Ranjit Singh was the son of a yeoman-tenant on the King estate, and his ancestors had been part of the Kings’ fighting tail ever since the Exodus, martial-caste jajmani- clients who followed the sahib into the Peshawar Lancers as a matter of course. That mixture of the feudal and the regimental was typical of the Empire’s military, and it made discipline a very personal thing. Ranjit Singh would obey without question, as long as the order didn’t violate his sense of duty-by letting his sahib go off into the wilderness without him, for example.
They climbed log steps in the side of the natural levee and strolled up the rutted muddy street that led from the stretch of riverbank. The Imperial cavalrymen walked with their left hands on the hilts of their curved tulwar- sabers; besides those they carried long Khyber knives, and holstered six-shot revolvers, heavy man-killing Webley. 455’s. Otherwise they were alike in their confident straight-backed stride with a hint of a horseman’s roll to it, and not much else.
Eric King was an inch over six feet, broad-shouldered and long-limbed, with a narrow high-cheeked, straight-nosed face, glossy dark-brown sideburns and mustache, and hazel eyes flecked with amber. Ranjit Singh was a bear to his lord’s hunting cat, four inches shorter but thicker in the chest and shoulders, broad in the hips, as well, and showing promise of a kettle belly in later years. He was vastly bearded, since his faith forbade cutting the hair on head or face, and the black bush of it spilled from his cheekbones down to his barrel chest. His eyes were black, as well, moving swiftly despite the relaxed confidence of his stride, alert for any threat.
Mostly the mud is a threat to our boots, Eric thought. Either sucking them off, or just eating them.
Someone had laid small logs in an attempt to corduroy a sidewalk, but heels had pressed them into the blackish mud; passing horses and feet kicked up more, and a small mob of shouting children followed the two foreigners, pointing and laughing.
A wooden scraper stood at the door of their destination, the small building with BANERJII amp; SONS on the sign above, and they used it enthusiastically before pulling off their footwear and putting on slippers.
“ Namaste, Lieutenant King sahib,” the little Bengali merchant said. “I received your note. Anything I may do for the Queen-Empress’s man…”
“ Namaste, Mr. Banerjii,” King replied, sinking easily cross-legged on the cushion and gratefully taking a cup of tea laced with cardamom, a taste of home. Sitting so felt almost strange, after so long among folk who used chairs all the time.
He handed over a letter. The merchant raised his brows as he scanned it. “From Elias and Sons of Delhi!” he murmured in his own language.
Bengali was close enough to King’s native Hindi that he followed it easily enough for so simple a matter. “They’re my family’s Delhi men-of-business,” he said modestly, keeping his wry smile in his mind.
Every trade has its hierarchy, he thought. And in some circles, it’s we who gain status from being linked to them, not vice versa.
“I will be even more happy to assist an associate of so respectable a firm,” Banerjii went on, in the Imperial dialect of English; that was King’s other mother-tongue, of course. “As I understand it, you wish to see something of the country? And to hunt?”
King nodded. And to make a report to the military intelligence department in the Red Fort in the capital; likely nothing would come of it, but it couldn’t hurt. North America was part of the British Empire in theory, even if Delhi’s writ didn’t run beyond a few enclaves on the coast in actual fact. Eventually it would have to be pacified, brought under law, opened up and developed; when that day came any information would be useful. That might be a century from now, but the Empire was endlessly patient, and the archives were always there.
“You will need a reliable native guide, servants, and bearers,” Banerjii said.
“Are any available? The garrison commander in Galveston lent me a few men. Locally recruited there, but reliable.”
And you should have asked for more, radiated from Ranjit Singh.
Banerjii shook his head. “Oh, most definitely you must hire locally,” he said. “Coastal men would be of little use guiding and tracking here-” He gave a depreciatory smile. “-as useless as a Bengali in Kashmir. But the natives have some reliable people. They are savages, yes, indeed, but they are a clean people here, all the Seven Tribes and their clans. From the time of the Fall.”
