DASH & DARING

Recently discovered memoranda attached to the files found on Captain Braxton Fitzroy shed a strange new light on the matter of his disappearance. This author is forced to wonder exactly what happened in Samarkand to shake such an officer’s faith so profoundly, and what would cause Lord Elgin to so brusquely dismiss a man who had lived his life in service to Queen and Country.

*~*~*

CLASSIFIED

TOP SECRET

From: The Office of Colonel Durand, Indian Intelligence HQ, Simla

To: Lord Elgin, The Office of the Viceroy

Subject: Death/Disappearance of Captain Braxton A. Fitzroy 

It is regrettable to lose such a decorated and useful officer of the Empire in such an inglorious way, but the accounts of the survivors of the Daedalus Expedition whom could be reached (Pundit Chandra Singh formerly of Punjab Frontier Force, Havildar Agansing Rai/5^th Gurkha Reg., Lt. Byron Baker has disappeared, cause/destination unknown) show that as usual, Fitzroy showed only the highest caliber of bravery and initiative in his work in the Himalayas.  

We fear the Russian involvement may have been minimal, contrary to prior reports. Suggest that this information be disregarded and that operations along the border continue as usual to deter further encroachments. 

Survivors report strange usage of some sort of mystical (Indian Intelligence of course disregards mysticism, but prior service records of those reporting and the exact nature of Fitzroy’s demise compel one to give such claims more credit than one would otherwise) powers by the Lama of this unnamed monastery. We suggest the reports be passed to our experts in London (i.e. the LoEG, the gentlemen in Cardiff or Messr. Dr.? At the Viceroy’s discretion of course.)

It is known to Indian Intelligence that Captain Fitzroy had shown a disconcerting tendency lately to question orders and the morality of his work since certain events in Samarkand, however, past work has made him invaluable to this office and the Empire at large, and he has a record of over a decade’s worth of exemplary service to his credit. Colonel Durand and Major Gibbons both recommend he be posthumously commended. 

Signed,

Lt. Markham Lloyd

Secretary to Colonel Durand

*~*~*

From: Lord Elgin, The Office of the Viceroy

To: The Office of Colonel Durand, Indian Intelligence HQ, Simla

Fitzroy’s filed are to be sealed and sent to India Office, London. 

An officer who has lost his faith in the Empire is no longer of service to the Empire.

Commendation denied. 

Claims of mysticism in the Himalayas are nearly constant and nearly constantly false. 

-Elgin

Baker gave the pile old flesh and robes a kick. 

“Impossible…”

Fitzroy put a hand on his friend’s shoulder, jostling him from his thoughts. They both looked down at the faded and tattered pile of red and black cashmere that had not ten minutes before clothed a living Lama. The body there now seemed a strangely shrunken thing. Where before there had been menace, mystery, murder, there was now only the banality of a corpse.  

“It doesn’t make any sense…”

“We haven’t the luxury of time, Lieutenant. We can’t afford to think now. Just act. We have a long walk ahead of us.” 

“…How are you going to tell the boys at Simla all this, old boy?”

“I’ll tell them the truth. I’ll tell them that we fulfilled our mandate, that we were ambushed, captured, tortured, and escaped execution, and that a violent, rogue sect of Buddhists were behind it all.”

“But…this just doesn’t happen, Braxton. This is something out of Kipling. Out of a novel. But we saw it. Damn it all, this was a sodding fool’s errand. And we were the fools…”

“Later, Byron. Later.”

Fitzroy turned away from his friend to look at those who remained.

 Singh pulled at his beard, lost in thought and Benny Fish sat, staring off into the mountains. Kulbir Thapa’s body lay at his feet. Zukharov caught his eye once, defiantly, and then looked away. 

None of them were in the best of condition to conduct a descent from a gentle hill, let alone a mountain, but there was only one way out, and they had no alternatives. The shattered remnants of the monastery still clung to the jag of stone above them, cloaked in a fast fading dread beneath the new snow. Fitzroy wished to be done with this place. The bridge yet waited to be crossed.

“Right, all of you up now. Just a short walk until we reach the village, and then…then we can go home.” 

Fitzroy’s voice betrayed the dangerous weariness that had begun to settle over each of them, but he belted up his coat, straightened his helmet and stood tall. They could not stop now. They had to reach that village before night fell. They would not survive in this place with no fire to warm them or supplies to keep them; no one needed to say it.

They began to leave, each passing beneath the low arch of stone that lead through the great broken peak to the bridge and freedom beyond. Their feet shuffled in the snow as they held close empty weapons and bruised limbs. 

It was dark and eerily quiet in the brief passage to the bridge. A lone torch flickered within, throwing gaunt shadows onto their faces. The wind blew hard beyond, whistling through the supports of the covered wooden bridge there.

It was a frail thing, made of wood dragged up from lower climates to stretch and grasp at these glacier left stones. The beams creaked with a sound that did little to inspire confidence in it’s integrity. Benny Fish moved ahead of the others, pushing against the floorboards with one booted foot. He was not reassured.

“I do not trust this wood, Sahib. The air is too dry for it. It shrinks from the walls.”

