The Place of Dead Kings (14 page)

The porters took less than an hour to pack away the remainder of the army camp. Then, at a barked command from Sergeant Wulfric and a blast of horns, the column of men, animals and vehicles ground into life and marched, trod and trundled up the road. Rain battered the carts, channelled over the wagon covers and smeared the backs of the oxen and mules. Men called instructions to each other, animals moaned and wheels churned the mud.

Jack, Saleem, Andrew and the others strode behind the wagon containing the statue, while a driver cracked a huge whip above the eight pairs of oxen. The figure of Ganesh had been covered in canvas and secured with chains, but the wagon creaked and sagged under the great weight.

The tall man who’d stopped the statue from falling walked nearby.

‘Thanks for your help,’ Jack said.

The man grinned broadly, his eyes glinting in the dim light. ‘It was nothing.’

Jack offered his hand. ‘Jack Casey.’

‘Robert.’ The man took Jack’s hand in his meaty paw. ‘I’m the cartwright for this journey.’

‘Keep moving, scum!’ Sergeant Wulfric marched up and down the column. ‘Don’t laze about, you hear!’

One man slipped and clung to the edge of a cart to stop himself falling.

‘Watch your feet, scum.’ Wulfric strapped the man on the arm. ‘Get on with it.’

‘Charming Sergeant we have there,’ Jack said to Robert, keeping his voice low.

Robert chuckled. ‘Och, you’ve only seen the half of it. We’ve been working for him since yesterday. We’re all sick of him.’ He spoke with a thick, unfamiliar accent and some of the words he used Jack couldn’t even understand.

Jack craned his neck to see over the heads of the men in front. He was near the rear of the column and there were at least a hundred porters, along with animals and carts, stretched out before him. Beyond the baggage train, the European soldiers marched in an orderly formation, with knapsacks on their backs and knife-muskets at their sides. They wore standard blue caps and tunics, while their officers, who rode alongside on horses, all had scarlet turbans. A drummer beat time as he strode at the rear of the group.

Jack pointed at the troops. ‘Saxons?’

‘Aye,’ Robert said. ‘Call themselves the 7th Native Saxon Infantry.’

Jack wiped the rain from his eyes and made out three figures on horseback at the head of the party. Staring hard, he identified Captain Rao, holding a black parasol above his head to protect himself from the rain. Beside him rode the rotund lieutenant, also with a parasol, and behind them came the man in the purple uniform.

‘What about the Rajthanans?’ Jack asked. ‘What are they like?’

‘Keep themselves to themselves for the most part,’ Robert said. ‘They’ve hardly spoken to us. Captain might be a wee bit inexperienced, though.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘Just heard it. His first assignment, they say.’

‘What about that lieutenant riding with him?’

‘Parihar’s his name. Heard he’s an old friend of the Captain’s.’

‘And that man behind them?’

Robert squinted. ‘Him? They call him Siddha Atri.’

Jack rubbed his chin. So, this Atri was indeed a siddha. Jack would have to watch him carefully.

A shudder ran through Jack’s body. They’d passed into a powerful stream of sattva, and he caught a whiff of the perfumed scent.

A ripple of unease passed back through the men as the baggage train rounded a hill. Jack noticed porters talking agitatedly to each other and pointing up the road. The smell of sattva became even more overpowering and mingled with a suggestion of coal smoke.

Jack turned to Robert. ‘What is it?’

Robert just nodded ahead. ‘Look.’

They passed around the side of the hill and a shallow basin opened up to their left. The land looked as though a battle had pounded it. What must have once been a forest had been reduced to scorched stumps. The grass and undergrowth had been burnt to ash and small fires dotted the ground despite the rain. Dim figures moved in the murk, as if rising up from the mud. Jack made out gangs of men digging with spades, driving poles into the earth or hauling up the few remaining trees. Rajthanan soldiers whipped the labourers with crops if they paused for even a moment. Near to the road, a giant European soldier was flogging a man chained to the side of a cart.

‘What is this?’ Andrew made to move towards the basin, but Jack held him back.

‘Mills,’ Robert said quietly. ‘They’re building new ones. Those men are traitors. Captured by the army.’

‘Crusaders,’ Andrew said.

‘Shut it,’ Jack hissed.

There was nothing they could do to help the men, but Jack understood what Andrew was thinking. He was thinking it himself – out there, toiling beneath the whips and crops of the Rajthanans, were his brothers, his comrades, his fellow freedom fighters.

In the past, when he’d been a loyal subject, he’d thought the empire was a force for good. Jhala had often told him the Rajthanans had brought dharma to Europe, and Jack had believed him. But before him he saw the true face of the empire. It was like a giant mill that sucked in people and land and sattva and ground them all into pieces.

Cold determination flooded through him. If the Grail existed, he would find it and use it against the Rajthanans.

Or die trying.

A metallic howl split the air. Smoke blasted from the side of the road and a giant shape, about the size of an elephant, reared up. With its claws, feelers and quivering mandibles, it looked something like a lobster, but its body was constructed entirely of black iron studded with rivets. Rain steamed as it struck the creature’s carapace and deep within it, just visible through the joints in its thorax, roared a red fire.

The porters cried out and stumbled to the other side of the road or ran ahead to get past the beast. One man shrieked and sprinted up the barren slope to the right, clambered to the top and disappeared over the ridge without looking back even once.

