Part 47 (2/2)
I felt a cold, thickening sensation in my belly: fear.
”s.h.i.+kari,” began the colonel, but then he hesitated with a glance to the grief-stricken father, and began to dismount and unlimber his gun. ”The young man looks well enough to ride. Have him sling the boy over my saddle. We must make it to the river by nightfall.”
He spared a glance for the Arab, and another caress for the exhausted horse. ”This man is my prisoner. I pursued him from the border, and I will be bringing him back with me.”
Kolinzcki, rising to his feet, seemed about to protest, but something in the glitter of the colonel's eyes silenced him. For myself, I merely nodded, and went with von Hammerstein to collect the casualties.
The events of that afternoon return to me now only as a heat-soaked blur. We walked only when we could run no longer. Waterhouse clung to the stirrup of the colonel's horse, trotting alongside it as he steadied his sons. Conrad still breathed, but he had not regained consciousness, and I believed James was suffering an internal injury: he grew ever whiter and more silent, and most of our water went to him.
I knew the Creature stalked us, as wounded cats will, for every so often I caught a taste of its red scent upon the breeze, and the gelding was hot-eyed and terrified. I feared the poor beast's wind was broken: it wheezed through every breath and staggered under its double burden, but it kept up gamely.
The colonel had bound the Arab's hands before him with a leather strap. Through this means, Moran contrived to keep the prisoner upright and moving, although he was staggering from exhaustion.
I came up beside him when we had not been moving long and leaned into his ear. ”The Arab is a Tsarist agent?”
”Of a sort,” he said, one wary eye on the individual in question. ”A tribal shaman. A personage. And an Afghan, not an Arab.” He raked me with a sidelong glance and I nodded to encourage his discourse. ”He was traveling to India with an entourage. We stopped the rest at the border, but this one got through. Fortunately, I've apprehended him before ...” His voice trailed off. ”What are your politics, Larssen?”
”I haven't any.”
He grunted. ”Get some.” And walked away.
My especial burden was the fat Count, who staggered along in our wake and complained. Miss Adler kept along nicely, bearing her own distress very well, despite suspicious looks from the Count. Almost, I thought he was about to break into open argument with her, but he directed a hard look at Moran and kept his comments to the heat.
Finally, in the haze of heat and despair, Moran turned on the Count. ”If you don't stop whining, I'll send you back in pieces!” he snapped, shaking his gun for emphasis.
The Count halted. ”A common Englishman does not call me a fool!” he replied sharply. ”I am accustomed to a dignified pace, and if this Norwegian idiot had not led us into the lair of monsters”-a rude gesture in my direction-”we'd all be bathed and fed by now!”
The colonel's prisoner chose this moment to break in, gesticulating and seeming to berate the Count, shrieking in anger. The Count listened for a moment, and shook his head. He glanced around in appeal. ”Do any of you understand this barbarian?” he asked, glancing from one to another.
None answered, but Moran's eyebrow rose in silent speculation.
Night came on more quickly than I could have imagined. My feet were b.l.o.o.d.y in my boots, and sun blisters rose along the length of my nose where my helmet did not shade it. I grew deaf to the hum of insects, the chatter of monkeys and birds. The sole promise of relief was the black storm front piling up on the horizon: the long-overdue monsoon, racing northward to greet us. Whenever I found the strength to raise my head, I glanced at those bulging clouds, prayerful, but they never seemed closer. As if some invisible army held them besieged, they roiled and tore, but could not advance.
Dr. Montleroy sought me out as the afternoon waned into evening. ”I'm going to lose James unless I can get him to help, and quickly. I may anyway, but there's still time to try.”
”What does his father say?” I croaked.
”He knows,” Montleroy answered, with a glance over his shoulder to the white-faced man. ”It is one son or neither.”
I nodded once. ”Take all the water. Go.”
We pulled Conrad down off the exhausted gelding over James's feeble protests, and the good doctor swung up behind. Moran poured water for the horse into his hat, and the animal sucked it up in a single desperate draft. ”Go like the wind,” he said to it, and slapped it hard across the flank. It startled and bolted, Montleroy and James bent low over its neck.
”G.o.dspeed,” said Miss Adler from beside me. I glanced around in surprise. It was then that I noticed that the Count was missing.
No one had seen him fall behind, and we could not turn back. Mr. Waterhouse, von Hammerstein, and I took turns carrying Conrad, who drifted in a fever. He mumbled strange phrases in a language I had never heard, but which seemed to discomfit Moran's prisoner greatly.
The prisoner attempted to speak to me, but I could only shake my head at his foreign tongue. He tried von Hammerstein as well, to equally little avail, and Moran did not interfere. I had the distinct impression that the colonel watched out of the corner of his eye, as if observing our faces for any sign of comprehension, but the chattering of the monkeys meant more, at least to me.
With her paramour gone, Miss Adler stalked up to the front of the group. It was she who first identified the clearing where we had killed the tigress. We paused for breath, and the prisoner threw himself down in the long gra.s.s and panted.
