Supping With Panthers (10 page)

‘Go on, man!’ I shouted. Still the Sergeant-Major wouldn’t budge. ‘Dammit, I’m giving you an order!’ I bellowed, and only then did he begin to climb. As I tried to follow him, however, I felt cold fingers clasping round my leg, and when I tried to kick them away I lost my balance and fell back into the dark. I felt myself crash into someone, and then I was hitting the stone floor. I opened my eyes … I saw a face. It seemed without lips, for the flesh round the mouth had rotted away, but it still had teeth, and they were open, and the stench of its breath as it pressed down towards my throat was like that of a sewer or an opened tomb. This was all the matter of a second, you must understand; before I had time even to put up a struggle, I heard a great bellow of rage and the thud of feet landing next to my head, and the creature by my throat was rising up again.

‘You bastards!’ I heard the Sergeant-Major roar. ‘You bastards, you bastards, you bastards!’

The creatures were making for him; he was finished, I thought, for he didn’t have the space or the time to use his gun, but he did have the ammunition box and so he flung that instead. The box, as I have mentioned, was of a fair old weight, and the rage with which Cuff hurled it served to dash the first rank of the creatures quite down onto the ground.

‘You bloody fool!’ I shouted. ‘You brave, bloody fool! Now get up those steps!’

The Sergeant-Major nodded. ‘Very good, sir,’ he barked, and up he went.

I followed him, scrambling away as fast as I could, for I didn’t want to be pulled down a second time. But the creatures weren’t moving. When I glanced back round, those on the ground were still lying there. I could make out their eyes watching me with their imbecile stare, and I could see human forms – a multitude of them, stretching back down the passageway. I felt a sudden tremor of the most terrible fear. It wasn’t the creatures, however, who had unsettled me; rather I had been struck by the queerest sense that they shared my fear with me; and that there was something approaching far more dreadful than they. And then, even as I was struck by this feeling, the creatures stirred and turned and bowed low to the ground. I peered down the passageway, but the light seemed to have grown suddenly much more dim, as though blackness were seeping up from the depths. This will all sound pretty crackpot, I know, and even now I’m not quite sure what it was that I saw. But at the time I had no doubt: I was witnessing bad magic. For as the darkness rose, so it seemed to draw in the light, much as blotting paper will absorb spilt ink. What lay within that darkness, I had no wish to see. I clambered up the steps and breathed in fresh open air.

‘Captain, look.’ Professor Jyoti was pulling on my arm excitedly. I stared about me. We were on the temple’s very summit, on the curve of a dome. Below us rose walls crowded with stone and wooden statuary. Some of the wooden statues had been broken up to form a barricade – by Eliot, I guessed, for he seemed tired and pale, as though overworked, and his leg was still damp with blood. But at least now, I thought, he wouldn’t have to use it again. This dome would clearly be our final stand.

‘Captain,
look.’

The Professor was beckoning to me, I hurried to the edge of the dome and peered down at the scene below. A line of redcoats was marching from the jungle. At the front of the column blew a Union Jack, and the faint strains of ‘The British Grenadiers’ rose to me on the mountain breeze.

‘But damn it,’ I muttered, ‘they will be too late.’

‘What do you mean?’ asked the Professor.

I glanced at the steps leading back into the dark. ‘The ammunition – we have lost it.’

‘Lost it?’ The Professor stared at me, then back at the advancing line of British troops. I turned to Sergeant-Major Cuff, who was standing guard by the steps. ‘Any sign of movement yet?’

‘Yes, sir, they’re massing.’

I turned to Eliot. ‘Light the barricades. Let old Pumper know we’re here

‘Sir!’ It was Cuff. ‘They’re coming up now!’

I rushed to the steps. Cuff was heaving off some statue’s head; he rolled it to the edge of the steps and let it drop. It was the damnedest bit of bowling I ever saw, for the deck was quite cleared and for a while all was still. Then I saw human forms moving again, down in the darkness, and I caught the glint of eyes at the base of the steps. Cuff had a second lump of stone in his hands. I glanced round at the barricade. The flames were starting to take. I turned back to the steps. The creatures were almost at our feet. ‘All right,’ I whispered. I lowered my arm. ‘Now!’

