The Lone Warrior Read online

  A servant appeared at the Englishman’s shoulder, a single glass held up on a silver salver. The crystal was misted, its sides lined with fine droplets of moisture, the promise of the cool drink it contained written in the thin ring of water around its base. The dark amber liquid within tantalised the Englishman and he reached for it gratefully, immediately taking a deep draught, his eyes closed in silent ecstasy.

  He felt the girl’s gaze rest upon him before he saw her. He looked across the room and caught the mocking stare sent in his direction. The look sent a shiver down his spine and he lowered the glass, the bitter taste paling against the spark of excitement that the single glance had aroused deep in his being.

  The girl turned away, her eyes flickering over the cards she flipped from the heavy wooden shoe beneath her wrist. It was as if she had not seen him, his presence as unremarkable as that of any of the eager-eyed babus seated at her table. But the Englishman had seen the glimmer of fear in the fleeting contact, and he felt it spark the kindling of anxiety that had been building deep in his gut.

  ‘Another beer, sahib?’

  The question was innocent, but there was a wry amusement in the words. The drinks-wala had seen the target of the Englishman’s stare, and he acknowledged what he believed to be the white-faced foreigner’s desire with a knowing smile.

  ‘No.’ The Englishman turned away. The heat of his fingers had caused the moisture on the crystal glass to run, and he felt it cold and wet on his palm.

  He walked quickly towards the table where the doe-eyed girl was at work. His free hand strayed unconsciously to the bulk of the revolver pushed hard into the waistband of his black dress trousers. He stopped and swept his eyes round the room. His hand left the hidden weapon and ran over his close-cropped hair.

  He lifted the glass to his lips and drained the last of its contents. For a moment he contemplated the bottom of the glass, as if trying to discern his future in the frothy residue left behind. Then he placed it on the green baize of the table and smiled.

  ‘Let’s go.’ He said the words with the calm authority of an officer; the clipped, urbane tone of a man who expected to be obeyed without hesitation.

  The girl looked up, her eyes wide in surprise. She gazed at the Englishman as if seeing him for the first time. The grey eyes that stared back at her were composed, the man’s face, with its thin growth of beard and the tiny silver scar that ran under the left eye, betraying nothing but indifference.

  Then she moved. She slammed the wooden card shoe on to the table and came to the side of the man who had interrupted the game, slipping her hand into his. She barely reached his shoulder and was forced to crane her neck as she contemplated the tall Englishman who had arrived to throw her life into turmoil.

  The mismatched couple walked briskly across the room. The Englishman’s foot caught a spittoon placed close to a fat babu who chewed unceasingly on betel. The china vessel cracked as it hit the man’s chair leg, the sound echoing like a gunshot. As if on cue, the place erupted into noisy confusion. The first voices were raised as the players at the girl’s table saw their croupier leaving on the arm of the firangi. Servants rushed forward, eager to subdue the sudden hiatus, their soothing voices adding to the noise that had destroyed the tranquillity of the room.

  The Englishman and the girl he was rescuing did not stop to admire the chaos they had caused. It was time to make good their escape whilst they still could.

  ‘We need a way out.’ The Englishman hissed the words without breaking step, ignoring the bubbling hookah that he knocked over in his haste.

  The girl was forced into a trot to keep pace with her rescuer. ‘This way.’ She pulled on his arm, tugging him to one side and towards a discreet doorway in the far corner of the room.

  ‘Sahib!’ A servant stepped into their path, his hands raised as he tried to bring them to a halt.

  The Englishman barged past, his shoulder thumping hard into the fool who had thought to delay him. The man staggered to one side and the couple continued, their pace increasing as they made for the door. They stepped around the incredulous pankha-walas, who looked up aghast as the pair rushed past, their arms still working in unison despite the shock of what they were seeing.

  The girl pulled the door open, revealing the gloomy servants’ corridor behind. She darted inside, pulling the Englishman with her. He resisted her urgent summons and paused to look back at the room they had thrown into confusion.