“We must cross.”

“Then I will go first, Sahib.”

The Gurkha Havildar, last of his men, put one foot in front of the other, and step by slow step, crossed the bridge.

His hands grasped the splintered wooden railing on either side of him and the Himalayan wind buffeted him through the gaps, strong enough to make him stagger and bend himself against it, head down towards the other side. 

The whistling sound was piercing between the two halves of the enormous stone as the air rushed through a too constrained space. At times it sounded nearly as if curious words were being pushed through that frigid air, borne too swiftly by to be heard properly. 

Lieutenant Baker wondered how anyone could have managed to span such a gap in such conditions, but that was just one more question he thought he would have to leave unanswered in these mountains. 

Benny Fish inched his way across, the steps painfully slow to those watching, as they wished and hoped and willed him along, praying silently that the bridge would hold long enough to let them all pass safely.

It took the Gurkha a full five minutes to cross. They couldn’t see his face across the gap, but he waved them on and Braxton decided who would go next. 

“Singh, we’ll need your special talents as a pundit once we’re across here. You next.”

The Sikh cartographer stepped onto the bridge boldly, moving more quickly than Benny Fish now that they knew the floor wasn’t going to give way the moment he walked it. He reached nearly halfway across when the wind blew through the stone cleft with a force that knocked him sideways against the rails. They gave alarmingly. Singh snatched at the beams that stretched from roof to floor, holding on until the blast subsided. He then picked his way on further, more quickly now, before another gust could do greater harm. 

He too reached the opposite side.

“Lieutenant, go on.”

And so Lieutenant Byron Baker of the Guides Infantry sheathed his sword, adjusted his tunic, secured his jacket, smoothed his hair, and with great effort, put on that devil-may-care smile that had brought so much unwanted attention from the over-protective relations of certain women in Simla, and began to cross. 

If even after all this, he thought he was going to do it as befit an officer of the Empire, straight backed and chin held high, he was soon disabused of the notion by the implacable will of nature that buffeted him. He stumbled for a handhold, and after a near too confident start, finished by slow and steady forward movement. 

He shouted back over the abyss to Byron and Zukharov.

“That bridge is not cricket, old man! Best be careful!”

Zukharov rolled his eyes. His response of course was low enough to be snatched by the wind before it reached the other side.

“Well of course we’ll have to be careful. Such good advice, he gives, this Lieutenant Baker. It’s a wonder he has made it so far in your military.”

“In case you haven’t noticed by now Zukharov, militaries don’t tend to value intelligence.”

“Is this a confession, Braxton?”

“Let’s move, Zukharov.”

“Should we not be going one at a time? Surely I should be testing this bridge for you, oh great Captain Fitzroy.”

Zukharov’s lips twisted into a sneer as he gave Braxton his new title.

“I wonder if your sense of humor will sustain you when you rot in a Bengali jail.”

“If I should only be so fortunate as to achieve such luxurious accommodations.”

“Shut up and come on.”

The wind tore at them with a banshee’s shriek as they stepped onto the bridge. Braxton had Zukharov’s arm in a vice grip with one gloved hand, and walked the Russian in front of him as they stepped onto the eerily creaking wood.

“Again, are you sure it so wise to go at the same time?”

“I told you that you would see the inside of an Indian jail.”

“And now you intend to make good on this. Like you’ve made good on your threats to kill me. Like you made good on your promises to your Gurkhas.”

Braxton bristled at the goad. He remembered all too well how Zukharov had managed to crack his cool back in his cell. Exhaustion prevented a repeat of the incident.

“That won’t work again.”

“I didn’t expect it to.”

They made little steps, holding to the handrails of shriveled timber. The boards beneath their feet shook in the Himalayan air. Across the other end of the chasm, Baker, Benny Fish and Singh looked on with open anxiety.

*~*~*

“They are mad to cross at once. The timber will not hold,” Singh said to no one in particular.

“They will make it. He will make it, Singh. The burra Captain Braxton Fitzroy always does,” said Benny Fish.

“You damn well better be right,” said Byron. His thoughts echoed his words.

‘God help us, you had better be right.’

 *~*~*

They were nearly to the halfway point now, sliding along slowly and methodically as they could, moving so slowly that they could scarcely be said to be moving at all. Even the Russian arms dealer was silent as they picked their way across the bare structure. 

Something strange reached their ears then, between the gusts of wind.

“Storm crow…”

A word seemed to weave it’s way through the wind, a whisper, something familiar…

“Storm crow…”

Zukharov peered over his shoulder with a worried look at Braxton. Fitzroy nudged him forward.

“STORM CROW…”

Something shifted wrongly beneath Braxton’s boot. The wind picked up once again, and both he and Zukharov clutched at the rails. 

It picked up even further.

“STORM CROW!” 

“Impossible!” cried Zukharov.

The bridge itself shifted.

“Not good, Fitzroy!”

“STORM CROW!”

The bridge shifted again, and both knew that something terrible was about to occur, and even as this realization dawned, time seemed to slow. 