”Two more miles to the river,” she said, in a flat and hopeless tone, resting the Winchester's stock on the ground. Moran glanced from her to the rapidly darkening sky and grunted. Waterhouse's face clenched in terror and I knew it was not for himself that he feared.
”We could try to run it,” offered von Hammerstein. He s.h.i.+fted the still form of Conrad Waterhouse on his shoulder and stared out toward the gra.s.slands, a calculating look on his face. ”Could you keep up, miss?”
The woman frowned. ”I daresay.” She bent down to unlace her boots while Rodney held the Winchester. She stepped out of them and knotted them over her shoulder.
The monkeys fell silent. The prisoner started up, eyes staring, and he cried aloud-”Ia! Ia Hastur cf'ayah 'vugtlagln Hastur!”-and then, in mangled Hindi, ”The burning one comes!” His eyes s.h.i.+mmered insanely. His voice was exultant. I wondered why he had not spoken Hindi before, at least to myself or Rodney.
”Run,” Moran shouted, yanking on the leather strap, and we ran.
The six of us, Moran dragging his captive, pelted out of the sal and down the slope of the land toward the riverbank. Around us the gra.s.s burned from gold to b.l.o.o.d.y in the light of the sunset. An enormous...o...b.. already half concealed by the horizon, lit the scene like the plains of h.e.l.l.
I ran with my hand clenched on my rifle, heedless of clutching gra.s.ses. Rodney darted ahead with one hand on von Hammerstein's arm, nearly dragging the laden man. Conrad bounced on his back, voice raised in a peculiar shriek, raving a string of words that pained my ears.
The ground blurred under my feet, and as I pa.s.sed Miss Adler I caught her elbow and dragged her along-she was running well, but my legs were longer. Ahead of me, I saw Moran give an a.s.sisting shove to Waterhouse and turn around to yank the leather strap again. His prisoner simply piled into him, swinging his hands like a club, teeth bared to bite.
”The dagger!” he shrieked in broken Hindi, foam flying from his teeth. ”You fool, or it will have us all!”
Moran moved with the speed of a man half his age. ”Go on,” he yelled at me as I moved to help him. He ducked under the prisoner's swing and brought his gun b.u.t.t up under the man's jaw. As I pelted past, the Arab tumbled boneless to the ground, and Moran raised his weapon.
I flinched, expecting a shot, but Moran snarled as he hauled the prisoner to his feet.
I caught my breath in my teeth. It hurt. ”Not ... going to make it,” Miss Adler groaned between breaths.
A lone tree rose before us as I stole a glance over my shoulder. We were less than halfway to the river, and I could see the red glow of the sunset matched by an answering inferno only yards behind.
Von Hammerstein and Waterhouse had reached the same conclusion, for as we drew up we saw them crouched in the gra.s.s. Rodney stood just behind them, his eyes very white and wide in his mahogany face. He clapped my shoulder as I pa.s.sed him, and I realized that he was younger than Conrad Waterhouse, over whose raving form he stood guard.
”Good lad,” I said to him, which seemed wholly inadequate, and I came and stood beside him. I remembered that we had given all our water to James, and nevertheless I found my fear lifting. I was resigned.
Moran came up to us and took in the situation with a nod. We turned at bay, the devil before us and the sunset at our backs.
It let us see it coming-a glowing specter in the darkness, a demon of flame and fear. It leaped through the tall gra.s.s toward me-a bound of perhaps forty feet. I caught a very clear view of it as it gathered itself. Flaming eyes glittered at me with unholy intelligence in the moment before it leaped.
I felt something rise in my heart under that regard, an antique horror such as I had never known, and I heard Waterhouse whimper-or perhaps I myself moaned aloud in fear. Words seemed to form in my mind, words of invocation that I both knew and did not know, powerful and ancient and evil as maggots in my soul: ”Ia! Ia Hastur ...”
I emptied the .534 at it, to no effect. Beside me, I heard von Hammerstein's gun choke and roar twice. He reached for a second one. The reek of powder hung thick upon the air.
The beast was in midair-it was among us-Conrad had risen to his feet with madness on his face and thrown himself at Rodney. Waterhouse caught the blow, staggered, and bore the boy over onto the ground, kneeling on his chest and bearing his hands down only with great difficulty. Rodney never flinched.
I dropped the empty weapon. ”Boy. Gun!”
Rodney snapped the Purdey into my hand, and I aimed along the barrel with a prayer to Almighty G.o.d on my lips. Moran was distracted from his prisoner, shaking his weapon loose and raising it in a futile and beautiful gesture. His luxurious mustache draped across the scrollwork on the gun as he sighted, and he placed two shots directly into the beast's eye as it lunged.
The flaming paw hurt not at all. It struck me high on the thigh, and I felt a distinct shattering sensation, but there was no pain. I lost the Purdey, and I saw poor Rodney hurled aside by a second thunderous blow. He fell like a broken doll, and he did not rise. Mr. Waterhouse started up to defend his boy, and was knocked backward fifteen feet into the tree before its next blow crushed von Hammerstein against the earth. I felt the impact from where I lay.
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