The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [414]
Quails, partridges and an occasional sandgrouse whirred up and scattered before him, and a young cobra, rudely disturbed, reared up hissing from the grass and struck out furiously at the flying hooves. But Dagobaz ignored them all and swept on, nostrils wide and mane and tail streaming out on the wind, racing to meet the morning…
‘You beauty,’ crooned Ash, ‘you wonder!’ He began to sing at the top of his voice, swaying in the saddle in time to the tune and the swift, effortless stride of the horse:
‘Thou wast their rock, their fortress and their might!
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well fought fight.
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true light –
Alleluia…! Alleluia…!’
He laughed aloud, realizing that he had without thinking been singing one of the rousing hymns that he had so often heard Wally sing in his bath of an early morning – and on many other occasions when they had ridden together galloping neck and neck across the plains around Rawalpindi – it being one of Wally's favourite descriptions of a particularly fine day that it was ‘A day for singing hymns on‘. But the laugh froze in his throat, for suddenly he heard a far-away voice, faint but clearly audible above the pounding hoof-beats, chanting in answer to him: ‘Al-le-lu-ia!’
For a moment his heart stopped and he tried to check Dagobaz, because he thought it was Wally. Yet even as he pulled on the rein he realized that what he had heard was only the echo of his own voice thrown back at him from the far hillsides. The discovery sobered him a little; there were villages among those hills, and realizing that if he could hear that sound so clearly there might be others who had done so too, he sang no more. Yet some of the exhilaration that had caused him to do so remained, and instead of feeling sad or apprehensive he was conscious of a curious sense of excitement: the taut, ice-cold excitement of a soldier on the eve of a battle.
By the time Dagobaz slowed down they were far beyond the dark grove of Govidan, and all about them the great amphitheatre in its circle of hills lay bathed in a pearl-pale light that cast no shadows. The quiet stretch of the lake mirrored a sky that was already yellow with the dawn; and as the light brightened and partridges and peacocks awoke and began to call, the gongs in the city stopped beating, and Ash turned back towards the burning-ground.
He rode slowly now, drinking in the beauty of the early morning, the sight and the sound and the scent of it, like a man parched with thirst and slaking it with spring-water. Few people would have found much to admire in such scenery, and to the majority of Europeans the flat, featureless plain and the circle of barren hills would have appeared ugly and daunting. But though Ash had every reason to dislike Bhithor, the dawn sky and the cool pale light slowly flooding the land, the clamour of partridges and peacocks and the scent of dust and smoke and kikar blossoms were an integral part of the world that he had loved and was leaving, and he savoured them with a new sense of awareness and a deep feeling of gratitude for benefits received.
He rode with a slack rein, and Dagobaz, having worked off his suppressed energy, was content to keep to a walk for a time. There was no need to hurry, as it was unlikely that the Rana's body would arrive at the burning-ground much before mid-day. For though the funeral would take place as soon as possible because of the heat, the procession would take time to organize, and there were bound to be endless delays. On the other hand the crowds would get there early in order to secure good places, and already there were signs of activity in the grove. Pin-points of brightness, barely visible in the fast-growing light, betokened cow-dung fires, and gossamer veils of smoke