Swords v. Cthulhu

Trespassers A. Scott Glancy

“Rider approaching!” called out Havildar Thapa.

Captain Henry Conder, late of the Corps of Bengal Sappers and Miners, stood up from his collapsible camp desk and stretched. Recording the expedition’s progress could wait; Conder was intrigued that anyone could be so bold as to travel alone through the Kulun Shan. He did not for a moment think there was some mistake: his Gurkha Riflemen were unerringly precise in their observations and reports. It was one of the reasons he’d worked so hard to get as many as he could on this expedition. The Kashmiri Sepoys were sturdy enough, well trained and diligent, but even the lowest Gurkha treated his duties with all the seriousness of a regimental sergeant major.

Conder fished a pair of binoculars out of his rucksack and strolled to the edge of their camp. Havildar Thapa stood peering off into the distance without the aid of binoculars, simply shielding his eyes from the waning sun. Like most Gurkhas, Thapa stood just over five feet tall. Conder towered over him at five foot eight. Should some Uyghur bandit decide to pick off the officer from among the Gurkhas, Kashmiri and Balti of Her Imperial Majesty’s Expedition to the Eastern Chinese Turkestan, he wouldn’t have much difficulty sorting the white man from the Asiatics.

Havildar Thapa hadn’t bothered to unsling his Lee-Metford rifle yet, which told Conder the rider was still thousands of yards away.

“Where is he, Havildar?” Conder asked in poorly accented Nepali. Thapa, the five other Gurkhas, and the seventeen Kashmiri Sepoys under his command all spoke decent English, so speaking a few words of Nepali was an unnecessary, but appreciated, courtesy.

Thapa pointed back down the valley they’d been reconnoitering the past week. Conder immediately saw the flicker of movement. Bringing his binoculars up, Conder recognized the rider immediately. The giant man had stood out in Baron Savukoski’s party, even among the other Cossacks. Even at this range his size was apparent from how far down his legs hung along the flanks of the small, tough pony he rode. What had his rank been? Uryadnik? Senior Warden? It was definitely Baron Savukoski’s chief NCO, unless there was more than one sixteen-stone Cossack to be found in the Kulun Shan.

Before departing Srinagar, Conder had received intelligence that a Russian expedition had left Tashkent, a party of Cossacks and Tuvans led by the redoubtable Baron Arvid Erik Savukoski. The Finnish noble was well known among the cartographers striving to fill in the great swaths of nothing that occupied so much of the maps of Central Asia. Conder had enthusiastically read of Savukoski’s exploits in the press and various scientific journals, but his secret reports to the Russian General Staff strained Conder’s meager Russian. When a brace of Cossack riders arrived, carrying a letter of introduction and an invitation to bring their expeditions together for an evening of dinner, drink, and talk of empire, Conder could hardly have refused such an invitation, but it still stung that the Baron had found him first.

Baron Savukoski set a good table, even if the plates and cups were simple lacquered wood. The Cossacks roasted a goat for the occasion, seasoned with the last of their expedition’s spices. Both Savukoski and his Balto-German ethnographer, Otto Eichwald, presented themselves in worn but well-preserved officers’ uniforms. Conder contributed some sugar, tea, and his closely rationed brandy with which to toast the health of Her Imperial Majesty Victoria and Czar Alexander III. After dinner, conversation began with good-natured jabs concerning the inevitable clash of their empires, but ended with Savukoski revealing his familiarity with Conder’s published work for the Royal Geographic Society, and complimenting Conder on the thoroughness and precision of his observations. The next morning both parties assembled so that Eichwald could take a couple of exposures with his folding camera to commemorate the meeting of the two great explorers — a perfect tableau of worthy adversaries exchanging their respects during a momentary lull in the Great Game.

The crunch of boots on frozen rock signaled the approach of Conder’s Pathan surveyor, Malik Dost Khan. A Risaldar in the 1st Bengal Lancers, Khan had crossed the Pamirs with Conder three years previously, and scouted alternate approaches into Tibet just two summers ago.

“Can you see who it is, Henry?” Khan asked in English.

“One of Savukoski’s Cossacks… the really big scoundrel. Do you remember his name?”

“No. Those brutes did nothing but sneer at the ‘moosulmanyes’ and stroke the pommels of their sabers.” The shared language of Conder, Eichwald and Savukoski had been French, which had left Khan out of the conversation. “You don’t suppose it’s another invitation to dinner?”

“As eager as I am for another lecture on the inevitability of the Czar’s Cossacks watering their horses in the Ganges, I don’t think that’s very likely.” Conder glassed the approaching rider again. The last time Savukoski dispatched a message there had been two riders and they had carried lances flying red pennants. Today there was only a single rider, and no such weapons were displayed.

“You sound certain.”

Conder lowered the glasses and looked Khan in the eyes. “When we broke camp I did the Russians a bad turn. I told them that the Tsang Pass was easily traversed. That we’d mapped it, and that it would cut two months off their march to the edge of the Talamakan Desert.”

Khan looked genuinely taken aback. “Do you think they took your advice?”

“We’ll know in a minute.”

Khan shrugged. “Well, I suppose someone was going to be the first to explore the Tsang Pass. Might as well be Baron Savukoski. Perhaps he discovered something he can name after his Czar?”

“Best case, he wasted a lot of time and had to retrace his route.”

“Worst, he found our elusive marauders,” Khan suggested. “Did you hope to use the Russians to flush them out?”

