Part 29 (1/2)
The major's eyes crinkled with amus.e.m.e.nt. ”Enterprising. Your mother and the man she lives with, did they approve?”
”They died in a fire long before I was shoveling horses.h.i.+t.”
”I'm sorry for your difficult life. Did you ever consider that you were meant to join the army?”
THE HARDs.h.i.+PS OF SURVIVING on London's streets had seemed the worst that anyone could endure, but the artist's new training took him far beyond his former ability to withstand fatigue, heat, hunger, thirst, and lack of sleep. The strange part was, he welcomed it. He proudly developed resources of strength and determination that he hadn't imagined were possible. He learned to ignore the threat of pain and death. Fear became an unfamiliar emotion, even as he vowed to make the enemy suffer fear in the extreme.
He was transformed into one of the warriors that the major had spoken about.
He received better food.
His lodgings were less cramped.
He was given respect.
He loved it.
”Your mission is to guard the opium caravans,” the major told the artist's elite unit. ”The land distance from India to China is less than the sea distance. In theory, the shorter distance should be quicker, but overland has these mountains”-the major tapped a pointer against a map on a wall-”where marauders attack our caravans and steal the opium. We send heavily armed cavalry to protect the caravans. It doesn't matter. The caravans continue to vanish. Tons of opium have been stolen.”
The major directed his attention toward the artist. ”We believe that the marauders are Thugs. Repeat what we taught you about the Thugs.”
The artist responded without hesitation. ”Major, they're a criminal cult that wors.h.i.+ps Kali, the Hindu G.o.ddess of death. She's sometimes called the Devourer. That's why she has so many arms in paintings of her. The Thugs specialize in stealing from travelers, usually killing them by strangulation.”
”Correct as always,” the major said.
The artist kept his face impa.s.sive but felt the pleasure of receiving approval.
”The British East India Company wants you to stop them,” the major commanded the unit. ”No, not merely stop them. Make them understand the unspeakable consequences of challenging the empire.”
FORTY NATIVES ACCOMPANIED THE CARAVAN. They managed the oxen that pulled the twenty wagons. They herded goats that were used for milk and meat. All were trusted employees of the British East India Company.
Each day, the artist and two members of his unit walked next to the wagons and a.s.sessed the behavior of the natives. Each night, they stepped into the dark and studied the camp, looking for secret conversations.
The cavalry escort amounted to forty, its captain sending riders ahead to look for ambushes. Villages became widely separated. As the land rose, trees gave way to gra.s.sland and boulders. The higher alt.i.tude made the animals and men breathe harder. Streams rushed from the distant mountains, their water so cold that it made the artist's teeth ache.
”Three days to the pa.s.s through the mountains,” the native guide said.
”Any risk of snow?”
”Not this time of year, but anything is possible.”
Indeed anything was possible. Two cavalry outriders galloped back in alarm. The caravan crested a plateau. Ravens and vultures erupted into the air, revealing the remnants of a caravan that had departed two weeks earlier. That caravan had included other members of the artist's unit.
Bones lay everywhere, scattered by predators. The bones of humans only. All the oxen, horses, and goats were missing, as were the wagons and their contents. The bodies had been stripped, no fragments of garments on any of the skeletons.
Portions of foul-smelling flesh remained, but not enough to indicate wounds. None of the bones showed signs of violence from firearms or blades, however. If those weapons had been used, at least some of the bones would surely have displayed damage. That forced the artist to conclude that all eighty-three people in the caravan-cavalry, natives, and three highly trained members of the artist's unit-had been strangled.
”I don't see how this is possible,” he told the cavalry commander. ”Granted, the natives didn't know how to defend themselves, but our hors.e.m.e.n did, and they had rifles as well as swords. The members of my special unit were even more capable. Nonetheless all of them were overpowered.”
The odor of decay was strong enough that the artist and the soldiers worked quickly, handkerchiefs tied over their faces, to collect the bones into a huge pile and cover them with rocks. Normally the races wouldn't have been mingled, but because there wasn't any way to distinguish the bones of natives from those of the English cavalry, it seemed better to group all of them together and be certain that the English received a Christian burial. Prayers were said. The oxen, horses, and goats kept reacting to the smell of death, so to quiet them, the caravan moved a mile ahead, formed a circle, and camped near a stream.
The night sky was brilliant. With so much natural illumination, the wagons were already exposed, so there was no reason not to build cooking fires.
