The Faraway Drums. Jon Cleary
our escort. That, I guessed, was the order of precedence, the British Tommy right back there behind the elephants and horses.
I turned back and looked at Major Farnol. The Nawab and Lady Westbrook had got up and moved to the front of the car where a bearer was serving them tea and biscuits. ‘Still nothing on Major Savanna?’
‘He’s disappeared completely.’
‘Are the telephone and telegraph wires still cut?’
‘I checked just before we got aboard. The wires are still dead. Captain Weyman is now worried about what has happened to the men he sent down the line.’ He looked out at the hillside dropping away like a cliff right beside us. The tops of the pines and cedars were just below us and it was as if we were riding on a rattling magic carpet above the forest. Monkeys swung along the tree-tops, keeping pace with us like urchins, and the children in the train hung out of the windows and screamed encouragement at them. ‘We have just two stops, at Solan Brewery and Bangu. Don’t get out, stay here in the carriage.’
‘Is that an order?’ I said with a smile.
‘Yes.’ But he didn’t return my smile.
We had been travelling for no more than half an hour, had gone perhaps no more than five or six miles, when the train abruptly began to slow, the wheels screeching on the rails and the cars battering each other with a loud jangling of iron buffers. I put out a hand to steady myself and it fell on Major Farnol’s knee opposite me. He put his hand on mine, pressed it, then rose quickly and went to the door that led out on to the rear platform. I saw that he had taken his pistol from its holster as he stepped out the door.
‘Damned trains!’ Lady Westbrook was on her second cup of tea; or rather it was on her. She wiped herself down where the liquid had spilled on her. ‘Never a journey without something going wrong!’
‘They are still better than making that dreadful journey up here by tonga, all those painful weeks by cart. You don’t really want the old days to come back, Viola.’ But the Nawab was not paying any real attention to her. He handed his cup to a servant, brushed past his wives, snapping something at them in Hindi that stopped their chattering in an instant and went out on to the rear platform to join Major Farnol.
I stood up to follow him, but felt Lady Westbrook’s hand on my knee. I was surprised at the strength of it; it was like a claw. ‘Stay here, m’dear. Leave it to the men.’
I sank back on my seat. ‘What’s going on?’
She let go of my knee, sat back, rattled her cup and saucer and handed them to the servant as he jumped forward. ‘I don’t know. But in these hills, when the unexpected happens, you learn it is better for women to stay out of the way.’
Then the Nawab came back, no longer genial, looking decidedly worried. ‘I’m afraid this is as far as we go. There’s a bally great landslide up ahead, completely blocking the line.’
End of extract from memoirs.
2
Farnol jumped down from the carriage, followed by Karim who had been riding on the rear platform. As they began to walk up towards the front of the train they were joined by the sergeant of the escort of soldiers. ‘Don’t look good, sir.’
They were walking on the cliff side of the railway line. The track curved round one of the many tight bends and they looked across at the tumble of rocks and earth and trees just ahead of the grunting, steaming engine. As they passed the Ranee’s private carriage, she came out on to its platform right above Farnol. He was surprised to see Baron von Albern, the German Consul-General, standing in the doorway behind her; he had not known her to be particularly friendly to the Baron. But he made no comment.
‘Are we going to be delayed long, Major?’
‘I don’t know, Your Highness. But from the look of it from here, I’ll be surprised if we get through at all.’
Other than the two private cars of the Ranee and the Nawab, all the carriages had box compartments. People were leaning out the windows, voluble and curious. Farnol, Karim and the sergeant walked on past them, careful not to miss their step on the rough permanent way and go plunging down the hillside into the trees below. Trees cloaked the steep hillside above the track and Farnol, on edge again, recognized the situation for an ideal ambush. He had instinctively chosen to walk along the outer edge of the permanent way, with the train itself as a barricade against any gunfire that might come from up there in the trees.
He stopped, said quietly, ‘Sergeant, go back and deploy your men along the other side of the train. Tell them to keep low, in against the bank. And see that no one gets out of the train.’
The sergeant looked surprised, but he was an old campaigner and he took off at once on the order, running back towards the rear of the train. Immediately above Farnol a voice said, ‘Something wrong?’
A man was hanging out the window of one of the compartments. He was hatless and his thin blond hair hung down in a fringe round his long-nosed, long-jawed face. He had the adroit eyes of the ambitious or the survivor, and Farnol wondered how acute his hearing was.
‘Nothing.’ He wanted no panic starting up amongst the passengers.
‘But I heard you tell the sergeant –’
Farnol stared up at the man. ‘You heard me tell him nothing, sir. You understand what I’m saying?’
‘Of course,’ the man said after a moment. But other heads were hanging out of windows close by and as Farnol walked on he saw the heads withdraw and he felt, if he did not hear, the murmurs inside the compartments.
The engine-driver and his fireman were standing at the front of the train with the conductor. Farnol introduced himself and the driver, a chee-chee with a plump face and a thick moustache, looking like a coal-dusted walrus, shook his head resignedly.
‘Never get past here in a month of Sundays, sir.’ The landslide was a sixty-foot-wide mound of rocks, earth and trees that covered the track and ran down to disappear into the trees below. ‘I don’t understand it, sir. There ain’t been any rain for a fortnight, that’s what usually causes the slides.’
‘Karim, go up to the top of the slide. Keep your eyes peeled.’
Karim caught the warning in Farnol’s voice, unslung his rifle and went clambering up the slope beside the landslide. Then the sergeant came back and with him was the Nawab.
‘My men are in position, sir. I tried to tell His Highness he oughta stay in the train –’ The sergeant was a 12-year man, his dislike of India and Indians of all ranks, but particularly princes, burned into his dark, wizened face.
‘If something’s going on, Clive, I think you can do with my help.’ The Nawab sounded less British, less an impostor. ‘My bodyguard is back there, six men with rifles.’
‘I’m hoping we shan’t need them.’
Then Karim came sliding down the slope. ‘Oh, I don’t like it, sahib. Some bugger has used dynamite up there –’
‘Righto,’ Farnol snapped, ‘everyone back behind the engine! Sergeant, get down and warn your men. Better get the Nawab’s men, too. Tell them to take as much cover as they can. And tell all the passengers to keep away from the windows on your side of the train.’
The sergeant went round the front of the engine and raced down the track below the trees. Farnol and the others remained on the outer edge of the track, the train crew all squatting down to make themselves smaller targets.
‘Is it an ambush?’ the Nawab said.
‘I don’t know, Bertie. It could be dacoits. I suppose Mala herself must be carrying a fortune in jewels with her. You too?’
‘One is expected to put on a show. I’m afraid I’ve brought the bally lot. The wives, y’know.