Metal Emissary (5 page)

Hari stood up. “I will be there in a moment, British.” Pausing, one foot poised to step backward, Hari stared into the distance.

“Hari?” Jamie stepped back from the rock wall and shielded his eyes from the snow. “You’re not moving, Hari?”

“Raiders, British. Riding hard.” Pointing in the direction of the emissary, Hari crouched on the rock. “They are coming from the east. It is strange. Why do they not see the emissary?”

“But they have seen us, eh?”

“Truly.”

“How many?” Jamie unslung the rifle case from his shoulder.

“Perhaps ten. They must have heard your shot, or have come to check on the rifleman.”

“You have to get down here, Hari.” Picking his way through the boulders, Jamie searched for a defensible position. Flat boulders and a well-worn path between steep rock walls gave Jamie a bad feeling about the outcome of a fight.

“It is better you come back up here, British. Better cover and high ground.”

“I can’t climb back up, I’ll have to run around and come back to you along the pass.”

“Then be quick. They are coming.”

Jamie pulled his rifle out of its case. He ran the short distance back to the rock wall. Holding the rifle by the end of the barrel, he slid it up to the mystic. “Take hold of it. You can cover me.”

Hari leaned over the rock wall and reached for the rifle, his fingers a hand’s length from the wooden stock. “It’s too far.” A musket ball whacked into the wall six feet to the left of Hari. “Jump, British. Jump up and give me the rifle.”

Jamie stepped onto a boulder to his right and jumped. The stock of the Baker rifle scraped the wall just an inch below the mystic’s fingers.

“Again. I will get it this time.” Hari leaned further over the ledge. A volley of incoming fire thwacked into the rocks, the lead balls embedding in the walls of the pass. Jamie jumped again, slipping the rifle from his grasp. Hari reached for it, grasped the stock and slipped, his body tumbling sideways. Hanging from the ledge by his right hand, Hari held the rifle in his left.

“Hari?” Jamie ducked as a musket ball split the air above his head.

“I am all right, British,” Hari shouted. “I am thinking of joining the circus.”

“What?” Jamie reached for his backpack and dragged it across the rocks to his side. Unfastening the canvas lid, he pulled out a pistol. “Hari, I think you should drop down to me.” Jamie primed the pistol and loaded it.

“No,” Hari called out. “I think I can get up again.”

Splintering the boulders and rocks on the ledge above Hari, a volley of fire blew grit, dust and sand into the mystic’s face. Hari’s grip failed, his fingers bloodied and torn by the splinters of rock showering the trail. He fell.

Chapter 3

The Cabool River

Afghanistan

December, 1850

The snow teased Lev Bryullov’s view of the two horses trudging alongside the Cabool River in front of him. Bryullov chewed on a plug of tobacco, a habit he had picked up from a Yankee spy he had caught in Saint Petersburg the previous spring. The interrogation, he recalled, had been interesting but revealed nothing of the American’s interest in Central Asia. Bryullov had kept the man’s supply of tobacco. He could not recall what had become of the man.
Slavery most likely,
Bryullov mused.

Bryullov urged his horse forward with a sharp jab of his heel. “Najma,” he grabbed the reins of the warlord daughter’s horse as he drew close. “This is not the way to the pass. Look there, girl,” he pointed to the west. “There is the gap and the way into the mountains.”

“Yes,” Najma slapped Bryullov’s hands from her reins. “If you want to die, it is a good place to enter the mountains.” She waited for Bryullov to respond. “The Pathaan hold the gap to the Khyber Pass. They tax all travellers entering the mountains, and then they kill them.”

“But we are very exposed here,” Bryullov glanced at the mountains on both sides.

“Yes,” Najma turned in her saddle. “But it is faster to travel along the river. There is no need to enter the pass.”

Bryullov released his grip on the reins of Najma’s horse. “You could have taken me there, and have been done with me. Why didn’t you?”

“I thought about it,” Najma stared at the Russian. “My father is friends with the Pathaan.”

“So why didn’t you?”

Najma grinned. “I don’t often get to travel alone, without my brother, father or my uncles. It would be boring if we had to stop so soon.”

“I see,” Bryullov chuckled. “And where do you think we are going?”

