The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [266]
‘You bastard!’ said Ash viciously and in English; and flung the knife.
Rage does not make for good marksmanship and Ash's aim was no better than Biju Ram's had been – the knife point missed the throat and grazed a collar bone that was so well protected by fat that the blade came nowhere near reaching it. But as the knife fell to the ground and a small trickle of blood ran down from the wound, Biju Ram dropped the pistol and began to scream on a thin high-pitched note of pure terror.
There was something inhuman in the sound of that screaming, while the spectacle of a grown man reduced to a frenzy of fear by the sight of his own blood trickling from a cut that would hardly have discommoded a child was so nauseating that Ash's rage turned to scorn, and instead of leaping at Biju Ram to knock him down and beat him to a pulp with his own stick, he stayed where he was and began to laugh – not at the absurdity of the sight, but because it seemed incredible to him that this miserable craven should ever have been able to terrorize anyone. Seeing him now, it was difficult to believe that so lily-livered a thing could have murdered Hira Lal, and Ash's laughter was, in its way, as ugly a sound as those womanish screams.
The blood drew a thin dark line down Biju Ram's pale chest, and he stopped screaming and bent his head in a ludicrous attempt to suck the wound. But the cut was too high to allow his mouth to reach it, and when he realized this he shrieked again and began to run to and fro like a chicken that has had its head cut off, stumbling among the grass clumps and the scattered stones in an aimless frenzy of terror, until at last he tripped and fell, and once again lay writhing on the ground.
‘I die!’ wept Biju Ram. ‘I die…’
‘You deserve to,’ said Ash unfeelingly. ‘But I am afraid that scratch is unlikely to do more than give you a stiff shoulder for a day or two, and as I still dislike the idea of killing anyone as spineless as you in cold blood, you can stop play-acting and get up and start back to the camp. It's getting late. Stand up, Bichchhu-baba. No one is going to hurt you.’
He laughed again, but either Biju Ram did not trust him or the shock of that second failure had finally broken his nerve, for he continued to writhe and weep.
‘Help me!’ moaned Biju Ram. ‘Marf karo' (have mercy), ‘Marf karo…!’
His voice died on a curious gasping wail, and Ash walked over to him, still laughing but moving warily in case this was merely a trap designed to lure him within range of another unsuspected weapon. But a glance at Biju Ram's grey, contorted, sweat-drenched face checked his laughter. There was something here that he did not understand. He had heard that there are people who cannot endure the sight of their own blood and are literally overcome by it, but the man on the ground, while patently in the grip of fear, was also suffering from genuine physical agony. His body arched and twisted convulsively, and Ash bent down and said roughly: ‘What is it, Bichchhu?’
‘Zahr…’ (poison), whispered Biju Ram. ‘The knife…’
Ash straightened up with a jerk and took a quick step backwards, suddenly enlightened. So that was why the man had shrieked and cowered. He had misjudged Biju Ram: it was not fear of pain that had made him grovel on the ground, but the fear of death – swift and horrible death. Nor had he been afraid of Ash. His fear had been for the knife in Ash's hand – his own knife with a blade that was steeped in poison to ensure that any wound it inflicted would prove fatal. No wonder he had watched it with such hypnotized terror,