In the Heart of Darkness

The nobleman's wife stalked forward. Her fury was obvious from her stride alone. The stablekeeper was thankful that he couldn't see her face, due to the veil.

Shocked as he was by her sudden appearance, the stablekeeper still had the presence of mind to notice two things.

The man noticed the comely youthful form revealed under the sari, which rain had plastered to her body.

The low-caste man noticed the bloodstains spattering the tunics of her fierce-looking escort of soldiers.

The man disappeared, submerged by the reality of his caste. Like all humble men of India, outside Majarashtra and Rajputana, the last thing he wanted to see in his own domicile was heavily-armed, vicious-looking soldiers. He had been unhappy enough with the fifteen soldiers the nobleman had brought with him. Now, there were ten more of the creatures—and these, with the stains of murder still fresh on their armor and weapons.

The stablekeeper began to edge back. To the side, his wife was quietly but frenziedly driving the other members of his family into the modest house attached to the stables.

The nobleman restrained him with a hand. "Have no fear, stablekeeper," he murmured. "These are my personal retainers. Disciplined men."

He stepped forward to meet his wife. She was still spluttering her outrage.

"Be still, woman!" he commanded. "Are you injured?"

The wife fell instantly silent. The stablekeeper was impressed. Envious. He himself enjoyed no such obedience from his own spouse.

The wife shook her head, the veil rippling about her face. The gesture seemed sulky.

The nobleman turned to the man who was apparently the commander of his soldiers. "What happened?"

The soldier shrugged. "Don't know. We were halfway here when"—he gestured to the north—"something erupted. It was like a volcano. A moment later, a great band of dacoits were assaulting us." He shrugged, again. The gesture was all he needed to explain what happened next.

The stablekeeper was seized by a sudden, mad urge to laugh. He restrained it furiously. He could not imagine what would possess a band of dacoits to attack such a formidable body of soldiers. Lunatics.

But—it was a lunatic world. Not for the first time, the stablekeeper had a moment of regret that he had ever left his sane little village in Bengal. The moment was brief. Sane, that village was. Poverty-stricken, it was also. He had done well in Kausambi, for all that he hated the city.

While the nobleman took the time to inquire further as to the well-being of his wife and retainers, the stablekeeper took the time to examine the soldiers more closely.

Some breed of steppe barbarians, that much he knew. The physical appearance was quite distinct. The faces of those soldiers were akin, in their flat, slant-eyed way, to the faces of Chinese and Champa merchants he had seen occasionally in his youth, in the great Bengali port of Tamralipti. So was the yellowish tint to their skin. Even the top-knot into which the soldiers bound their hair, under the iron helmets, was half-familiar. Some Chinese favored a similar hairstyle. But no Chinese or Champa merchant ever had that lean, wolfish cast to his face.

Beyond that, the stablekeeper could not place them. Ye-tai, possibly—although they seemed less savage, for all their evident ferocity, than Ye-tai soldiers he had encountered, swaggering down the streets of Kausambi.

But he was not certain. As a Bengali, he had had little occasion to encounter barbarians from the far northwestern steppes. As a Bengali immigrant to Kausambi, the occasion had arisen. But, like all sane men, the stablekeeper had avoided such encounters like the plague.

The nobleman approached him.

"We will be going now, stablekeeper. I thank you, again, for your efficiency and good service."

The stablekeeper made so bold as to ask: "Your wife is well, I hope, noble sir?"

The nobleman smiled. "Oh, yes. Startled, no worse. I can't imagine what the dacoits were thinking." He made a small gesture toward the soldiers, who were now busy assisting the wife and her ladies into their howdahs. The gesture spoke for itself.

The stablekeeper shook his head. "Dacoits are madmen by nature."

The nobleman nodded and began to leave. An apparent sudden thought turned him back.

"I have no idea what madness has been unleashed in Kausambi tonight, stablekeeper. But, whatever it is, you would do well to close your stable for a few days."

The stablekeeper grimaced.

"The same thought has occurred to me, noble sir. The Malwa—" He paused. The nobleman, though not Malwa himself, was obviously high in their ranks. "The city soldiery will be running rampant." He shrugged. It was a bitter gesture. "But—I have a family to feed."

The expression which came to the nobleman's face, at that moment, was very odd. Very sad, it seemed to the stablekeeper. Though he could not imagine why.