Braxton felt the wind pull at him, he heard it whistle through his ears, but all he saw was how the far exit suddenly seemed a poor fit for the size of the covered bridge. How curious, that stone should move like that, that it should shift off to one side or another. How curious that the bridge seemed to be sliding. How curious there should even be such a bridge in these mountains. How curious that all of this should be happening at all.

He saw Baker scream something, the words pulled from his lips by a wind that could not possibly be so strong. He saw Benny Fish and Chandra Singh make useless gestures and form useless words. He saw Zukharov’s monocle fly from his face as up became down and down became up and they tumbled within the covered bridge over and over and over down, down, down the side of a mountain that had no end. 

He thought of the Countess in her room in Istanbul, the dead Princess on the Steppes, the dancer he had known in Cairo, he thought of them all. He thought of his father and he thought of their vagabond lives in service of Queen and Country. He thought of the 2^nd Afghan War, of Baker and every comrade alive and dead. He thought of every secret he had kept, every lie he had upheld, and every man he had killed. He wondered if it had all meant anything after all. 

Just then an old scrap of schoolroom doggerel came to mind, the same one that he had been hearing in his thoughts since this entire affair had begun.

‘E is for Empire, for which we would die.’

*~*~*

March 30^th, 1897

Somewhere north of Sikkim, in the Himalayas

One Sikh pundit, one Gurkha havildar and one English lieutenant stumbled through the snow and the whipping wind down precipitous peaks and neglected switchback trails, down, down, down the mountains they had climbed up what seemed like ages ago. 

They were bitter cold, wet, wounded, and silent. 

The air numbed their bodies, but it could not numb their thoughts. It could not erase the faces of the men whom they had left behind. It could not erase what they had just seen. 

As they had moved down the mountains towards the distant village, their words had been angry, desperate. Braxton knew the bridge was unsafe, why cross it two at a time? Why? What had they all heard before the bridge and their comrades tumbled down into the abyss? Hadn’t they heard it before? No, surely, that could never be. Such things did not happen. It was impossible, no it was not impossible, and surely they could not discount anything after all they had seen. He had been dead. They had seen his corpse. How could he pronounce doom from beyond the grave? Stories from high places, stories of old magic, stories of fakirs from the plains, stories full of impossibilities, and this was simply one more. But this one was different. This one involved them. 

After a time their talk had ceased. The cold had taken it from them. They didn’t move as men anymore. They had become pure animal will. They moved because to stop was to die, and they had seen too much death.

In the distance, the rude dwellings of the poor wretches who called these mountains their home beckoned with pinpricks of firelight. Their thin trails of smoke disappeared into the rapidly changing sky. 

The last members of the Daedalus Expedition moved towards the little village, feeling very small as they walked upon the roof of the world.

*~*~*

FIN ?

“Sahib! Down!” Braxton flung himself into the snow as Benny Fish cocked his rifle and began to fire at the red and black robed man that stood unmoving at the entrance to the bridge. His hands moved automatically, firing and reloading more swiftly that the eye could follow. But each shot went strange, twisting impossibly or stopping short. 

Lieutenant Baker ran to Fitzroy watching dumbstruck at what could not be.

 “Faith. Faith is more powerful than any bullet, English.”

The Lama moved forward, but his feet did not touch the earth. His robes fluttered in a wind that did not reach the others. 

Chandra Singh moved after Baker, he kept his rifle trained on the Lama, whose movements blasphemed against natural laws.

Zukharov adjusted his monocle, blinking hugely. The air seemed very thin to him suddenly, and he groped in his coat for something he had kept unused through all the fighting. His insurance.

Baker rushed to the Lama, swinging his sword with a savagery that would have cut any other man clean in two. He was carelessly tossed aside with a wave of the Lama’s hand, landing feet away in the snow. 

Singh began to fire now, moving closer and closer to the floating Lama, his mouth set in a hard scowl as the crack of gunfire died too quickly in the silence that enveloped them. The bullets all went wide. Benny Fish joined in the fusillade with his own dwindling ammunition. The Lama’s face twisted in a grimace. It was clear that whatever puissance he had called to his aid was not easy to maintain. He was exerting himself.

Baker picked himself up again, rushing to the Lama with a defiant cry. He was swatted away again, less far this time. The mad monk buckled slowly, sinking closer to the ground. He spoke, nearly pleading, and a twisted beneficence passed over his face.

“Can you not see that I only wish to save this world? Can you not see that I am salvation? I am here to break the endless cycle of violence. I am here as peace. I am here as love. Death brings new life, and I will bring death in order to bring life. To love all so deeply and not act, that is the crime!”

His words went without understanding to the ears of all save Zukharov, Fitzroy and Singh, and none of them were ready to accept such things.

Singh kept firing and reloading, and not a shot touched the man. This could not be.

Baker shook his head as blood trickled from his nose, and he rose unsteadily once more to his feet. He staggered to the Lama and swung again as Singh fired ineffectively. The Lama barked words that twisted and snaked through the air, flinging the pundit backwards against an exposed gnarl of stone, and as he did so, he stretched out a hand, catching Baker’s sword mid-swing and wrenched it from his grasp. With a yell, a blast of impossible air knocked the Lieutenant backwards, flat on his back.

