shoulder. “I’m sorry that you’ve walked into this. We tried to send the village men off to safety, but we seem to be trapped here. Is this your son?”
The younger man nodded, and took a step forward.
“I am. We will stand and fight with you, whatever enemy you face.”
Macconnach smiled grimly at him.
“Would that we knew what we are about to face. You make take fright, and wish to flee, but I caution you against it.”
Father and son looked at one another uncertainly.
“As you say, Major sahib. The general will not be best pleased by any of this.”
“I shall take full responsibility.”
Isabel and Arpan began to argue with him on this point, but Macconnach held up his hand. “Shall we save our debate? We would do well to make ready instead.”
Isabel was not sure how much more making ready her nerves might stand. It felt a bit like being told to stand still to wait for a boulder to smash down on oneself.
“Major,” she started, but he fixed his eyes upon her with regret and took her hand for a brief moment. The physical contact had the same immediate effect as a cooling stream in hot weather. She swallowed and nodded.
“Not long now. When it comes, fight what you can see, leave the rest to me.”
With that, silence fell, but for their shallow breathing. After a few more moments, Isabel could feel the hairs on her arms begin to raise, and the air grew steadily colder.
“Stand your ground!” It came as an order; not one of them shifted. Macconnach looked up to the sky, and closed his eyes. Isabel could see his fingers clenched tightly around the sword he’d picked back up.
His knuckles were so white they glowed in a darkness which seemed preternatural, a living thing. As he tilted his head back, he began to speak in a low voice, words of some other tongue, completely foreign to Isabel’s ears.
The wind picked up, as it had the other night when he had dispatched the vetala. She concluded that he must be calling for aid again, and shuddered to think of banshees coming down out of the sky. What would her father think of this? Would she ever see him again?
A piercing shriek shattered the quiet, and stretched across the distance for what felt like an eternity. It was similar to the cries of the golden jackal, to which she was well-accustomed.
Instead of the usual comforting feeling she’d always drawn from their yips and howls, however, this only brought dread. Ranajit shouted, pointing to the north. The moon was in its new phase; only the light of the Dog Star gave them any glimpse of what was to come.
Spread out across the hillside, they could see movement, creeping and unnatural. These were the rhythms of the dead. Isabel realized that the cries were emanating from some of these creatures, as they slunk across the ground.
A smell of decay reached them, filling the air. She held tightly onto the long, curved knife, and scanned the ground in every direction.
They were only coming from the direction which had seen the Spaniard pulled down into the earth. That might be a blessing, if any were to be had in this hour. Ranajit and his son were steeled, waiting for the moment of attack.
Isabel looked upon him, her father’s butler, a servant who had once been a soldier. She had grown up with him by her side, his son a playmate.
He had bandaged knees, sneaked sweets, and secretly taught her things about India that even her father didn’t know. She would not forgive herself if they both did not come back with her.
The air had grown cold enough that they could see their breath. Macconnach was the only one of them not shivering, but he seemed to be in some other realm than they were, still speaking quietly in his unknown language.
Arpan was the first to engage one of the creatures, as it came to the top of a rise, it leapt off toward him. Isabel could see that it had been an animal at some time. In the faint light, she saw patches of hide still intact, their orange and black stripes faded.
This creature that had once been a tiger snarled as it flew, Arpan responding in kind, swinging his sabre cleanly through it. The snarl faded into silence as it crumbled into dust.
Startled, they laughed for a brief moment, until seeing how close the rest of the creatures had drawn. They were of all different species: wild dogs, jackals, hyenas, tigers, caracals, wild boar, foxes, gibbons, and elephants. The dogs were the most plentiful, and they darted into the fray like the trained opportunists they had been in life.
Their fur hung in ragged clumps off their skeletons, and yet they came in to do violence as if they were fully of flesh. By some unspoken agreement, the four of them surrounded Macconnach, and fought the creatures as they struck.
