Supping With Panthers (5 page)

But I could not allow myself to brood for long. I sat amongst my men, swapping jokes and mugs of tea. They deserved their relaxation, for it had been a stiffish day and tomorrow, God knew, might turn out breezy as well. I glanced up at the road ahead of us. The more I studied it, the less I liked its look. It would be an act of bravery akin to folly, I knew, to follow it any further up the mountainside. I wondered if we should not wait for Pumper and his men, but I was mustard-keen to spy the land out further and have another crack at the Ivans up ahead. I remembered our prisoner. Whoever or whatever she was, she might prove a useful hostage to us. I rose and wished my men good-night; then I crossed back to Eliot, where his patient still lay.

‘So, then,’ I asked him, ‘she’s still alive?’

A shadow appeared to pass across his face. ‘Look,’ he replied and he drew back a blanket. The prisoner’s eyes were still closed, but there was a faint smile on her lips and her cheeks seemed plumper and touched with red. Eliot replaced the blanket and rose to his feet He crossed to the other side of the fire, and I noticed a second body stretched out there; it lay perfectly still.

‘Who is it?’ I asked.

Eliot bent down. Again he drew back a blanket and I recognised Private Compton, a good lad and usually the very picture of ruddy health. But now his skin was remarkably pale, just as the Russians’ had been, and his eyes, which were open, seemed glassy and dead. ‘Look,’ said Eliot, and began to unbutton his patient’s tunic. He pointed; there were scratches all over Compton’s chest, and the wounds were vivid and raised like welts. I looked up into Eliot’s eyes. ‘Who did this?’ I asked. ‘What did this?’ He slowly shook his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied.

‘And the pallor? – the look in his eyes? – dammit, Eliot, is this your disease?’

He glanced up at me; then slowly, he nodded his head.

‘So where has it come from?’

‘I told you before – I just don’t know.’ The admission of this ignorance seemed to cause him displeasure. He glanced through the flames at the body of the prisoner. ‘It is possible, I suppose,’ he said, with a wave of his hand, ‘that she is infected. Her skin seems very cold and it has a certain pallid gleam, but otherwise she lacks the primary symptoms of the disease. It may be that she’s a vector, transmitting it but remaining unaffected herself. The problem is, though, that I am not even certain how the disease is being spread.’

He sighed and glanced down at the wounds across poor Compton’s chest; he seemed on the verge of saying something, but then he froze and stared through the flames at the prisoner again. ‘I will keep a watch on her,’ he said slowly, ‘on her and on Compton.’ He looked up at me. ‘Don’t worry, Captain. Leave me with the patients, and if anything happens I will let you know at once.’

I nodded. ‘But please, for God’s sake,’ I muttered, ‘don’t let her die on us.’ I glanced up at the road to Kalikshutra again. ‘If we can only get her to talk, she might know of another way up that devilish cliff.’ Eliot glanced at me and nodded; again he appeared ready to say something, but for a second time the words seemed to freeze on his tongue. I wished him good-night and left him staring into Compton’s face, wiping the poor fellow’s brow. Clearly we both had much to think about. I needed a good pipe, I realised. I sat down, and lit one. But I must have been more tired than I had thought, for even with the briar still between my teeth I began to feel my eyelids droop. Before I knew it, I was out like a light…

I had the queerest dream. This was unusual for me -I’m not a dreaming type – but the one I had that night seemed uncommonly real. I imagined that the woman, our prisoner, was by my side. I stood quite transfixed; I had a gun in my hand, but as I stared into her face I found I was slowly loosening my grip. The gun dropped to the ground, and its clattering woke me from my trance. I looked around and realised that I was in a palisade, and that the enemy were breaking in waves against our fire. But my men were falling – surely soon they would be utterly submerged. I had to help them -I had to man the walls – otherwise we would be broken and the regiment destroyed! But I couldn’t move, that was the damnedest thing; for when I tried I found that I was frozen by the woman’s eyes, trapped like a fly in a spider’s web. She laughed. I looked around again, and I saw that everyone was dead – my own men, the enemy, all dead apart from me. Even the woman beside me was dead, I saw now, and yet she still moved, walking away from me as though she were some hungry pantheress. I felt drawn to her most terribly and I tried to follow her, but then I felt cold hands pulling on my legs. I looked down. The dead were everywhere reaching for me. Their eyes had the idiot stare of Eliot’s disease, and their flesh was white, and chill as the grave. Helplessly, I felt myself being pulled down, submerged beneath soft, cold limbs. I saw Compton. His face was pressed against my own. He opened his mouth and a look of the most damnable greed suddenly burned in his eyes. His lips seemed to suck like a pair of hungry leeches as he brought them closer and closer towards my face. I knew he was going to feed on me. They touched my cheek… and I woke up to find Eliot was shaking me.

