As the guard reached for Winterpole, Christopher lunged for his left arm, swinging it back hard against the shoulder. He heard a bone give with a snap and the guard scream in pain. The rifle dropped from paralysed fingers. The guard had sufficient presence of mind to throw himself round on Christopher as he scrabbled on the floor for the weapon. But Christopher was impatient now and out of control.
As the guard rounded on him, he heard a scream outside, a woman’s scream. Instinctively, he recoiled from his opponent’s grip, straightened, and lunged upwards with his knee, catching the man hard in the groin.
Christopher reached for the abandoned Mannlicher. It had been rendered clumsy by the long bayonet at its end. He heard Chindamani cry out again, a tight scream followed by a sob. They were hurting her. Without pausing, he turned and made for the entrance.
“Christopher!”
It was Winterpole, shouting urgently.
“He’s got a pistol, Christopher! I can’t get to him!”
The guard had struggled to his feet in spite of the pain and was fumbling with a pistol in his side-holster.
Christopher swung round. The man held the pistol in his right hand, trembling. He was swaying, dizzy with pain, unable to take aim. Christopher did not want to fire it would bring attention in his direction too soon. He swung the rifle round, feeling it move like a spear in his hand. Men had fought a war with weapons like this, in cold trenches, over rusted wire, yet he had never so much as handled one before. He felt primitive, a sort of god, cold metal in his hands. The man had steadied and was pointing the pistol at his chest. It was heavy, black and diabolical.
Christopher lunged, images of parade grounds in his mind. He had seen men stabbing bags of straw, shouting as they did so. The revolver fired, a sudden light, and a sound of roaring filling the world. He felt the rifle grow heavy, felt something cumbrous move at the end of the long spike, felt the rifle jerk in his hands, heard the revolver fire again, felt himself fall forward into the heaviness.
The bayonet twisted and there was a sound of screaming.
Christopher realized he had closed his eyes. He opened them and saw the guard beside him, vomiting blood, rearing against the long spike in his stomach like a fish made passionate against death on the angler’s gaff. He closed his eyes again and turned the blade once more, drawing away, empty, entranced, striving to escape the tearing of flesh. There was a softer cry and a silence and a pulling away, and suddenly he was adrift in the supremacy of life over death.
“There is no death. There is no death,” he kept repeating, but he opened his eyes and saw the guard on the floor, entering another world. The bullets had not touched Christopher. He was unhurt, but blood from the guard had splashed on his hands and the bayonet he held was dark and wet.
“You bloody fool!” screeched Winterpole from his corner of the tent.
“You’ve ruined us!”
Christopher ignored him and ran out, clutching the rifle.
A fire had been brought back to life about twenty yards away, a red fire that threw tremendous sparks out to tease the darkness. A semicircle of men stood near it, their faces lit like carnival masks, inflamed and bestial. They were cheering as though watching a cockfight. They seemed not to have heard the gunshots, or perhaps they had decided mutually to ignore them in order to concentrate on more immediate concerns.
Christopher raced towards them, pulling back the bolt on the rifle, gauging the distance and the positions of the men round the fire. Coming from the darkness across soft ground, he was at an advantage.
There was a cry and the circle parted a fraction.
Through the gap, Christopher could see one of the four men who had come for Chindamani. He crouched above her, half-naked, pawing her breasts, breathing heavily. Christopher stooped, took aim, and fired a single shot that left the man with only half a head.
The camp filled instantly with silence. Only Chindamani’s sobbing could be heard, and the voice of a hunting owl drifting on the darkness.
“Chindamani,” said Christopher calmly. Hysteria would not help them now. A cool head and a steady hand were what was needed.
“Push him aside, stand up, and come here to me,” he told her,
praying they had not disabled her or that fear had not frozen her into immobility.
For what seemed an age, she lay there, sobs racking her, the dead man’s blood wet on her naked skin like a baptism into all that life was really about. The men were unarmed, uncertain of how many guns their former prisoners might have trained on them.
They could not see into the darkness and knew they presented good targets against the light of the fire. Someone shouted in a harsh voice.
Tut that bloody fire out before he shoots somebody else!”
But nobody stirred. No-one wanted to be the one to move and be singled out for the next shot.
She lifted herself slowly, thrusting the dead assailant away from her with loathing.
“Ignore them,” Christopher said.
“They won’t hurt you. Walk towards me slowly.”
She began to move, arranging her torn clothes about her to conceal her nakedness. He willed her to him, steadying her faltering footsteps with words of encouragement. She reached the circle of men and started to walk through.
One man reached out to snatch at her, intending to use her body as a shield for his own escape. Christopher shot him through the throat, a single shot. The others fell back warily. The way lay open for her.
She was at his side, trembling as she touched him. Her hand clutched at his arm fiercely, hurting him, her fingers digging into his flesh. She said nothing. He felt a rage in him that neither the darkness nor the lust of killing could stifle. He would feel it always, from that moment: it would never leave him, though it would lessen in magnitude.
“We’re leaving,” he said.
“The horses are behind us. I’m going to keep these bastards pinned down here: can you get to the horses?”
She nodded, choking back the last of the sobs.
They inched back slowly across the rough ground, heading for the area behind the tents where the horses had been hitched for the night to tent-pegs. The sound of the animals came to them out of the darkness, whinnying softly and stamping their feet, restless on account of the shooting.
“Find two horses you think we can handle,” Christopher instructed her.
“Untie them. Don’t worry about saddles, we’ll have to go bareback. Untie the others as well, but leave one for Winterpole, in case he makes it.”
She slipped away from him, her confidence returning. Someone had thrown water on the fire and he could no longer see clearly what was happening in the camp.
A voice came out of the darkness, soft and familiar.
“The rifle, Mr. Wylam. Throw it away from you as far as you are able. I am aiming at your back and the range is negligible, so please behave like a reasonable man.”
Christopher stiffened. He recognized the voice: Rezukhin. A long sigh escaped him. He had forgotten that the general’s tent was next to the temporary paddock. With a groan, he threw his rifle down as ordered, several yards away.
“Christopher! What is it?” Chindamani called from the darkness.
“Stay back!” he shouted.
“Take the nearest horse and ride. Don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for anyone! Just ride as fast as you can!”
“Keep quiet, Mr. Wylam,” Rezukhin’s voice came again.
“But first tell the girl that if she so much as moves a muscle I’ll shoot her where she stands. Is that understood? I can see her perfectly clearly from where I’m standing. And I see very well in the dark, I assure you.”