Tiger Claws (48 page)
Authors: John Speed
Sai Bai finds herself one of hundreds of women who watch in frightened silence as the long line begins to form. She walks swiftly to the front of the line, where Shivaji waits on his Bedouin, talking with Iron and O’Neil. She’d like to run, but propriety and her nausea hold her back. Hanuman’s horse trots past. She calls to him, but her voice blends into the river of voices crying out farewells.
She sees her husband nodding, hears Hanuman give the order to proceed, hears the bellowing of sergeants down the line of horsemen as the order is repeated. The army starts to move.
He’ll be gone before she gets to say a word! She dashes for the city gates. The sentries let her pass of course, and mount the narrow stairs to the battlement. “Shahu, Shahu!” she cries out. Shivaji turns—maybe he’s heard her!—but he turns back without making a sign. What about me? she thinks as he rides into the dawn. What about your vow to me?
“You see, your father is gone,” says a voice beside her, dry as stones. Sai Bai looks around to discover Jijabai nearby, and standing next to her, Sambhuji. “Bite back your tears and be a man,” Jijabai tells him, but she lets the boy bury his face in her sari, and pats him as he sobs.
Sai Bai is crying, too. She’s too woozy even to comfort her son. A hand presses her shoulder, and Sai Bai raises her wet face to see Jyoti standing near her. “Did he say goodbye to you?” Jyoti sniffs. Sai Bai shakes her head. “Neither did Hanuman,” Jyoti says. “None of them did. Two thousand men, and not one of them said goodbye.”
Kalidas offered Lakshman food. He offered him a woman. But Lakshman had come to Kalidas’s hideout for only one reason.
Kalidas wants to hear Shivaji’s response to his offer. Lakshman tells him, in a rush, just so, no more, for his thoughts are elsewhere.
Kalidas understands, of course: Had he not once felt the same desire? So Kalidas led Lakshman to Kali in her cloud of flies.
It’s not like last time, thank the gods. She doesn’t move, her eyes don’t roll. She’s just a statue. But this time, she laughs. Lakshman hears her clearly. He realizes that Kali’s gaping mouth and hanging tongue are locked in a delighted endless laugh. She is the queen of laughter.
Even the decaying heads of her necklace are laughing. Each smiles as the blackening lips expose bright teeth. The liquifying eyeballs pour down the moldering cheeks like merry tears. What can they do but laugh? he thinks. They have come home. All our heads will someday hang around her black neck, strung through the ears, licked by her dangling tongue.
At last Kalidas returns, kneels before the
murti
and kisses her black, red-nailed feet. The flies buzz around him when he stands. “Come,” says Kalidas. He helps Lakshman to his feet. “We’ve gotten word.”
murti
and kisses her black, red-nailed feet. The flies buzz around him when he stands. “Come,” says Kalidas. He helps Lakshman to his feet. “We’ve gotten word.”
Lakshman’s horse stands saddled in the clearing. “A gift to you, brother,” Kalidas says, nodding to the new silver-studded saddle and matching bridle. “Are you all right, brother? Did she give you a good dose?”
Kalidas’s smile is gentle and familiar, and around him his henchmen wear the same encouraging look. They are welcoming him into their brotherhood. He has come home.
Kalidas’s smile is gentle and familiar, and around him his henchmen wear the same encouraging look. They are welcoming him into their brotherhood. He has come home.
As he helps Lakshman up onto his saddle, Kalidas tells him that Mulana Ahmed sent word: the gold caravan will leave tomorrow. “Tell Shivaji about the ridge behind the pass,” Kalidas says smiling. “That’s where I would wait.”
“You look very happy, Kalidas,” Lakshman says, liking him.
“Why not? Has she not given me everything? Even the protection of your lord, I have. Soon I will have more gold than I could spend in the rest of my life. Why should I not be happy?” Kalidas strokes one of the bright silver bosses on the saddle. “Don’t forget to bring my money,” he says, not looking up at Lakshman.
“I won’t,” Lakshman replies hurriedly. For it seems to him suddenly that Kalidas’s voice is like a threat.
“I trust you, brother. I want to trust your master as well.” Kalidas lifts his hands to his head. “Follow her commands, brother. She will give you anything. Just do what she asks.”
“But how will she tell me what she wants?”
“Always she is talking, talking, talking. No one wants to hear, for they fear her words. Don’t be afraid of what she tells you. However strange it seems, obey! Only listen, listen, listen.” Then Kalidas laughs and slaps the horse’s rump, and Lakshman canters away.
Lakshman arrives at the Vyasa Pass just as the sun reaches the western horizon. Conditions at the encampment are spartan. No tents, no fires—the horses are kept saddled; bedrolls lie on the bare ground.
Lakshman gives Shivaji Kalidas’s message: there’s less than a day before the caravan clears the pass. Then he adds Kalidas’s suggestion to ambush the caravan in the rise on the other side of the pass.
