“Seems a wee bit cumbersome,” Danny observed, watching incredulously.
“On the contrary, I deem it eminently practical,” said Enoch Root. “If I belonged to a small warrior elite, my greatest fear would be a peasant uprising-ambushes along the roads, and so on. If I had the right to kill any peasant who came within a bow-shot of me…”
“You could relax an’ enjoy the good life,” Jimmy said.
After provisioning themselves in the town they turned south and followed the coast deeper into Malabar. From time to time they would pass a criminal who had been impaled on a javelin and left to die by the road-side, which only confirmed the impression that they were in a well-ordered place now, and had not taken any undue risks in sending their escort home. The heat of the sun in this far southern place was murderous, but the farther they went the closer the came to the Laccadive Sea with its cool onshore breezes, and in many stretches the road was lined with Palmyra palms whose enormous leaves cast volumes of shade on the way below.
They knew they were close to the court of Queen Kottakkal when frail racks began to line the road, all a-drape with those same palm leaves, which had been put there to dry and whiten. The Queen’s scribes used them as paper. A lot of shouting could be heard up ahead.
“What’re they hollerin’ about?” Danny wondered.
“Maybe one of their ships just came back loaded to the gunwales with booty,” Jack said, “or maybe a crocodile is loose in the town square.”
The road opened up into the main street of a fair-sized port town consisting mostly of woven reed dwellings. There were occasional timber houses along the street, and these became more numerous and larger as they drew closer to the waterfront: the bank of a significant river that ran slowly and quietly through a deep-looking channel that broadened, a quarter of a mile downstream, to form an inlet of the Laccadive Sea. The town had doubtless stood here for ?ons but gave the impression of having just been set up in the midst of an ancient forest, as giant trees-teaks, mangoes, mahua, mahogany, coconut-palm, axle-wood, and one or two cathedral-sized banyan trees-stood between houses, and spread and merged overhead to create a second roof high above the palm frond thatchings that topped the buildings.
Young Nayar men were racing from house to house and tree-trunk to tree-trunk hollering at each other in extreme excitement. The travelers had only just come into view of the waterfront when a posse of Nayar boys burst out of a house and ran past them, completely ignoring them. Moments later those Nayars were pursued by a shower of arrows that came hissing down all around, some landing among the Shaftoes and lodging in the soft ground.
“Those black fookers are shoowatin’ at us!” exclaimed Jimmy, yanking out his pistol and cocking the hammer.
“Not just at us, Jimmy boy,” Jack said, in an ominously quiet voice.
All of the others turned to see Jack sprawled in his little two-wheeled carriage, both hands clutching his abdomen, where an arrow projected from his body at right angles. “It’s a damned shame,” he whispered. “Come all this way to die here and now…”
Jimmy was torn, like a man on the rack, between his desire to go and kill some black people, and the strictures of the Fifth Commandment. “Dad!” he cried, dismounting, and crossing over to the carriage in a couple of strides. He put his hand up to Jack’s face as if to give him a tender caress-then clamped his father’s jaw between thumb and fingers and wrenched his head this way and that, inspecting him. “You still bear the marks o’ the beatin’ we gayave ya-an’ to think you’ll carry ’em to yer grayave.”
“To me they’re like the sweet kisses I never had from the two of you-and never deserved-”
“Aw, Dad!” Jimmy cried, and planted one directly on Jack’s lips. Fortunately from Jack’s point of view it only lasted a few seconds-then Jimmy grunted, bit his father’s lip, and spun away from him, clutching his ribs.
Danny was looking down on them coolly from the back of his horse, holding a bow whose string was still quivering. “When you’re finished, tell me so I can go an’ throw up. Then we’ve a score to settle with those Nayars, or what e’er the fook you call ’em.”
Jimmy bent down stiffly and picked up the arrow that Danny had just loosed into his ribs. It had a blunt tip.
“Take two-you’ll be needing ’em,” Jack said, handing Jimmy the one that had bruised him in the stomach.
A couple of Nayars charged each other in the middle of the street nearby, and fell into a terrific duel with bamboo swords.
“I’m startin’ to like the looks o’ this town!” Jimmy said. “May we use firearms?”
“I do not think it would be considered sporting,” Jack said, as Danny shot a blunt arrow into the chest of a strapping Nayar who was just emerging from a doorway. A dozen arrows swarmed from the windows of the same dwelling and knocked Danny out of the saddle.
“Ye basetards!” Jimmy bellowed, and charged the doorway before the snipers could nock a second flight of arrows.
“Run along and play, boys,” Jack said-unnecessarily. He and Enoch slapped their bullocks’ reins and went into motion. Soon the street debouched into a sort of waterfront plaza hacked out of the mangroves. Diverse small river-boats and coastal craft were tied up along the quay, reminding Jack, in a very imprecise way, of Thames-side. Turning their heads they could look downstream to the inlet that served as Queen Kottakkal’s chief, and only, harbor. A dozen or so larger vessels rode at anchor there, and their appearance made Enoch chuckle. “Nowhere have I seen a more motley collection of pirate-vessels-not in Dunkirk, not even in Port Royal of Jamaica. Turkish galleots, Arab dhows, Flemish corvettes-is there anything they won’t use?”
“To carry guns and to sail fast are the only requirements,” Jack said. “The dhow, second from left, is the vessel she took from us.”
And then both men naturally turned their heads to gaze southwards across the river. The opposite bank was a stone bluff undercut by the current, so that it bulged out towards them slightly, then rose to a plateau some ten fathoms above their heads. This was not extraordinarily high, but it sufficed to command the river and the inlet with batteries of forty-eight pounders and mortars that could be seen, here and there, protruding from embrasures at the corners of Queen Kottakkal’s palace wall. It was difficult to make out where the natural cliff left off and the built wall began, for both were concealed deep behind a mat of interwoven vines, some as thick as tree-trunks, that had grown outwards to a depth of yards. This hanging jungle was home to a whole nation of adventurous monkeys with prehensile tails. The vines that grew on the Queen’s fortifications were of diverse species, but all of them seemed to be flowering. These were not roses or carnations but ripe dripping fleshy organs of sweet light, big as cabbages, grown in shapes that Euclid never dreamed off, organized in clusters, networks, and hierarchies. At the moment all were facing into the sun, so that the jungle-wall blazed with shocking color. It looked as if some fabulously wealthy pirate-nation had laid siege to the place and bombarded it with giant rubies, citrines, pearls, opals, lumps of coral, and agates, which had lodged in the cliff and been left there. It hummed and teemed with the energy of a million bees and a thousand hummingbirds that had been drawn to the place from all over the South Seas by the cataract of narcotic fragrance that came out of it. Compared to this, the mossy domes of the palace above and the blunt muzzles of its guns, were as dim as old paint.
Getting up there, if they had not been invited, would have been a short, fatal adventure. As it was, Jack and Enoch were conveyed across the river without losing any limbs to crocodiles, and ascended to the palace without running afoul of any trap-doors or poison-dart barrages. They followed a series of stairways-some external, winding up the stone cliff-face among the vines, and some internal, cut through the stone. Finally they emerged into a small courtyard surrounded by walls with many arrow-slits: a killing-ground for invaders. But a door was opened and so they entered into the palace.