Benny Fish fired one last shot before he tossed the spent rifle to the ground, drew his kukri and rushed this man who had killed his men, who had denied them a warrior’s death. He did not get far before he joined Chandra Singh, knocked out cold by the stone he had landed against. The world went dark for the Havildar.

Braxton Fitzroy stood cold in the silence that followed. Not a shot sounded, not a blade cut true, and the wind even had ceased to blow. He looked about. Baker lay collapsed in the snow, and Benny Fish and Chandra Singh had been knocked unconscious. It would be up to him. There was no fear in his mind. Only a rage moved through him as the Lama’s robes touched the snow. The monk spat blood. His magic had taken a toll. His small eyes caught Fitzroy’s own, and now the Englishman could see the weird glow that smoldered deep within them. He said something, a whisper. Fitzroy didn’t care. He was going to kill the man with his bare hands.

He took only a few steps when he realized that his feet would move no more. His boots had been stuck fast, ice clutched at him, rooting him to the mountain. 

The Lama labored for breath.

“Your time will come, English. But first…first…I must deal with those who would betray me…”

Zukharov had stayed at the rear of the fray throughout, his hand in his coat. He began to step backwards as the Lama moved to him, closing the distance with a shuffle that could not have carried him as quickly or as far as it did. He snatched the Russian’s collar, breathing heavily, his words slow with pain.

“I saved you, cur, and you have the…audacity…to dishonor me so… When I found you in Cairo you were a shell of a man… You were nothing… Riddled with vermin…wounded…impure with whore-gotten diseases…hiding with rats infested houses to avoid the men who wanted you dead… I bought your freedom. I had seen you in my visions, traitor… I knew you would be the one to bring guns to my monks, but I had not foreseen this…and for this, you will die.”

Zukharov twisted his hand inside his coat, and a shot rent the air.

The Lama looked incredulously downwards to the hole in the Russian’s jacket, and the hole in his own robes. 

“Insurance,” said Zukharov with a smirk, pulling out the smoking Mauser he had kept hidden there.

“Folly,” smiled the Lama.

Zukharov’s face fell. The Lama delivered a backhanded slap that send the arms dealer reeling, as he pulled from within his robes a dagger, and advanced with murderous intent. The Russian’s monocle popped from his eye as he tripped backwards into the snow, a desperate panic seizing him. His eyes flickered to all those who might have intervened. Only one still stood, pulling impotently at legs that would not move. Zukharov did not think about what he did next. Instinct guided him. The arms dealer gripped the Mauser by it’s searing barrel and threw it with all the strength and accuracy he could muster.

“FITZROY!”

The gun arced in near slow motion through the air, spinning in lazy circles as Braxton and the Lama both looked up. The Englishman over extended himself as he reached out his hand, his momentum causing him to fall forward and crack the ice that held him fast. He landed face first on the stones and snow. The Lama looked behind him with a snarl and turned once again to advance on the prone and helpless Zukharov.

“Your aim is as poor as your judgment, cur.”

Zukharov swallowed. Perhaps that had been a poor idea after all.

Down the way, Braxton smiled. 

He had caught his gun during the fall. The ice around his legs had snapped. He could move once again.

The Lama knelt on his betrayer’s chest, his old knees jutting hard from his robes, pushing the breath from the Russian’s lungs. Zukharov’s insurance had obviously had an effect though. The Lama’s movements and words were thick with fatigue and blood flecked his mouth.

“You destroyed my house… You betrayed my monks… You have thrown away salvation to lie with dogs… Perhaps I was the fool to think you could have been saved in the first place. But now it matters not. Goodbye, cur.” He raised his dagger for a killing stroke, when an unexpected crack rang out. 

The Lama arched his back in pain, his free hand flying to the new wound. He forgot his pain, rising from the Russian’s chest and began to move through the snow to his attacker.

Captain Braxton Fitzroy walked slowly towards him as he kept firing, his arm held straight, his aim true. 

Step, step

Fire

Step, step

Fire

Step, step

Fire

Step, step

Fire

Step, step

Fire

Step, step

Fire

The Lama staggered after each shot, but still he moved, still he advanced, and his eyes still burned with an unnatural light. Braxton did not stop. The two closed to yards, then feet, closer and closer and closer until only a few steps separated them.

Step

Fitzroy aimed at the Lama’s heart.

Step

The Lama faltered, but kept moving.

Step

Fitzroy sighted down the barrel of his gun.

Step

The Lama drew back his dagger to end this.

Fire.

The Lama looked curiously at Braxton. The Captain looked back. He had made himself a stone once more. The monk staggered, he moved his mouth to speak, but only managed two words.

“…Storm…crow…”

The monk collapsed forward against Braxton’s boots, slumping into the snow.

The wind began to blow again.

Fitzroy looked down at the dead mess of robes and wrinkled skin and fading sigils that lay pooled at his feet, stepped over them, and walked to Zukharov, who had begun to stand. 

“I knew you would get him, ol-…”

Braxton kicked Zukharov square in the gut, grabbed a handful of his coat as he doubled over, and brought the butt of his Mauser down onto the back of his head. The Russian curled up in the snow, coughing and sucking in air. He looked pleadingly at Fitzroy.