“I don’t like it,” Shivaji says after a moment.
Lakshman’s good eye twists to Shivaji. “What don’t you like, Shahu?”
“The place a caravan would most expect an ambush would be as they emerge from the pass. Just the place that Kalidas told us to go. They’ll be ready for a fight. In a fair fight, our three hundred men can never beat their thousand.”
Lakshman smiles. “Tell me you have an unfair plan.”
Shivaji’s plan is so difficult that Hanuman begins deploying men immediately. The preparations are huge. Lakshman sees now why Shivaji chose Hanuman to be his chief lieutenant. Hanuman has always been an enthusiastic fool, and that’s exactly what Shivaji’s plan requires.
What motivates Hanuman is hard for Lakshman to imagine. What motivates the three hundred men is obvious. Shivaji promised them a share in the spoils. He even promised to count out their shares within their sight. Of course, for this, even Lakshman pitches in. He thinks Shivaji’s plan will fail, but he wants his hand out in case it should succeed.
They work that night and all next day. The sun has begun to slip down the western sky before everything is ready.
Near the entrance to the pass, Lakshman scrambles to the top of a hill, where Shivaji and Hanuman huddle together. Below them the gold caravan stretches over the twisting mountain road. “Look,” Shivaji says to Lakshman. “You guessed right.”
Earlier, they’d argued over how the captain would arrange his caravan, its wagons and its guards. Now they see that the forces are arranged much as Lakshman had foretold. “You should always listen to me.” Lakshman grins.
At the head of the line are rank after rank of lancers, riding four abreast. Behind them come perhaps fifty horse-drawn carts, each surrounded by six horsemen. Then a hundred or more horsemen carrying bows and arrows. Lakshman’s eye gleams. “Just the way we want them, Shahu. Made to order.”
“The captain will have joined the real caravan: the one coming through our pass. They’re walking right into our hands.”
As the captain’s section of the caravan enters the pass, the sun casts dark shadows across the stony road. The sun is going down. The vanguard of Bijapuri lancers crowds together where the road narrows. The captain shouts for everyone to move quickly.
The wagons struggle over the ragged stone of the mountain road, wheels groaning and creaking. They’re slower moving than the lancers, and soon a large gap has formed. And behind the wagons, the archers clump together,
jostling against each other, since it’s hard for them to move as slowly as the wagons.
jostling against each other, since it’s hard for them to move as slowly as the wagons.
The wagons have just reached the midpoint of the pass when chaos explodes all around them.
A loud
bang
echoes from the canyon walls on either side of the road. Suddenly a half-dozen horses and their riders fall into a crumpled heap. Those standing nearby find themselves splattered by blood, by chunks of meat and bone. Horses rear and run madly, screaming, their wounds still smoking. Another bang. More horsemen fly into the air as their horses disintegrate beneath them.
bang
echoes from the canyon walls on either side of the road. Suddenly a half-dozen horses and their riders fall into a crumpled heap. Those standing nearby find themselves splattered by blood, by chunks of meat and bone. Horses rear and run madly, screaming, their wounds still smoking. Another bang. More horsemen fly into the air as their horses disintegrate beneath them.
Smoke billows through the narrow passage. The smell of gunpowder and burnt flesh swirls around the chaos. The horses begin to dance, eager to run, pitching their riders. Fallen men scramble to avoid the hooves of their terrified mounts.
The cannon blast away again, leaving a score of horses and their riders dead, and dozens bleeding and wild.
“They’re firing chains!” shouts someone over the screams of wounded. The remaining archers, who expected only to be firing arrows at a rear attack, now wheel their horses around and drive for the rear in panic.
More cannon fire. Screaming horses fall in a heap, pinning their broken riders. Unable to turn, the wagon horses run forward in a frenzy as another cannon blasts. The horses of the third wagon try to climb over the wagon ahead of them. They all spill over, and the upended wagons land in a heap against the jagged rocks.
All this has taken only seconds. Before the lancers can turn their mounts, an avalanche of boulders pours down. The phalanx collapses beneath the stones. Shouts and screams, crash and clatter, these echo in a jumble from the bluffs. Another cannon booms. Smoke billows out in brown, caustic clouds.
Then from the bluffs where the rocks crashed down, come high-pitched war cries:
Har, har, mahadev! Har, har, mahadev!
A hundred men, two hundred, some on ponies, come sliding down.
Har, har, mahadev! Har, har, mahadev!
A hundred men, two hundred, some on ponies, come sliding down.
Soon the wagons are surrounded. The lancers are cut off from the wagons. The wagon guards try to form a line, but in vain. On their nimble ponies, Shivaji’s soldiers dart toward them and dash away, attacking with lance and sword, and deadly arrows. Each time they leave a few more dead behind, then they circle and attack again.