“No. Nothing so calculated,” Conder sighed. “I just got it in my head that I should make some effort to confound him, even just a little. We’re enemies, after all. Well, no matter. However their merry dance turned out, I suspect we shall be spared a second invitation to dinner.”

“That seems certain, Henry.”

The rider was finally close enough to make out details without the binoculars. The pony’s thick hair was caked in frost, its gait was short and rubbery, as if it had been run to exhaustion. The saddle pack seemed unusually light, with no bedroll in evidence, and the saddlebags were empty. As the Cossack approached, he swung his leg over the saddle and dropped himself into a purposeful walk, without appreciably slowing his mount. The huge man was armed to the teeth, although that was not unusual for anyone traveling in this brutal land. A long, slightly curved kindjal dagger was thrust through his silk belt. A guardless shashka saber hung from his left side. Carried barrel-down across his back was a cut-down Cossack version of a bolt-action Berdanka carbine. Strangely, his cartridge belt, slung across his broad chest, was empty of shells. His sheepskin greatcoat was torn and frayed, and spattered with fine black stains, as was his tall, shaggy kubanka hat. The man had come from a fight, the blood of his foes drying black where it had landed.

Havildar Thapa unslung his Lee-Metford and held it at port arms. Thapa stood more than a foot shorter than the Cossack brute, but showed no sign of hesitation as he stepped in front of him. The Cossack stopped and looked at Conder over the top of Havildar’s flat-topped Kilmarnock cap. Conder didn’t much care for the set of the huge man’s jaw, nor the sunken look of his eyes. The giant was unsteady on his feet, exhausted.

The Cossack pulled off his heavy gloves and produced a folded piece of paper out of the cuff of his greatcoat. He held it out and announced, so far as Corder’s limited Russian would allow, that it was a message for the “anglise kapitan.”

“Let him advance, Havildar.” Thapa reluctantly stepped aside; the Cossack shouldered past and held out the folded note. As Conder reached for it, his eyes dropped to the Cossack’s left hand, just in time to see him draw his long kindjal dagger. The captain rocked back, avoiding the sweep of the blade just beneath his chin, but he caught his heel and stumbled. The Cossack flipped the kindjal in his hand, from an upward sweep to a downward stab, and lunged before Conder found his footing. He would have been on top of Conder had Malik Khan not got both his hands around the Cossack’s forearm and wrist, turning the blade away. Thapa smashed the Cossack’s calf with the butt of his rifle. Roaring, the Cossack went down on one knee, and drove his right fist into Malik’s face.

Conder righted himself and went at the Cossack like a rugby tackle, putting the big man on his back. As the Cossack’s head struck the ground, Thapa delivered a second blow with his butt-stock, breaking the giant’s nose and spraying Conder and Malik with blood. The Gurkha NCO was drawing back his rifle when Conder waved him off.

“No! No! Wait! This man has a story to tell and I mean to hear it.”

Malik peeled the unconscious Cossack’s fingers away from his kindjal and tossed it aside. “Let’s hope you haven’t killed him.”

“Most assuredly not, Risaldar Khan,” said Thapa. “Had I meant him dead, his skull would be open.”

“Quickly, Havildar,” said Conder. “Let’s do something about his wrists before he gets his senses back.”

They didn’t move fast enough. By the time they had rope to bind the Cossack’s wrists and ankles, it took five Kashmiri Sepoys to hold him down.

When Conder and Khan rummaged through the Cossack’s possessions they found the man’s supplies were exhausted. He had no food for himself or his pony. His canteen was equally empty. No cartridges remained for his Berdanka carbine, but the barrel and action were fouled with burnt black powder. His kindjal knife and shashka saber had been recently oiled and sharpened, but their blades were chipped and bent from hours of hacking through bone and sinew. The Cossack wasn’t much better off than his pony, physically exhausted and on the brink of collapse. Conder didn’t care to think how much faster the Cossack’s knife would have been had he eaten in the last several days.

Even so, every attempt to examine the Cossack’s injury required the Sepoys to violently restrain him. He fought his captors until he collapsed. When the Cossack awoke after dark, he found himself on a blanket near the campfire, two Sepoys standing over him with rifles.

Conder thawed some snow over the horse-dung fire, sprinkling in a pinch of their remaining tea leaves. It wouldn’t be the strong brew of a Russian samovar, but he offered the tin cup to the Cossack. At first he received only a baleful stare, but soon the Cossack relented and permitted Conder to tip the cup to his bloodstained lips, and he quietly drank.

“Your name?” Conder asked. The Cossack said nothing. Conder’s Russian was weak, but he knew he’d spoken correctly. “What is your name, Kozzaki?”

The snarled response was something about how when Conder arrived in Hell, he could tell the Devil that Uryadnik Shkuro had delivered him.

“Why?” Conder asked, holding up the kindjal. The Cossack spit on the ground in front of him and launched into a tirade in something utterly unlike the textbook Russian Conder was barely familiar with.

“Did you follow any of that?” Malik asked, when the torrent subsided. He squatted nearby, one hand on the butt of his long Kyber knife, the other absently testing his swollen left cheek.

“Yes,” said Conder. “Something killed all the Russians and he blames me.”

The interrogation moved slowly and carefully, like a verbal autopsy, hampered by Conder’s Russian and Uryadnik Shkuro’s near total illiteracy. It was well past the witching hour when Conder felt he’d gotten the fullest account from Shkuro.

Exhausted by the ordeal, Conder knew he would not be able to sleep until he shared what he’d heard. He woke Malik Khan after helping himself to the last bottle of the medicinal brandy.

