The Sleeping Sands (27 page)

There was a crack of thunder and the lion sprang into the air, twisting and snarling. It fell, blood gushing from a black wound behind its shoulder. Mehemet Taki Khan sprang from his horse and walked over to the lion, which was struggling to get to its feet, snarling and glaring at the Khan with wild hatred. Calmly, quickly and effortlessly, the Khan reloaded as he walked, levelled his long gun and shot the lion between the eyes. It slumped to the floor.

Using his gun as a lever, he managed to free Layard, whose left leg was still trapped by the body of the horse. He inspected the Englishman, who was shaking with shock.

‘Nothing seems to be broken,’ he observed, ‘which means you are very lucky. You have some scratches on your leg and the wound in your shoulder is fairly deep. We’ll need to clean that up as quickly as we can or it will go bad.’

The Khan washed the wounds with fresh water from his canteen and then tore some strips of linen from his tunic. He cut the saddle from Layard’s horse and, using the edge of his knife, scraped at the soft, mouldy underside of the leather, gathering a sticky dark paste.

‘This is an old Arab trick,’ he explained to Layard, ‘it helps to clean the wound.’

He smeared the paste around the cuts on Layard’s leg and shoulder and bandaged them tightly.

‘We will need to find shelter for the night,’ he said. ‘You need to rest. How are you feeling?’

‘Shaky,’ replied Layard, ‘and sore. The feeling is coming back into my right side though – oh - it hurts more than anything I’ve felt before. That beast just came out of nowhere. I never thought a lion would attack a mounted rider.’

‘Look,’ said the Khan, gently helping Layard to a sitting position, ‘dark fur, black mane, no manners; it’s an infidel lion. What do you expect?’

While the Khan may have considered his lack of broken bones to be a sign of good fortune, Layard’s other injuries made progress slow and painful. His entire body was bruised and aching and the torn muscles in his thigh and shoulder burned with agony. His left leg was tender and buckled under his weight when he tried to walk and his head pounded with an excruciating pain. The Khan offered him a little food, which he immediately vomited back up. He was in no fit state to travel any distance. The Khan helped Layard onto his own horse and then retrieved Layard’s gun and pack from the fallen mount.

‘There is a castle near here,’ said the Khan, securing Layard’s equipment to his horse’s saddle, ‘belonging to Mullah Fezi and his followers. He owes allegiance to me. It is a steep climb, but you will be safe there. Mullah Fezi’s castle is the most impregnable in the country.’

‘Safe?’ asked Layard, wincing with the effort of talking. ‘Safe from what?’

‘These lions rarely hunt alone,’ said the Khan. ‘We need to find shelter before it gets dark.’

The men climbed slowly into a group of steep-sided hills that clustered together above the narrow valley they had been crossing. High above them, in the fading light, Mehemet Taki Khan pointed out a narrow black structure hanging impossibly against the rock-face.

‘That is Mullah Fezi’s castle,’ he said, raising his voice over a wind that had begun to rise. ‘We must press on.’

Every inch of the climb was agony to Layard. As they struggled, painfully slowly up the trail to the high castle, he could feel a fever taking hold of him. His throbbing headache made it hard to focus his eyes or maintain his balance on the horse and more than once the Khan was forced to leap forward and grab the slumping Englishman to prevent him from slipping from the saddle and plunging over a precipice.

The wind continued to rise as they climbed higher, whining and shrieking among the crags and ridges of the peaks. In his fevered mind, Layard heard lions roaring and yowling in the gale and called out in fright to the Khan, who laughed his rich, warm laugh and described to Layard all the comforts they would enjoy in the castle.

It was almost completely dark when they at last reached the castle. Hauling themselves up the last few feet of a narrow rocky stair cut into the cliff, they emerged onto a flat natural platform of rock that formed the approach to the castle’s gates. However, the Khan’s cry of triumph at reaching their destination died on his lips as the two men caught their first proper sight of the castle at close distance.

The castle was silent and deserted. Its narrow windows were dark and lifeless, like the empty eye-sockets of a smashed skull. Its heavy gates had been torn from their hinges and patches of blackness on the dark grey of the platform showed where their fragments lay smashed and scattered.

‘We have to get out of this gale,’ said the Khan, leading the horse forward, its exhausted rider sagging in the saddle.

