The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [446]
It drove the night before it as a housewife drives dust with her broom, and as the moon paled and the stars vanished, the dawn broke in a flood of yellow light along the eastern horizon – and Ash saw a small dark figure appear on the crest of the ridge, to be briefly silhouetted against that saffron sky before it moved downwards, slowly and tiredly towards the gully.
He ran out to meet it, stumbling across the shale and calling out, lightheaded with relief and careless of how much noise he made; and it was only when he was half-way up the grassy slope that he stopped, and a cold hand seemed to close about his heart. For he realized that there was still only one figure. Bukta was alone; and as he came nearer Ash saw that his clothes were no longer dust-coloured but hideously dappled with great dark stains.
‘They were both dead' – Bukta's voice was flat with exhaustion and he dropped down wearily and without apology, hunkering on the grass like a tired old crow. But the dried blood on his coat was not his own, for he had, he said, arrived only after it was all over.
‘It was clear that some of those sons of dogs had climbed up into the hills, and coming down from behind had taken them by surprise. There had been a fight in the nullah and their horses too were dead – and I think very many of their enemies must also have died, for the ground between the rocks and in the nullah was red with blood, and there were many spent cartridges – so many that I doubt if they left so much as one unfired. But by the time I came, the Bhithori dogs had taken away their own dead and wounded. It must have taken many men to carry them back to the city, as only four men had been left behind to keep watch by the entrance to the nullah…’
A flicker of a smile showed briefly on Bukta's brown, nut-cracker face, and he said grimly: ‘Those four I slew with my knife. One after the other, and without noise; for the fools slept, thinking themselves secure – and why not? They had slain three of us five and must have thought that the other two, one of whom was a woman, would be flying for their lives and far away among the hills. I knew that I should have come away then. But how could I leave the bodies of my master the Sirdar-Sahib, and the Hakim and his servant, lying there unburned at the mercy of wild beasts? That I could not do, and therefore I carried them out one by one to a disused shed that stands near the bank of the stream, making four journeys, for I could not carry Manilal's head and body at one time…
‘When at last I had brought them all, I pulled down the old, dry thatch and made a great pile of it, and placing the bodies upon it, each a little apart, strewed them with powder from my cartridges, and then cut down the roof-poles and supports so that these fell inwards. When all was done I fetched water from the stream and said the proper prayers, and taking flint and tinder, set fire to it and came away, leaving it burning…’
His voice died on a sigh, and Ash thought numbly, ‘Yes. I saw it. I thought it was camp fires. I didn't know –’ It appalled him to think that he had actually seen that pulsating glow and had not known that it was Sarji burning… Sarji and Gobind and Manilal…
Bukta said tiredly: ‘It burned very fiercely, the wood being old and dry. And it is my hope that when it has burned out the wind will carry the ashes of the Sirdar-Sahib and the others into the stream which is hard by, and thus by favour of the gods will they be taken onward to the sea.’
He glanced up at Ash's stricken face and added gently: ‘Do not look like that, Sahib. To us who worship the gods, death is a very little thing: a brief halt only on a long journey during which birth and death are succeeded by re-birth, and again death; and thus on and on, until at last we achieve Nirvana. Therefore why grieve that these three have completed another stage on that journey, and may even now be embarking on the next?’
Ash did not speak and the old man sighed again; he had been greatly attached