The Place of Dead Kings (32 page)

‘The child?’

Rao raised his hand weakly and brushed the tears from his eyes. ‘She lost the child, I understand.’

‘So, you joined the army?’

‘Father insisted. Sent me away to avoid the shame.’ Rao sighed. ‘I never wanted to be in the army.’

‘What . . .
did
you want?’

Rao was silent for a long time. ‘A poet. I wanted to be a poet.’

A poet? Christ. Jack felt like laughing, but all that came out was a wheezy cough.

Rao seemed to understand Jack’s response and managed to give a small smile. Then he shut his eyes and leant his head back against the rock. ‘I’ve made such a mess of things.’

Jack tried to say something more but couldn’t manage it. Darkness embraced him and the sattva-fire bubbled in his chest. The storm roared outside, but the sound and the cold didn’t trouble him any more.

He felt calm. He accepted his fate.

Voices. He heard voices nearby.

He opened his eyes, tried to see through thick rheum and made out a brutish face with a shaggy beard and wild hair.

A savage.

A twinge of fear ran through him, but less than he would have expected. He felt as though he were watching himself from a great distance, as if he’d already slipped over completely to the spirit realm.

A second savage appeared beside the first.

As far as Jack could tell they were both wearing heavy cloaks and carrying spears. They spoke to each other in Gaalic.

Was Rao still alive? Jack wanted to find out, but didn’t want to move his head and so alert the savages.

Better they thought he was dead.

He noticed his scimitar lying beside him. He could grab it and attack, but he doubted he had the strength. Once he moved, the savages would know he was alive and kill him.

But wouldn’t they soon realise he was alive and kill him anyway? They would crawl into the cave and check him more closely. What would they do then? Stab him? Worse?

The savages were still speaking to each other.

He would have to do something. He couldn’t just lie there and let them slaughter him – and Rao too, if he were still alive. He would sit up, grab the scimitar and shove it into the nearest savage’s chest.

At least he would die fighting.

He counted to three in his head, grunted, groaned and tried to sit up. But it was as though he were strapped in place. He couldn’t move his back more than an inch away from the rock.

The savages jumped in alarm and shouted. One of them scrambled into the cave.

Black pools spread before Jack’s eyes. He was going to pass out again. There was nothing he could do about it.

So this was it. He would meet his death on the end of a savage’s spear.

He no longer fought to stay awake. It was best that he passed out now.

He heard more shouting.

Soon it would be over.

T
he guns had stopped, the mortars were silent and no shells exploded. Occasionally, in the distance, Jack heard the pop of a musket, but near to him, in this part of the battlefield, the Slavs made no sound at all.

He sat on the fire step, leant back against the wall of the trench and glanced up at the stars scrawled across the night sky. The smell of the wet earth was all but blotted out by the traces of powder smoke still hanging in the air. He’d got used to the smoke and its sulphurous scent during the long months of the Slav War. He’d run through great, choking clouds of it, felt it burn his eyes and the back of his throat. He’d marched over battle-scarred fields that still reeked of it. He’d fallen asleep with the scent clinging to his clothes. The smell seemed to seep into everything and followed him around wherever he went.

He shut his eyes for a second. He was sure he wouldn’t forget that smell for as long as he lived.

A man screamed. A series of moans followed. Then another man, perhaps less than fifty feet away, sobbed.

Jack opened his eyes and shivered. Now that the guns were quiet, he could hear the cries of the wounded. The fallen men had been lying on the shell-pocked field beyond the trench since a failed attack the day before. They would have been crying out all night.

‘Bastards!’ one man shouted. ‘Pull me back there. Bastards! Get me out!’

William, sitting beside Jack, removed his cap and ran his fingers through his thin hair. ‘Poor sod.’

Jack shivered again. It was hard to listen to the cries, but the officers had forbidden any of them to help the wounded. The Slavs would fire on anything that moved on that dismal plain.

He glanced down the trench. In both directions, the other men from the company sat huddled on the fire step. A few had thrown blankets over themselves and were trying to sleep, while others rubbed their hands or stamped their feet to fight the cold and the tension. One man was repeating his prayers and crossing himself over and over again. The soldiers’ faces seemed more gaunt than even a few hours ago, as if the knowledge that at dawn they would have to go over the top had drained the blood from their skin.

