Shadow of the Moon (34 page)

19

The lane was inches deep in dust and even the long-thorned fragments of dead cactus with which it was strewn only pressed deeper into it under Alex's feet, while the faint snap of their breaking was drowned by the purr and bubble of the hookah and the slap of the falling cards. A dozen yards short of the cart he flattened himself against the ground once more and began to crawl forward inch by inch, the end of his turban wrapped about his nose and mouth as a protection against the choking dust. Then he had reached the cart and was under it, shielded from view by a bale of fodder and the hanging blanket, with his head barely a foot from the legs of the man who leant against the off-side wheel and less than a yard from the two card-players who muttered, cursed, coughed and drew by turns at the hookah.

The dust and the acrid smoke of the dung-fire penetrated even through the folds of turban cloth and tickled Alex's nostrils unbearably, and the wound in his arm throbbed painfully. A procession of ants crawled across his legs and a host of night-flying insects, attracted by the glow of the fire, fluttered and crept about his face. The slow minutes seemed like hours and he had begun to wonder if some mishap had befallen Niaz when at last he heard the sound he had been waiting for. A voice - a raucous and untuneful voice that sang an obscene ballad enumerating in detail the charms of a certain Delhi courtesan.

The song, interrupted by hiccoughs, came nearer, and the card-players broke off their game and turned to listen, while the dozing sentinel roused himself and unslinging his musket held it at the ready.

‘It is only some drunkard from the town,' growled one of the card-players. ‘
Ohé
! Who comes? Thou canst not pass. The road is closed. Go back, O servant of Bhairon!'

‘Go back?' hiccoughed the newcomer. ‘Wherefore? And since when has this path been closed to honest men?'

‘It is an order of the new Government,' said the man with the musket.

‘What
zulum
!' (oppression) First it is a wandering pig of a Pathan whose horse thrusts me into the jheel so that I am besmired with mud, and now the road is closed against me so that I—'

The man with the musket gripped Niaz and dragged him into the light of the fire. ‘What is that you say? What Pathan?'

‘He is back on the road there. May his horse fall into the jheel and drown. He desired to know where he might obtain a fresh mount, his own being spent. But what do I know of horse-dealing? A song is better. Let us sing together, thus - “O moon of Beauty …”'

‘It is the very one!' said the man with the musket. ‘Hush, fool! Does he come this way?'

‘Who?'

‘The Pathan, O owl!'

‘How should I know? He sits by the path while his horse grazes. Must I indeed go back? What if he should beat me? Pathans be men of evil temper and this one is angry.'

‘Let us go,' said one of the card-players, his hand on the handle of a serviceable-looking knife. ‘There is a price on his head. Stay by the cart, Dunnoo, and let none pass. And thou, O son of a noseless mother, remain thou here until we return, and if it be that thou hast not spoken truth concerning the Pathan thou shalt suffer a sore beating.'

‘Why should I not speak truth?' demanded Niaz, tripping over his feet and sitting down heavily in the dust. ‘It is as I have said. He sits by the jheel and curses his gods. If I may go no further I will sleep here. One place is as good as another.'

He staggered to his feet again and yawned largely; a yawn that broke off into a hiccough as two of the men turned and disappeared down the lane. Presently the remaining sentinel turned back to squat by the fire. There was the sound of a dull blow, a coughing grunt and a thud, and Alex crawled out from under the cart and beat the dust off his clothes.

The man who had been addressed as Dunnoo lay face downwards by the smouldering fire and Niaz was composedly replacing a long-hafted knife in its sheath and concealing both in the folds of his clothing.

‘I said there was to be no more killing,' said Alex angrily.

‘He is not dead,' said Niaz, rolling the man over with his foot. ‘I used the hilt only, and these
pūrbeah
pigs have thick heads. It may be that he has a crack in the skull, no more. Do we go now? It will be a long journey on foot.'

‘All the more reason to go on horseback,' said Alex. ‘Even a spent horse may travel swifter than a man. We will wait. Those two will be back soon, and I think that they will bring us the horses.'

He stooped above the unconscious man and began swiftly to strip off his outer clothing, donning them himself while Niaz bound and gagged the man and rolled him out of sight under the cart.

Ten minutes later the other two returned, leading, as Alex had surmised, the horses that they had found grazing by the jheel. ‘We could not find him. But there were two horses and we have brought both away. He cannot get far on foot,' said the man with the musket, edging his way between the wheel and the steep bank of the lane. He crumpled and fell as Alex's fist took him under the jaw, and a choked cry from the rear of the cart showed that Niaz had risen from beneath it and struck down a second victim.

‘Pah! It is easy,' said Niaz with scorn, ducking under the wheels and reappearing. ‘We must pull this thing clear, else the horses cannot pass.'

They dragged the cart forward, and having led the horses out of the lane, tied up the two groaning men (the first had still not moved) and bundled them into the cart. ‘It would be better to kill them,' said Niaz judicially, ‘then they can tell no tales.'

‘There has been enough killing. They will not be found until morning and we shall be across the river by then.'

‘Mayhap,' grunted Niaz pessimistically. ‘But there is the bridge to be crossed.'

The brief period of rest appeared to have put new life into the jaded horses and they made good time along the moon-splashed road towards the river, but Alex's arm had begun to stiffen, and from the pain that it gave him he realized that the jagged scrap of metal that had caused the wound must still be embedded in it. He would have to get it out soon or it would fester.

