Havildar Thapa unslung his Lee-Metford and held it at port arms. Thapa stood more than a foot shorter than the Cossack brute, but showed no sign of hesitation as he stepped in front of him. The Cossack stopped and looked at Conder over the top of Havildar’s flat-topped Kilmarnock cap. Conder didn’t much care for the set of the huge man’s jaw, nor the sunken look of his eyes. The giant was unsteady on his feet, exhausted.
The Cossack pulled off his heavy gloves and produced a folded piece of paper out of the cuff of his greatcoat. He held it out and announced, so far as Corder’s limited Russian would allow, that it was a message for the “anglise kapitan.”
“Let him advance, Havildar.” Thapa reluctantly stepped aside; the Cossack shouldered past and held out the folded note. As Conder reached for it, his eyes dropped to the Cossack’s left hand, just in time to see him draw his long kindjal dagger. The captain rocked back, avoiding the sweep of the blade just beneath his chin, but he caught his heel and stumbled. The Cossack flipped the kindjal in his hand, from an upward sweep to a downward stab, and lunged before Conder found his footing. He would have been on top of Conder had Malik Khan not got both his hands around the Cossack’s forearm and wrist, turning the blade away. Thapa smashed the Cossack’s calf with the butt of his rifle. Roaring, the Cossack went down on one knee, and drove his right fist into Malik’s face.
Conder righted himself and went at the Cossack like a rugby tackle, putting the big man on his back. As the Cossack’s head struck the ground, Thapa delivered a second blow with his butt-stock, breaking the giant’s nose and spraying Conder and Malik with blood. The Gurkha NCO was drawing back his rifle when Conder waved him off.
“No! No! Wait! This man has a story to tell and I mean to hear it.”
Malik peeled the unconscious Cossack’s fingers away from his kindjal and tossed it aside. “Let’s hope you haven’t killed him.”
“Most assuredly not, Risaldar Khan,” said Thapa. “Had I meant him dead, his skull would be open.”
“Quickly, Havildar,” said Conder. “Let’s do something about his wrists before he gets his senses back.”
They didn’t move fast enough. By the time they had rope to bind the Cossack’s wrists and ankles, it took five Kashmiri Sepoys to hold him down.
When Conder and Khan rummaged through the Cossack’s possessions they found the man’s supplies were exhausted. He had no food for himself or his pony. His canteen was equally empty. No cartridges remained for his Berdanka carbine, but the barrel and action were fouled with burnt black powder. His kindjal knife and shashka saber had been recently oiled and sharpened, but their blades were chipped and bent from hours of hacking through bone and sinew. The Cossack wasn’t much better off than his pony, physically exhausted and on the brink of collapse. Conder didn’t care to think how much faster the Cossack’s knife would have been had he eaten in the last several days.
Even so, every attempt to examine the Cossack’s injury required the Sepoys to violently restrain him. He fought his captors until he collapsed. When the Cossack awoke after dark, he found himself on a blanket near the campfire, two Sepoys standing over him with rifles.
Conder thawed some snow over the horse-dung fire, sprinkling in a pinch of their remaining tea leaves. It wouldn’t be the strong brew of a Russian samovar, but he offered the tin cup to the Cossack. At first he received only a baleful stare, but soon the Cossack relented and permitted Conder to tip the cup to his bloodstained lips, and he quietly drank.
“Your name?” Conder asked. The Cossack said nothing. Conder’s Russian was weak, but he knew he’d spoken correctly. “What is your name, Kozzaki?”
The snarled response was something about how when Conder arrived in Hell, he could tell the Devil that Uryadnik Shkuro had delivered him.
“Why?” Conder asked, holding up the kindjal. The Cossack spit on the ground in front of him and launched into a tirade in something utterly unlike the textbook Russian Conder was barely familiar with.
“Did you follow any of that?” Malik asked, when the torrent subsided. He squatted nearby, one hand on the butt of his long Kyber knife, the other absently testing his swollen left cheek.
“Yes,” said Conder. “Something killed all the Russians and he blames me.”
The interrogation moved slowly and carefully, like a verbal autopsy, hampered by Conder’s Russian and Uryadnik Shkuro’s near total illiteracy. It was well past the witching hour when Conder felt he’d gotten the fullest account from Shkuro.
Exhausted by the ordeal, Conder knew he would not be able to sleep until he shared what he’d heard. He woke Malik Khan after helping himself to the last bottle of the medicinal brandy.
“Did you learn anything?” Khan said, struggling out from under his wool blanket.
“I sent those Russians to their deaths. That Shkuro fellow is the only survivor.”
“But there were over twenty armed men in their party.”
“Twenty-two. Shkuro knows of no one else who got away.”
“Could it be the raiders we’ve been looking for?” Malik asked.
“We’ll need to see what’s left of the Russian camp to be sure.”
“Then we depart in the morning,” Malik said casually, and rolled back under his blankets.
“There’s more,” Conder said. He uncorked the bottle of brandy and took a pull. He didn’t offer any to Khan, in deference to the laws of the Prophet. “The Cossack says they were attacked under cover of night. By dwarves.”
Khan sat back up. “Dwarves? What do you mean?”
“He used the work ‘karlik,’ the Russian for a person afflicted with dwarfism. But… the dwarves I’ve seen are bent, malformed creatures. Such hapless unfortunates couldn’t overwhelm twenty heavily armed Cossacks.”
“Perhaps he meant pygmies? I hear tell of such peoples in the Andaman Islands.”
“You are remarkably well informed, Malik. Yes, there are pygmies in the Andamans and in the Congo, but I doubt our illiterate Cossack ever heard of such things. Russian aristocrats are quite taken with dwarf entertainers, so perhaps ‘karlik’ is the closest equivalent in his experience.”
“Did he say how these dwarves fought?”
“Quiet. Moved well in the dark. Got inside the sentries and let loose volleys of heavy darts launched from something like a woomera or an atlatl. No musketry at all. The Russians didn’t even know they were under attack until someone was struck — and soon dropped. The darts were poisoned. Then the devils rushed the camp. Shkuro says they shot down plenty of their attackers, but those single-shot Berdankas were too slow. The Baron ordered the men to their ponies to break out of the ambush, but most of the horses had already been struck by darts; they collapsed under their riders. Shkuro carried another Cossack behind him for a while, but the man took a couple of darts. He lasted until first light and then died badly.”
“No rifles? Not even flintlocks or matchlocks?”
“Just darts, knives, and spears. Shkuro said they pursued him day and night. On foot, if you can believe that. They kept up with his pony when he walked it, gained on him when he tried to sleep. He spent all his ammunition keeping them at bay. Hasn’t seen them in weeks, but can’t be sure they gave up.”
“I take it you intend to pursue them?” asked Malik.
“It’s our first real lead on these invisible marauders.”
“Good. I look forward to it, but I’ll need a good night’s sleep if I am to kill so many kaffir,” the Pathan said, and rolled over to return to sleep.
The next morning Captain Conder addressed the assembled expedition. Having heard Conder’s intention to travel to the Russian camp and track the bandits down, the two Tibetan guides were unhappy but resigned. Their Uyghur translator, Qasim, was utterly despondent and could not seem to make himself useful or sit still. The seventeen Kashmiri Sepoys were hard-faced and grim. The six Gurkhas, however, seemed utterly indifferent. They packed their gear with the carefree cheer one would expect for a short walk to the creek for an afternoon of fishing. The Cossack remained under guard, hands tied, weapons secured.