‘Lord Jesus.’ Andrew crossed himself.

‘Stay where you are,’ Jack shouted to his men. ‘It’s just a transport avatar.’ He sounded confident, but he’d learnt even transport avatars could be dangerous and he kept a wary eye on the creature.

A driver in a grey tunic and turban rushed across to the avatar and tapped it on the side with a stick. The beast grumbled and a jet of steam whistled from its side. Then it raised itself up on its hind legs for a moment, exposing an underbelly riddled with tubes and pistons, before it spun round and crunched back to the earth. It ambled off, the driver following and continuing to tap it with the stick.

‘Keep moving, scum!’ Wulfric paced alongside the column. ‘Anyone who stops again gets fifty lashes!’

The men pressed on past the desolate basin. The scent of sattva remained intense, and Saleem raised his sleeve to his face so he could breathe through the cloth. Jack patted the lad on the shoulder and gave him a grim smile. No doubt Saleem was remembering their encounters with avatars three years ago.

Finally, the road bent away from the basin, the sattva faded and the men’s unease seemed to lift. The porters walked with more confidence and a few even laughed and joked.

Robert shivered. ‘Evil place.’

‘That’s true enough,’ Jack said.

He stared ahead through the sheets of rain. The road snaked off across a dismal heath and into a line of hills.

‘You know how far it is to Scotland?’ he asked Robert.

‘Not far.’ The big man grinned. ‘The border’s three hours away, at the most. All this land used to be part of Scotland, before the Rajthanans got here a few years ago.’

Three hours. Good. They were making progress. Each step forward was a step towards Mahajan’s kingdom and whatever secrets it held.

Jack caught snatches of singing. The soldiers were belting out Saxon marching songs, and while their voices were harsh and guttural, there was something uplifting about the sound.

He remembered singing himself as he and his army comrades marched along. He smiled as he recalled one of his regiment’s favourite tunes.

He grinned a little wider and the cold and rain seemed to fade away. The Saxons continued chanting, but in his head the English song ran on and on.

From out of the past, the voices of the men from his regiment seemed to swirl about him, soft at first, but then rising to a loud chant. William was beside him. And all the others who’d died in battle. They were marching along with him. All around him. So many of them.

Ghosts.

M
isty drizzle cloaked the land. Rain dripped from the branches of the hunched trees and puddles smeared the fields. The sodden ground sucked at the men’s boots as they walked, while the cart and wagon wheels slashed the mud. Occasionally Jack heard the spectral cry of a seagull overhead, but this became less frequent as the expedition left the coast behind.

After three hours, the ground began to rise and undulate, and the hills swelled ahead.

‘That’s it,’ Robert said. ‘We’re in Scotland.’

Jack looked around. He couldn’t see guards or a border post of any sort. ‘How can you tell?’

Robert grinned and his eyes shone. ‘A Scot always knows when he’s come home.’

‘A Scot?’

Robert grinned more widely. ‘Aye. Did you not realise?’

Jack mumbled that he hadn’t. He glanced at the big man, who wore a worn tunic, hose and old boots. The only thing notable about him was his height and his unkempt hair and beard. He looked no different from an ordinary Englishman. ‘I thought . . . you’d look—’

‘Like a wild savage?’ Robert opened his eyes wide, as if he were crazed.

That is what Jack had thought. He’d been posted to the Scottish border years ago with the army and he’d even seen Scots bandits in the distance. But they’d always fled when he and his platoon had pursued them.

Robert chuckled. ‘No, you’re thinking of the tribes to the north. Here in the south, near the border, we’re little different from you English.’

Jack stared ahead into the grey haze. He didn’t know much about Scotland. During his posting to north-east England, he’d learnt almost nothing about the lands beyond the border. Scotland had always seemed a place of mists and secrets. A place he was unlikely ever to travel in.

‘This Land of Mar,’ he said. ‘How long will it take us to get there?’

‘Now there’s a question.’ Robert scratched his beard. ‘No one knows precisely because no one knows exactly where it is.’

‘Great. How are we going to get there, then?’

‘See that man?’ Robert pointed to the head of the column, where an indistinct figure now walked alongside Captain Rao’s horse. ‘He’s a guide. Another Scot. He’ll lead us as far as he can. But after that we’ll have to ask the local tribes for directions.’

‘Sounds as though it’s going to take weeks.’

‘Aye. It will. I heard the Rajthanans are estimating two weeks. But that’s just a guess.’ His teeth flashed in the dim light. ‘That’s if we even make it at all.’

Two weeks? Jack went silent. That was longer than he’d hoped. In Shropshire they’d estimated a week, but that was based on information in ancient manuscripts, which could well be inaccurate.

There were only four weeks left before Kanvar’s cure wore off. At the moment he felt well enough, but the sattva-fire was always there, quivering in his chest whenever he stopped to think about it. And he would grow weaker as the end of the two-month period drew closer.

He stared across the windswept landscape.

He remembered Elizabeth on the night she’d come to his hut and stood in the doorway and told him she was pregnant. Then he found himself picturing Vadula’s army massing in Worcestershire.

He shook his head to dispel these thoughts.

Your mind is a rippling pool. Still it.

Keep your thoughts focused on the task. Keep your feet on the road. Keep marching forward.