing in lengths of bamboo. The bamboo was bursting with a bang as the air between the knots expanded. It was a fireworks display, the flaming splinters spraying the air like sparks. Howard caught Sergeant O’Connell’s eye and shook his head vehemently. Then the air was rent by a succession of shrieks. He looked again. The dancing was suddenly frantic, joined by drum beating and the blowing of buffalo horns. A naked man appeared, his body daubed profusely with black and white spots, leading a buffalo calf toward the pit by the shore. The animal was bellowing and pawing the ground. Behind them the dancers parted and another man appeared, wearing only baggy dark pantaloons but carrying something gleaming in his right hand.

“Chendrayya,” Howard muttered. “Just as the muttadar described him.”

“He’s got a tulwar,” Wauchope murmured.

The man in the pantaloons raised his right hand, revealing the curved sword feared above all others by British soldiers in India, able to cut a man in two in a single stroke. In a flash the sword came down one way and then the other behind the buffalo, cleaving the air. For a split second there was silence, and then a terrible bellow as the calf fell backward off its legs, leaving the feet stuck grotesquely in the sand. Blood spurted from the severed limbs into the pit. The dancers leapt on the calf like a pack of frenzied hyenas, tearing the flesh off with knives and their bare hands. Blood spurted and flowed into the pit, the animal’s heart still pulsing even as it was torn from beneath the rib cage. Then the drumbeat began again, slow, insistent. The dancers drew back from the carnage, their heads and arms drenched in blood, and carrying their dripping trophies, slowly circling around. The muttadar on the foredeck began babbling incomprehensibly, then said the same words over and over again in the Koya language, all the time drooling and beating his head, averting his eyes from the scene on the foreshore.

“What on earth is he on about?” Wauchope said.

“Meriah.” Howard spoke in little more than a whisper.

“Meriah? You mean human sacrifice? Good God.”

Three men were thrust forward to the edge of the pit. They were darker-skinned, wearing the tattered remains of lowland pantaloons, their hands tied behind their backs. They seemed stupefied, unable to stand upright, and were kicked to their knees by the man in body paint. Howard watched in horrified fascination. The captured police constables. There was nothing he could do.

“Sir!” O’Connell bellowed.

Howard suddenly saw something else. “Wait!” he shouted. “There are women and children there! Hold your fire!”

In an instant the tulwar flashed again. Two heads flew off, and blood gushed into the pit. The third constable fell forward, shrieking. The painted man pounced on him and pulled him into the pit, holding the struggling form down in the bloody mire until it was still. For a moment there was silence. Then the man stood up, his back to them, facing Chendrayya, and raised his arms outward, blood and mucus falling from his arms in a diaphanous sheen of red.

“That was for our benefit,” Howard murmured to Wauchope. “For it to be a true meriah sacrifice, the victim has to be ritually prepared. Those constables were executed. What they did to the buffalo was sacrifice.”

“You mean they do that to humans too?” Wauchope said, aghast, his composure gone.

“They supposedly tear their victims to pieces with knives, leaving the head suspended from a pole. No European has ever seen it.”

The drumbeat began again. The painted man in the pit pulled a heavy dripping garment over his shoulders. Howard could see it was a tiger skin, sodden with blood. The first drops of rain were spattering against the deck of the steamer, and steam from the fires mingled with an efflorescence that seemed to rise from the mangled carcass of the bull and the bloody pit beside it. Chendrayya looked across at the steamer, seeming to stare directly at Howard, then turned and made his way up the sandbar to the place where the three poles had been erected earlier. The frenzied dancers in front of him parted, revealing a group of white-clad women around one of the poles. Howard squinted against the mist that swirled over the river. The women were flourishing boughs, and the pole had the effigy of a bird suspended from it, a cock. Howard swallowed hard. With a sickening feeling, he realised there was more to come. Three victims, one to each pole, west, middle, east-sunset, noon, sunrise.

“This will not be quick,” he murmured to Wauchope.

A man was led out in front of the women, his hair shorn, garlanded with flowers, wearing a clean white garment. His neck was held between a cleft bamboo and he already seemed half-dead, whether from slow strangulation or toddy was impossible to tell. Eager hands reached out to catch the saliva that was drooling from his mouth, smearing it into the red turmeric on their own faces. He was dragged toward the far pole, out of sight in the crowd. The incessant slow drumbeat suddenly rose in a frenzied crescendo, and the group of women around the central pole parted. Howard looked, and nearly retched.

It was a child.