“Did you learn anything?” Khan said, struggling out from under his wool blanket.

“I sent those Russians to their deaths. That Shkuro fellow is the only survivor.”

“But there were over twenty armed men in their party.”

“Twenty-two. Shkuro knows of no one else who got away.”

“Could it be the raiders we’ve been looking for?” Malik asked.

“We’ll need to see what’s left of the Russian camp to be sure.”

“Then we depart in the morning,” Malik said casually, and rolled back under his blankets.

“There’s more,” Conder said. He uncorked the bottle of brandy and took a pull. He didn’t offer any to Khan, in deference to the laws of the Prophet. “The Cossack says they were attacked under cover of night. By dwarves.”

Khan sat back up. “Dwarves? What do you mean?”

“He used the work ‘karlik,’ the Russian for a person afflicted with dwarfism. But… the dwarves I’ve seen are bent, malformed creatures. Such hapless unfortunates couldn’t overwhelm twenty heavily armed Cossacks.”

“Perhaps he meant pygmies? I hear tell of such peoples in the Andaman Islands.”

“You are remarkably well informed, Malik. Yes, there are pygmies in the Andamans and in the Congo, but I doubt our illiterate Cossack ever heard of such things. Russian aristocrats are quite taken with dwarf entertainers, so perhaps ‘karlik’ is the closest equivalent in his experience.”

“Did he say how these dwarves fought?”

“Quiet. Moved well in the dark. Got inside the sentries and let loose volleys of heavy darts launched from something like a woomera or an atlatl. No musketry at all. The Russians didn’t even know they were under attack until someone was struck — and soon dropped. The darts were poisoned. Then the devils rushed the camp. Shkuro says they shot down plenty of their attackers, but those single-shot Berdankas were too slow. The Baron ordered the men to their ponies to break out of the ambush, but most of the horses had already been struck by darts; they collapsed under their riders. Shkuro carried another Cossack behind him for a while, but the man took a couple of darts. He lasted until first light and then died badly.”

“No rifles? Not even flintlocks or matchlocks?”

“Just darts, knives, and spears. Shkuro said they pursued him day and night. On foot, if you can believe that. They kept up with his pony when he walked it, gained on him when he tried to sleep. He spent all his ammunition keeping them at bay. Hasn’t seen them in weeks, but can’t be sure they gave up.”

“I take it you intend to pursue them?” asked Malik.

“It’s our first real lead on these invisible marauders.”

“Good. I look forward to it, but I’ll need a good night’s sleep if I am to kill so many kaffir,” the Pathan said, and rolled over to return to sleep.

The next morning Captain Conder addressed the assembled expedition. Having heard Conder’s intention to travel to the Russian camp and track the bandits down, the two Tibetan guides were unhappy but resigned. Their Uyghur translator, Qasim, was utterly despondent and could not seem to make himself useful or sit still. The seventeen Kashmiri Sepoys were hard-faced and grim. The six Gurkhas, however, seemed utterly indifferent. They packed their gear with the carefree cheer one would expect for a short walk to the creek for an afternoon of fishing. The Cossack remained under guard, hands tied, weapons secured.

The expedition moved with a dreary monotony, only differentiated from the days before the Cossack’s arrival by the knowledge that they were edging ever closer to a terrible danger. Shkuro had taken nearly two weeks to catch up with the English expedition, but he was just a single horseman. Moving twenty-nine men and sixteen horses meant a lugubrious crawl. The towering Kulun Shan were cold, dry, and devoid of trees. The ground was broken, rocky, and bad on horses. Conder marveled that Shkuro had avoided injuring his pony during his weeks in the saddle.

The journey left plenty of time for the men to ruminate on the impending threat. Save for the Gurkhas, the Cossack, and Conder, everyone else, even the Tibetan Baltis, were Mohammedans. Malik Khan read to them from the Koran at night, paying extra attention to those suras that exalted the struggle against polytheists and devil worshippers. Certainly, Malik assured the men, these savages could not be of the Umma, and killing vile poisoners would be righteous Jihad. His words had the desired effect.

At the end of each day’s march, Conder interrogated Uryadnik Shkuro about the conditions they would find as they backtracked his trail. Shkuro responded to Conder’s questions, but his answers were terse and guarded. Conder suspected the Cossack hadn’t yet accepted his ignorance of the dangers posed by the pygmy inhabitants of the Tsang Pass. On the third night Conder ordered the Cossack’s hands untied. On the fifth, he returned the Cossack’s weapons to him. Thereafter Shkuro answered the captain’s questions as completely as their limited ability to communicate would allow.

Yet what Shkuro told Conder didn’t make much sense, even accounting for the unevenness of his Russian. The Cossack described twin statues of dead, bat-winged dogs, carved from dark stone. He spoke of abandoned villages of stone huts, surrounded by rings of menhirs. He described the massive bones of unidentifiable animals. When Conder spoke with his Balti guides and his Uyghur translator, none of the men would admit any knowledge of such things, but the fear on their faces was obvious. Conder decided not to excite them further and kept the Cossack’s descriptions to himself.

On the sixteenth day of their march, Havildar Thapa announced the expedition was under surveillance. Without making any physical move to indicate the location of the observers, Thapa described their hiding place in terms that even an Englishman could understand.

“Excellent work, Havildar,” Conder said, blowing on his tin cup brimming with yak-butter tea. “Bring me some prisoners after dark.”

“Most assuredly, my Captain,” Thapa beamed. “A distraction would be most helpful during the approach on their position.”