  A sea of dark faces was turned his way, every expression betraying anger at the disturbance he had created. He could see the servants rushing to and fro as they tried to calm their guests, their hurried gait such a contrast to the calm, serene progress he had witnessed earlier. He also noticed the arrival of three of the Circle’s guardsmen, their hands clutched tight around the hilts of the heavy talwars buckled to the sashes round their waists.

  ‘Come on, you fool!’

  The girl pulled hard on his wrist and he let himself be led into the passageway. She tugged him forward, increasing their pace so that they rushed through the dimly lit corridor, his boots echoing loudly on the tiled floor. There was none of the splendour of the public rooms in the tight passage. Guests were not expected to enter the hidden workings of the Circle, and the decor reflected the practical nature of their escape route.

  They moved quickly, the girl leading. Twice they heard the sound of footsteps scurrying past in adjacent corridors, but they slipped along without encountering anyone coming the other way.

  ‘You came!’ The girl panted the words over her shoulder as she ran, pausing to glance around a corner before pulling him forward once more.

  ‘I promised, didn’t I?’ The Englishman sounded affronted at having been doubted.

  ‘Men promise many things.’ The girl stopped suddenly. She turned to face him, the whites of her eyes bright in the gloom. ‘You came!’

  The Englishman reached forward and took her in his arms, crushing her to him. She kept her face lifted towards him, and he looked down at her, seeing the wonder written there. ‘I keep my word.’

  Her brown eyes sparkled with delight. She whooped, a single explosion of joy, her mouth opening wide as she released her excitement.

  The Englishman smiled and pushed her away from his embrace. ‘You’d better show us the way out, love, or we aren’t going anywhere.’

  She laughed. It came from deep in her throat and it captivated him, just as it had when he had first met her only a few weeks previously. He had not expected to become infatuated with a woman. He had been drinking away the hours, waiting for the carriage to collect him and take him down to Garden Reach and the Peninsular and Orient steamer that would take him on the next leg of his long journey back to England and a home he hadn’t seen for years. Then he had met the girl and everything had changed.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She offered a mock salute and turned to lead him on. She’d taken no more than three steps before she turned back and quickly kissed him on the lips. ‘You came! Jack, you came!’

  Jack Lark tasted her lips, then laughed as she pulled away. He was creating chaos and stealing a girl from men who thought of her as nothing more than one of their possessions. It was madness, sheer idiot folly. And it felt glorious.

  They ran hard over the tiled floor, doorways and other passages flashing past as they raced by.

  ‘Stop!’

  The bellowed command echoed down the corridor. The couple slewed to an awkward halt and skidded into a large, barrel-vaulted room at what Jack guessed was the rear of the house. He saw a door to the outside on the far side of the room, but there were half a dozen grim-faced guards blocking their path. Jack and the girl had moved fast, but the Circle’s guards and management had thought faster, assembling a small army to block the club’s rear exit.

  ‘Stay behind me.’ Jack stumbled on the words, his breath rasping in his throat after their madcap dash. He gently pulled on the girl’s arm, tugging her backwards as he stepped towards the men who stood between them and freedo
m.

  He sucked in a lungful of the warm air. It was far hotter in the areas of the club where only the servants existed. There were no grass tatties or willing pankha-walas here, and he felt the sweat running freely down his body. He wiped his hand across his face, slicking away the worst of the moisture from his eyes.

  ‘Stand aside.’ He gave the command in as level a tone as his ragged breathing would allow. He had not come seeking a fight.

  A thin, waspish man stepped forward. He was razor-thin and dressed simply but elegantly in a kurta with wide-bottomed pyjamas; the fine orange sash wrapped around his waist matched the colour of his tightly bound pagdi. The armed guards parted, easing out of his way and leaving no doubt in Jack’s mind that this man was in command.