‘Moorfield,’ he was saying in a low, desperate voice, ‘get up, they’ve gone!’

‘Who?’ I asked, rising at once to my feet. ‘Not the woman?’

‘Yes,’ said Eliot, giving me a queer look. ‘Have you been dreaming of her?’

I stared at him, astonished. ‘How the devil did you know?’

‘Because I did too. And that’s not the worst,’ he added. ‘Compton is gone as well.’

‘Compton?’ I repeated. I stared at Eliot in disbelief and then, I’m afraid, such was my shock at the tidings he had brought that I rather bawled the good Doctor out. But he merely studied me, his eyes keen and his head angled so that he had even more the look of a hawk.

‘Are you still determined to press further on?’ he asked, when my anger had at length blown its course.

I didn’t answer immediately, but looked up at the mountain peaks and the road that led towards them through the Himalayan night. ‘There is a British soldier missing,’ I said slowly. I clenched my fists. One of my soldiers, Eliot.’ I shook my head. ‘Damn it, but it would be a pretty poor show if we were to draw stumps now.’

Eliot stared at me, and for a long time he made no reply. ‘You realise,’ he said at last, ‘that if you continue to take the road you are on, they will wipe you out?’

‘Do we have any other choice?’

Again Eliot stared at me wordlessly; then he turned and began to walk towards the cliff. I followed him; he had the air of a man who was wrestling with his conscience, and I wasn’t altogether too upset to see it. At length he turned to face me again. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, Captain,’ he said.

‘But you are going to?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Because otherwise you will certainly die.’

‘I am not afraid of death.’

Eliot smiled faintly. ‘Don’t worry – I am only reducing the certainty of it to the level of high probability.’ Then his smile faded, and he looked at the mountain wall which lay beyond the pass. Now that we were more directly below it, I could scarcely see to its summit, so high it rose. Eliot pointed. ‘There is a way up,’ he said, ‘to the top.’ The route, it seemed, was a pilgrims’ path. ‘It is called
Durga,’
Eliot told me, ‘which is another name for the goddess Kali, and means in English “difficult of approach”. And so it is – which is why the brahmins give it such supreme value, for they say that the man who can scale it is worthy of glimpsing Kali herself. Only the greatest of ascetics have ever attempted it – only those who have purged themselves through decades of penance and meditation. When they have attained the state of readiness, they ascend the cliff. Many do not succeed; they return, and it is from them that I have heard of the difficulty of the way. But a few – just a few – manage it. And when they reach the summit – he paused – ‘when they have succeeded, then they are shown the Truth.’

‘The Truth? And what the devil would that be?’

‘We don’t know.’

‘Well, if these
brahmins
attain it, why ever not?’

Eliot smiled faintly. ‘Because, Captain, they never come back.’

‘What,
never}’

‘Never.’ Eliot’s smile faded as he stared up at the mountain front again. ‘So then,’ he murmured softly, ‘do you still want to go?’

A wasted question indeed! Naturally I prepared to set off at once. I chose my fittest man, Private Haggard, and my strongest, Sergeant-Major Cuff; the rest I left behind to make sure of the Pass and await old Pumper, who I hoped would be approaching with his troops fairly soon. But in the meantime, with dawn still several hours off, I and my small band were already on our way. We clambered towards the far side of the Pass, over rocks at first and then, when the cliff started to rise sheer and featureless, up steps which had been carved out from the naked rock. ‘According to the brahmin,’ Eliot said, ‘these will lead to a plateau perhaps a quarter of the way up. We must cross that and then continue our ascent up the remainder of the mountain face.’

Painfully, we began our ascent. The steps had been crudely carved and were often little more than toe-holds in the rock, sometimes vanishing altogether, so that it was pretty hard going and toughish on the legs. It was cold as well, and my legs began to cramp; after a couple of hours I started to think what fine soldiers the brahmins would have made, for they must all have been fitter men than we! I paused to draw my breath and Eliot, who was behind me, pointed to an outcrop of rock. The steps, I could see, twisted up across its face. ‘Once we’re over that,’ he shouted, ‘we’re past the worst. The plateau will be only a gentle climb away.’