“Yes,” said Conder. “I think that can be arranged.”

Several hours later, as the last traces of light faded from the sky, Gurkha Naik Rai launched into an uneven performance of “Garryowen” on his bagpipes, followed by a very credible rendition of “The Campbells are Coming.” Rai had just finished a fine performance of “The Minstrel Boy” when everyone in camp heard the screams. Seconds later Havildar Thapa blew the all clear on his whistle. Thapa and the four other Gurkha Riflemen emerged from the darkness, dragging two limp figures and prodding a third along at the point of their kukris.

“Any of them get away, Havildar?” Conder asked.

“No, my Captain, not a one,” Thapa responded cheerfully.

“Any casualties?”

“No, my Captain, not a one.”

“Excellent work, Havildar.”

“Thank you, sir. It’s always better to have music when we work.”

“Now,” said Conder more seriously, “let us get a look at — good lord, Havildar! Where are his clothes?”

Thapa’s smile dropped into a scowl. “This soldier must report that the enemy is clothed.”

Conder looked again. The prisoner’s exposed genitals were plainly obvious. The squat, dirty figure could not have been taller than four feet. The first thing that stood out was how black he was — his face, his hair, even his skin. Not naturally black, but stained with a kind of pigment, perhaps to make his naked skin less reflective for night fighting. Pale gray eyes shone brightly from his darkened face. His limp black hair was cut into a bowl that sat high atop his slightly oversized head, leaving the area above his temples and ears completely shaven. Conder was unable to place the man’s race, even under the illumination of an oil lamp. He seemed disturbingly Caucasian, only with deeply wrinkled features and skin that made him appear greatly aged. Around his neck hung necklaces of bone, and leather trinkets and fetishes, including a large leather pouch on a thong. As Conder stared, he realized that the pouch was made from the skin peeled from a human head, the eyes, nose, and mouth sewn shut to keep the bag’s contents from spilling onto the ground. Then Conder saw the seams. The pygmy was not naked. It was wearing the hide of a man, tanned and cured and sewn into a buckskin-like garment.

“Bloody hell,” Conder whispered. The pygmy sensed Conder’s revulsion and giggled in amusement. It sat on the ground smiling, blood running down its face from a gash delivered by the flat of Havildar Thapa’s kukri. The disgusting creature turned its bloodied head to smile at everyone in turn, and show the pointed teeth that adorned its too-wide mouth.

Filed, perhaps? Conder wondered. “Get Qasim over here. I have some questions for this… thing.” But the Uyghur translator would not approach. He sat by a low fire and kept his back to the prisoner.

“Qasim!” Conder called, but the man would not budge. Conder strode over and struck his best authoritarian pose. “Qasim!” he said in the Pathan tongue they shared, “you have a job to do.”

“No,” Qasim responded flatly. The blunt refusal in the face of the expedition’s leader left the rest of the men exchanging worried looks.

“Qasim, you’ll either do your job or you’ll lose your pay.”

“Take my pay,” said Qasim. “I’ll keep my soul.”

Besides Khan, some of the Kashmiri also spoke Pathan. Not wanting them to overhear, he waved them off. Conder squatted down next to Qasim and lowered his voice to a whisper. “You know this man’s tribe?”

“It is no man. It only wears the skin of a man.”

Conder took a moment. Out east, men took their ju-ju very seriously indeed. It was not something Conder could dismiss. “Do you mean its garment?”

“No. Beneath that skin there is no man. Only al-Shayṭān. Only Iblīs.”

“Is this a thing permitted to be spoken of?”

Qasim looked around, as if to ensure that no one was close enough to overhear. “It is not safe,” Qasim hissed. “There are things that hear their names if you speak them.”

“Then we won’t speak its name.”

“No. It has seen me. You spoke my name in front of it.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Malik Khan interrupted. “That little monster can’t answer our questions.”

Conder leapt to his feet, fearing that one of his men had prematurely pushed a knife through the pygmy. “Did someone — ”

“No. This happened a long time ago. Come and see for yourself.”

Malik had discovered it while examining the teeth of the two dead pygmies to determine if they were filed or naturally malformed. In point of fact, they were artificially shaped. Prying the corpses’ jaws open, Malik showed Conder the more disturbing discovery.

“Their tongues have been cut out.”

Conder recoiled at the strangely empty mouths, ringed with triangular incisors. “And the live one?”

“The same.”

“Anything of note in their kits?”

“Not particularly. Crudely forged iron knives. A few darts covered in a foul-smelling paste. Their dart-throwers are carved from human thighbones. Their… clothes seem useless against cold. Their footwear is little better than sandals. They didn’t even have blankets. They must be impervious to the cold.”

“Did you find rations? They do eat, don’t they?”

“Some dried smoked meat. Hard enough that you’d need teeth like that to get through it. I fear that it may be… unnatural.”

“How do you mean?” asked Conder. He tipped out one of the dead pygmies’ small leather pouches onto the ground. Its contents filled him with revulsion. There were a number of feathers, glass beads, shaped stones, finger bones, dried human ears, and a mummified tongue. Upon giving it a second look, Conder realized the pouch itself was a human scrotum.

“I am going to execute that thing right now,” he said, standing and wiping his hands on his trousers.

“That would be good and proper, Henry,” Malik said.

Conder fetched his Navy cutlass from his tent. He had never done well on sword drills with the standard British Army officer sword, but the broad, heavy blade of the cutlass had proved brutishly effective more than once. He drew the blade and tossed the scabbard aside. As Conder approached the grinning pygmy, the creature thrust a hand into its pouch, pulled something out, and popped it into its mouth. Conder raised the cutlass to split the fiend’s skull.

