Free The Faraway Drums by Jon Cleary Page B

we go. There’s a bally great landslide up ahead, completely blocking the line.”
    End of extract from memoirs.
    II
    Farnol jumped down from the carriage, followed by Karim who had been riding on the rear platform. As they began to walk up towards the front of the train they were joined by the sergeant of the escort of soldiers. “Don’t look good, sir.”
    They were walking on the cliff side of the railway line. The track curved round one of the many tight bends and they looked across at the tumble of rocks and earth and trees just ahead of the grunting, steaming engine. As they passed the Ranee’s private carriage, she came out on to its platform right above Farnol. He was surprised to see Baron von Albern, the German Consul-General, standing in the doorway behind her; he had not known her to be particularly friendly to the Baron. But he made no comment.
    “Are we going to be delayed long, Major?”
    “I don’t know, Your Highness. But from the look of it from here, I’ll be surprised if we get through at all.”
    Other than the two private cars of the Ranee and the Nawab, all the carriages had box compartments. People were leaning out the windows, voluble and curious. Farnol, Karim and the sergeant walked on past them, careful not to miss their step on the rough permanent way and go plunging down the hillside into the trees below. Trees cloaked the steep hillside above the track and Farnol, on edge again, recognized the situation for an ideal ambush. He had instinctively chosen to walk along the outer edge of the permanent way, with the train itself as a barricade against any gunfire that might come from up there in the trees.
    He stopped, said quietly, “Sergeant, go back and deploy your men along the other side of the train. Tell them to keep low, in against the bank. And see that no one gets out of the train.”
    The sergeant looked surprised, but he was an old campaigner and he took off at once on the order, running back towards the rear of the train. Immediately above Farnol a voice said, “Something wrong?”
    A man was hanging out the window of one of the compartments. He was hatless and his thin blond hair hung down in a fringe round his long-nosed, long-jawed face. He had the adroit eyes of the ambitious or the survivor, and Farnol wondered how acute his hearing was.
    “Nothing.” He wanted no panic starting up amongst the passengers.
    “But I heard you tell the sergeant—”
    Farnol stared up at the man. “You heard me tell him nothing, sir. You understand what I’m saying?”
    “Of course,” the man said after a moment. But other heads were hanging out of windows close by and as Farnol walked on he saw the heads withdraw and he felt, if he did not hear, the murmurs inside the compartments.
    The engine-driver and his fireman were standing at the front of the train with the conductor. Farnol introduced himself and the driver, a chee-chee with a plump face and a thick moustache, looking like a coal-dusted walrus, shook his head resignedly.
    “Never get past here in a month of Sundays, sir.” The landslide was a sixty-foot-wide mound of rocks, earth and trees that covered the track and ran down to disappear into the trees below. “I don’t understand it, sir. There ain’t been any rain for a fortnight, that’s what usually causes the slides.”
    “Karim, go up to the top of the slide. Keep your eyes peeled.”
    Karim caught the warning in Farnol’s voice, unslung his rifle and went clambering up the slope beside the landslide. Then the sergeant came back and with him was the Nawab.
    “My men are in position, sir. I tried to tell His Highness he oughta stay in the train—” The sergeant was a 12-year man, his dislike of India and Indians of all ranks, but particularly princes, burned into his dark, wizened face.
    “If something’s going on, Clive, I think you can do with my help.” The Nawab sounded less British, less an impostor. “My bodyguard is back there, six men with