  ‘You appear to be trying to take something that is most precious to us, sahib.’ The man spoke slowly, as if the firangi might struggle to understand the words. His English was perfect, and for the first time Jack began to wonder just who he had decided to make his enemy.

  ‘The girl wants to leave.’ Jack’s reply was curt, the words delivered flatly and without emotion. ‘I would suggest that you do not stand in our way.’

  The man laughed, or at least gave the impression of doing so. For there was no humour in the bitter sound and his eyes flashed in anger as he took a single pace towards the couple, who still held hands, their chests heaving with the exertion of their attempted escape.

  ‘The girl cannot make that choice, sahib. She belongs to us.’

  ‘You cannot own her. She has the right to choose.’

  The thin-faced man’s eyes narrowed. ‘She was bought. We own her. There is no choice.’

  Jack felt the small hand clasped in his begin to tremble. He wanted to comfort her, to reassure her that all would be well, but he could not risk taking his eyes off the man who confronted them. He squeezed her hand once before he let it go, moving his own so that it hovered near the opening of his jacket and close to the handle of the hidden weapon that he had brought for just such an eventuality as this.

  ‘We are leaving. Tell your men to stand aside. I will not give you another chance.’

  Again the man laughed his grating chuckle. He stared at Jack, saying nothing, but anger simmered in his eyes.

  ‘Kill them both.’ He spoke the words calmly, as if ordering nothing more than a peg and soda. Then he slipped back through his guards and left the room by another doorway, the request clearly of insufficient importance to detain him any longer.

  The six guards took a pace forward. As one they pulled their talwars from their leather scabbards. The blades flashed in the light spilling into the room from a line of thin windows, and the guards all slipped into a fighting stance as they started to edge forward.

  Jack felt nothing as he regarded the naked steel. ‘Is there another way out?’ he asked his companion, without looking away from the talwars coming towards him.

  ‘No.’ The voice was small, timid.

  He nodded. ‘Then we shall leave this way.’

  His hand slipped around the handle of his gun. It was a Dean and Adams five-shot revolver. He did not trust it completely. It had failed him before and had nearly cost him his life. But it had also killed more men than he cared to remember, and as his fingers touched the cold metal, he felt the tension slip away.

  He drew the gun smoothly and raised it, his arm extending as he aimed the barrel at the closest guard.

  ‘Stand aside. Now.’ He strode forward, his movements quick and commanding. He waved the gun as he moved, sweeping it from side to side to cover the group of guards, who saw an easy killing slip away, a quiet murder replaced with the threat of their own death. He used his free hand to shove the closest man away from him decisively, trying to awe them with his purposeful actions.

  ‘Move. Look lively now.’ He forced the guards backwards, threatening them with the gun, aiming it at the nearest men’s faces. ‘Move! Move!’

  He caught his companion’s eye.

  ‘The door!’

  The girl, who had stood in mute horror as her rescuer marched towards the men ordered to kill them, sprang to life, rushing to the door, her hands grasping for the bolt.

  It was too much for the guard closest to her. He slashed his talwar at the girl, who screamed and twisted away, the blade missing her by no more than an inch.

  Jack did not hesitate. He swung the gun round and fired.

  The crash echoed around the room. The bullet smashed into the wall in front of the guard, gouging a thick crevice in the whitewashed plaster, the crack of the impact loud an instant after the cough of the revolver.

  ‘The door!’ Jack yelled the words again. Already the other guards were moving, galvanised into action by the gunshot.

  They came forward in a rush. The first talwar thrust at Jack’s ribs and he twisted quickly to one side, letting the blade slide past him before he bludgeoned his elbow forward, catching the guard in the face. The man fell and Jack leapt over him, roaring a wild cry as he dodged another fast-moving talwar that scythed through the air in front of him.