“I welcome you,” the pygmy said in perfectly accented French.

Conder let the cutlass fall to his side. The rest of the party stirred in consternation.

“You have no tongue,” Conder blurted in his schoolhouse French, his thoughts forming words before he could stop himself.

“I have many tongues.” The filthy pygmy smiled, shaking his grisly pouch. With the eyes and mouth sewn shut, the upside-down visage adorning the bag looked twisted in agony. “I am pleased you have chosen to visit our sacred land of Leng. You and your kind bring rare gifts of bone, skin, and meat to the Unspeakable Lama of the Tcho-tchos. Such gifts would be nigh impossible to obtain without your steadfast efforts to deliver yourselves to our larders. The Lama is pleased by your offering.”

The trick was disturbing, but Conder had seen more inexplicable things performed by fakirs in the markets of Calcutta. At least, that was what he told himself. He was grateful that no one else in the party spoke French, but even if the meaning of the pygmy’s words were lost, the impossibility of them did no good for the men’s morale. Seizing the initiative, Conder asked, “What are you called?”

“I am the one who will enjoy shitting you out onto the cold rocks of Leng. What more do you need to know?”

“How many of you are there?” Conder continued.

“Enough that the meat of all your fellows will still leave our bellies wailing. But know that before you are divided among the faithful, the High Priest Not to Be Described will gobble your souls and vomit them into the mouths of the gods of chaos, like a vulture feeding her chicks,” the pygmy tittered.

“That’s very brave talk,” Conder said.

“We love death more than you could ever love life.”

“And yet you surrendered.”

“Because the Lama wanted me to tell you that before you die we will cut new holes in you in which to rut. We’ll use them long after you are dead.” The pygmy’s gray eyes sparkled with a nauseating delight.

Conder sighed, bored with the posturing. “I’ve quite enjoyed our conversation,” he said gently. “But I think the part I like the most about talking with you is that I’ll never have to do it again.”

The pygmy’s sardonic expression collapsed into a lifeless mask as Conder drove his cutlass down through the top of its skull, splitting the bridge of its nose. The mummified tongue the pygmy had put in its mouth rolled down its chin and onto the ground. Conder set his boot in its face and wrenched the blade free.

“This thing,” he roared in English, brandishing the bloody blade, “ate the flesh of men. It wore their skins. It boasted of abominations, as if we would turn and run. But we will not run. We are men of war. And what do men of war do with cannibals and man-skinners?”

“We tell them the Gurkhas are coming!” shouted Havildar Thapa, raising his kukri knife. “Ayo Gorkhali!” His five men followed suit and repeated the traditional battle cry: “Ayo Gorkhali! Ayo Gorkhali!”

Malik and the Sepoys drew their khyber knives and took up the takbir: “Allāhu Akbar! Allāhu Akbar!”

Even the Tibetans joined in. Only Qasim the Uyghur and Shkuro the Cossack remained silent. Qasim turned his back on the whole affair and hugged his knees. Shkuro simply watched the heathens cheering for blood.

The next day they entered the Tsang Pass. Along the way they found no bodies where Shkuro said he’d shot down his pygmy pursuers, nor did they find the body of the poisoned Cossack that allegedly fell from the back of Shkuro’s saddle. Not even bones were found. Shkuro could offer no explanation except to shrug and say, “Maybe they eat their own dead, too?”

Three days later they found the hounds. The two statues were mounted on titanic pedestals higher than the tallest man in their party could reach. The elephantine granite statues were an unwholesome chimera of Chinese fu-dog, Egyptian sphinx and jackal-headed Anubis, and Assyrian winged bull. Their lean and putrid forms were as realistically depicted as the artist’s crude ability could manage. The Sepoys lobbied energetically to pull them down with the horses, but Conder ordered them on. Time enough for that later.

Every day the expedition passed abandoned villages composed of round stone huts, like granite igloos scattered across the valley’s upper slopes. In their forlorn state they bore more resemblance to tombs than homes. The rings of menhirs and rough obelisks surrounding the ruins only compounded the impression of a vast cemetery. The carvings adorning the stones depicted horned figures engaged in unnatural acts of copulation and murder.

The unidentifiable animal bones the Cossack had mentioned were also in evidence. Although they bore some resemblance to the fossilized remains of flying reptiles Conder had seen in the British Museum, they were larger by orders of magnitude — and as bones, not stones, they represented a creature that had darkened the skies in Conder’s lifetime.

On the sixth day, sentries reported the expedition was once again under observation. Conder’s orders were to take no action against the surveillance. Show no sign of awareness. Let them get comfortable.

On the morning of their tenth day in the Tsang Pass, they came upon the wreckage of the Russian expedition. The site matched the reports Conder had read in Srinagar — inexplicably empty villages and vanished caravans. Clothing lay strewn about. Tools, weapons, ammunition lay discarded and smashed. The attackers had gone to great effort to ruin the Cossacks’ Berdanka carbines, splintering their stocks and beating their barrels against rocks. Even the Cossacks’ ponies and goats lay abandoned, stripped by vultures and scoured by ants. Yet no human corpses were found. Not even bones.