But goodness, did we have to earn that gentle climb first! It was virtually dawn by now, but in that bleak, exposed place the wind seemed more vicious than it had ever done, and it buffeted our bodies in screaming gusts as though trying to sweep us out into the sky which waited, blank and dark, below our swinging feet. It was a pretty grim experience; and then, just when I thought it could hardly grow more grim, I heard a scream. It was very faint, and then was lost on the shriek of the wind. I tensed, and Eliot too seemed to freeze against the rock. The wind fell and we heard a second scream, borne to us on a gust blowing up from the ravine. But beyond the ravine we couldn’t see; the outcrop we were crossing had intervened. My blood felt like ice now; to continue on my way, thinking only of where to place my fingers and my toes, to worry about myself and not my men, was the worst kind of ordeal, yet it had to be done; indeed, I did it faster perhaps than if I had never heard the screams. Once I had reached safety, I followed the path as it wound back across the rock-face; I looked down and saw the ravine yawning distantly below, yet not so far that I couldn’t see our tents. Remember too that it was almost dawn, growing lighter by the minute, and you will understand my consternation when I found that I couldn’t see any of my men. Not a hint of movement.
Not a sign of them.

I continued to gaze as well as my eyesight would allow, but it was as though every last one had just vanished into air. I remembered the screams I had heard, and I freely admit that I dreaded the worst. So too, it was clear, did Private Haggard. My three companions had all joined me by now and, despite my best efforts to chivvy them along, they observed the camp and its emptiness. ‘Probably gone for an early-morning stroll, sir,’ said the Sergeant-Major imperturbably; then he gestured at Haggard. ‘Best keep an eye on him, sir,’ he whispered. And he told me what I had not before realised, that Haggard had been a part of the expedition which had lost Lady Westcote – he had been in the area before and seen some pretty queer things. He was a brave enough chap, but rattled, for your average soldier will cheerfully take on a Zulu impi by himself, but give him a whiff of voodoo and he’ll show you a stomach dyed a deepish shade of yellow. By this time we were crossing level ground; I began to wish we were still mountaineering, for Haggard, I thought, needed his mind kept busy.

The plateau we were crossing was about a mile deep. We made our way carefully, and soon joined a path that wound up through the rocks and had traces of recent footprints in the dust. We took to the heights, shadowing the path, and it wasn’t long before we were approaching the base of another mountain front, rising sheer and seemingly even more insurmountable than the cliff we had just climbed. Eliot paused to scan the rocks ahead. ‘There,’ he said suddenly, pointing. ‘That’s where the path continues up the diff.’ I looked and saw a gaudily painted shrine carved out from the rock. I inched forward, searching for a way that wouldn’t take us along the path, for I was on my guard despite the seeming calm, but as I lifted my head I felt Eliot’s hand restraining me. ‘Just wait,’ he whispered. ‘The sufferers from the disease are sensitive to light.’ He pointed again, this time to the east. I looked. The mountain peaks were touched with pink. Eliot was right; the sunrise couldn’t be far away.

‘Sir,’ whispered Haggard, ‘what are we waiting for?’

I motioned him to be quiet, but Haggard shook his head. ‘It was like this when they took the Westcotes,’ he muttered, ‘that poor lady and her lovely daughter -snatched away, them and their guard, just like now, gone into the night, just gone into the air.’ He rose to his feet and looked about him wildly. ‘And now they’re hunting us!’

Desperately I pulled him back down, and as I did so I heard Eliot breathe in and hiss at us to lie still. I stared at the path before us; there was movement coming from the undergrowth beyond, and I saw a group of men walk out. They were dressed in Russian uniforms, but I could not see their faces, for they stood with their backs to us. Then one of the men turned and seemed to sniff the air. He looked towards the rock where we all lay hidden, and I heard Private Haggard mutter and groan. I too, staring at him, felt a sickness in my heart, for I was looking at the man I had shot in the skull the night before! I could recognise his wound, just a mess of blood and bone, and how the blighter was still alive I couldn’t tell. Yet he was! His eyes were gleaming and shone very pale.