  He grabbed the nearest wrist with his left hand, pulling its owner sharply forward before chopping the revolver downwards and cracking the metal hilt into the guard’s skull. He spun away before the man had time to fall and battered another guard’s talwar to one side with the barrel of the gun. He stepped forward and slammed his forehead into the man’s face, a fleeting glimpse of horrified astonishment registering in his mind before his vision swam with the force of the impact.

  ‘Look out!’

  Jack’s skull hurt from the head butt, but he heard the warning cry and threw himself to one side in time to see the bright flash of a talwar as it cut through the air where he had just been standing. He threw the revolver up and fired again. There was no time to aim, but the threat was clear and the guard who had attacked him leapt backwards as he tried to escape the bullet that scorched through the air before burying itself in the ceiling.

  ‘Get back!’ Jack bellowed the command, then fired twice more in quick succession, cowing the three guards who were still standing. They retreated, their desire to fight the firangi fading fast.

  The girl threw back the bolt and opened the door. Overheated air rushed into the room, spreading the powder smoke that hung in clouds.

  ‘Stay back!’ Jack roared. He had no idea if the guards understood his words, but they backed away, refusing to come close to the madman who was still waving a loaded revolver in their direction.

  The girl reached out and grabbed Jack’s wrist, pulling him away, leading him out into the blazing heat.

  The moment they were outside, they ran, a wild, careering gallop through the rancid back alley behind the splendid building that housed the Circle. They laughed as they went, the joy of the escape released as they raced away.

  ‘Did I kill any of them, do you think?’

  ‘No. You missed. You are not such a good shot, I think.’

  Jack laughed. ‘I meant to miss. Those poor buggers didn’t deserve to die for that nasty skinny bastard.’

  The palki pitched and heaved as they rounded a sharp bend. The four bearers must have wondered at the sanity of the couple who had emerged from a dank side alley to throw themselves inside. But Jack had overpaid them to kill their curiosity, and so they had taken the odd passengers willingly.

  It was cramped inside the palki, but Jack did not mind. It was no hardship to be confined with such a beautiful companion.

  ‘You still hit them.’

  ‘They’ll live.’

  The girl pulled her long silk scarf around her, as if suddenly cold. ‘A man has never fought for me before.’

  ‘Then you have lived a sheltered life.’ Jack stared back at her. Her brown eyes were huge, her fear still bright inside them. She was a creature from a beautiful dream, her face perfectly symmetrical. He did not think he had ever seen anyone so perfect, but it was her eyes that captivated him the most. They were so alive. He felt the flutter of a memory stir i
n his head but forced it away, determined to live in the present and not the bitter past. He stared at her beauty, using it as a balm to calm his mind, to force away the memories that haunted him.

  ‘You should not stare so.’ The reprimand was given gently.

  He smiled. Her accent was a constant delight. The English words took on a whole new dimension when she spoke them, the rolling sounds warmed as she ran them around her tongue.

  ‘You are beautiful. I cannot help it.’

  The girl blushed. Two points of colour flared high on her cheeks, the hue bright against her dusky skin. ‘Is that why you rescued me?’

  Jack sat back, easing his battered head into the cushions that were piled at one end of the palki. It hurt, a painful reminder to never again be foolish enough to use it as a weapon. ‘I told you I would come for you.’

  The girl wriggled forward so that she sat next to his head. She reached across, her finger tracing the yellow and blue bruise that was already showing in the centre of his forehead.

  ‘Men make many promises when they are drunk.’

  ‘I was never drunk.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Well, not completely.’

  ‘Yet still you came.’ She spoke in a hushed tone now as if not able to understand what had just happened.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why?’

  The question hung in the air between them. Jack did not have an easy answer. He had seen her barely a dozen times. Each time she had been working, serving in the hotel where he had been staying, which he had discovered to be owned by the same men who ran the Circle. He had followed her to the club, passing an evening at her table. They had barely spoken, but for some reason he could not understand, he had felt a connection, sensing something between them more than just polite formality. And he had spotted her fear. She seemed so sad and lost that he had felt tied to her no matter that he did not even know her real name.