Danger at Dahlkari Read Online Free PDF Page A

The bearer stumbled, falling to his knees, and the Thugs were upon him. He let out a bloodcurdling scream, throwing his arms up, and the scream died as a long yellow scarf was slung around his throat. The strangler wrenched mightily, twisting with savage strength, his eyes narrow slits, teeth bared, while his colleague seized the bearer’s arms and pulled in the opposite direction. There was a gasping, choking sound as the bearer thrashed and struggled, his face reddening, eyes bulging out in their sockets, and then there was a crisp snap and the body fell limp. The Thugs let it drop to the ground, grinning at each other.
    I buried my face against Sally’s shoulder. She held me tightly, arms like bands of steel, and I could hear her heart pounding, pounding. Both of us trembled violently, and when I finally looked up the Thugs were wandering back toward the caravan, dragging the corpse behind them as though it were a limp sack of potatoes. There were no more screams now, just the excited merry babble of voices as the Thugs discussed their success. They began to move about the campsite, taking down tents, gathering various articles, dousing the fires, and there were heavy, scraping noises as the corpses were dragged behind the boulders toward the huge hole Sally had discovered earlier.
    We could see part of the campsite through the dense congestion of leaf and branch and vine, see without being seen, and both of us grew still, arms still entwined, staring through the thick greenery at the scene of horror unfolding. There were at least thirty Thugs moving about, some of them folding up tents, some of them digging holes, burying the remains of camp fires, others kneeling on the ground, bundling up goods. They chattered away with jolly good humor, frequently laughing. Some were old, some very young, in their early teens, all wearing loose white trousers and long-sleeved white tops tied with sashes at the waist, heads turbaned. One of them held his long yellow rumal stretched between his hands, demonstrating to a companion how he had twisted it about a throat. His companion nodded with approval and pounded him on the back.
    We saw them dragging the bodies away, so very casual about it, holding onto a foot or a hand and letting the body bump and bang over the rough ground, disappearing behind the boulders with their terrible load. I saw the fat, rotund body of Yasmin Singh, still wearing the elaborate apricot silk robe and maroon trousers, saw it bounce and bump as two men pulled it across the ground, each holding onto a foot. The head joggled up and down like a rubber ball. It was a scene of unimaginable horror from a nightmare world, not real at all. It can’t be real, I told myself. This can’t actually be happening.
    â€œAre you all right?” Sally whispered.
    â€œI—I think so. Sally, it’s—”
    â€œI know. We—we have to be strong, Miss Lauren. We have to survive. That’s all that matters now—survival.”
    â€œThose men who joined the caravan—they know we were there, know we weren’t murdered. They’ll come looking for us—”
    â€œMaybe not,” she said. “It all happened so quickly. Perhaps they’ll think we were murdered, after all, our bodies—buried under the others. They—they seem to be in charge of the goods. See. They’re the ones giving orders. The grave will probably be half-full before they finish. Perhaps they won’t find out we escaped—at least for a while. We’ll just have to hope so.”
    â€œWhat—what are we going to do?”
    â€œWait,” she said. “They generally leave the area as soon as possible, make their getaway promptly. If—if all goes well, they’ll be gone in a little while. We might as well make ourselves comfortable.”
    Sally sat down, making an inordinately loud noise in the leaves, and I sat down beside her. There was a large tree trunk behind us,