Less than an hour's riding brought them the smell of the river, and they led the horses off the road and tethering them in the jungle went forward on foot to reconnoitre. The unmade road became rougher and more sandy and the air cooled perceptibly and smelt of wet sand and stagnant shallows. There was a square mud toll-house where the road ended, and behind it, screened by plantains and bamboo, lay a meagre huddle of huts that housed the family of the toll-keeper and the bridge guard. Pedestrians were not required to pay a toll, which was only levied on carts and wheeled vehicles whose approach was audible from a considerable distance, and the toll-house was in darkness. Alex and Niaz kept to the shelter of the trees on the far side of the road, and gave it a wide berth.

The near bank was low and fringed with casuarina scrub, and the white sands and wandering shallows stretched far out into the moonlight. But beyond the sands and the shallows the river ran deep and wide, bounded on the far side by a steep bank and a solid wall of jungle. A raised stone causeway ran from the Oudh bank to the edge of the deep water where a bridge of boats spanned the main arm of the river, but there was no sign of life on or near it, and it lay open and innocent in the waning moonlight, creaking to the sluggish pull of the slow-moving current.

‘They are on the other side,' muttered Niaz.

Alex nodded, frowning. He knew the far bank of the river well. The jungle that clothed it was so dense as to be almost impenetrable. A horse could not force its way through that tangle of trees and scrub and high grass, and it was no easy task for a man, for there were no paths except those made by wild animals. The only road was the one which wound for almost ten miles from the river to Lunjore, walled in by the jungle. And even if they could swim the horses across there was no point for several miles, either up stream or down, where they could get them ashore, since the current ran strongly on the far side and had worn away the bank until it overhung the river. The only possible landing-place was the cutting where the bridge of boats ended and the road ran up a long, gentle slope to where another brick-built toll-house
and half a dozen mud huts huddled on the fringe of the jungle. They would have to leave the horses.

‘We must swim,' said Alex slowly.

Niaz did not speak but he pointed silently, and Alex, looking along his raised arm as a man sights along the barrels of a gun, saw a long grey object at the water's edge; something that might have been a log washed down by the river, and which lay at the exact angle that such a log would have grounded. Mugger; the blunt-nosed, man-eating crocodile of the Indian rivers.

‘If I die, I will die on land,' said Niaz, ‘and not in the belly of such as that. Besides, I am no swimmer, and it will go hard with thee to swim against the current with a wounded arm. No. I will go forward, riding one of the horses. Why should they do me harm? They look for a Pathan. If there be only a few, I may slay them, and then I return for thee.'

‘And if there be a dozen of them and they hold thee until first light? The men we bound at Pari will be found at the dawn, and they will follow here and will remember thee.'

‘I said we should have killed them,' said Niaz disgustedly. ‘It is in my mind to ride back now and slit their throats. But it were better I think to go forward while the night lasts.'

Alex said: ‘Try then. It may serve. Take my horse, for it is the least spent. And if there be too many of them, ride for Lunjore and tell Gardener Sahib to send a company with all speed.'

They walked back through the casuarinas and the clogging sand towards the road and the thicket where they had left the horses, but as they reached the road's edge Niaz checked suddenly to listen and Alex, following his example, heard a faint and distant sound that he had heard once before that night. A sound of galloping hoof-beats that came nearer and louder. This time from the direction of Pari.

The two men stood motionless in the shelter of the trees and presently five riders galloped past them in the clear moonlight, raising a choking white cloud of dust. They heard the headlong pace check at the toll-hut and a sound of voices, and then clear in the silence the creak and clop of horsemen crossing the bridge of boats.

Niaz let his breath out in a small sigh. ‘One at least of those men is one who watched by the cart. I should have hit harder. The bridge is closed to us. It may be that we can win back to the Khanwai road. They will not look to see us there, and we have the horses. Let us go back.'

‘And be hunted through Oudh? No. We must go forward - or die.'

‘Then I think we die tonight!' said Niaz grimly.

‘If we can reach the bridge it should be possible to swim the river,' said Alex thoughtfully. ‘We can hold by the bridge and—'

‘We cannot do it,' said Niaz. ‘No two men could reach the boats unseen even on their bellies. There is not cover for a tree-rat.'

Alex digested the truth of this statement in silence. The base of the stone causeway was considerably wider than its top and the ramp on either side offered no cover, while from the bank to the bridge lay close on two hundred yards of flat open sand and shallow pools which the river covered in the rainy season. Anything moving on it would be visible while the moon was up, but between moonset and first light there would be at least a short period of darkness, and during that time it might be possible to wriggle unseen to where the bridge began, and there to take to the water. Niaz was no swimmer as he had said, but even he could pull himself over by the boats, for the ropes that tethered them together would provide a handhold. But they had first to reach the bridge …

Alex had had barely three hours' sleep in the last two days and his head was aching. His wounded arm was absurdly painful and it throbbed to a steady burning beat of pain that seemed to find an odd rumbling echo in the night. An echo which slowly drowned the throb of his blood, until he realized suddenly what it was. There were carts approaching down the road towards the bridge. A long line of creaking, bullock-drawn carts of the kind that may be met with on any Indian road at any time of the night; their drivers asleep while the patient beasts plod slowly onward hour after hour in the darkness.