“Adina Pur,” Najma shrugged. “You told my father.”

“And you were listening.”

“Yes,” Najma urged her horse forward with a click of her tongue.

Bryullov waited until Najma and the two horses had pulled ahead. Twisting in the saddle and leaning over the horse’s back, Bryullov opened the flap of one of the saddle bags and slipped his hand inside. He patted the lid of a wooden box, the feel of the smooth wood creasing his mouth into a reassuring smile. Bryullov tightened the straps of the saddle bag, spit tobacco juice onto the dusting of snow covering the ground. Lifting his heels to encourage his horse into a trot, Bryullov paused and squinted into the distance along the rocky plain they had travelled from Farshad’s camp. A hawk hovered in the air above a patch of barren rock. The Russian rubbed a hand over his beard and stared at the hawk until it stilled its wings and glided down to the ground and out of Bryullov’s sight. He kicked his heels and pulled the horse’s head around with the reins and followed Najma and the packhorse trailing behind her.

҉

Jamie breathed the cool air of the Khyber Pass. Breathing through his mouth, he imagined the air travelling the length of the barrel of his Baker rifle and into his lungs. He closed his eyes. He breathed out. Fidgeting the stock of the rifle into his shoulder, Jamie opened his eyes, searching for targets.

“Are you ready, British?” Hari waved Jamie’s pistol in front of him. “First you snore, then you nuzzle that barrel like it was a pillow.” The mystic shook his head. “All that and you will kill just one man if we are lucky.”

“One man?”

“Yes, British. Just one man. Him maybe.” Hari pointed at the Pathaan raider drawing a long knife from the red sash around his waist. “His friends will kill us in the thirty seconds it takes you to reload,” Hari tutted. “The British are supposed to possess wonderful technology. But not you. You have
that.”

“Fifteen,” Jamie tracked the raider with his rifle. “And we won’t die, Hari.”

“Because you can reload in half the time?” Hari rolled his eyes.

“No, Hari.” Increasing pressure on the trigger with his finger, Jamie breathed out. The musket ball punched out of the Baker rifle. The taste of blackpowder bit at Jamie’s tongue. The raider dropped onto his knees as the shirt covering his chest blossomed red. The man fell and was still, the snow staunched the flood of the man’s lifeblood in a ring of ice crystals crimsoning about the raider’s torso. “Technology can fail, Hari. Your turn,” Jamie ducked down behind the ring of boulders to the right of the path. Pulling a square patch of leather from his shirt pocket, Jamie pressed it inside the lip of the barrel. Fiddling a musket ball out of his belt pouch, he nestled the ball inside the leather and rammed the ball and patch down the length of the barrel with the rod. Jamie turned as Hari fired the flintlock pistol and the thick powder cloud mixed with the flurries of snow.

“Be quick, British,” Hari reached inside his cloak and drew a curved blade the length of his forearm.

“What the hell is that?” Jamie primed his rifle.

“Truly,” Hari leaped up onto the boulder and swung the heavy blade into the shoulder of the raider sent ahead to try their position. The man screamed as Hari kicked him in the chest to free his blade. “You have never served with the Indian Gurkhas.” Hari ducked down behind the boulder and began reloading the pistol. Jamie stood, tracked a raider moving into position along the pass. He fired. The raider ducked down into cover, levelling the long jezail he carried upon a smooth rock. Jamie grabbed Hari by the shoulder and pulled him to the ground.

“Jezail,” Jamie nodded. A second later, the crack of the raider’s rifle split the snow-filled air, the lead ball embedding itself in the rock wall above their heads. “Not too accurate.”

“The jezail?”

“No,” Jamie grinned as he rammed another musket ball into the rifle, “the raider. Ready?”

Hari pulled back the hammer on the pistol. “Ready, British,” he smiled. One hand on Jamie’s shoulder, Hari crouched behind the boulder, the pistol raised before him, the barrel tracking targets as the raiders leapfrogged in and out of cover. “Look there. They are trying to get to higher ground.”

“Yes,” Jamie raised the rifle, pointing at a raider with a goatskin tunic climbing the steep wall of the pass. He stared at the man, not much older than himself, sandals scrabbling on the rocks. The raider stopped climbing and turned his head to face Jamie. Their eyes met. Jamie shook his head. The raider grinned, slipped his hands free of the rock and slid back down the wall.

