about murder. He had committed it before. Once he was done with the redcoats, he would be done with killing, period. That was his covenant with God, and he did not give a hang what more righteous minds would make of such promises.
He squinted into the lens again, barely making out their shapes amongst the rippling forms of trees. The wretched moonlight was not helping him, either.
He wondered what they must be doing, but if they were following a map of some sort, it would make sense that they had to stop occasionally to orient themselves. If it were a very old tree that they were all clustered around, even more proof that he was right.
He had not settled on why Miss Alderton was amongst the party. It was niggling at his brain. He hoped she would stay behind in his second scenario. He was entirely opposed to harming a woman, but there were other things to be done with women.
And her disguise; he snorted only at the thought of it. She had looked like a child dressed in a theatre costume. Not even a moustache to hide her slender jaw.
She rode like a woman as well. It was well that they had left after dusk. No tiny amount of scrutiny would have failed to see through her pitiful camouflage.
After what seemed like an eternity, they remounted their horses, Macconnach on his ridiculous stallion, Miss Alderton on her nag, and the rest of the men on their native ponies. Except, he noted, for one, who had what seemed to be an Arabian.
Very odd indeed. In his equations, however, it only served to reinforce his theory. This man must have bought an expensive mount with what he had already found.
He nudged his own mare, a standard issue of watery origins that were offered en masse to military officers. With his retirement, though, he was going to reestablish his family’s Lusitano breeding stock.
His heart contracted even still when he recalled the day his bay mare had gone to the auction block. There was no hope of her still being alive, but surely he would find her equal.
With gold and emeralds in his sights, he continued his pursuit, moving silently behind the small party. He had no talent in anything except the craven arts. And so, as the party he followed had missed the signs of his presence, he too missed the signs of the presence of unseen evil riding with him.
He merely felt a bit hotter and more impatient than usual, and distracted himself from it by cursing the English horse in colorful language.
ॐ
It had to be approaching midnight. Isabel was sore from riding astride Lizzy, and she scowled at whomever had decreed sidesaddle was the only appropriate means for ladies to ride.
It meant that she was out of shape for riding properly, not having really done so since she’d been a child. It also meant that she would be in woeful condition once they stopped to rest.
Since her encounter with the vetala-thing, she kept reaching up to feel her throat. There was still some sort of burning sensation, and though she would rather have covered up what were sure to be bruises, the lingering sensation of choking dissuaded her from doing so.
She thought she would never again complain about smells or the lack of a refreshing breeze, so long as that recent moment of being unable to draw air was never repeated.
Something about the creature and its unheralded appearance was eating at her thoughts. Every time she tried to think clearly about it, the more it seemed to slip away.
It was an intangibility very much like the dreams she’d been having lately about her mother. She’d hear Mother’s voice, calling her from some distant room.
The closer she got to the room, the more slowly she would move, while the door seemed to grow ever distant. It was unpleasantness all round, and she began to feel that she should let it all slip away for a while.
Instead, she found herself staring at Macconnach again, but with slightly less hostile undertones. She was actually quite appreciative of his having come to her aid. She was very much unready to utter those words to him, but began to analyze the efforts he had put in to save her life.
It had been a tidy, if inexplicable, bit of work. One moment staring dumbfounded at her, the next, whoosh! Wind screaming out of some dark and desperate place…had he been frightened for her?
There had been some unknown emotion registering on his face, she recalled that well enough, but whether it had been for her sake, or through the exertion of his task, who knew?
What she did know was that she had gotten the bit of proof that she had asked for. She could no longer deny that Macconnach was what he’d claimed to be, which was, what, exactly? He’d not been entirely clear on that subject.
And what would they do, precisely, when they found the source of all this evil? Isabel turned the little pepperbox pistol over in her hands, looking carefully at it. She was not a soldier, which was what Macconnach had politely hinted at.
The pistol could hold a few rounds at a time, and she had no experience reloading under duress. Her father had told her stories of men freezing up completely when confronted by the chaos of war. She’d be…damned, there, she said it, she’d be damned if she’d let that happen.
It simply came down to her lack of experience, which could easily be as crippling as fear. She would have to allow the major to give her some instruction. Perhaps he might be persuaded to include the rifle in that as well. Perhaps, if she might persuade herself to set aside her pride.
Arpan carried a rifle; from its appearance, it must have been a gift. It was gilded and tasseled, but she did not doubt that it was in excellent working condition. He also carried his officer’s sword.
Logically, she deduced that he would also have something like a katara dagger or a kukhuri knife hidden somewhere on his person. Arpan struck her as a person who preferred an abundance of preparation.
The other men carried their short swords, rather reminiscent to her of the Roman gladius, as well as lathi spears that had made men like Ranajit into such lethal lancers.
She naturally was the most lightly armed of the party. In contrast to their weaponry, though, the men were laconic aesthetes. They loved song and poetry, and kept one another entertained throughout the ride, in spite of Arpan’s repeated entreaties that they lower their voices.
The only logical conclusion was that their level of self-confidence overshadowed their worry over what they had just seen. It was not a feeling she shared with them. She was, to put it mildly, a bit shocked at it. She asked Arpan for some illumination, to which he smiled.
“You know as well as anyone how seriously we take the mystical here in India. Did you not seek to make use of that with your communion to Durga?”
Arpan said this pointedly and Isabel blushed, wondering whether he was going to let her live that down. “It is seen as perfectly normal in many respects. You English have spent far too much time deciding to ignore what is right in front of you.”
“Ah, there Colonel, you have the English wrong. They are simply too much of a crossbred species to have any of their own myths left.” Macconnach had wheeled around to join Isabel and Arpan.
“Oh, indeed, Major? Yours are utterly muddied with the Irish, are they not?” Isabel tried out an innocent smile. Macconnach shook his head. Even when she was seeking to engage in lighthearted banter, Isabel could not allow anyone to have the last word.
“Blasphemy. We were there first.” He winked at her. She twitched.
“At any rate, my people are strictly Britannic, from what I’m told. I could have all sorts of druids and whatnot in our family history.”
“But there, you see? It is the whatnot that defines you, and you have no idea of its details, nor of the stories which comprise your landscape. You have no place in nature anymore, and you deny that anything exists beyond the trees and flowers that you cut and pluck.” Arpan sounded genuinely aggrieved.
He was, in fact, thinking of how much the landscape had altered since the arrival of the East India Company, with its desire to turn all of the Bengal Presidency into tea fields, as far as he could tell.
The Company men liked to
strut about, bragging on having conquered the tiger, but they failed to see the true reason for it. The tiger went where its food and safety could be guaranteed, in other words, as far from Englishmen with rifles as possible.
He knew, as every other man, woman, and child in India did, that the jungle could only be borrowed land. It would take back its rightful ownership eventually.
In fact, he could not help but wonder whether this circumstance with demons and strange creatures was due in part to the sudden explosion of plantations and land development.
Bring with it the presence of hundreds of strangers, who would put ever more and more demands on the land…surely the gods were not well pleased with this.
He had long ago learned to put on a show of obedient if vague Christendom for General Wellington. Indeed, although the Duke was tolerant of a great many vagaries in this strange life, he was not so with what he called “pagan faiths”.
Arpan had had more than one occasion to observe that narrowness in action, and had realized early on that he would fare much better if he took to the cross, and begged forgiveness from his own gods later.
He had wondered whether his false faith could have been the reason for the village’s troubles. It did not make enough sense to him to be an acceptable theory in the end.
If that were the case, he alone should have suffered, and been thrown down from his position of authority. Too many others were suffering.