The cavalry commander a.s.signed sentries. As the natives and the soldiers prepared food, the artist and the two members of his unit hoped that so much activity would conceal them from anyone watching. They crawled from camp and established their own sentry posts at three equal compa.s.s points, northeast, northwest, and south. They each took a packet of biscuits and a canteen filled with stream water.
Away from the fires, the night was bitterly cold. The artist lay among rocks and used force of will to keep from s.h.i.+vering. I can withstand anything, he told himself, remembering the sergeant's words. What doesn't kill me makes me strong.
The fires didn't last long, their fuel coming from gra.s.s, animal droppings, spa.r.s.e bushes, and the branches of a solitary, long-dead tree.
The artist kept scanning his surroundings.
A shadow moved among the wagons, perhaps a guard coming back from his watch while another man took his place. A later shadow might have been a native relieving his bladder beyond a wagon.
The camp settled into sleep.
Another shadow appeared, detaching itself from the circle of wagons. Close to the ground, it came in the artist's direction.
As the artist drew his knife, the moon cast a shadow of someone behind him.
The artist rolled an instant before a figure leapt toward him. The moon's illumination was enough to reveal that the figure had a rope with a knot in it and that the figure looped it over where the artist's throat had been. The artist stabbed him, stifling his moans. He surged up to meet the second figure, surprising him, thrusting under his rib cage while pressing a hand against his mouth.
The artist didn't allow himself even a moment to exult in his victory. What he felt now were the tightened nerves and compacted muscles of an animal confronted by an enemy. Something terrible was happening to the camp, and he had the even more terrible sense that he might not be able to stop it.
He crawled silently in that direction, then stopped as he realized that just as he had seen the shadow crawl toward him, so an enemy in the camp could see him approaching. That shadow had been a decoy, drawing his attention while the true a.s.sa.s.sin had come from behind him.
Are there others behind me? he thought.
He hugged the ground, trying to a.s.sess which direction posed the greater threat. Three clangs from an oxen bell puzzled him. Soon, he noticed silhouettes moving among the wagons. They bent and tugged at various objects. His stomach hardened when he realized what they were doing-stripping clothes from corpses. The silhouettes put the clothes in the wagons, along with various objects that had been unpacked to prepare the night's meal. They hitched the oxen to the wagons. They herded the goats together and tied the horses to the backs of the wagons.
The artist had no doubt that everyone in the camp was dead.
He had no doubt about something else as well. The silhouettes moving among the wagons would soon want to know why the two men sent to kill him hadn't returned.
He crawled away from the camp, scanning the horizon for threats. The two members of his unit who had established their own sentry posts-had they possibly survived? When he judged that he was far enough away, he moved in a circle, searching for where the other men had taken their positions.
Now he again saw moving shadows-two silhouettes tugging clothes from a body that could only belong to one of his comrades.
Loyalty fought against common sense. So far, he had counted at least twenty silhouettes. He knew that one man in his special unit was dead. What were the odds that the other man had survived? If so, what would that man decide to do? There was no way to save the caravan. The mission now became to determine how the caravan had been overwhelmed and to pa.s.s that information to the next caravan that would come through here in two weeks.
The artist knew that his comrade wouldn't be foolhardy. If the man was alive, he would back away and hide, as the artist now planned to do. They were trained to be self-reliant. They would survive to defeat this enemy another day.
Hide? Where? The landscape was barren, except for boulders and the stream. Using the cavalry horses, the marauders who overwhelmed the caravan would easily be able to search the area for miles in every direction.
The artist made a wide semicircle. Staying low, he retraced the route that the caravan had used to arrive here. He didn't know if the attackers had the skill to follow his tracks. To eliminate the risk, he walked backward where the animals and wagons had crushed gra.s.s and torn up the ground.
A glow over the eastern hills warned that the sun would soon rise. No matter how low he stayed as he ran, he would soon be visible. Hors.e.m.e.n could easily catch him. He needed to conceal himself.
He suddenly realized where he was-near the mound that contained the bones of the previous caravan. As the light increased, the artist sprinted toward the rocks, removed some, made a tunnel among the bones, crawled in, pulled the rocks back into place, and arranged the bones so that they concealed him.
The stench of the rotting flesh made him vomit the biscuits he'd eaten while watching the caravan. Willpower wasn't enough to keep him from throwing up. The odor was so disgusting and visceral that his body took charge. Buried by death, he fought not to s.h.i.+ver from the cold of the rib cages and skulls above and below him and all around him. Tense, he listened for the sound of approaching horses and voices.