The Far Pavilions Read Online Free PDF

and once a hyena laughed hideously from a patch of elephant grass a few yards away, and a mongoose chittered angrily among the shadows. But these were all familiar sounds, as familiar as the tom-toms that beat in the distant city and the shrill hum of the cicadas; and presently Sita drew the end of her chuddah over her face and slept.
    She awoke in the first flush of dawn, aroused abruptly from sleep by a less familiar sound: a sharp urgent clatter of galloping hooves, the crack of fire-arms and men's voices, shouting. There were horsemen on the road, approaching from the direction of Meerut and riding like men possessed, or pursued, the dust of their headlong progress streaming out behind them like a trail of white smoke across the dawn-lit plain. They thundered past within a stone's throw of the peepul tree, firing wildly into the air and shouting as men shout in a race, and Sita could see their staring eyes and frenzied faces, and the clotted foam that flew from the straining necks and flanks of the galloping horses. They were sowars (troopers) wearing the uniform of one of the Bengal Army's cavalry regiments. Sowars from Meerut. But their uniforms were torn and dusty and disfigured by the dark, unmistakable stains of blood.
    A stray bullet ripped through the boughs of the peepul tree and Sita cowered down, clutching Ash, who had been woken by the noise. The next moment the riders were past and the dust that whirled up behind them blotted them out in a choking cloud that filled her lungs, making her cough and gasp and cover her face in the folds of her sari. By the time it had blown clear and she could see again, they had reached the river and she heard, faint but clear in the quiet dawn, the hollow thunder of hooves crossing the bridge of boats.
    The impression of desperate men who fled in fear of pursuit had been so vivid that Sita snatched up the child, and running with him to the shelter of the elephant grass, crouched there, listening for the hue and cry that must surely follow.
    She stayed there for the best part of an hour, hushing the bewildered boy and begging him in whispers to stay still and make no noise; but though she heard no more hoof-beats on the Meerut road, the stillness of the morning lent clarity to a distant crackle of firing and the voices of men shouting under the walls of Delhi. Presently these too ceased or were absorbed into the work-a-day sounds of the awaking city and the normal noises of an Indian morning: the creak of a well-wheel, partridges calling out on the plains and sarus cranes by the river; the harsh cry of a peacock from the standing crops, and the chatter and chirrup of tree-rats, saht-bai and weaver-birds. A troop of brown monkeys settled in the branches of the peepul tree, and a faint breeze off the river stirred the tall elephant grass and made a dry monotonous rustling that blotted out all other sounds.
    ‘Is it a tiger?’ whispered Ash, who had sat up over more than one kill with Uncle Akbar and knew about tigers.
    ‘No – but we must not talk. We must be quiet,’ urged Sita. She could not have explained the panic that the yelling horsemen had aroused in her, or what exactly she was afraid of. But her heart was still beating at twice its normal speed and she knew that not even the cholera, or the terrible hours of their last night in camp, had frightened her as the sight of those men had done. Cholera, after all, she knew; and sickness and death and the ways of wild animals. But this was something else. Something inexplicable and terrifying…
    A country cart drawn by a pair of lethargic bullocks jolted slowly down the road, and the homely, unhurried sound of its passing reassured her. The sun lipped the rim of the far horizon and suddenly it was day, and Sita's breathing slowed and steadied. She stood up cautiously, and peering through the parched grasses saw that the road lay empty in the bright sunlight. Nothing moved upon it – which was in itself unusual, for the