Layard gazed with feverish eyes at the jagged black smear that was the castle doorway. It looked to him as if he was being dragged towards the gaping maw of some enormous beast. He recoiled in fear and lost his seat, falling from the saddle and landing in a faint on the cold rock.

Layard woke to see the Khan’s face glowing in a ghostly light. He twitched and moaned in his fever. The Khan passed him a cup of water and spoke softly.

‘I have made a fire for you,’ he explained, ‘and here, I found a lamp. We are in one of the guard-rooms. They are the strongest in the castle. I don’t understand, though. There are weapons and supplies all about. No-one has touched them. Yet there are no people here. Surely Mullah Fezi’s people would have taken the arms and supplies with them if they fled the castle or, if it was attacked, the attackers would have taken whatever they could find as spoils of war. What force could have taken this castle anyway? No cannon could be hauled up this mountain that could have blown apart its gates. I don’t understand.’

He put some wood onto the fire and pulled a blanket up around the Englishman’s shoulders.

‘Try and sleep, I will see if I can find us some food.’

Layard slipped back into unconsciousness as the Khan took up the lantern and, with his sword drawn, stepped towards the room’s dark doorway.

‘Henry, wake up!’

An urgent voice shook with fear.

Layard struggled to wake, feeling himself being sucked back into a spinning vortex of sleep. His head pounded and his vision swam. He could barely distinguish the figure of a man crouched over him from swirling forms that danced before his eyes in a fevered gavotte. Above the pain in his head and the roaring of his own blood in his ears, Layard could make out only intermittent phrases from the man who swayed and shifted before him like a character in a dream.

‘-found them. They were gathered in a storeroom-‘ more roaring and pounding.

‘-women, children. Terrible-‘ Thump, thump, thump. Only the pain was real. The dream voice an illusion; forms and sense a distraction from the all encompassing agony of abstract existence.

‘-blood everywhere, Henry. They were huddled together-‘ the swirling lights intertwined, taking on the forms of tawny-maned beasts. Snarls and growls woven into a howling wind.

‘-didn’t have a chance. So much blood-‘ Nothing but savage roars and growls and something deeper and more savage still. Something familiar.

‘-Henry. It will come for us-‘

He must have slipped back into unconsciousness. He awoke in a cold panic, lying on a cold stone floor in an unfamiliar, pitch-black space. He jerked awake and a hand grabbed his face, smothering his mouth and pushing him sharply to the floor.

A soft voice whispered almost imperceptibly in his ear. He could feel the hot breath and soft touch of the speaker’s lips.

‘Don’t make a sound,’ hissed the Khan. ‘Don’t move.’

He could feel the Khan’s body against him in the cramped, dark space; could feel the pounding heart of the other man and sense the Khan’s mouth almost kissing his ear as he whispered again.

‘It is near.’

The two men lay still, a terrified parody of lovers in the dark, listening for something for which they had no name. Then they heard it. A soft, slithering, scratching, padding sound as something unseen and heavy dragged itself across the castle’s floor. They could hear a scraping and rending as a great bulk pushed its way through doorways. A low, wheezing breathing, deep, ominous and regular, grew louder as the thing came nearer to where they lay. Scratch. Pad. Slither. Nearer and nearer it came. Layard felt the hairs on his neck tingle as if they were being blown by the thing’s icy breath. It came nearer still. Layard held his breath, willing his heartbeat to stop, lest the thing could hear the frantic drumming in his chest. Nearer still it came. It was heading directly for them. Surely it knew exactly where they were – could hear their pounding hearts and smell the stench of their fear. Nearer still.

Timber creaked above them as a massive weight pulled itself onto the boards that sat just an inch from Layard’s face. The timbers bowed under the weight and Layard could feel them press down against his shoulder; against his cheek. The horrible breathing was deafening now, engulfing them as if they were inside the thing itself. Then the thing growled – a low, savage and unearthly growl that Layard had heard before. He felt his chest tighten and his head swirl as he fell back into a faint, the terrible growling echoing in his ears.

There was a crash of splitting timbers and a blinding white light flooded into the space where Layard lay curled and helpless as an infant.

‘The panel had jammed shut,’ grunted the Khan, kicking at the remaining piece of timber panel. ‘There, it’s clear. We can crawl out.’

Layard looked about. He was crammed into a tiny space; wooden on all sides apart from a freezing stone floor. Daylight was streaming into his refuge from a space left by the wooden panel that the Khan had kicked free and through which he was now crawling. He blinked, disoriented and confused.