Shkuro set about scrounging for undamaged .42 caliber cartridges for his own Berdanka. Conder didn’t interfere. Looking about, he found Eichwald’s camera, an 1886 Improved Model Le Merveilleux, flattened, and the photographic plates smashed to shards. A leather-bound folio, perhaps Baron Savukoski’s expedition notes, had been burned in a campfire, its contents lost forever. Then Conder found a small crate marked опасность динамит, its contents scattered about on the ground. Most of the sawdust packing had blown away, but the sticks appeared dry and undamaged. A search produced no caps, but plenty of safety fuse. As to why Baron Savukoski had included dynamite in his provisions, Shkuro pleaded ignorance.

Conder called the men together. He explained his plan. Under the fading light of day, they moved as quickly as possible to the nearest abandoned village and made camp there. Campfires were lit inside the stone huts. No sentries walked the perimeter. The moon was dark. Conder passed the time converting a handful of .303 cartridges into passable blasting caps.

The pygmies did not keep him waiting long.

They were fifty yards from the camp when Conder fired the first flare from his Very pistol. The white star shell arced through the night, revealing hundreds of dark, slithering figures belly-crawling up the slope toward the village. Two things happened very quickly. First, the pygmies, to a man, looked up at their first sight of a burning magnesium shell, and their irises slammed shut to keep out the retina-scalding light. And second, Captain Conder gave the order, “Volley fire! Fire!”

Twenty-eight rifles roared in unison from behind the standing stones that surrounded the ruined village. Save for the single-shot rifles carried by the Cossack, the Tibetans, and the Uyghur, every man in the expedition was equipped with an eight-shot, bolt-action Lee-Metford rifle. The pygmies took the first volley in stunned surprise. They took the second volley in utter disbelief, having never seen rifles that could be reloaded so dizzyingly fast. As Conder ordered the third volley, the spell broke. Dozens scrambled to their feet to knock their dart-throwers. The swarm of .303 rounds punched fist-sized holes and left limbs dangling from shreds of meat. Dozens fell. Some managed to blindly hurl their darts into the night. They were answered by a fourth withering volley.

A moan rose from the mass of black figures struggling to their feet. A sound of disappointment, as from the mouth of a spoiled child who has found his parents’ largesse wanting. This was not fair. A stronger voice cried out among the pygmies, and they surged up the slope. Conder reloaded and fired his Very pistol as he roared the command, “Rapid fire! Fire at will!”

For the next three minutes the pygmies died. Perhaps they did love death more than the trespassers loved life, but after enduring two minutes of sustained fire, the pygmies’ love of death proved to be not entirely unconditional. The last minute before Conder called “Cease fire!” they shot the pygmies in the back as they fled. There was no pursuit in the dark.

Come daybreak, the men saw the full measure of their work. So could the vultures, which began to gather. Had anyone bothered to count, they would have found eight hundred and sixty-four spent shell casings scattered at their feet. Instead they walked among the wounded, finishing them with bayonets. No member of the expedition had suffered anything more serious than fingers singed on their rifles’ red-hot barrels. Even Qasim looked less hopeless.

Conder, Khan, and Thapa counted the dead and settled on a conservative figure of one hundred and seventy killed.

“They’ve had enough,” Malik Khan observed.

“I’ll be the one to decide when they’ve had enough,” Conder snapped. “Have the men pack up and fall in. We’re going to beard them in their den.”

The expedition was moving by 8am. Tracking the retreating pygmies was easy. Circling carrion birds marked where their wounded had succumbed or were too weak to move. Any still holding a guttering spark of life were bayoneted.

Two days later, the trail led to an almost invisible ravine. A quirk of the desolate landscape hid a narrow passage in what appeared to be a solid cliff. The expedition moved through in small groups, lest they be attacked from atop the high walls, but no one moved to oppose them until they reached the village.

They heard the cacophony from miles away. It came from another stone village, this one not abandoned. Hundreds of figures churned between the huts and standing stones, dancing, shouting, and flailing. They beat all manner of instruments constructed from the bones and flesh of men. Conder ordered Gurkha Naik Rai to deploy his bagpipes again. The effect of “Cock o’ the North” on the mob was like kicking an anthill.

They poured out of the village, down the slope, and across a half mile of open field. Conder looked at the force arrayed before them through his binoculars — he saw old men, invalids, women, and children. The women carrying infants were in the vanguard, howling like devils.

“Thank you, Naik Rai,” Conder called to the piper. “We have their attention. Please rejoin the rest of the ranks. Volley fire present at five hundred yards!”

The horde did not move particularly fast. They were under the guns for almost ten minutes, though the pace of the fire was slower. None got any closer than twenty yards, but none broke and ran. No one bothered to count the dead this time.

“By the most merciful, how could they throw their lives away like that?”

“To make us spend our bullets, Malik. Do a count. Let’s see what we have left.”

It came to just over forty rounds per man.

“The news is good, Captain,” Havildar Thapa announced upon completing the inventory. “We are unlikely to run out of enemy before we get a chance to wet our kukris.”

“Yes, but before you swallow that bone, you’ll want to measure your anus,” Khan scoffed at Thapa’s bravado. “Forty rounds per man is just enough for one more fight.”

“Yes, but they don’t know the state of our magazine,” Conder said. “So we push on, Malik. We push on.”

“Just as well. Old age is a time of wretchedness anyway,” Khan sighed.

Crossing the field of dead and dying, none felt any enthusiasm for dispatching the wounded. No one stopped to retrieve the squalling infants freezing on the cold ground, either.

Once past the village, they saw the fortress. It squatted, a massive, round, windowless dome surrounded, like the villages, by a concentric circle of rough granite menhirs. These were like the titan blocks of Stonehenge, dwarfing the gravestone-sized menhirs that ringed the villages.

