Jani and the Greater Game (The Multiplicity Series Book 1) (7 page)

She closed her eyes and waited, a sick feeling in her stomach.

Only then, as she mimicked death, did the throbbing pain in her ankle and back return.

She heard a Russian voice – what an ugly language it was! – and the sound of footsteps crunching through the debris. The soldiers were chatting casually among themselves, and Jani would have loved to know what they were talking about. Were they homesick for a bleak Moscow, or missing their sweethearts, or crowing at the British deaths their actions had brought about?

The footsteps came closer. She held her breath, drawing in her stomach and hoping the thickness of her dress might conceal any inadvertent movement. She thought then that an eagle-eyed soldier might notice the ticking pulse at her throat – but there was little she could do about that now.

She only hoped that Lady Eddington would play her part and keep still.

The Russians’ conversation seemed only yards away. She could smell the reek of cheap cigarettes, and then a waft of body odour. A Russian soldier laughed and the sunlight – showing venous red through her closed eye-lids – was blotted out as he stepped between her and the midday sun.

The shadow remained, and Jani wondered if the Russian was looking down on her, examining her wound, wondering why it appeared
not quite right
... Or was he standing with his back to her, examining the ‘corpse’ of the dowager?

She longed to open her eyes, quell her curiosity, but knew that to do so might spell her death.

She heard another round of gunshots, a long way off, and it was all she could do to prevent herself from giving an involuntary start.

At long last the shadow moved away from her, and the red light resumed.

She heard the scraping of metal and wondered what the soldiers were doing now. She heard the sound of conversation, not far off. The odour of tobacco wafted her way again. Unable to stop herself, she fluttered open her right eye minimally.

The soldiers were ten yards away; they had righted a
chaise longue
and an armchair and were sitting down to finish their cigarettes.

She could not help herself; unbidden, a tear escaped her right eye and slid down her cheek.

Whether it was the tear that betrayed her, or Lady Eddington’s sudden, small indrawn breath, she would never know.

She heard a Russian exclamation, and hurried footsteps, and then someone kicked her in the ribs and she cried out in pain and opened her eyes. Lady Eddington screamed as another soldier assaulted her; a third, she saw, was kicking at the corpse of Mr Gollalli in an attempt to discern if the dead film-maker were part of the duplicity.

Terrified, Jani scrambled over to the old lady and they held each other as the Russian soldiers bent down, picked something from the ground, and passed it around with quizzical comments: one of Mr Gollalli’s fake wounds.

Then the trio faced Jani and the dowager, and their grins were almost identical: venal and libidinous, and accompanied by a look in their eyes that Jani would never forget.

They whispered to each other, staring at her exposed chest, and Jani was too petrified to move a hand and cover herself.

“Be brave, child,” Lady Eddington murmured, then cleared her throat and addressed the soldiers.

“I doubt whether you speak English, so I am reduced to employing your mother tongue. H’hem...” She stared at the soldiers and spoke a short sentence in Russian.

In an aside to Jani, she said, “I’ve asked to speak to their commanding officer.”

The tallest of the soldiers grinned, then laughed uproariously and said something to his comrades. The trio laughed with him.

He knelt so that he was level with Lady Eddington and said deliberately, “I speak a little English. Our orders, to kill all who survive the crash. But my commanding officer... he say nothing about... how you say... having a little fun?” He turned to his comrades and smiled. “But first of all,” said the soldier, “we kill the old lady.”

He stood, drew a revolver – prolonging the torture by checking that the chamber was fully loaded – then stood back and raised the weapon.

Jani wept, too frightened to move a muscle.

Lady Eddington, fixing the soldier with her steely gaze, recited, “The Lord is my shepherd...”

Jani saw the soldier’s trigger finger tighten. She wept and closed her eyes.

The expected detonation never came. She heard a grunt, and when she opened her eyes she saw the soldier slumped on the ground, his head twisted at a strange and unlikely angle. There was a blur of motion and the second soldier screamed as something attacked him, twisted his neck with a snap and discarded him like a rag doll.

The third soldier backed off, terror in his eyes, as Jelch advanced. The soldier fumbled with his weapon, raised it and tried to find the trigger. He was too slow. Jelch yanked his rifle from his grip, reversed it and, as the Russian stared in horror, the creature stepped forward and drove the weapon through his sternum with a terrible crunch of breaking bone.

A silence sealed itself over the suddenly motionless tableau, broken after a second by the beautiful singing of a song bird.

Jelch turned and stared at Jani, its deathly white, flattened face expressionless. Then it took off at speed and was soon lost to sight amidst the wreckage of the airship.

Jani felt a hot flush spread from her chest and rise into her head. Her ankle throbbed as if someone was prodding it with a red hot poker, and the pain in the small of her back surged.