King nodded in turn; that was one of the fundamental distinctions in the modern world, between those whose ancestors had eaten men in the terrible years after the hammer from the skies struck, and those who hadn’t. The only more fundamental one was between those who still did, and the rest of humanity.
“And they are surprisingly honest, I find, particularly to their oaths-oh, my, yes. But proud-very proud, for barbarians. There is one young man I have dealt with for some years, a hunter by trade, and-”
With a gesture, he unrolled the tiger-skins. King caught his breath in a gasp.
III. The Maiden in Her Wrath
Sonjuh dawtra Pehte thrust her way into the beer shop through the swinging board doors, halting for a second to let her eyes adjust to the bright earth-oil lamps and push back her broad-brimmed hat. The dim street outside was lit only by a few pine-knots here and there.
There were a few shocked gasps; a respectable girl didn’t walk into a man’s den like this unaccompanied. Some of the gasps were for her dress-she’d added buckskin leggings and boots, which made her maiden’s shift look more like a man’s hunting shirt, and so did the leather belt cinched about her waist, carrying a long bowie and short double-edged toothpicker dagger and tomahawk. A horseshoe-shaped blanket roll rode from left shoulder to right hip, in the manner of a hunter or traveler.
One man sitting on the wall-bench, not an Alligator clansman and the worse for corn-liquor, misinterpreted and made a grab for her backside. That brought the big dog walking beside her into action; her sharp command saved the oaf’s hand, but Slasher still caught the forearm in his jaws hard enough to bring a yelp of pain. The stranger also started to reach for the short sword on his belt, until the jaws clamped tighter, tight enough to make him yell.
“You wouldn’t have been trying to grab my ass uninvited, would you, stranger?” Sonjuh said sweetly. “’Cause if you were, after Slasher here takes your hand off, these clansmen of mine will just naturally have to take you to the Jefe for a whuppin’. ’Less they stomp you to death their own selves.”
The man stopped the movement of right hand to hilt, looked around-a fair number of men were glaring at him now, distracted from their disapproval of Sonjuh-and decided to shake his head. A sensible man was very polite out of his own clan’s territory. If he wasn’t…well, that was how feuds started.
“No offense, missie,” he wheezed.
“Loose him,” Sonjuh commanded, and the dog did-reluctantly.
The man picked up his gear and made for the door; several of the others sitting on stools and rough half-log benches called witticisms or haw-hawed as he went; Sonjuh ignored the whole business and walked on.
The laughter or the raw whiskey he’d downed prompted the man to stick his head back around the timber door-frame and yell, “Suck my dick, you whore!”
Sonjuh felt something wash from face down to thighs, a feeling like hot rum toddy on an empty stomach, but nastier. She pivoted, drew, and her right hand moved in a chopping blur.
The tomahawk pinwheeled across the room to sink into the rough timber beside the door, a whirr of cloven air that ended in a solid chunk of steel in oak. The out-clan stranger gaped at his hand, still resting on the timber where the edge of the throwing-ax had taken a coin-size divot off the end of the middle finger, about halfway down through the fingernail. Then he leapt, howling and dancing from foot to foot and gripping the injured hand in the other as the mutilated digit spattered blood; after a moment he ran off down the street, still howling and shouting bitch! at the top of his lungs.
Most of the men in the beer shop laughed at that, some so loud they fell to the rush-strewn clay floor and lay kicking their legs in the air. She went and pulled the tomahawk out of the wood, wiped it on her sleeve, and reslung it; Slasher sniffed at something on the floor, then snapped it up. The roaring chorus of guffaws and he-haws was loud enough to bring curious bypassers to the door and windows, and send more hoots of mirth down the street as the tale spread; several men slapped her on the back, or offered drinks-offers she declined curtly. The older men were quiet, she noticed, and still frowning at her.
