But the thing had an eye. A great, muddy, golden eye. And when it opened and turned its gimlet gaze upon him with all the power of its unholy origin — that was when Lancelot finally dropped his sword and screamed.
And then it was over. All of it.
Trespassers
A. Scott Glancy
“Rider approaching!” called out Havildar Thapa.
Captain Henry Conder, late of the Corps of Bengal Sappers and Miners, stood up from his collapsible camp desk and stretched. Recording the expedition’s progress could wait; Conder was intrigued that anyone could be so bold as to travel alone through the Kulun Shan. He did not for a moment think there was some mistake: his Gurkha Riflemen were unerringly precise in their observations and reports. It was one of the reasons he’d worked so hard to get as many as he could on this expedition. The Kashmiri Sepoys were sturdy enough, well trained and diligent, but even the lowest Gurkha treated his duties with all the seriousness of a regimental sergeant major.
Conder fished a pair of binoculars out of his rucksack and strolled to the edge of their camp. Havildar Thapa stood peering off into the distance without the aid of binoculars, simply shielding his eyes from the waning sun. Like most Gurkhas, Thapa stood just over five feet tall. Conder towered over him at five foot eight. Should some Uyghur bandit decide to pick off the officer from among the Gurkhas, Kashmiri and Balti of Her Imperial Majesty’s Expedition to the Eastern Chinese Turkestan, he wouldn’t have much difficulty sorting the white man from the Asiatics.
Havildar Thapa hadn’t bothered to unsling his Lee-Metford rifle yet, which told Conder the rider was still thousands of yards away.
“Where is he, Havildar?” Conder asked in poorly accented Nepali. Thapa, the five other Gurkhas, and the seventeen Kashmiri Sepoys under his command all spoke decent English, so speaking a few words of Nepali was an unnecessary, but appreciated, courtesy.
Thapa pointed back down the valley they’d been reconnoitering the past week. Conder immediately saw the flicker of movement. Bringing his binoculars up, Conder recognized the rider immediately. The giant man had stood out in Baron Savukoski’s party, even among the other Cossacks. Even at this range his size was apparent from how far down his legs hung along the flanks of the small, tough pony he rode. What had his rank been? Uryadnik? Senior Warden? It was definitely Baron Savukoski’s chief NCO, unless there was more than one sixteen-stone Cossack to be found in the Kulun Shan.
Before departing Srinagar, Conder had received intelligence that a Russian expedition had left Tashkent, a party of Cossacks and Tuvans led by the redoubtable Baron Arvid Erik Savukoski. The Finnish noble was well known among the cartographers striving to fill in the great swaths of nothing that occupied so much of the maps of Central Asia. Conder had enthusiastically read of Savukoski’s exploits in the press and various scientific journals, but his secret reports to the Russian General Staff strained Conder’s meager Russian. When a brace of Cossack riders arrived, carrying a letter of introduction and an invitation to bring their expeditions together for an evening of dinner, drink, and talk of empire, Conder could hardly have refused such an invitation, but it still stung that the Baron had found him first.
Baron Savukoski set a good table, even if the plates and cups were simple lacquered wood. The Cossacks roasted a goat for the occasion, seasoned with the last of their expedition’s spices. Both Savukoski and his Balto-German ethnographer, Otto Eichwald, presented themselves in worn but well-preserved officers’ uniforms. Conder contributed some sugar, tea, and his closely rationed brandy with which to toast the health of Her Imperial Majesty Victoria and Czar Alexander III. After dinner, conversation began with good-natured jabs concerning the inevitable clash of their empires, but ended with Savukoski revealing his familiarity with Conder’s published work for the Royal Geographic Society, and complimenting Conder on the thoroughness and precision of his observations. The next morning both parties assembled so that Eichwald could take a couple of exposures with his folding camera to commemorate the meeting of the two great explorers — a perfect tableau of worthy adversaries exchanging their respects during a momentary lull in the Great Game.
The crunch of boots on frozen rock signaled the approach of Conder’s Pathan surveyor, Malik Dost Khan. A Risaldar in the 1st Bengal Lancers, Khan had crossed the Pamirs with Conder three years previously, and scouted alternate approaches into Tibet just two summers ago.
“Can you see who it is, Henry?” Khan asked in English.
“One of Savukoski’s Cossacks… the really big scoundrel. Do you remember his name?”
“No. Those brutes did nothing but sneer at the ‘moosulmanyes’ and stroke the pommels of their sabers.” The shared language of Conder, Eichwald and Savukoski had been French, which had left Khan out of the conversation. “You don’t suppose it’s another invitation to dinner?”
“As eager as I am for another lecture on the inevitability of the Czar’s Cossacks watering their horses in the Ganges, I don’t think that’s very likely.” Conder glassed the approaching rider again. The last time Savukoski dispatched a message there had been two riders and they had carried lances flying red pennants. Today there was only a single rider, and no such weapons were displayed.
“You sound certain.”
Conder lowered the glasses and looked Khan in the eyes. “When we broke camp I did the Russians a bad turn. I told them that the Tsang Pass was easily traversed. That we’d mapped it, and that it would cut two months off their march to the edge of the Talamakan Desert.”
Khan looked genuinely taken aback. “Do you think they took your advice?”
“We’ll know in a minute.”
Khan shrugged. “Well, I suppose someone was going to be the first to explore the Tsang Pass. Might as well be Baron Savukoski. Perhaps he discovered something he can name after his Czar?”
“Best case, he wasted a lot of time and had to retrace his route.”
“Worst, he found our elusive marauders,” Khan suggested. “Did you hope to use the Russians to flush them out?”
“No. Nothing so calculated,” Conder sighed. “I just got it in my head that I should make some effort to confound him, even just a little. We’re enemies, after all. Well, no matter. However their merry dance turned out, I suspect we shall be spared a second invitation to dinner.”
“That seems certain, Henry.”
The rider was finally close enough to make out details without the binoculars. The pony’s thick hair was caked in frost, its gait was short and rubbery, as if it had been run to exhaustion. The saddle pack seemed unusually light, with no bedroll in evidence, and the saddlebags were empty. As the Cossack approached, he swung his leg over the saddle and dropped himself into a purposeful walk, without appreciably slowing his mount. The huge man was armed to the teeth, although that was not unusual for anyone traveling in this brutal land. A long, slightly curved kindjal dagger was thrust through his silk belt. A guardless shashka saber hung from his left side. Carried barrel-down across his back was a cut-down Cossack version of a bolt-action Berdanka carbine. Strangely, his cartridge belt, slung across his broad chest, was empty of shells. His sheepskin greatcoat was torn and frayed, and spattered with fine black stains, as was his tall, shaggy kubanka hat. The man had come from a fight, the blood of his foes drying black where it had landed.