Hanuman begins to shout orders. All the wagon guards have fallen;
most are dead. Riderless horses trample the bodies of the living and the dead alike. “Archers, archers!” Hanuman bellows. “Form a line!”
most are dead. Riderless horses trample the bodies of the living and the dead alike. “Archers, archers!” Hanuman bellows. “Form a line!”
Less than three minutes have passed. The Marathi archers fire a rain of arrows. Lakshman, his lance bloody, is the first to reach a wagon. He heaves aside the canvas cover and exposes a dozen sacks. Dropping his lance, he slashes of the top of one with his serpent dagger and peers inside.
“Sand!” he screams, in a voice so loud that the others stop and look at him. He lifts the sack and pours its contents out in a brown cascade. He tries another and another. “Nothing but sand!” He runs down toward the rear of the convoy. Shivaji is trying to organize a rear guard against the fleeing Bijapuri archers. Lakshman reaches Shivaji and grabs him by the shoulder. “There’s nothing here but goddamned sand! We attacked the wrong convoy!”
Shivaji looks at Lakshman for a moment, then tries to turn away, but Lakshman will not let him. He spins him around again, swinging his dagger toward Shivaji’s face. Shivaji is fast enough to block the blow: with the hilt of his gauntlet sword Shivaji cracks Lakshman against the ear.
When Lakshman lifts his head, his ear is ringing so badly he can see the pain. He staggers to his feet and stares at Shivaji, trying to decide if he should drive his dagger in the bastard’s back. But he does not. He growls and lurches back down the road.
In his pain, Lakshman sees the situation with icy clarity. All around is chaos and disaster. To the east, Shivaji is screaming at bowmen who are pelting the retreating Bijapuris with showers of arrows. But they’re quickly running short of arrows. When they run out, Lakshman thinks, the Bijapuris will regroup. They outnumber us, and we’ll all die.
Hanuman’s men are firing arrows at any of the Bijapuri lancers foolish enough to attack. The lancers die by ones and twos, but there are hundreds of them. It’s only a matter of moments before the lancers regroup and try an all-out assault, Lakshman thinks.
A cannon shot echoes through the pass. Lakshman turns to see that Shivaji has aimed a couple of cannon at the fleeing archers. A cluster of shot whistles mere inches over his head, over the wagons and riders, over the heads of Hanuman and his Marathi men. Then Lakshman hears the screams of the Bijapuris on the other side.
As the echo of the cannon’s roar fades, an awful silence rings in Lakshman’s ears. “Why are your handth empty?” he hears a voice whisper, a woman’s voice.
Lakshman spins around, trying to find the source of the whisper. “Do
you not thee that hammer?” the voice lisps again. Near his feet he spies a Bijapuri battle hammer and picks it up, threading his hand through the heavy leather thong.
you not thee that hammer?” the voice lisps again. Near his feet he spies a Bijapuri battle hammer and picks it up, threading his hand through the heavy leather thong.
“Thtrike him,” says the voice. Lakshman sees a few feet away a Bijapuri gasping in agony, trapped beneath his broken, dying horse. “Thtrike him!” the lisping voice insists, and now of course, he knows whose voice he hears, and why it lisps. He sees the wide-eyed terror of the Bijapuri as the iron hammer falls. His head implodes with a wet
thwack.
thwack.
Lakshman looks down at the hammer lodged in the Bijapuri’s skull, the Bijapuri’s twisted, broken face, the blood and brain splattered on his pants. “What have I done?” he asks himself. He tugs the hammer free and staggers forward, self-loathing growing in his chest. In an agony of anger, he swings the hammer around his head once more, and smacks it viciously into the side of an overturned wagon.
The hammer splinters the wood with a loud crack. As Lakshman wrenches it free, he sees a glint of brightness. His eye widens, and he begins to batter the wood, again and again. Chips and splinters fly in all directions as the boards fragment under his blows. And then it spills out, looking almost a liquid; a river of golden coins flowing from the hammer hole, forming a puddle around Lakshman’s feet.
It takes Lakshman a moment to realize what’s happened, a moment, but no more. Then he falls to his knees and begins to shovel coins into his pockets, laughing, rubbing them on his face like cool water. “Hey, Shahu!” he yells. “I found it! They hid it in the wagon sides!”
His shouts can barely be heard over the clamor of the battle. But soon Marathis all around him are leaping off their horses, tearing at the wagon sides with lances and swords, battering them with maces and bare hands. A pond of gold spills from the wagon. The Marathis scoop up the coins. Emptying the sacks of sand, they fill them with treasure.
Other books
Arab Jazz by Karim Miské
Lessons In Loving by Peter McAra
MemorialDay by Wayne Greenough
The Priest's Well (The Greek Village Collection Book 12) by Sara Alexi
The Liars' Club: A Memoir by Karr, Mary
Dangerous Hearts: Rock Star Romance, 1 (Lyric & Wolf) by Mia McAdams
Folly by Jassy Mackenzie
Free Gift With Purchase by Jackie Pilossoph
Sorceress by Celia Rees
Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson
