The Tiger Warrior (15 page)

There was a lazy whine overhead, followed by a dull thump and a puff of smoke from the opposite shore. A copiously moustached figure walked into view from behind the deckhouse and planted himself firmly behind the line of riflemen, his hands behind his back and his heavy Adams revolver drawn. He turned toward Howard, and a bloodshot eye bore down on him from under the peak of his pith helmet.

“Shall we give them a volley, sir? Put the wind up them. Fucking savages.”

“Sergeant O’Connell. Might I remind you we are desired by government to open negotiations to induce the rebels to free the native constables they have taken captive.”

“Poppycock, sir, if I may say so.”

“You may. Meanwhile, hold your fire.”

The moustache twitched. “Very good, sir.”

Howard took out a brass and ivory pocket telescope from a pouch on his belt, raised his head slightly over the plating and peered through the telescope at the far bank. There were dozens of them now, streaming down from the village, lean, dark men clad in loincloths, some carrying bows and arrows and others long matchlock smoothbores. He could see that some were more extravagantly made up, their long hair combed and braided forward and embellished with red cloth and feathers. Some of them carried skin drums and brass trumpets. Along the foreshore clusters of men were digging pits in the sand and erecting three bamboo poles in a line against the edge of the jungle. They had lit large bonfires, and the swirling black smoke drifted over the river, obscuring the scene from the steamer. It was unsettling to view, flashes of activity revealed and then obscured in the smoke, impossible to discern the intent. At any moment they might pull out their canoes and mass for attack. Howard turned to the sergeant. “Their last fusillade was up in the air. There’s something odd going on over there. They’re right on the edge of the riverbank, as if they want us to see them, taunting us. If they start aiming at us, you can let fly. On my command. You understand?”

“Sir.” The sun-scorched face stared resolutely forward.

Howard looked out at the scene again. A week ago, washed by the rain, this had been a place of shimmering beauty, the great gorge of the Godavari snaking its way through hills of sparkling green, rising on either side five hundred feet or more, with the ridges and peaks of the Eastern Ghats beyond. But now, it was as if a heavy miasma had risen up from the river and choked the valleys in veils of mist. The river was a lifeline, the only place where the sun burned through, and everywhere else was cloaked, sinister. He could sense the fear and superstition of the spirit world, the hundred gods and demons these people believed lurked in the jungle. His first patrol ashore had deeply unnerved him, and it was not just the rebels waiting in ambush. There was something else there, something that had kept these dark places remote and impervious from the march of progress across the continent. He could understand why their native bearers from the coastal lowlands feared and despised this place, and refused to come with them beyond Rajahmundry. He took a deep breath and raised his eyeglass again toward the reed-roofed village that spread along the opposite riverbank, and the increasing throng of natives who swirled and danced around the fires on the sandy foreshore. He turned to the Indian officer beside him, a ferocious-looking Madrasi in a turban, with piercing dark eyes. He spoke to him in Hindi. “Jemadar, pass the word for Mr. Wauchope, would you?”

“Sahib.”

A few moments later a tall figure ambled out from the deckhouse, carrying a small open book in one hand. He wore dust-colored khaki, the new fad among officers fresh from the northwest frontier, and his puttees were bound with strips of colorful Afghan cloth. He was bareheaded and tanned, with a thick crop of black hair and a full beard. Howard had spoken to him briefly when he had arrived during the night with the reinforcements, hearing the latest news from Afghanistan, but Wauchope had promptly gone to sleep in what counted as the officers’ quarters under a mosquito net beside the deckhouse. Howard was looking forward to having another officer on deck, one who was famously unruffled, just what was needed to keep them all from becoming unhinged by the darkness and sorcery of this place.

Wauchope peered at the tumult on the opposite shore, pursed his lips, then nodded at Howard. He had sharp eyes, intense like the jemadar’s, but with humor in them. “I was looking for the saloon,” he said, with a pronounced drawl. “I have come to realize that this is not exactly a Mississippi River steamer.”

“I never understood why you left America, Robert.”

“My family is Irish, remember.” Wauchope slouched down beside the railing, and fished out a pipe. “Not poor Irish, but landowning Irish of English origin. My father moved us to America because he felt powerless during the famine, and could not bear to return afterward. We have a long tradition of soldiering. For me, it was either West Point or the Royal Military Academy. After having lived through the American Civil War as a boy, I never wanted the possibility of facing my brother on the field of battle.” He tapped his pipe. “I was inclined to seek my glory abroad.”

“I was here in India during the mutiny, you know,” Howard said. “A babe in arms. I don’t remember it and my mother never told me what I saw, but I used to have bad dreams. Not anymore.” He paused, then he gestured at the book. “What are you reading?”

Wauchope deftly struck a match with his other hand and lit his pipe, sucking on it as he flicked the match overboard. He raised the spine of the book toward Howard. “Arrian. The life of Alexander the Great. We found some ancient ruins up beyond the Indus, and I’m sure they’re Greek altars.”

“The frontier’s got you hooked, Robert.”

“I’ve put in for the Survey of India, you know. They’ve got a vacancy on the Boundary Commission. I was heading back from the Afghan campaign to tie up my affairs with the regiment in Bangalore when I was diverted here as a replacement.”

“We’ve been dropping like ninepins. Every officer who steps into the jungle is prostrate within a week. It’s the worst fever I’ve ever seen.”

“You seem to have survived it.”

“I was born here, remember? Any child who survives the Bengal summer is set for life.”

“Surgeon-Major Ross in Bangalore thinks it’s the mosquitoes.”

“Of course it is.” Howard swatted his neck, and peered up at the sky. Beyond the hills a black swathe of cloud had appeared, forked by distant lightning. “And we’re not safe from mosquitoes anymore on the river. The monsoon’s pushing them out over us like a pestilential blanket.”

“Pity.” Wauchope drew on his pipe, closing his book. “If you only allowed yourself to be struck down by the fever, you’d be invalided from here and then sent to Afghanistan. That’s where careers are being made. There’ll be no medals out of this place.”

“I’m detailed for the Khyber Field Force. They say the war there isn’t over yet. But I’ve wanted to be near Edward and Helen in Bangalore. Colonel Prendergast has been most understanding.”

“Ah.” Wauchope put his hand on Howard’s arm. “How is your little boy?”

Howard’s face fell. “He’s not good, Robert. He’s been sickly all year. You know what that can mean for an infant out here.”

Howard’s voice hoarsened. “I cherish him dearly. Poor Helen is beside herself.” He turned away, blinking hard, then knelt up again and peered over the plating. He passed his telescope to the other man. “See what you make of that.”

Wauchope glanced at Howard with concern, then peered through the glass at the foreshore. “Good Lord. There must be five hundred of them, maybe more.”

The scene had changed from a few moments earlier. There were now crowds of men milling around the bonfires, and there were gourds, the palm liquor flowing freely. The men with braided hair wielded swirling batons, now weaving them into spirals, now figures of eight and back again. Drums were being beaten, discordant, out of unison, then together in a monotonous beat. Suddenly an extraordinary apparition materialized out of the smoke. A dozen men appeared with extravagant headgear of bison horns, great curved horns that perched precariously on their heads. They wore tiger skins, and their faces were red with kumkum powder. As they came forward the air was rent with shrieking, so loud it set Howard’s teeth on edge. The men advanced in a line toward the riverbank, retreated, then advanced again, kneeling down and pawing the earth in imitation of fighting bulls.

“I believe they are invoking the bloodred god of battle, Manecksoroo,” Howard murmured. “Asking to turn battle axes into swords, bows and arrows into gunpowder and bullets.”

“They have real bulls too,” Wauchope said, passing the telescope over. Howard peered through, and grunted. “So that’s it.” He snapped shut the glass, then turned and leaned back against the railing. “Bull sacrifice. That’s what those pits are for. They mix the blood with grain and throw it into the forest clearings, to induce fertility of the soil. This could go on for hours, until they are stupefied with the toddy.”

“I thought sacrifice had been suppressed,” Wauchope said.