“Old friend…”

Fitzroy knelt and grabbed a fistful of his hair. 

“Old friend…”

He placed the barrel of the Mauser to Zukharov’s head.

“Braxton, please old friend, please…”

Zukharov smiled with a sickening desperation. All Fitzroy could see were his dead Gurkhas. The stone in his chest hardened.

He pulled the trigger.

…Nothing happened.

The Mauser was empty.

“I am not your friend.”

Fitzroy let go of the arms dealer’s hair, and stood.

       

“Another large door loomed before them, with gilt knockers carved into hideous faces…

*~*~*

Braxton Fitzroy rose unsteadily to his feet, the stone yard they had landed on had not been forgiving. The late March snow fell heavy and thick around five remaining members of a failed expedition and one Russian arms dealer, and the wind cut them to the bone surer than any monk’s sword. Their thick coats, tattered, bloodstained and sweat soaked now, offered only a little protection against the cold. 

They found themselves in the deserted courtyard of the monastery, and they quickly picked themselves up and began to move swiftly away from the main hall, which now began to fold in on itself in earnest, with a noise that echoed and amplified in the surrounding mountains to deafening levels. The weather beaten and painted wood that had adorned the hall’s outer façade snapped and spun into the wind, forming deadly projectiles for any caught in their path, and all bolted for what cover they could find. 

Stones toppled and the mountain shook as it claimed that tenuous manmade structure as it’s own, many supports tumbled down and out into the abyss that surrounded the jut of stone that much of the monastery defiantly clung to. Cacophony ruled as the work of centuries was undone in the space of minutes. 

Many more passed.

Silence stole over the scene. 

Only the wind filled their ears.

“It’s over,” breathed Lieutenant Baker. 

“Not yet, sahib,” answered Chandra Singh, checking the remaining ammunition for his Martini-Henry.

“We are well on our way, Singh,” said Havildar Benny Fish, as he pulled the remaining rifle and bullet pouch from Zukharov’s shoulder, and checked to see that it was loaded.

“But we must stay on guard.”

“There are many doors, Havildar,” said the last Gurkha sepoy of the expedition, Kulbir Thapa, as he wiped his bloody kukri on the hem of his coat.

It was true. Doors studded the perimeter of the courtyard they found themselves in. Any one of them could lead to either freedom or uncertain doom back in the winding maze of the lower monastery. No doubt monks yet lived. The place was like a beehive, with innumerable passages and cells.

 “Which one leads out, Zukharov?” asked Braxton.

The Russian moved to his side, pulling the pith helmet from his head and offering it to the man to whom it belonged. He dragged a dirty hand through the hair it had disheveled.

“This looks better on you, I believe. The door there, at the far end of the yard. That is our salvation. Beyond that we must flee down a long path, little better than a cattle trail. A covered bridge lies at the end, connecting two halves of a cleft in the mountain. Once we have passed that, we are free. There is a village not so terribly far from here…the monks often bartered with or extorted from the men there. From that place, we will be on our way…”

Chandra Singh fixed Zukharov with a gaze full of contempt and spoke.

“Sahib, I feigned sleep during our ascent to this place. The monks did not notice. I can also guide us from here.” He left out the implied, ‘We no longer need this dog.’

Braxton Fitzroy took the proffered helmet, poking a finger through the bullet hole in the crown and shooting a disapproving look at Zukharov and a nod to Singh before he jammed it back onto his head and secured the strap. Something seemed more complete about him to the men around him with that battered piece of pith back where it belonged. 

“Then let us be rid of this place.” 

Another rumble passed through the stones at their feet.

“And quickly now.”

They all moved to the door Zukharov had pointed out, and this one opened without ceremony, unlike the last one they had encountered. Beyond lay another decrepit passage, ancient and ornate prayer wheels were mounted along either side of the hall. They were defaced with the same symbols that decorated every monk they had met.

Baker stared at them with disgust as they moved. 

“What the deuce do these symbols mean, Zukharov?”

“My skills as a linguist failed me when I inquired as to that same question. The Lama fell to discussing obscure Buddhist doctrine and I couldn’t follow him. This did not stop him from talking for at least an hour, I am afraid. The little I could glean from his babble was that they were some sort of charms, protections and spells. Mystical nonsense.”

“I’m not so sure about that last part now…”

Zukharov was oddly insistent.

“It is nonsense, I tell you. They are, rather, they were, mad, not magical. A bunch of lunatics…” It sounded as if the Russian was trying to convincehimself more than anyone else.

Braxton looked over his shoulder at the arms dealer with a knowing look before speaking.

“And yet you came here, even though you claim they are lunatics. You hired porters, secured everything that was asked of you and climbed to this place before the snows set in…”

“That is enough, old friend. I have no desire to discuss any of this further.”

Lieutenant Baker scowled, pushed the arms dealer against one of the prayer wheels and jabbed an accusing finger into his chest to emphasize his point. 