Down rolled the stone, and again the creatures were cleared from the steps. We were out of bowls though now, for there were no more statues’ heads to be taken; a slab was loose, however, and we shifted that so that it blocked the way, but I doubted it would hold off the enemy for long. I glanced down over the temple’s edge; flames were rising from the jungle, and Pumper’s men were advancing on the abyss. Even as I watched they cleared the bridgeheads, but it looked like being a tight thing, for the flagstone was already shifting under the Sergeant-Major’s feet and the fire we had lit was taking time to spread. We all of us gathered round to hold down the slab as the flames behind us began to crackle and lick, and minutes, precious minutes, slowly passed. Suddenly there was a shiver from below our feet, and the slab of stone cracked from side to side. Hands reached upwards and we all fell back.

The barricade now was a regular blaze, and so we hurried to take up our places behind it, for we knew that the enemy hated fire. And for a while indeed they seemed to be repelled by it; more and more of the creatures were massing by the steps, but still they hung back, and all the time Pumper’s redcoats were drawing nearer, and my hopes began steadily to rise and rise. Then suddenly the enemy were at us. We fired; our remaining bullets were rapidly spent, and even though the stones in front of our barricade were slimy with gore, the creatures still rolled forward like the tide of a flood. We were swinging flaming brands at them now. One I caught in the face, and I watched his eyeballs shrivel and melt; another was torched like a bag of straw. From below us I heard a crackle of rifle-fire, and I knew that Pumper must have reached the foot of the temple. If only we could hold out! If only we could make it stick. Still the enemy came at us. I was weakening now. We all were. If the enemy turned our flanks, then we would surely die. Screams were ringing everywhere as the creatures were engulfed by the tongues of our flames, but I knew that their sheer weight of numbers was starting to tell. I looked at the far flank. The body of a burning man twisted and stumbled against the flames, but behind him were more men and I knew it was over, for our flank had been turned. Then the creatures paused; suddenly even the screams died away, and I could hear nothing but the crackling of the flames. A lull settled across the whole deadly scene. Far below us I heard British rifles again, but I was not tempted to hope this time, for I knew that death was waiting for us. I stared into the flames; I composed myself; I prayed I would not go unworthily.

And then I felt the fear again. I struggled against it, but like a dark fever it had me in its grip and seemed determined to wring out my very soul. It is a painful thing for a man to know that his bravery is failing him; yet after all, I told myself, what is bravery but the overcoming of fear? I tightened my grip around my club of burning wood; I walked to the edge of the barricade. If I had to die, then I would do it as nobly as I could, eyeball to eyeball. I would not allow my terror to conquer me. I raised my club. I rounded the barricade….

There was no one there. Or rather – there was no one there who remained alive. Of corpses, however, there was a multitude. In the flames, across the dome, heaped down the steps – there lay our enemy, already putrefying. I stared around me in amazement; then I turned back to my comrades to tell them we were safe, but they too were gone and I was quite alone, exposed on that ancient and dreadful place. I stared into the fire; it seemed a regular inferno now, almost as though it were feeding on the dead, for I saw how the corpses were burning like wood, and the smoke from their flesh rose up in greasy streaks of black. Indeed, the smoke seemed almost like tongues of flame, and as I watched these tongues I saw that they were a veil, and that behind them were standing six human forms.

I staggered back, I freely admit, for I was bewildered and stunned. I knew that I must be sick, and I wondered if it wasn’t my old malaria affecting me, yet I did not seem feverish; on the contrary, I had never before felt so gloriously clear-headed. I looked up at the human forms again; they had walked from the fire, and were staring down at me. They were women of an absolute loveliness, and one was the woman we had thought to make our prisoner. She smiled at me and I felt the most beastly lust, at once glorious and cruel. My soul seemed quite opened to them; I took a step forward, but as I did so they all turned from me and bowed their heads, and I saw that the object of their adoration, raised high as though supported by the blaze of the flames, was a throne. I understood. They did not speak to me, I heard nothing put into words, but I understood. We would live. We had stumbled into one of the dark places of the world – but we would live. Strangely, I felt my terror start to seize me again. As though drawn, I looked up at the throne. I could see now that a woman was seated there. Two other shadows were standing on either side: one seemed to have a face much like Eliot’s – although it could not have been Eliot himself, of course – while the other figure, though European, was like nobody I knew at all. I had no eyes for either of them, however, only for the seated figure who seemed to me the most desirable thing I had ever beheld. I struggled to summon to my mind’s eye an image of my wife, but she would not come; there was only my desire; my infernal, beastly lust. It seemed to be quite burning me up. And yet, no – it was not only lust that I felt, for there was the terror too, intermingled with it, and it was tightening around my head. As I looked up at the throne and the shadowy form one last time, I knew that my consciousness was melting away. I felt darkness rising behind my terror’s grip. I dosed my eyes. Then there was nothing more left to feel.