“Human sacrifice, yes, decades ago, but not animal sacrifice, though it’s discouraged.” Howard slumped, suddenly overwhelmed with lassitude. “This is what those idiots at the Board of Revenue don’t understand. I’ve brought Campbell’s book on the suppression of human sacrifice with me. You can read it yourself He says we can’t use morality to persuade a people to give up their age-old customs. Our morality means nothing to them. You have to show them that their life will be improved as a consequence. If you then take away their greatest pleasures, they will return to their old ways. We broke the cycle by showing them their land could be fertile without needing sacrifice. Now a stroke of the pen in Calcutta and it is all undone. It was all lurking just below the surface, just inside the jungle, but now they want us to see it. You can hardly blame them.”

“Tell me about these people.”

“They’re Kóya,” Howard said. “Descendants of the ancient Dravidian inhabitants of India, here at the time of Alexander the Great. But you couldn’t get a greater contrast to the civilization of the Mughals or the Sikhs. These people are more akin to your Red Indians. They hunt in the jungle and burn small clearings for crops. Hardly any of them have a notion of the world outside.”

“Maybe no bad thing,” Wauchope murmured, drawing on his pipe. “Do we have their language?”

“I possess a slight colloquial knowledge of the vocabulary. But we have our interpreter, who tells me about their customs.” Howard jerked his head toward a small, wiry man of indeterminate age sitting cross-legged on the foredeck, his skin deeply tanned and wearing only a white loincloth. His hair was dark brown, almost auburn, curly like his straggle of beard, and his face was wizened. In one hand he was holding a bow and arrows, and in the other a tubular section of bamboo about a foot long. His only embellishment was a gold chain hanging from the top of one ear to the lobe, with a small pendant dangling below. He was smoking a cheroot, and his eyes seemed dazed.

“He’s half-cut on palm wine,” Howard said. “It can’t be helped. It’s their lifeline during the monsoon. That’s what this rebellion is all about. How much did Colonel Rammell tell you?”

Wauchope shook his head. “I only had time to report my arrival at the field force headquarters in Dowlaishweram. The boat with the sapper reinforcements was already waiting to take me upriver. And Rammell and his adjutant were both prostrate with fever. Like almost all the other officers.”

Howard exhaled forcibly. “Well here’s the nub of it. If some imbecile on the Board of Revenue hadn’t decided to impose a tax on palm toddy, then we wouldn’t be here. That, and the native policemen. For months at a time the only outside presence among these people has been the constables, lowlanders the hill people despise. The British superintendent of police and the agency commissioner hardly ever come up here because of the jungle fever. The constables are free to intimidate and exploit the hill people as lowlanders always have done. And now that we need them, they’re worse than useless. Hardly a man of them can be got to smell gunpowder. The rebels’ first act was to capture half a dozen of them. It’s good riddance as far as I’m concerned.”

A ragged volley erupted from the riverbank, but no sound of bullets overhead. “Matchlocks again, Sergeant. Hold your fire.”

Wauchope peered over the metal plate at the smoke. “Where do they get their powder?”

“When I took my first party into the jungle last week, I searched a village and seized their guns, all matchlocks,” Howard replied. “The women were making saltpeter by urinating into bags of manure suspended over pans, and then letting the liquid that seeped out crystallize. Ingenious, really. They’re always burning jungle to open up new patches for cultivation so they have plenty of charcoal, and sulphur they get from traders. The powder’s pretty poor, but it’s good enough for small game. Some of them also get powder and ball from the lowland moneylenders who enslave them in debt. But I fear they now have a new source of weapons.”

A bullet smacked against the smokestack of the steamer, causing an almighty clang, followed by a sharper crack from the shore. “Speak of the devil.” Howard peered through his glass again. “An old East India Company percussion musket, native police issue. Some of the constables have supplied the rebels with arms and ammunition in return for their own safety. The police really are perfectly useless. They can be trusted to do nothing, they are disobedient and insubordinate. But Government wishes us to employ them. That’s what happens when a war is run by clerks in Calcutta. And there’s another problem. In the infantry regiments deployed in the field force, there are sepoy officers who still can’t use maps properly, even the rudimentary ones we’ve made of this place. Without a map and bearings you’re lost in the jungle. But all of our sappers are excellent map readers. So here we are, the Queen’s Own Sappers and Miners, employed as infantry and police. It really is a most lamentable state of affairs.”