of all the garrison and their dependants were spared. None was to be
hurt, none was to be imprisoned. The British were welcome to
confiscate all the weaponry in the fort, but they were to allow
Gawilghur’s inhabitants to leave with such personal property as could
be carried away on foot or horseback.
“Of course the British will accept!” Manu Bappoo said.
“They don’t want to die in the breaches!”
“Has Beny Singh the authority to send this?” Dodd asked.
Bappoo shrugged, “He’s Killadar.”
“You’re the general of the army. And the Rajah’s brother.”
Bappoo stared up at the sky between the high walls of the
entranceway.
“One can never tell with my brother,” he said.
“Maybe he wants to surrender? But he hasn’t told me. Maybe, if we
lose, he can blame me, saying he always wanted to yield.”
“But you won’t yield?”
“We can win here!” Bappoo said fiercely, then turned towards the
palace as Gopal announced that the Killadar himself was approaching.
Beny Singh must have been watching his messenger’s progress from the
palace, for now he hurried down the path and behind him came his wives,
concubines and daughters. Bappoo walked towards him, followed by Dodd
and a score of his white-coated soldiers. The Killadar must have
reckoned that the sight of the women would soften Bappoo’s heart, but
the Prince’s face just became harder.
“If you want to surrender,” he shouted at Beny Singh, ‘then talk to me
first!”
“I have authority here,” Beny Singh squeaked. His little lap dog was
in his arms, its small tongue hanging out as it panted in the heat.
“You have nothing!” Bappoo retorted. The women, pretty in their silk
and cotton, huddled together as the two men met beside the snake pit.
“The British are making their breaches,” Beny Singh protested, ‘and
tomorrow or the day after they’ll come through! We shall all be
killed!”
He wailed the prophecy.
“My daughters will be their playthings and my wives their servants.”
The women shuddered.
“The British will die in the breaches,” Bappoo retorted.
“They cannot be stopped!” Beny Singh insisted.
“They are djinns.”
Bappoo suddenly shoved Beny Singh back towards the rock pit where the
snakes were kept. The Killadar cried aloud as he tripped and fell
backwards, but Bappoo had kept hold of Beny Singh’s yellow silk robe
and now he held on tight so that the Killadar did not fall.
Hakeswill sidled to the pit’s edge and saw the monkey bones. Then he
saw a curving, nickering shape slither across the pit’s shadowed floor
and he quickly stepped back.
Beny Singh whimpered.
“I am the Killadar! I am trying to save lives!”
“You’re supposed to be a soldier,” Bappoo said in his hissing voice,
‘and your job is to kill my brother’s enemies.” The women screamed,
expecting to see their man fall to the pit’s floor, but Manu Bappoo
kept a firm grip on the silk.
“And when the British die in the breaches,” he said to Beny Singh, ‘and
when their survivors are harried south across the plain, who do you
think will get the credit for the victory? The Killadar of the fort,
that is who! And you would throw that glory away?”
“They are djinns,” Beny Singh said, and he looked sideways at Obadiah
Hakeswill whose face was twitching, and he screamed.
“They are djinnsl’ “They are men, as feeble as other men,” Bappoo said.
He reached out with his free hand and took hold of the white dog by the
scruff of its neck. Beny Singh whimpered, but did not resist. The dog
struggled in Manu Bappoo’s grip.
“If you try to surrender the fortress again,” Manu Bappoo said, ‘then
this will be your fate.” He let the dog drop. It yelped as it fell
into the pit, then howled piteously as it struck the rock floor.
There was a hiss, a scrabble of paws, a last howl, then silence. Beny
Singh uttered a shriek of pity for his dog before babbling that he
would rather give his women poison to drink than risk that they should
become prey to the terrible besiegers.
Manu Bappoo shook the hapless Killadar.
“Do you understand me?” he demanded.