What had happened? I cannot pretend to know. When I woke I had no recollection of anything that had occurred after our flank seemed to give, and neither, it turned out, did my comrades-in-arms. They too had lost consciousness in those final minutes, and when we awoke we knew only what Pumper Paxton could tell us. We had been found, he reported, laid out cold in a pile behind the barricades, the fires still blazing and the corpses of our assailants littered everywhere. For a while it had been feared that we might die ourselves, for we were all in comas of a remarkable depth, and it was a couple of days before we woke again. By that time Kalikshutra had been left far behind, and when I tried to recollect it a great wave of terror and blankness intervened. Only recently has the memory of what occurred returned; I have set it down here for the very first time.

A mystery, then, the events of that strange time must remain. Who had the dark figure on the throne been? Who the man with the face like Eliot’s, who his companion on the throne’s other side? Why had they spared us? Had they even been real at all? I am well aware that I may sound a bit ‘touched’, and perhaps I was, for our time in the mountains had been harrowing enough. I cannot in my heart believe that I was the victim of a mere hallucination, if for no other reason than that I survived it to tell the tale. The final judgement, however, I must leave to my reader. Let him judge my account and my character for himself.

I was to see no more of Kalikshutra. Our mission, in one sense, had been a success, for we could now be certain there were no Russians there, nor likely to be in the future again. It seemed the Raj too was content to leave the kingdom well alone, for Pumper, as it turned out, had been absolutely forbidden to annex the place. I grew pretty hot about this, feeling as I did that Kalikshutra could only benefit from the introduction of British rule, for of the vileness of its native practices there could be no possible doubt. But I knew that Pumper could scarcely disobey his orders; indeed, he told me in strictest confidence that the future of Kalikshutra was the subject of some pretty top-level discussions back in London. And so it was that we put the place behind us; and if truth be known, I wasn’t too upset to see its back.

Only one footnote to this tale now remains to be told – and that the saddest and most ghastly of all. It happened that we were approaching the ravine that would lead us on to the Thibetan road. As we passed the statue of Kali, I saw that a figure was crouched in front of it, his clothes streaked with ashes and his head bowed to the dust. Slowly, he looked up and round at us. It was the
brahmin,
the old fakir. He rose to his feet unsteadily and pointed at us; he began to scream and then he walked forward, shrieking all the time, and as he drew near to Pumper and myself I suddenly saw a terrible brightness in his eyes. It reminded me of the woman we had taken prisoner, and when I stared at his skin beneath the ash I saw that it gleamed as the woman’s had done.

‘He has the disease!’ I shouted.

‘Are you sure?’ Pumper frowned, and when I said that I was, he ordered the
brahmin
to keep away. But the
brahmin
kept coming, and though he was ordered back a second time he would not halt, and Pumper had no choice but to beat him away. In the heat of the moment, as it were, he struck the
brahmin
across the face and the old man went staggering back into the dust. It looked bad and Pumper was appalled by what he had done, of course; he moved forward to go to the
brahmin’s
aid, but Eliot held his arm and pulled him back.

‘Give him money,’ he said, ‘but for God’s sake, you and your men must keep away from him.’

Pumper nodded slowly. He shouted the order to his column, and as they marched past he threw a purse of rupees at the priest. But the old man flung them into the dirt He had risen to his feet by now, and he watched our progress with his burning eyes. As we advanced into the mouth of the ravine, the scream of his curse echoed after us. There was not a man, I think, who did not shiver at the sound.