The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [433]
Ash awoke, sweating with terror, to find that the sound of galloping horses was only the desperate beating of his own heart.
The nightmare was a familiar one. But the awakening was not, because this time he was not in his own bed, but lying on hard ground in a dark patch of shadow thrown by a boulder. Below him a belt of scree fell steeply away down a gully that was bright with moonlight, and on either hand the bare hillsides swept upwards to shoulder a sky like a sheet of tarnished steel.
For a moment or two he could not remember how he came to be there, or why. Then memory returned in a scalding flood and he sat up and stared into the shadows. Yes, she was still there; a pale huddled shape lying in a hollow that Bukta had scraped out for her between two boulders and lined with his horse-blanket. At least they had brought her this far in safety, and when Bukta returned – if he returned –
Ash's thoughts checked sickeningly, balking like a horse that suddenly recognizes the dangers of a fence and refuses to face it; for the position of the moon told him that it was long past midnight, and by rights Bukta should have arrived back at least two hours ago.
He stood up cautiously, moving with extreme care to avoid making any noise that might disturb Anjuli, and peered over the boulder; but nothing moved on the bare hillside, and the only sound that he could hear was made by the night wind whispering through the dry grass and between the tumbled rocks. He could not believe that he had slept so soundly that he would not have heard the noise of returning footsteps, yet even if he had, there would still be the horses…
But there were no horses on that empty expanse of hillside, and no sign of Bukta, or of anyone else; though far away, in the sky above the valley, a red pulsating glow told of camp fires, and by inference, the presence of a large force bivouacked there for the night and only waiting for dawn before taking up the trail.
Ash rested his arms on the boulder, and staring out across the grey folds of the moon-washed hills towards that distant brightness, coldly calculated his own and Juli's chances of survival in an almost waterless region where there were no recognizable paths or landmarks; or none that he himself could recognize, even though he had come that way barely a week ago. Yet if Bukta did not return he would have to find the path back through this trackless maze of ridges himself, and by way of the few places where there had been springs in the parched wilderness – and later on through the many miles of jungle-clad foothills that lay across the northern borders of Gujerat.
It had been no easy road before, but now… Once again the train of Ash's thought jarred to a halt and he dropped his head on his folded arms, shutting out the moonlight. But he could not shut out the memory of all that had happened, and now he saw it again, printed searingly behind his closed eyelids…
They had walked out of the screened enclosure, Sarji leading, and down the narrow stairway to the terrace where the crowd – spectators and sentries alike – craned to watch the suttee's last moments, and swept by emotion, prayed, shouted or wept as the flames shot upwards and the pyre became a blazing, blinding pyramid of fire. No one present had spared a glance for the small party of four palace attendants led by a helmeted member of the Rana's bodyguard. They had left the chattri unhindered and unremarked, and within minutes had reached the shelter of the older and more ruined buildings.
Dagobaz had been standing with his ears pricked, listening; and despite the roar and crackle of the fire and the cries of the crowd he must have heard Ash's step and recognized it, for he whinnied in greeting before he saw him. There were four other horses tethered to a tree near by, one of which was Sarji's own Moti Raj and another