A boy, not much older than his own son, was tied to the pole. His head was lolling like the man’s, but his body shuddered, still alive. Four of the women held out his little arms and legs. The man in the tiger skin approached, and picked up a pole, like the handle of an axe. He tapped the boy on the head with it, and then tapped each of the boy’s limbs. Only they were not taps. Howard had been seeing everything in slow motion, and as his mind replayed it he saw the little limbs each crack and flop away, broken like boughs of dry wood. The women let go, and the small body flopped like a rag doll from the chain that held his neck. A rope tied to the top of the pole was pulled, and the cock began to whirl around and around, followed by the women who circled it. Among the swirling robes there were flashes of blades held in readiness, glinting. The boy raised his head, and Howard was sure he heard crying, the helpless crying of a child, that seemed to reach out to him, that seemed to come from a child of his own.

It was unbearable. Howard reached over and took the Snider-Enfield rifle from one of Hamilton’s sappers crouching next to him. It had a repair behind the receiver, a darker piece of wood, but it was sound. He pulled the hammer to half-cock, flipped open the breechblock with a sharp turn of his right hand, pulled back the ejector and tipped out the spent cartridge case. He spat on his finger, pushed it into the chamber and wiped out the fouling, then smeared the stinking black residue on the railing. He reached over to the leather case on the sapper’s belt and took out the last remaining cartridge. He was acting without thought now, his whole being focused on the mechanical acts of the drill. He dropped the cartridge into the breech and pushed it home, then snapped shut the block. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, pointing the muzzle a few inches below his target. With his right thumb he pulled back the hammer to full-cock, and he hooked his forefinger around the trigger. He closed his left eye, and raised the muzzle steadily until the foresight was in line with the notch of the backsight. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he pressed the trigger, without the least motion elsewhere, his eye on the object in his sights.

It was a target, nothing more.

The rifle kicked against his shoulder, but he seemed to hear no sound, as if his senses had frozen the moment before, sealing the image on his retina like a photographic negative. All he felt was a dizzying speed, as if he himself were hurtling at twelve hundred feet per second toward his target. He blinked, and the image was gone. His ears were ringing, and all he could see was a cloud of smoke from the muzzle, and then a swirling maelstrom on the foreshore. He let the rifle fall on its butt and lurched heavily forward on one knee, desperately trying to stop retching. He heard a bellow from Sergeant O’Connell and then the immense crack of a volley from the line of riflemen beside him. He turned and saw O’Connell’s face bearing down on him, flushed, eyes red-rimmed, the very image of Fury unleashed. He saw the lips move, then heard the voice. “That should do it for you, sir. Fucking cannibals.” Howard looked around and saw Wauchope staring at him, and he breathed hard. He must stay in control. He straightened up and looked at O’Connell. “There will be hell to pay if we cause a massacre, Sergeant. The civil authorities will send us out of here in chains. We can only shoot if we’re fired on. I’m trusting you to exercise restraint.”

“You put that boy out of his misery, sir,” O’Connell said. “That took uncommon courage, sir. God bless you.”

Howard felt faint, and turned quickly back to the rail, holding it tight. Wauchope took out his revolver, spinning the cylinder to check that the chambers were loaded. He shoved it back in his holster and put his hand on Howard’s shoulder. “Now’s the time to go and find our sappers and Bebbie,” he said quietly. “O’Connell’s volley dropped the devils who had been tormenting that little boy, but the rebel leader and the rest had already moved to the other two victims. I fear the sacrifice has taken place. But the rebels are too far gone with toddy to see us go. They’re perfectly besotted.”

Walker came up from where he had been operating on the wounded sapper, wiping his hands on his apron. “Those who aren’t dead drunk will be going home with their pound of flesh,” he said. “They have to bury their offering in their own plot of land before nightfall, to ensure the efficacy of the sacrifice. They will be dispersing far and wide to their villages.”

Hamilton looked at Howard. “Well?” Howard fingered his own holster, and looked again across the river. His mouth felt dry, and his heart was fluttering. He was not sure what he had just done, or if it was a horrible dream. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Very well. The jemadar and Sergeant O’Connell can look after things here.” He glanced up the deck to the muttadar, who was cowering beside the seven-pounder gun, clutching his bamboo tube. “And the muttadar can come with us. He can bring his precious cargo. Even if Bebbie’s beyond our help, at least we can uphold our end of the bargain.” He looked up at the wall of black cloud that was now towering over them, and felt the drops of rain on his face. “It’s time we got his sacred idol back where it belongs. And got our sappers the hell out of there.”