“You see, Malik? Would God have spared that crate of Russian dynamite if He didn’t intend us to level that redoubt?”

Malik Khan did not appreciate Conder’s sacrilegious bluster.

As the expedition drew closer, the scale of the structure became apparent. It was the size of a cathedral, like the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople, and it was no fortress. There were no battlements from which to fight, no towers or windows to watch from, no murder-holes from which to shoot their poison darts. It was a dark gray dome, built from granite blocks the size of those that formed Cheops’ Pyramid. A single low, arched doorway lurked at the base of the dome. No one rushed out to attack.

“Announce us, Naik Rai,” Conder called to his piper. “Try ‘The British Grenadiers’ this time.”

The Gurkha’s performance produced no reaction.

“They seem less interested in using up our ammunition,” Khan observed.

“Then we go in after them.”

The two Tibetans, Qasim, and two of the Kashmiri Sepoys were posted at the entrance to ensure a line of retreat and to guard the expedition’s horses. They fueled and lit a trio of kerosene lamps, and Conder, his revolver and cutlass in hand, led twenty-three men into the stygian vault.

The narrow corridors turned and twisted in an unpleasantly biological manner, as if the great dome were a mummified corpse rather than a stone labyrinth. The walls inside were painted with frescoes, wet paints applied to wet plaster, preserved by the dry and the cold, and shielded from the sun and the wind. The scenes depicted in the brilliant pigments were nonsensical madness. Leviathan spiders, whose webs spanned valleys, devoured horned men, who in turn burned the spiders’ webs and crushed their egg sacs. Black ships, like triremes or galleys, rowed through the sky, landing to disgorge bloated pale horrors that herded the horned men aboard their ships, disappearing into the sky with them. Oceans and islands were depicted, despite the Kulun Shan being perhaps the most inland spot on Earth. Reptilian horrors wheeled through the painted skies, and great cities guarded foul pits that led deep into the Earth. There was more to see, but then the pygmies began to attack.

Conder kept to the widest passage with the tallest ceiling, presuming that it would lead to the center of the structure and present some keystone the dynamite could be applied to. Side passages were ignored, and, as soon as the party passed, hidden defenders emerged and attempted to take the hindmost. In the first attack, six knife-wielding pygmies managed to strike down Sepoy Ahmad and Sepoy Hasan, before succumbing to bayonets and black powder. Hasan’s wound in his shoulder blade did not appear mortal, but the wavy asymmetrical blades carried by the pygmies were covered with a tar-like substance. It was a matter of minutes before Hasan began sweating profusely and complained that he was too weak to carry his pack or lift his rifle. In ten minutes he collapsed and could not rise again.

“Poison,” Shkuro grunted to Conder in Russian. “One hour, maybe two.”

Conder explained to Hasan and the man grimly nodded his assent. Malik spoke a prayer over the man, and Conder put him out of his misery with a round from his Webley revolver. They divided Hasan’s ammunition. It did not sit well with the men to leave him, but Conder assured them they would remove the dead when they withdrew.

The close, lightless corridors removed many of the expedition’s advantages, but they used their firepower to kill scores of the naked maniacs. And yet every black-powder cartridge gone was as sand through an hourglass. In the confusion, Rifleman Rana was slashed across the chest by one of the wicked knives. Wishing to avoid the fate of Sepoy Hasan, Rana drew his kukri and threw himself into the pygmies crowding the corridor before them. Not wanting to shoot their comrade, the rest of the men waded in with bayonet and kukri, and within seconds the floor was slippery with blood. The second rank of Sepoys tried to place a bayonet through the heart of every wounded pygmy, but one managed to stab Sepoy Hussain in the calf before Conder could put a round through its eye. Hussain limped forward into the fray to sell himself as dearly as he could with his last minutes.

Cutting, stabbing, and shooting their way forward a foot at a time, they forced the last of the pygmy warriors out of the corridor and into a huge domed chamber, like a blockage forced from a pipe. Conder barely had time to register the details, since the battle did not slow, but he noted the round chamber was hundreds of feet across and was dominated by a great, yawning circular pit at its epicenter, surrounded by six rude stone altars. Directly across from the entrance, on the opposite side of the pit, was a raised dais, atop which squatted a strange and unnaturally proportioned golden throne bearing a huge, misshapen figure swathed in a voluminous, cowled yellow silk robe. The yellow hierophant did not stir, so Conder ignored it in favor of firing his Webley through the spine of the pygmy on his left, while hacking at the pygmy on his right.

As the fight spilled out across the chamber, the advantages of the rifles returned, even as the pygmies were able to bring more fanatics to bear. These zealots wore the newest and most uncommon skins to denote their rank and prestige. Conder recognized the visage of Baron Savukoski pulled down like a mask over the face of a gray-eyed monster. Conder blew out the back of its head with his Webley.

The pygmies scattered as they were pushed back; some threw themselves at the foot of the dais and waved their hands in deliberate and meaningful ways. The Sepoys shot them down from across the room, splashing their blood across the hem of the disinterested hierophant’s yellow robe. Risaldar Khan set into his opponents with his Kyber knife, reserving his own Webley for anyone who looked to be remotely bothersome. Shkuro, with his long reach and longer saber, passed his blade over the guard of pygmy after pygmy, striking off the tops of their heads. The Sepoy impaled pygmies on their bayonets, kicking the dying off the ends of their blades. The Gurkhas’ kukris scattered fingers and opened throats. Rivers of blood ran between the flagstones, winding ever closer to the lip of the yawning pit.