“Now you listen here you damned fool. That is enough. You will address the man by his proper title and you will answer his bloody questions when he bloody well asks them. You might have saved our skins, but we lost good men back there because you took your sweet time coming to the rescue. Now this whole expedition has stunk to me from the minute we set out on it, and too much has happened for any of us to be able to just wave things off. Once we reach safety, you have explaining to do.”

Zukharov scowled back at Baker, and looked to Fitzroy.

“Your dog, Braxton,” he used his first name, looking pointedly at Byron, “you would do well to keep him on a shorter leash.”

“Lieutenant Baker must use his own initiative when he thinks it appropriate to do so. But for now, we must keep moving. Lieutenant, kindly act as Mr. Zukharov’s escort. Try not to be too gentle.”

“With pleasure, sir.”

Baker released Zukharov with a grunt, and jabbed him back into line with the point of his sword. They kept walking as the hall stretched on and the floor rumbled ominously once again. The lower levels must have still been collapsing.

“That bloody Lama did something to me back there. I had him. I had him. Then with a wave of his hand…” muttered Baker to himself.

“We have stories back home about the powers of Tibetan lamas, sahib. They are rumored to know many secrets, and can cast strange spells,” offered Kulbir Thapa. His Havildar shook his head.

“Those are children’s tales, Sepoy Thapa, and you would be doing well to forget them. What killed our comrades were not magicians, but men. And they died as men. And we will come back here, and with deepest respect to the burra Sahib Fitzroy who is dear to me, we will return with a pukka Colonel sahib at the head of a full expedition and we will finish this bloody job and deliver proper revenge for our comrades.”

Baker shook his head.

“Sepoy Thapa is right though, Havildar. Something happened. Something…”

They reached the end of the long hall. Another large door loomed before them, with gilt knockers carved into hideous faces. Buddhist prayers were carved into the stones surrounding it, benedictions and protections made foul with the ubiquitous profane symbols. Snow scudded under the bottom of the door and wind whistled through gaps in the wood. Everyone looked at one another, silently wondering if after all they had witnessed whether things might be this easy. But there was no time for contemplation.

Benny Fish took point with his rife, and pushed it open.

The land tumbled down and away from them beyond the door, and the greatest peaks on earth jutted up before them, fingers of stone and snow standing defiant against time and the elements.

The air was a thick whirl of powder and wind, and stole the heat from the men’s bones the moment they set foot in it. They flinched from the cold, clutching close what they wore.

All except for Fitzroy. 

He stood for a moment in the wind, his boots crunching through the fresh snow, his blood caked Afghan coat and scarf snapping in the thin air, his eyes closed. He took in a stinging breath, a bellows breath, and what thoughts passed through his mind the others could not know, but when he turned to them, it was with a shadow of a grin, and as they picked their way down the treacherous path, something close to confidence passed again through their hearts. 

Singh pointed out an enormous knuckle of stone that lay at the bottom of the path. It had been cloven in two millennia ago.

“Sahib, between the two stones…there is the bridge there we must cross.” 

Zukharov spoke up as well, trying to keep up a usefulness he had gotten into the habit of outliving.

“It crosses the chasm between the two stones. Fortunately, this chasm is not great, and fortunately, this bridge is covered. Beyond…beyond we will be free.”

Singh kept him fixed with a look of contempt. They all did. Except for Braxton. He strode on, goat-like, over the impedimenta of the wild mountains. 

The path there was indeed little better than a switchback cattle trail, as the Russian had promised. Poles with prayer flags bowed in the wind along either side of the path, marking it out even when it grew lost, and slowly over the course of a quarter of an hour they made their way down to the bridge.

The cracked knuckle of ancient stone loomed large, black and imposing before them, but they could not halt, would not halt. Freedom loomed too close to slow their steps now. A passageway through the stone made was soon seen by all, a natural gap widened with chisel and hammer to fit the size of two or three men walking side by side. They knew the promised bridge lay beyond.

“We are nearly there, Sahibs!” Sepoy Kulbir Thapa nearly ran to the passage, so eager was he to be rid of this terrible place where so many he had known had died. Havildar Benny Fish did not stop him. How could he after all that had happened? Kulbir’s boots carried him, crunching through the snow with a loping mountaineer’s gait over stone and jag, to that portal of stone that promised so much. The rest lagged behind as Kulbir disappeared through the entryway, reappearing briefly to wave them forward.

Fitzroy went first towards to stone tunnel, ignoring the wounds that brought an ache to his bones. There was someone he very much wished to see once this was all over. He was determined not to pause until he had. 

“I made myself a promise to leave this Great Game to younger men who still lust for glory while I yet have my head. It’s high time to make good on that.”

Braxton let his mind wander for the briefest of moments, away from the wounds and the cold, across mountains and plains and deserts to the one place he wished he could be, to the one person he knew would be there.

The thought sustained him as he made his way to the passage, but it did not sustain him through what he saw next. 

Kulbir Thapa stood silhouetted in the entryway, strangely stiff.

Something was wrong. The sound of the wind was deadened weirdly in the shadow of the enormous stone. 

Blood trickled down from the corner of the Gurkha’s mouth. Fitzroy felt the cold once again.