Lady Eddington, eyes shut tight, was still reciting the Psalm.

Jani wanted to tell the dowager that her prayers had been answered, but she felt a sudden and overwhelming nausea.

Clutching Lady Eddington’s hand, she passed out.

CHAPTER

FOUR

Das addresses his followers –

The perfidy of the British – The age of Kali –

“Obey my commands...”

D
URGA
D
AS SAT
in the shade of the banyan tree, in a square on the outskirts of Delhi, and addressed his followers.

It was late afternoon on a punishingly hot summer’s day and even the dogs had not yet ventured from the shadows. The only sounds were the distant hum of the city, the occasional thrum of an airship as it passed overhead, and the mellifluous drone of Das’s voice as he stressed to the crowd the iniquitous nature of British rule in India.

He was a huge man swaddled in the tangerine robes of a high priest, his belly hammocked in his lap. A garland of marigolds hung around his neck, lost in the cataract of his grey beard. On his broad forehead was painted a single word in Hindi,
Kali
... For Durga Das was a follower of Kali, the goddess of time and change and the consort of Shiva.

For two hours he had worked the crowd into a fervour of indignation, and then rage, as he outlined the crimes committed by the British. “They came to our great land,” he said in Hindi, “and posed as traders, beneficent people with only the buying of spices in mind. They persuaded our forefathers with sweet words – but is it not written that the vicious, despite their honeyed words, have poison in their hearts? And very soon they showed their true colours; when their evil agents had gained our trust, worked their wiles on our gullible leaders, then little by little they exerted their considerable powers, dividing and conquering, setting maharajah against maharajah, nawab against nawab; and then they sent in their soldiers – for our protection, they claimed – and the rot had set in. For it is written that the cruel are feared even by the wise. From then on, the story has been one of relentless conquest, rape and pillage, as the British took what is rightfully ours and imposed their decadent ways on our people...”

They were a simple crowd, composed mainly of stall-holders, street-hawkers and the unemployed; he could get away with half-truths, generalisations, and the occasional quote from holy texts. If challenged, he would say that he would use any weapon in his armoury against the British oppressors, even lies; if lies were the means to a desired end, then so be it. What mattered was that he instil in the hearts of the people the basic truth, that India belonged to the Indians and the British were not wanted here.

“Down the decades,” he went on, “they have shown their hatred of our people by massacring innocent men, women and children. They are no better than the Russians and the Chinese whom they constantly rail against! Consider, if you doubt my word, the most recent atrocity committed by British soldiers in the city of Allahabad. There our brothers, the Nationalists, staged a peaceful demonstration – and what did the British do?”

Several people, planted and paid for by his acolytes, shouted out, “They shot dead fifty of our people!”

“The dirty British killed us like dogs!”

“They began firing upon innocent protestors who had fired not one shot! One hour later, over fifty men, women and children lay dead in the square!”

Durga Das raised his hands. “All,” he went on, calming the tide of outrage spreading through the crowd, “to put down our fellow Nationalists, to quell the
peaceful
voice of dissent – to keep their powerful stranglehold on the country they stole from us!”

He allowed the protests to swell again, then raised his hands – relishing his power as he played the gathering like an expert conductor. “But what is it that they really want from us?” he asked, eyeing the front row of the gathering. Eager eyes returned his stare, hanging on his every word. He saw individuals shake their heads, their lips moving silently as they asked him what it was the British really wanted.

“I will tell you, my children. The British do not want to rule over us because they take from our great country spices and tea, coffee and all manner of exotic foodstuffs they are unable to grow in their own frost-bound homeland – though they gladly steal such produce from us by the by. No, the true reason they subjugate our great nation is to get their greedy hands on what they call Annapurnite.”

A scandalised murmur passed through the seated crowd.

Das raised his arms. Silence fell. He went on, “But I can tell you, my friends, that there is
no such thing
as Annapurnite!”

A collective indrawn breath raced through the crowd like wildfire, followed by a hubbub of frenzied comment. Durga Das called for order and said, “Be patient, my friends, and I will explain... I come from a long and venerable line of Holy Priests – my father was a Priest, and his father before him, and his father too, all the way back, over five hundred years – and having its source, like the holy Ganges itself, in the foothills of the Himalayas, from where my family hailed. Now fifty years ago, so the British claim, an English prospector discovered in the foothills an ore of such tremendous power that from it could be derived the means to create a fuel with which to drive all manner of technology. But I will tell you this...” He paused, his commanding gaze sweeping over the gathering, ensuring their obedient silence before he went on triumphantly, “I tell you this – the British were lying!”

When the outcry had abated, Das continued. “There was no such prospector! There was no such ore! There is no such thing as Annapurnite! It is yet another lie the British use in their armoury of treachery to subjugate our great nation!”