“Henry! There’s no time for that! We have to go now!”
“That’s an order, Risaldar! Do your duty, damn you!” Malik was taken aback, but ordered his Sepoys into an arrowhead formation to force the corridor.
Havildar Thapa stepped forward. “Permission to assist the Captain!”
“No! Go now!” Conder knelt by the case of dynamite Pun had placed against the wall behind the golden throne.
Thapa pulled up his bloody left sleeve. A gash from a knife split his forearm. The skin was already darkening. “I cannot go far. So I shall not go!
Conder immediately felt both relieved and guilty that he would not be dying alone. “Very well, Havildar. It’s your time to spend as you like.”
Suddenly all the Gurkha Riflemen were shouting, volunteering to stay. Conder knew the obstinacy of Gurkhas in the face of danger. There was no time to waste arguing. He’d need every hand to keep the dead from snuffing out the fuse.
“Make yourselves useful! Rifleman Rai! I should very much like to hear ‘The Minstrel Boy’ again before I die!”
“With pleasure, Captain Conder!” Rai beamed, as he unslung his bagpipes.
“Everyone else, get out now!” Conder began prying the lid of the case of dynamite with the blade of his cutlass.
Shkuro shouted from across the hall. “Your name, Englishman? What is it?”
“Captain Henry Tobias Conder,” he yelled over his shoulder.
The Cossack nodded, tapped his chest and answered “Uryadnik Bogdan Timofeyevich Shkuro.”
As Shkuro turned to leave with Khan and the Sepoys, Havildar Thapa called out, “Wait, Captain! Did you tell the Russian what I asked you to?”
No, he hadn’t. Thapa had first made his request when the troop of Cossacks had towered over his Gurkhas as they’d posed together for Eichwald’s photograph. Conder shook his head at the man’s priorities, but would not deny Thapa’s last request. Conder stood and yelled in Russian. “Bogdan Timofeyevich! My Gurkha Uryadnik wants your Czar to know that he and his men are very short examples of the Gurkha people! Back home they are all much taller!”
“Truly,” the Cossack said without a trace of irony. “A race of giants.”
And then he was gone.
Neither man ever saw the other alive again.
The Dan no Uchi Horror
Remy Nakamura
Takeda Inochinomi, Arakage’s daughter, knelt in the mud. In final position for seppuku, the point of her tanto dagger hovered, ready to strike. The blade quivered, swaying with her breathing like an edgy viper.
Honor. This was the way of the warrior. Her father’s way. He died with such honor. She served as his second, beheaded him with a powerful stroke. Ended his agony as his intestines spilled over his tanto. In her mind’s eye, his head came to a stop, glaring at her. Honor, his eyes rebuked her.
Night crept closer, the forest bleeding shadows, heavy rain and the altar-like mountain of Dan no Uchi conspiring with her pursuers. So close to her uncle’s monastery, and she had no light. She could barely see her weapons — her naginata, a bamboo bow, a nearly empty quiver — just an arm’s reach away. The lead scouts would catch her first. Perhaps the half-demons could see in the dark. Or track her like hounds. No choice. No hope.
She focused her mind inwardly on the image of Amida, washed with gold. She mouthed the mantra, Namu Amida Butsu. Praise Amida Buddha. Inhaled smells of rain, wet earth, and damp decay. Her hands steadied, but then her father’s head replaced the Buddha’s, blood oozing, staining the statue’s lustrous neck. Honor.
She looked up at the apparition that seemed to hover before her, glowing in the deepening night.
“Honor,” she whispered. “If you had honor, we’d have died fighting. Side by side.” Her words flowed with measured force, parrying his look of condemnation. “If you had honor, we’d have built a mound of corpses around us with our blades. The priests would sing of our last stand, father and daughter.”
The gruesome vision began to fade.
“If you had honor, your daughter would not be kneeling half-naked in the mud, with no light, no second to end her suffering.”
She opened her hands. Dropped the knife.
The ghost was gone. Hot tears mixed with cold rain. She wiped them away. Pulled her kimono back up over her arms and chest. Tightened her sash. Groped in the dark for her dagger.
“I could be your second!”
Inochinomi stood, tanto pointed outward. A girl’s voice.
“I’ve never chopped a head off.” Same voice, different location. She turned to face it. Strained to listen through the wind and heavy rain. It sounded like a girl. “Not a human’s head, at least. Certainly not a woman’s!” Cheerful.
“Who are you?” Inochinomi asked. Strove to keep her voice calm. Spoke with authority. “What are you?”
“Sounds like you’re not going through with it. Shame. What kind of sick mind dreamed up seppuku, anyway? Maximum pain, gutting yourself like a fish. This is honor?” Amusement.
“Answer me,” Inochinomi demanded.
“Careful now, I’m handing you your naginata. They’ll be here in moments. Down the path. Can’t you smell them?”
The handle tapped Inochinomi’s left shoulder. She gripped it. Relaxed into the familiar heft and texture. A lifeline for a drowning warrior. She had to trust this stranger. At least for now.
“Ready yourself,” said the girl. “I’ll help you see.”
Inochinomi hesitated.
Then waves of stench assaulted her senses, punching through the rain. Excrement, bile, and rancid meat. The reek sparked memories. Her brothers and cousins speared, dying. Her family’s retainers screaming. Her father’s hasty preparations to gut himself, calling her to his side. Handing her his katana.
The stink of hell. Of her family’s demonic assassins. And through the rain, the sounds of bestial sniffing, of claws on slick grit. Inochinomi assumed battle stance. Gripped her naginata with both hands. Faced the darkness.
“Shut your eyes,” the strange girl shouted. A clack, the smell of burning sulfur, a flare of sparks. Inochinomi caught a flash of a girl clad in white, like a ghost, before she shut her eyes tight.
Several explosions followed. The pops deafened Inochinomi, the flashes painfully bright even through her eyelids. She swept her gaze from pitch-blackness to a geyser of green sparks. In the distance, a beast fled, panicked, its impossibly tall rider bouncing wildly. In the mud, another horse-beast screamed and writhed, something burning, sizzling in its guts. This horse had slime-skin and the teeth and claws of a tiger. Its masked rider scrambled up on strangely jointed legs. One of its long, ape-like arms reached for its waist, and Inochinomi heard the metallic rattle of chains.
The devils stank like a battlefield in the sun.
Inochinomi tried not to gag. Ignored the taiko pounding of her heart. She wanted to rage. These assassins had destroyed everything she loved. She controlled herself. Buried memory. Forced out even her desire to live. There was only her opponent, this battle, this moment. Her naginata was a part of her, the pole a part of her arms, the blade her claws. She advanced.
When the demon whipped his weighted chain to catch her pole sword, she was ready. Feinted, flicked her weapon out of the way. Followed with a rapid swipe to the creature’s chest. It staggered back, then fell. She skewered the hellish being, leaning into the weapon to finish it off.
She nearly let go when serpentine things burst through the chest and waist of its black garb. Eel-like appendages grabbed desperately at the pole arm. She chopped the body until the writhing tentacles quieted. As they stilled, the round-toothed lamprey mouths at their ends rasped one word in unison: