The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [215]
Should they attempt to escape together they would certainly be followed: and this was not British India – this was Rajputana – ‘King's Country’ an amalgam of sovereign states ruled over by independent princes, where the writ of the Raj meant little. The hereditary rulers paid lip-service to the Queen-Empress, but apart from that they did very much as they pleased, and their rank protected them from prosecution in any court of law. A paternal Government provided them with ‘advisers’ in the form of Residents, Commissioners, Political Officers and an Agent-General, and decided such vexed questions as how many guns each should be entitled to have fired in salute on ceremonial occasions. But otherwise it made a point of not interfering with them unless actually forced to do so, and there would be little safety for a runaway princess and her lover in such country.
Once the word of their flight had gone out, every man's hand would be against them and no state in all Rajputana would give them refuge. So for the present there was nothing he could do but wait upon events and trust to the inspiration of the moment, hoping, like Mr Micawber, that something would turn up – a miracle, for preference, for he was beginning to think that they would need nothing less. ‘Yet what have I ever done to deserve a miracle?’ thought Ash.
He could find no answer to that, and when, half an hour later, something did indeed turn up, it was not the miracle he hoped for, but a confirmation of all his fears, and proof – if he had needed proof – that the dangers he had visualized were very far from imaginary.
Because the light was still poor enough to make the going treacherous, he had been keeping his eyes on the ground, and it had not occurred to him that his movements would be of any interest to anyone save Mahdoo and his own servants, or that he might be attacked.
The shot took him by surprise, and for a moment he did not realize that he had been the target. The bullet struck the lathi and spun it out of his hand in the same instant that he heard the report, and it was instinct alone made him throw himself flat among the stones; though even then it did not occur to him that he had done anything more than cross the line of fire of some local hunter who was shooting for the pot, and he raised his head and shouted angrily into the darkness.
The answer was a second shot that whipped above his head, missing him by less than an inch. The wind of its passing stirred his hair, but this time he made no sound, for though the first shot could have been accidental the second was not. He had seen the flash, and realized that the man who had fired was standing little more than fifteen yards away and could not possibly have failed to hear him call out, or mistaken his voice for that of a wounded animal. And in the next moment, as though to confirm this, he heard quite clearly in the silence the snick of a breech block as the man reloaded.
It was a frightening sound, and the cold deliberation of it made his heart lurch and miss a beat. But at the same time it seemed to clear his brain, and make him think a good deal more quickly and more concisely than he had done for many days. The vacillation of the past hours fell away from him and he found himself assessing the situation as coolly as though he were on a training exercise on the plains beyond Mardan.
The unknown man was certainly no wandering budmarsh shooting at a stranger for sport or viciousness; rifle bullets were far too valuable to waste without the certainty of reward, and he carried nothing worth stealing. His assailant was also plainly aware that his quarry was unarmed, for in spite of having fired twice, he had