In the distance, the trench snaked away to join other trenches that stretched back for half a mile, worming between dugout shelters, earthworks, fascines, gun emplacements and shell craters full of water, eventually reaching the hospital tents, baggage carts, cavalry pickets and officers’ marquees. A whole teeming city of thousands of soldiers had been moulded from the mud as the campaign wore on.

A man lying on the battlefield cried out repeatedly for his mother.

‘Wish he’d bloody give it a rest,’ old Sergeant Watson said.

The men sniggered and even Jack couldn’t stop himself snorting. It was a cold-hearted joke but it lightened the mood. Gallows humour was the only kind available in that bleak field outside Ragusa.

William put his cap back on and secured the strap beneath his chin. He gave Jack a grin. ‘I’ll wager a shilling I’m the first to reach Ragusa Tower.’

Jack smiled back and shook his head. He was always amazed at the way William managed to keep his and everyone else’s spirits up. He was twenty – only a year older than Jack – and yet he seemed like a veteran, as if he’d been through battles many times before, rather than experiencing them for the first time like everyone else in the company.

‘A shilling?’ someone said. ‘My pound says I’ll be first.’

Jack jumped at the sound of the voice. Captain Jhala had walked up from a side trench as they’d been talking. Jack leapt to his feet and did a quick namaste, William doing the same.

Jhala beamed. ‘At ease, men.’ He rested his hand on the pommel of his scimitar. The brass buttons on his tunic shone in the faint moonlight. ‘They say there’ll be no rain tomorrow. The weather’s on our side.’

‘Then I’ll have no trouble getting to the tower first, sir,’ William said.

Jhala chuckled. ‘We’ll see about that, Private.’

A dying man shrieked in the darkness and they all fell silent for a moment. A soldier a few feet down shook so hard Jack could hear his teeth chattering. The man who was praying said the Latin words of the Our Father even more loudly.

Jhala seemed to quickly take stock of the situation. ‘Men! Listen, all of you!’

The hundred and fifty men of the company shuffled to their feet, clasping their muskets to their sides. Men from other companies, sitting further along the trench, peered to watch as well.

Jhala paced up and down as he spoke. ‘At first light we’ll get the signal to advance. We face a fierce foe. But there is no need to be afraid. The Slavs will crumble before us. That is for certain. We have right on our side. We are following our dharma. There is a true path laid out before us.’ Jhala met the eyes of the men as he walked past. ‘We each must follow our true path. All we have to do is keep our feet marching along it. One step at a time.’

Jack felt a tingle in his spine as Jhala spoke. He squared his sagging shoulders and gripped his musket more tightly.

The cries of the fallen seemed to fade and no longer troubled him. He was no longer worried about running at the Slavs. He was no longer afraid of the shot and shells and musket balls. He couldn’t even smell the powder smoke.

He would go over the top of the trench when the time came and charge along his true path.

Following his dharma.

And following Jhala.

Jack heard men talking softly. He was lying on his back on hard ground. His eyes were closed.

He listened carefully to the voices. He didn’t understand the words, but they were clearly speaking Gaalic.

He felt a quiver of anxiety. The savages were near to him, just a few feet away. Were they debating what to do with him? Were they planning how to kill him?

Where was he? He couldn’t remember anything since he’d passed out in the cave. Was he still in the cave? He didn’t think so, because he felt warm. Deliciously warm, in fact. The smell of smoke was strong and the faint crackle nearby could only be a fire.

He was warm and dry and lying beside a fire. If the savages wanted to kill him, they weren’t in a hurry.

Should he open his eyes? Would they attack him then?

He tried flexing his fingers. He could move them easily. He tried wriggling his toes and that posed no problem either. The pain in his chest had vanished. He felt well and strong.

If there was going to be a fight, let it be now, when he was in good health.

He opened his eyes, but didn’t yet move and simply stared straight up. He saw stone above him. For a second he thought he must still be in the cave after all, but then realised he was looking at a low, domed ceiling made of irregular dry-stone blocks that were blackened with soot. He was in some sort of hut or shelter.

The voices continued.

The savages hadn’t noticed him yet.

He would have to move soon. He would jump up, rummage for a weapon and do what he could to defend himself – and Rao, if the Captain were still with him. He would have to be careful, though. The crude ceiling looked low and he wasn’t sure that he could even stand up straight beneath it.

He shut his eyes and listened intently to the voices. The men sounded calm, as if they were talking idly to each other. How many were they? He concentrated for a minute and picked out four separate voices.