“Good, British. At least
he
gets to live another day,” Hari cursed under his breath.

“Shoot the ones making mischief,” Jamie shifted to his right and fired. “Maybe their friends will run away?” A raider wielding a scimitar in one hand, a long knife in the other, dropped to the ground just twenty feet from where Hari and Jamie intended to make their last stand. Jamie pulled another patch of leather and a ball of lead from his pocket and proceeded to reload his rifle.

Leaping over the boulder, Hari fired the pistol at one man, slashing the kukri at another. “British,” Hari called out as he collapsed to the floor under the weight of a heavyset raider. Jamie raised his rifle butt and charged, clubbing at the jumble of men writhing at his feet.

“Him,” Hari wheezed. “Not me, British.”

Jamie kicked at the raider until he released his grip on the mystic’s back. Hari rolled onto his side and raised the kukri. Leaning forward he dropped the kukri on the rocks as Jamie tumbled on top of him, the crack of a jezail buzzing up the pass like an angry lead hornet.

“Stay down.” Pushing himself onto his elbow, Jamie reached for the Baker rifle.

“Hah,” Hari’s attacker tugged the rifle by the barrel, pulling it out of Jamie’s reach and into his own hands. Standing on a boulder above Jamie and Hari, the raider spun the rifle within his grip, pointed the rifle downward and fired. The flintlock clicked on an empty pan.

“Get him, Hari,” Jamie rolled over onto his side.

Scrabbling after the kukri blade, Hari grasped it with his fingers and rushed at the raider. Surprised at the dry shot, the raider dropped Jamie’s rifle and turned to run. Hari stamped on the man’s trailing shirttails and slid the kukri through the man’s shirt and into his back. He ducked at the sound of another crack of a jezail as the raider slumped onto a patch of snow between the rocks dragging Hari’s kukri out of his hands. Hari watched as a raider picked his way toward him, his jezail held high and pointing at Hari’s head.

“Drop, Hari. Get down,” Jamie pushed the mystic aside and shot before the raider before could pull the trigger of his own long rifle. The man crumpled to his knees, gasping, the ornate stock of his jezail clattering to the ground.

“Are you all right, British?” Hari picked himself off the ground. He stared at the bloody tear in the cloth of Jamie’s trousers as it flicked back and forth in the wind.

“I am fine,” Jamie lifted his rifle and tossed it to the ground. “But I caught one in the thigh while you were wrestling with the big fellow.” Jamie pointed at the line of raiders stalking toward them along the pass. “We are all out of luck, Hari.” The image of French sailors cornering Jamie on the bloody quarterdeck of
HMS Magnificent
flit through Jamie’s mind. Sharpshooters in the rigging had saved him that day. Jamie cast a quick glance up and along both sides of the pass. The high ground was empty, but for the wind and snow. Jamie gripped Hari’s arm and lowered himself to the ground.

“Are we giving up?” Hari shot a look at the raiders. Jezails resting in the crooks of their arms, the five men slowed to a stop and waited.

“I am, Hari,” Jamie winced as he prodded his thigh.

“Because of that?” Hari pointed.

“Yes, that,” Jamie ran a grubby hand over his short beard. “With one rifle and a pistol,” he waved his arm toward the line of Pathaan, “we can’t take them all.”

“A poor excuse, British.” Hari stamped a foot on the dead raider lying on the ground. Grasping the handle of his kukri, he tugged it free. “Truly, I am disappointed.” He wiped the blade clean on the raider’s sleeve. “Perhaps it is true. The Queen’s navy really is beaten.” Hari spat. “I will have to handle these men myself.”

“Hari?” Jamie called as the mystic sheathed the kukri in the scabbard hidden in the folds of his cloak. Hari took a step forward.

“I am Hari Singh,” he unbuttoned his shirt and opened the front to reveal a tattoo of azure blue spiralling in a clockwise direction on his chest. “I pray for my one god,” he took another step, “and I pray for the god of all men.” The Pathaan raiders shifted on their feet. “But I do not pray,” Hari turned to shout at Jamie, “for the men who have lost their faith in God, nor the God’s who have no faith in men.”