Isabel found that it was far easier to destroy the creatures than she might have thought, for they were mindless, following only some mass command. She was not bothered by doing them harm, either.
There was no blood, only sickening crunches of bone and rot. Dust and animal screams filled the air for some time, until their attack dwindled, and a lull settled. The break in the action lasted only a few moments, until the ground began to rumble beneath their feet.
A fissure opened in the spot that had swallowed Arras, widening and expanding until it seemed to resemble the entrance to a cave.
Isabel could see that it looked manmade; her mind flew unbidden to the stories of the lost raja and his supposed treasure vault. Something told her that they were likely seeing that very thing.
“Perhaps we now have some inkling as to the end of the raja and his family.” She swallowed past the horror of the thought. A dull glow began to show from inside the cave.
“It drew us here. It wishes to consume.” Macconnach had ceased his chanting, and was focused on the cave entrance. More creatures were on the move, from out the mouth of the fissure.
These were, or had once been, human. Their flesh was partially mummified. Tattered remnants of clothing hung from them, their eyes were empty, yet burning with some appalling fire.
They cried out in tongueless rage. Isabel could feel her resolve wavering, but she gripped her knife tightly again, refusing to allow her feet to move.
“Consume what? Us?” She thought about the missing boy and the baby, the mutilated animals. It had been a carefully designed lure, she realized. One that would catch the attention of someone like Major Macconnach. “You. It wants you, doesn’t it?”
“It will take all of us, but yes, I think it has wanted me all along.” A rumbling sounded again; this time it sounded distinctly like nothing so much as the earlier laughter, fiendish and malevolent. “I stand by what I said earlier. If you can, leave me to it, and go back to your father.”
“No!”
“Miss Alderton is correct. We shall not abandon you to your death. Besides, Major, I think now that it drew me here as well.”
“What do you mean, Colonel?”
“I am the last of the line of the lost raja.” The new host of creatures drew near; they all poised to fight. “I am sorry. I should have said something earlier, but I have never before uttered those words.”
All at once, the creatures flew toward them, screaming and clawing. Isabel could see once they were closer that there were men, women, and children. She dropped her spear and concentrated on slashing at the pressing throng.
All the others were similarly engaged; the numbers of the walking dead seemed endless as she let fly the knife again and again. This was much more unhappy a task, and she found herself weeping freely as she cut through what had once been children when they leapt at her.
They were reduced through their enchantment, to something much more primal. She was reminded by them of langurs, the street monkeys which would jump on unsuspecting passersby to rob them of food and trinkets.
ॐ
Next to her, Arpan was facing his own crisis of conscience. He had known who he was, had known for some time. He never would have been a member of Lord Wellington’s staff without knowing his noble lineage. These creatures he now set about d
estroying, they were the bones of his ancestors.
He had learned what circumstances had driven his great-grandfather to leave the palace and family. A young boy with a broken heart had had enough of cruelty. When Arpan had found his great-grandfather’s letters, beneath a loose stone inside their house, he’d finally understood.
Shame had driven the raja’s son away and saved him from a terrible fate. Likewise, shame had kept Arpan from ever speaking of what he’d discovered. It had driven him away from his village, into military service, and out of India.
Away from his home, the tale of the raja’s family had blinked out of existence. It had been only too easy to forget them. Once he had come back, so too had the memories of the misdeeds of his forebears.
The only question now was whether he had been called by them, or by the same entity whose desire was to take Macconnach for its own. Little by little, he and Abington’s manservant beat back the creatures, the vetala which were the possessed dead.
Perhaps he was meant to give them their eternal rest, he decided. He had been called to free them from their enslavement. It was the only duty he owed them, for they had paid on their own sins many times over. This thought drove him forward, as he let fly his sword as a liberator.
Clouds of dust erupted as each vetala was destroyed, but it seemed that there was an endless supply of them. All the workers that had cut out the vault from the earth, all the family and household, the guards, and unfortunates who might have