Path of the Tiger, стр. 455
‘Who is that?! What is he saying?’ one of the porters shrieked in Bengali.
‘It’s one of the forest demons!’ the other howled. ‘It’s going to kill us and eat our souls!’
‘You’d best turn and run yourself, lion man!’ Milton snarled with raw aggression. ‘We’ve come for yer hides an’ heads, an’ we ain’t leavin’ ‘til we done shot an’ skinned every last one a’ y’all!’
William peered about in panicked confusion, with the world feeling, quite alarmingly, as if it was starting to spin madly around him. Ahead of him he could see Kelly doing the same. What were these hunters on about? Why were they referring to the speaker as ‘lion man’?
‘Ajit, ready your elephant gun,’ Bingham commanded, a trace of nerves cracking through his put-on steadiness of speech. ‘Take the first clear shot you can get. Head shot, body shot, it matters not. Anywhere that massive bullet hits will cause major and probably lethal damage, and if we can cripple him now, we can finish him off later. Remember, the lion is the primary target; go for him first. Milton, the tiger is yours. The rest of us will provide cover fire, and we will handle the bear, the rhinoceros and the leopard. Ajit, that rhinoceros is dangerous and is going to require at least two rounds from your elephant gun, so after the lion has been taken, shift your attention immediately to the rhinoceros.’
Ajit nodded, smiling grimly as he loaded his elephant gun.
‘Nothing but a bit of sport,’ he growled. ‘We’ll be having a good hunt today, we will. A damned good hunt.’
‘Bet you ten pounds I’ll bag more of these bastards than you,’ Milton said to Ajit as he readied his own guns, his yellowed teeth gleaming with the promise of blood as he leered an evil smile at the others while cocking his rifle.
‘Ten pounds it is,’ Ajit agreed before dismounting. ‘From here we go on foot!’ he shouted to the rest of them.
As everyone else began to dismount, Bingham sidled up to William.
‘Not you,’ he whispered. ‘You bring up the rear on your horse, and for God’s sake remember your primary mission objective.’
William nodded and remained mounted.
‘Yes sir. Don’t you worry sir, I’ve got it down.’
‘THIS IS YOUR VERY LAST WARNING! TURN BACK NOW!’
Everyone froze as the thunderous voice ripped through the forest once more. Then, in a brilliant flare of lightning that lit up everything clear as day for half a second, William caught a brief glimpse of a man standing on a large rock a mere fifty metres or so to their right. He was a white man, clad in a long earth-brown robe, similar in style to those worn by Buddhist monks, and his chestnut hair was thick, wavy and long, hanging about his shoulders, and on his craggy face he sported a bushy brown beard, streaked, like his hair, with grey. Fierce deep-set eyes, illuminated so starkly by the lightning flare, stared out with a look of ferocious intensity at William. It was impossible to tell from that blink of a glance how old the man was, but he appeared to be middle-aged.
Bingham also caught a glimpse of him, and without hesitation fired a few rounds from his revolver in the man’s direction, but when another lightning flare lit up the forest, the man was nowhere to be seen.
‘The lion is here,’ Bingham muttered. Then he turned to address the others. ‘Prepare for the hunt! We will slaughter these beasts before the day is out!’
An earth-shaking lion roar, which sounded, in its bestial potency, unlike anything William had ever heard off of the field of battle, cannoned through the trees. The epicentre of the almost seismic disturbance was the section of forest where they had just seen the strange man in the brown robe.
That booming sound was answered by another deep roar to their left, and then by a rumbling bark and a snorting bellow to their front. These sounds were then met with another pair of barking roars to their rear; the expedition was, it appeared, completely flanked and surrounded. The porters began to panic, and one of them started screaming repeatedly with shrill terror, and he threw his baggage down and scrambled as fast as he could up the nearest tree. The other porter took one look at his friend clambering up the tree and dropped his own load of baggage to do the same. Beneath William, River King was also showing signs of fear, which was unusual for this war-trained, battle-hardened beast who had survived the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. The stallion started to show the whites of his eyes, while his nostrils flared open as he sucked in breath after fright-charged breath of the rain-damp air. He then caught a whiff of something on the wind, and abruptly reared up on his hind legs, whinnying loudly with terror. William was only able to keep him under control with the greatest effort.
‘How in the hell did the bastards get around to our left flank?’ Milton shouted as he swung his rifle around, peering through the sheets of sleeting rain and the labyrinthine maze of trees. ‘Goddamn it! We don’t have enough cover in this position, we’re too exposed!’
‘Steady, steady!’ Bingham cried. ‘Ajit, Milton, right flank! Take the lion first, and the rest will fall!’
Kelly pulled out his revolver and pointed it with a violently trembling hand at the dark forest, swinging his aim haphazardly left and then right as he heard the wild animals crashing through the undergrowth once more.
A mighty roar resounded through the forest, and this time it was much closer to them. Then an earth-rending clap of thunder shook the trees with cataclysmic violence, and a near-blinding shear of lightning illuminated the entire area in brilliant violet-tinged white – and that was when William saw the beast.
It was only for a