It took a few seconds for Conder and the others to realize they were alone among the silent corpses. No, not quite alone. One remained on top of the misshapen golden throne, quiet and unconcerned, swaddled in silk. A shape stirred under the sea of yellow. It was not the shape of a man, nor a primate, nor even something with bilateral symmetry. It sloshed and slithered under its yellow shroud like a mound of greasy serpents. Conder and the men watched as its sleeve parted, and a long, undulating tube, carved from a large bone or tusk, emerged from the folds. Pallid snakes coiled around the tube and slipped one end of it beneath the High Priest’s mask. The sound that flowed out of that tube was an atonal wail fit to wake the dead. Which was exactly what it did.

The first to stir was one of the pygmies. Sepoy Shah put his bayonet through its ribcage to finish it off. Instead, the pygmy grabbed the barrel of Shah’s rifle with its remaining hand and would not release it. Shah discharged his rifle and blew it off the end of the bayonet, but that didn’t stop it from sitting up again. Conder stepped up and struck its head off with his cutlass. All watched in speechless horror as the headless body struggled blindly to its feet. More rose. Rifles fired. The bullets did nothing but disfigure the lively dead. Even their former comrades Rifleman Ran and Sepoy Hussain were struggling to their feet. The devout called for God. The sacrilegious muttered profanities. The Cossack did both.

Conder could feel the panic rising in the men. Even the Gurkhas were at a loss. Any second he expected someone to break ranks and flee into that lightless corridor littered with the likely stirring dead. Were the hundreds they slaughtered out on the field before the village also rising?

The flute! The dead rose when the flute sounded. It was insane, but it was a straw to grasp at. Pointing his cutlass at the figure on the throne, Conder roared “Put a volley into that devil! Now!”

Everyone fired. Conder and Malik emptied their Webleys. The yellow silk erupted with gouts of something too thick and blue to be blood. Bullets smashed the flute to bits. The thing on the throne pitched forward, rolling down the steps. There was a glimpse of something pale and wet before it dropped into the pit and vanished. The flute was silent, but the dead still advanced, teeth gnashing.

The melee was joined. Kukris opened throats and bellies. Bayonets and rifle butts pushed the advancing dead back. Meat and bone were sundered, but the enemy came on. Then the Cossack struck the head off one of the pygmies and kicked its flailing torso in the chest. The corpse spun around and stumbled blindly into the bottomless pit.

“Into the pit! Force them into the pit!” Conder shouted above the din. The Gurkhas struck off the fingers and hands of the corpses, while the Sepoys speared them on their bayonets and ran them off the edge and into oblivion. Sepoy Rassoul was dragged screaming into the pit by the corpse he was trying to maneuver into it. The corpses remained silent as they were hurled in. Everyone could still hear Rassoul screaming when the last corpse was sent in after him.

And more corpses were shambling into the great hall. Looking around, Conder took stock of his men. Malik and the Cossack still stood, as did Havildar Thapa and four of his Gurkhas. Eleven Sepoys remained. Every uniform was tattered and covered in blood. How had it all gone so wrong? He’d led his men to their deaths and worse.

“Risaldar Khan! Take the men and cut your way out. Don’t fight them. Just get past them. Get to the horses and get clear. Rifleman Pun, put the case of dynamite by that wall. Leave me a lantern and I’ll catch up with you when I’m finished.”

“Henry! There’s no time for that! We have to go now!”

“That’s an order, Risaldar! Do your duty, damn you!” Malik was taken aback, but ordered his Sepoys into an arrowhead formation to force the corridor.

Havildar Thapa stepped forward. “Permission to assist the Captain!”

“No! Go now!” Conder knelt by the case of dynamite Pun had placed against the wall behind the golden throne.

Thapa pulled up his bloody left sleeve. A gash from a knife split his forearm. The skin was already darkening. “I cannot go far. So I shall not go!

Conder immediately felt both relieved and guilty that he would not be dying alone. “Very well, Havildar. It’s your time to spend as you like.”

Suddenly all the Gurkha Riflemen were shouting, volunteering to stay. Conder knew the obstinacy of Gurkhas in the face of danger. There was no time to waste arguing. He’d need every hand to keep the dead from snuffing out the fuse.

“Make yourselves useful! Rifleman Rai! I should very much like to hear ‘The Minstrel Boy’ again before I die!”

“With pleasure, Captain Conder!” Rai beamed, as he unslung his bagpipes.

“Everyone else, get out now!” Conder began prying the lid of the case of dynamite with the blade of his cutlass.

Shkuro shouted from across the hall. “Your name, Englishman? What is it?”

“Captain Henry Tobias Conder,” he yelled over his shoulder.

The Cossack nodded, tapped his chest and answered “Uryadnik Bogdan Timofeyevich Shkuro.”

As Shkuro turned to leave with Khan and the Sepoys, Havildar Thapa called out, “Wait, Captain! Did you tell the Russian what I asked you to?”

No, he hadn’t. Thapa had first made his request when the troop of Cossacks had towered over his Gurkhas as they’d posed together for Eichwald’s photograph. Conder shook his head at the man’s priorities, but would not deny Thapa’s last request. Conder stood and yelled in Russian. “Bogdan Timofeyevich! My Gurkha Uryadnik wants your Czar to know that he and his men are very short examples of the Gurkha people! Back home they are all much taller!”

“Truly,” the Cossack said without a trace of irony. “A race of giants.”

And then he was gone.

Neither man ever saw the other alive again.