He reached instinctively for where his Mauser would have been, but found no holster and no pistol. Hadn’t Zukharov retrieved their effects?

The sepoy fell forward with a sick thud into snow that was soon stained red.

A figure filled the space where he had stood, and an unnatural silence closed on all present, thick and heavy, a silence that was soon pierced by a single word.

“Fools.”

*~*~*

 

Byron Baker fell forward beneath the weight of the monk who had collapsed on top of him, cursing loudly, when suddenly more shots and more yells rang out, mixing with the echoing din that surrounded him. 

He felt his bonds being cut and something metallic and cold was shoved into his hand…a Webley revolver.

“About bloody time!”

Baker rolled out from beneath the dead monk, trying to take in the entirety of the situation before the confusion cost him his life. 

The monks who had held him, Singh and Benny Fish were dead. The two remaining further down the line were quickly being dispatched by the Gurkhas they had once held captive. The Lama’s masked bodyguards closed around their master, and the two that had rifles began firing as their leader shouted into the noise.

“Fools! Imbeciles! What have you done? My visions! Can you see, my brave guards, how they defile our holy places? How they bring evil to this place? First here, and then the world!”

The executioner monk raised his sword in a white heat, chanting angrily as he prepared to kill Fitzroy and deny the rescue it’s leader, when his master halted him.

“No, the fool English is mine!”

So he instead grabbed Fitzroy by the collar of his shirt and prepared to drag the man into the protective circle of masked guards surrounding the Lama. A bullet to the head halted his progress, and Chandra Singh smiled for the first time in a long time beneath his wiry beard as he reloaded and cocked his rifle for a second shot. 

‘What good is their bloody faith now?’

It was truly pandemonium in that great hall as the pillars shook and centuries old wall paintings cracked and gunfire cut through the deep rumblings like knives. 

The four remaining Gurkhas, including Havildar Benny Fish rushed to cover on either side of the hall, kukris in hand, eyes gleaming with thoughts of revenge. To attempt a frontal attack on the circle of guards, four men against ten, would not be wise, especially with two enemy rifles covering the floor. They would flank them instead. There was no predetermined plan. Hard fighting along the frontier had made such tactics automatic, and Lieutenant Baker saw at once what needed doing. 

Chandra Singh flung himself down into a prone position behind the bodies of the two freshly dead monks that had guarded himself and Baker, and took aim on the gun wielding men guarding the Lama. Baker did the same, cocking his Webley and firing, providing cover for the Gurkhas. 

“This whole damned mountain will be coming down around our ears if we are not getting the hell out of here!” yelled Zukharov to the Lieutenant, as he hefted another dead monk as a human shield, emptying his remaining Derringer fruitlessly in the general direction of the monks. Fitzroy’s pith helmet poked incongruously above the red robes, and promptly had a hole put into it by a well-placed shot.

Braxton struggled with his bonds on the floor as it rumbled beneath him and bullets whistled above him, and he heard two cries echo out as each rifle-wielding monk met their fate. 

He heard the war cry of his Gurkhas and the sound of close combat ring around him as a familiar face filled his field of vision, and he felt his bonds being cut.

“Time to make good on my oath, eh old boy?”

“Baker!”

“No time for that, chap. This belongs to you, I believe?” Byron presented Braxton’s saber to him in a mock serious fashion.

“I believe it does.”

“Sir, permission to kill these self-righteous bastards?”

“Granted, Lieutenant.”

“Righto, sir. With gusto, sir. At once, sir.”

As Braxton leapt to his feet, Baker drew his own sword and fired off a hasty shot into the gut of one masked bodyguard who moved towards the two Englishmen. 

The English Captain moved purposefully into the fray, as his Gurkhas made deadly use of their kukris and Baker popped off another shot into the circle of bodyguards. One moved to intercept Fitzroy, and the Englishman rushed towards him, ducking under his swinging blade and standing up to grab a fistful of the monk’s robe. He pulled him forward and shoved his saber into the man’s belly, and felt the blood soak the robes he clenched in his fist. 

He kicked the dead man from his blade, and parried a blow from the left, jumping above a low swing and bringing his sword down in a savage arc through the red robes and past a monk’s collarbone. Another monk closed from the right and Fitzroy met him with steel, parrying left and right, moving into his guard, forgoing subtlety in his cold rage, driving a left hook into the man’s jaw, propelling one hobnailed boot into his groin and dropping one elbow onto his bowed neck. The monk dropped, and Fitzroy brought the heel of his boot down on the man’s throat. He twitched once before he stopped moving.  

He could see the Lama now through the whirl of fighting, clicking his prayer beads with a fevered intensity, his eyes closed, his lips mouthing prayers as the number of his bodyguards dwindled quickly.

Braxton walked to him, death in his eyes and his step quickened to a run. Before he could reach him though, something slammed into his chest, knocking the wind from his lungs and reminding him of every wound that had yet to heal.

