The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [550]
A shot smashed into the coffin and the ugly stench of death was suddenly strong on the evening air, blotting out the reek of black powder and the scents of the river.
‘Apka mehrbani,* Battye-Sahib,’ said Suba Singh quietly, sketching a salute to the thing in the coffin. ‘You always had a care for your men, and but for you that would have been my head. Let me see if I cannot avenge their discourtesy towards you.’
He lifted his head and sighted carefully, allowing for the jerk and sway of the raft. The rifle cracked, and a man near the cliff top flung up his arms and toppled forward to lie still, while the jezail he had held slid from his grasp and clattered down the cliff face in a shower of stones. Suba Singh might not be a Frontiersman, but he was known to be the finest marksman in his squadron.
‘Two to us. Now let us see you do better, Pathan,’ said the Sikh.
Zarin grinned appreciatively, and ignoring the bullets that hummed about him like a swarm of angry bees, took aim at a mark that would have been invisible to anyone not bred in a country where every stone may conceal an enemy: a narrow crevice between two rocks, where the muzzle of a long-barrelled jezail protruded a few inches. The shot went cleanly home above the small circle of metal, and the muzzle dropped with an abruptness that told its own tale.
‘There,’ said Zarin. ‘Are you satisfied?’
There was no reply, and turning his head he met a blind fixed stare above the coffin. The Sikh had not moved: his chin was still propped on the stiff folds of tarpaulin and his mouth was agape as though he were about to speak, but there was a bullet hole through his temple, and Dayal Singh, lying beside him, had not even known that his compatriot had been hit…
‘Mara gaya?’ (Is he dead?) asked Zarin harshly, knowing the foolishness of the question even as he asked it.
‘Who? The misbegotten dog you fired at? Let us hope so,’ said Dayal Singh. He reached for more ammunition, and as he did so the body of Suba Singh fell sideways and lay sprawled across the raft with one arm trailing in the water.
Dayal Singh stared down at it, his outstretched hand rigid and his breath coming short. Then suddenly he began to shiver as though he had a fever. His fingers came to life again and he loaded his carbine with furious haste, cursing the while in a harsh unsteady whisper, and leaping to his feet, began to fire at the cliff, re-loading from a handful of bullets he had stuffed into his pocket.
The raft lurched dangerously, riding the full flood of the treacherous current, and the steersman flung his weight over to balance it and yelled to the Sikh to get down. But Dayal Singh was temporarily beyond the reach of reason. A red blaze of rage had swept away caution and he stood squarely astride the body of his dead comrade, facing the cliff and cursing as he fired. A bullet clipped his jaw and blood streamed into his dark beard, and presently his puttees turned red where a second shot had struck his leg. He must have been hit half a dozen times, but he neither flinched nor ceased his steady, furious swearing, until at last a bullet smashed into his chest and he staggered and dropped his carbine and fell back across the body of his fellow Sikh.
His fall tilted the raft violently to one side, and a flood of water raced across it, foaming about the coffin and sweeping away a clutter of tins and equipment; and before Zarin or the steersman could right it, the bodies of the two dead men slid down the wet logs and vanished into the river.
Relieved of their weight, the clumsy craft righted itself and Zarin rose to his knees, and wringing the water from his uniform said bitterly: ‘There go two good men; and in these times we cannot afford to lose even one such. This has indeed been a costly campaign for the Guides.