The Game - Laurie R. King [146]
Halfway up the eastern side, Holmes’ face peered out at me from between two trees. I said nothing, did nothing to let the guard know what I had seen, but Holmes grinned at me before slipping back into the undergrowth. As I rounded the northern end of the trees, he used the momentary distraction of my reappearance to make his move.
His black figure darted out from the trees to where Geoffrey Nesbit lay. The guard immediately raised his rifle and fired a shot, which missed his target wildly but ricocheted alarmingly ten feet from my horse’s nose. I shouted in fury, hauling back on the reins to force my gelding into a rear, but only when the maharaja added his voice to the protest did the guard lower his gun and kick his own horse into a run instead.
He was too late. Holmes had grabbed Nesbit’s ankles and dragged the limp body face-first at high speed across fifteen feet of ground and up the rocks into the shelter of the trees. Nesbit’s arms stretched out after him, muscles slack, head bouncing back and forth wincingly across the rough ground. A dozen steps and they were gone. The guard galloped up, pressing his bay close to the wall of green.
“I say,” I shouted at him. “Unless you want a spear through you, I’d suggest you move back.”
His English was quite good, and he moved away briskly. After a minute, seeing that there was nothing he could do now to keep the magician from retrieving the spear that had killed the English captain, he looked to his master for instructions, then rode back to his position at the southern end.
I made a great show of peering this way and that into the growth before circling back north and turning down the far side of the copse. The guard shifted a few yards to the east so he could keep track of me, but came no farther, wanting to remain within sight of his maharaja. I rode to the spot where Holmes had shown himself to me, then dismounted, looping the reins over a dead branch and patting the damp chestnut neck. The horse bent to lip at the grass; I hefted my spear up to shoulder level for effect, then stepped into the trees and the dappled half-light.
In a clearing near the creek, I found Nesbit sitting hale and hearty, bathing the blood from a scraped cheek while Holmes unthreaded the doctored spear from the resurrected man’s coat. I saw that its blade had been thrust through a flat piece of wood then bent sideways to lock it down, after which the spear’s butt end had been threaded through a slit in the garment and bound up against the victim’s spine with a length of black turban fabric. The blood was explained by the carcase of a young pig that lay on the rocks, the spearing of which no doubt explained the sudden exodus of the rest of the herd.
“A masterly bit of illusion, Holmes,” I said. He nodded his acknowledgement, gave my cropped scalp and blond moustache a pained glance, then concentrated again on the work in hand. “Now, if you can just conjure up one of our host’s aeroplanes, we’ll be well out of here.”
“I couldn’t even manage to hang on to Nesbit’s horse,” he said apologetically.
“You did well to lay hands on me,” Nesbit objected.
“Don’t worry,” I told him. “Self-criticism is my husband’s way of patting himself on the back.”
“Nonetheless,” Holmes went on, deigning to take note of my psychological insight, “we’re three riders with one horse, and a border at least six miles away.”
“Have to do something about that, won’t we?” I said. The situation ought to have filled me with alarm, but instead I felt irrationally cheerful. “What’s our arsenal?”
“One long spear, one short, another short one with a ruined head. You have your knife, Russell?” he asked with a glance at the borrowed riding boots.
“Of course. Nesbit?”
“No. Well, a pen-knife, that’s all.”
“Still, there are plenty of rocks. You take my spear,” I told him. “You’re better with it than I am. Shall we go?”
The puzzled Army captain put on his ruined coat and