‘I dragged you under here last night,’ said the Khan in response to Layard’s uncomprehending look, ‘I thought we could hide here, under the platform.’

Layard uncurled his cramped and aching limbs, rubbing them to restore his circulation. He heaved himself to the opening and wriggled through it, gasping as the hard edges of the timber pressed against his bandaged wounds. He found himself lying in the great hall of the castle, beside the raised wooden platform from beneath which he had crawled. The hall was in disarray. Furniture was smashed and splintered; lamps and vessels were scattered and crumpled and carpets thrown about as if by a whirlwind. Only the Khan and Layard’s own packs and weapons were untouched, stowed under the wooden dais.

The Khan looked around warily, his sword and pistol drawn.

‘It is gone,’ he said.

He turned to Layard with a white face and eyes half-mad with fear.

‘Henry, there’s something I must show you,’ he swallowed and bit his lip before continuing. ‘In the back, there’s a storeroom. It- it’s too terrible for words. Come and see.’

Layard took up his own gun from below the platform and cocked both barrels. Together, the two men stepped slowly and cautiously towards a dark passageway that led from the hall to a black void beyond.

‘There is a sort of cave at the rear of the hall,’ explained the Khan. ‘The castle was built around it. It forms a natural storeroom where Mullah Fezi can hold enough supplies to hold off any siege. Wait, we’ll need a light.’

The Khan searched through the wreckage of the hall and at last found a lamp that retained enough oil to be useful. He lit it and, holding the sputtering light aloft, stepped into the storeroom.

The room was empty. It held no stores; not a grain of wheat; nor was there a mark on its stone floor.

‘I don’t understand,’ said the Khan. ‘Last night, I saw them all in here. They were all dead. There was blood – everywhere.’

‘Could it have been another storeroom?’ asked Layard, looking nervously over his shoulder at the passage to their rear.

‘There is no other,’ said the Khan, sinking to the floor.

He sat against the rough wall of the cave, the lamplight flickering on his haggard features.

‘I know the castle well, this is the only one,’ he looked helplessly at Layard. ‘I don’t understand it. There was so much blood.’

‘I don’t remember much from last night,’ said Layard gently. ‘I was afflicted by a fever. All I can recall are fragments of nightmares. Fever dreams. Perhaps the shock of the lion encounter, the storm and the darkness played tricks upon us.’

‘Perhaps,’ sighed the Khan.

For a moment Mehemet Taki Khan allowed his head to droop and his shoulders to slouch, looking like a defeated old man. Then he shuddered and drew himself straight. He sprang to his feet and turned to Layard.

‘Still, I don’t understand where they have all gone,’ he scowled. ‘We must return to Kala Tul and consult the white-beards.’

He strode purposefully through the hall and into the inner courtyard, followed by a still limping Layard. In the courtyard, there was no sign of the Khan’s horse, which he had tethered there on their arrival.

‘Lions,’ he said simply. ‘It appears that you were right, Frank. My mind did play tricks on me. Come, it is a long march back to Kala Tul.’

C
HAPTER 15

L
AYARD WATCHED
K
HANUMI WALK ACROSS THE COURTYARD TO THE ENDERUN
. She had gathered up a bundle of sheepskins that looked about three times the size of her slim frame. He jumped up from the divan on which he had been sitting and offered to carry the skins for her, at which she laughed and sprinted away, bounding the last three yards in a single leap, to disappear, sheepskins and all, into the chambers of the women’s quarters.

Layard scratched his head and smiled, watching her graceful form slip out of sight. The princess was like no woman he had ever met. Many times since his return from the lion hunt, his mind had drifted to the Khan’s offer. How fine would it be to settle among the noble Bakhtiari and live like a lord with the most beautiful woman in creation? He had found himself delaying his expedition to Sûsan and inevitable dangers; discovering petty excuses to remain at Kala Tul; to note one aspect of Bakhtiari customs or another. He spent long hours carefully recording the costume of the Bakhtiari women and transcribing histories of the clan that were recited to him by the Khanum; a wealth of information about the complex wars, rebellions and internecine struggles that had shaped the politics of the region. He pored over his sketches and maps, correcting and re-correcting tiny details. His shoulder still ached from the lion attack and bouts of intermittent fever further discouraged him from setting out. Why should he risk his skin, in such a frail condition, for the sake of some shadowy old gentlemen in London, when these honest and open folk had offered him a home and an unconditional welcome?