lime wash and the curtains were of cotton. Some fine furniture of
ebony inlaid with ivory stood in the hallway, but Hakeswill had no eye
for such chairs, only for jewels, and he saw none. Two bronze jars and
an iron cuspidor stood by the walls where lizards waited motionless,
while a brass poker, tongs and fire shovel, cast in Birmingham, mounted
on a stand and long bereft of any hearth, had pride of place in a
niche. The hallway had no guards, indeed no one was in sight and the
palace seemed silent except for a faint sound of choking and moaning
that came from a curtained doorway at the far end of the hall. The
noise of the guns was muffled. Hakeswill hefted his sword and edged
towards the curtain.
His men followed slowly, bayonets ready, eyes peering into every
shadow.
Hakeswill swept the curtain aside with the blade, and gasped.
The Killadar, with a tulwar slung at his side and a small round shield
strapped to his left arm, stared at Hakeswill above the bodies of his
wives, concubines and daughters. Eighteen women were on the floor.
Most were motionless, but some still writhed as the slow pain of the
poison worked its horrors. The Killadar was in tears.
“I could not leave them for the English,” he said.
“What did he say?” Hakeswill demanded.
“He preferred they should die than be dishonoured,” the Havildar
translated.
“Bleeding hell,” Hakeswill commented. He stepped down into the sunken
floor where the women lay. The dead had greenish dribbles coming from
their mouths and their glassy eyes stared up at the lotuses painted on
the ceiling, while the living jerked spasmodically. The cups from
which they had drunk the poison lay on the tiled floor.
“Some nice bibb is here,” Hakeswill said ruefully.
“A waste!” He stared at a child, no more than six or seven. There was
a jewel about her neck and Hakeswill stooped, grasped the pendant and
snapped the chain.
“Bleeding waste,” he said in disgust, then used his sword blade to lift
the said of a dying woman. He raised the silk to her waist, then shook
his head.
“Look at that!” he said.
“Just look at that! What a bleeding waste!”
The Killadar roared in anger, drew his tulwar and ran down the steps to
drive Hakeswill from his women. Hakeswill, alarmed, backed away, then
remembered he was to be a rajah and could not show timidity in front of
the Havildar and his men, so he stepped forward again and thrust the
sword forward in a clumsy lunge. It might have been clumsy, but it was
also lucky, for the Killadar had stumbled on a body and was lurching
forward, his tulwar flailing as he sought his balance, and the tip of
Hakeswill’s blade ripped into his throat so that a spray of blood
pulsed onto the dead and the dying. The Killadar gasped as he fell.
His legs twitched as he tried to bring the tulwar round to strike at
Hakeswill, but his strength was going and the Englishman was above him
now.
“You’re a djinnl” the Killadar said hoarsely.
The sword stabbed into Beny Singh’s neck.
“I ain’t drunk, you bastard,” Hakeswill said indignantly.
“Ain’t seen a drop of mother’s milk in three years!” He twisted the
sword blade, fascinated by the way the blood pulsed past the steel. He
watched until the blood finally died to a trickle, then jerked the
blade free.
“That’s him gone,” Hakeswill said.
“Another bloody heathen gone down to hell, eh?”
The Havildar stared in horror at Beny Singh and at the corpses drenched
with his blood.
“Don’t just stand there, you great pudding!” Hakeswill snapped.
“Get back to the walls!”
“The walls, sahib?”
“Hurry! There’s a battle being fought, or ain’t you noticed? Go on!
Off with you! Take the company and report to Colonel Dodd as how the
fat little bugger’s dead. Tell him I’ll be back in a minute or two.
Now off with you! Quick!”
The Havildar obeyed, taking his men back through the hallway and out
into the sunlight that was being hazed by the smoke rising from the
ravine. Hakeswill, left alone in the palace, stooped to his work. All