A monk wearing a terrible devil’s head mask had kicked him to the ground, and Fitzroy found himself in the unenviable position of being flat on his back once more. His saber had flown from his hand at the impact, skittering away through the fighting. The huge man raised his bloody sword for a killing stroke when a compact form flew through the air, crashing into the monk with a bloodcurdling cry. It was Benny Fish! The Gurkha wrenched his kukri across the monk’s throat, screaming into the dead man’s mask as the life spilled from his body.

“AYO GORKHALI!”

The Gurkha havildar scrambled from the monk and helped Fitzroy to his feet as the walls cracked terribly. A pillar began to wobble, and toppled tremendously in the hall, sending a shower of dust and stone down upon the heads of all the men there. 

Monks began to trickle back, finding the lower levels beyond saving; they sought the guidance of the man who had taught them salvation lay with his words and his plan. What were they without their Lama? What they saw horrified them. Their captives were closing on their leader. They rushed into the fray as the ceiling began to drop down around their ears, tremendous blocks of stone and woodwork crashed to the floor, blocking many of the entrances and exits to the main hall.

Zukharov rushed forward to the fighting, his Derringers spent long ago, brandishing a monk’s sword. Fitzroy’s khaki dyed pith helmet rocking unsteadily on his head. His monocle dangled from it’s chain around his neck and his entire person was an image of absurdity far removed from the usual suavity he presented to the world.  

“Now would be a good time to be running, my old friend!”

“Not yet, Zukharov! He still stands.”

“You are going to get us all killed, you stubborn English fool! This mountain is coming down around our ears!”

“You promised a diversion, not that this entire mountain would collapse!”

“Then I miscalculated! This place is older than the hills, and honeycombed with passages! The lower levels must have collapsed. It is all coming down!”

Fitzroy looked about the surreal scene and saw one more of his Gurkhas fall to a monk’s blade as more stumbled back into the main hall. Byron had waded into the fray, laying about with his own sword, and Chandra Singh used his Martini-Henry like a club, fending off three monks at the same time. The Lama had been backing away all the while towards a statue of the Buddha at the rear of the hall, clicking his prayer beads and speaking prayers. His dark eyes were wide at what went on as his monastery crumbled about him. 

Baker dispatched the monk he was fighting, and turned towards the Lama, rushing at him with a furious cry. Something curious happened then, and it went nearly unnoticed in the surrounding chaos. The Lama gestured with his free hand, and Baker flew backwards, knocking into a pillar that shook dangerously. A chunk of masonry fell then, cutting off Fitzroy from the Lama and the rear of the hall.

“Baker!” Fitzroy rushed to his friend, helping him to his feet.

“We must go!”

“What the hell did he just do to me?”

“There’s no time, we’ll find out later!”

Braxton stood, and caught the eyes of his remaining men.

“We must cut our way out of here! We haven’t a moment to lose!”

They all began then to do just that, stumbling over falling stones and fighting their way through thin crowds of bewildered monks as they rushed towards the front of the hall, the large wooden doors there and salvation beyond. 

A loud grinding rumble shook the floor at their feet as they ran, and another large pillar fell to the floor, snapping into pieces, as one more Gurkha fell then at his Havildar’s side, crushed beneath a huge block of stone.

“Go!” the doomed man croaked beneath the weight, and Benny Fish saluted his soldier, his eyes tight as the now four remaining escapees rushed through the mayhem.

The doors loomed larger, and larger and larger still and all of them could nearly taste the cold air beyond as the last scattered groups of confused monks gave way. They all slammed into the huge wooden doors at nearly the same time, hoping beyond hope that a great heave would be all that was needed to break out to the beyond. The door barely budged. It was held shut through years of disuse and the sticky accretion of grease given off by the butter lamps that seemed to cover everything. 

“Damn it all!” cried Baker, “now what?”

Chandra Singh cried out and pushed Baker away as another pillar began to topple towards them. Providentially enough, it crashed into the doors, the top of the pillar blasting a hole in the wood. A rush of cold air flew into the hall, bringing with it the promise of escape. It leaned at an angle, but one not steep enough that they couldn’t make their way up the incline. Zukharov went first, pushing the others out of the way and disappearing up, over through the hole in the door. 

Benny Fish then ordered his remaining sepoy, Kulbir Thapa, up the pillar to escape beyond. Fitzroy grabbed Benny Fish, pushing him to the pillar, overriding his objections with a stern face and a barked order.

“Up, Benny Fish! Go!”

Baker then grabbed Fitzroy by the arm.

“You next old man. Get out of here! You’ve done quite enough. We’ll come back with a whole regiment and finish the job. That damned Lama can’t do anything more now.”
“What happened to a ‘kick in the balls and a bullet in the gut’ for every man here?”

“I can wait, old man.” Baker grinned, and winced, clutching his side. 

“You’re wounded, go, Baker, go! That’s an order.”

“We’re all wounded, old man,” protested the Lieutenant, but he climbed up and out regardless.

Braxton looked quickly behind him as the roof began to collapse in earnest. Monks fluttered through the destruction, crying out in despair and fear as their very home swallowed them up. He channeled every swift footed bazaar footpad he had ever seen as he half climbed, half ran up the pillar, flinging himself out and over the crack in the thick wooden door to a hard fall below.

*~*~*