CHAPTER XV

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*THE SNAKE-GOD*

Vahana ran on ahead. Bent and twisted with age, his half-naked figure far outstripped the riders whose horses ploughed heavily through the morass of jungle-grass. Behind them, again, came the straggle, panic-driven horde of Ayeshi's army, and after them the flood, rising over Heerut.

Vahana halted from time to time and looked back, nodding and beckoning. He was too far in advance for them to see his face. But in that feverish agility, in that patient waiting on them there was a malignant joy, the expression of a soundless, senile laughter.

They had strange companions--cheetahs, antelopes, wild pigs--all the creatures of the plain--trotting at their sides, unheeded and unheeding, conscious only of their common peril. They moved slowly, dragging themselves painfully free from the clinging mud. It was the flight of an evil dream--the enemy at their heels, their limbs weighted, each step an anguished effort. They made no outcry, but the tortured breathing of these flying thousands became an unbroken moan of terror.

Vahana led them by a circuitous path back over a ridge of ground rising to the rear of the temple. They followed unquestioningly. There was no choice. Their retreat was already cut off: to the right the flooded plain, to the left the trackless jungle hemmed them in. The ridge was all that remained to them.

Sigrid rode between Ayeshi and Barclay. They had not spoken. Ayeshi held himself like a sleep-walker, his face blank, his eyes wide open and expressionless. The hand that held the reins was slack and indifferent. His horse, instinctively aware of the danger pursuing them, kept up of its own account, but he did not seek to control it. Compared with him, Barclay was the very spirit of sombre exultation. He turned persistently to the woman beside him, his eyes ugly with significance. But her small, white face betrayed no consciousness of him. Its serenity was deathlike. Her body rode beside him, but her mind, the living part of her, eluded him. He had not hoped that it would be otherwise--his pitiless intuition had showed him the limit of his power, the limit of all power; but there was Tristram, who by now knew the value of the freedom which she had bought for him--Tristram, who represented all that he, Barclay, had desired and hoped for and loved, all that he now hated with the intensity of a mutilated passion, Tristram who would suffer at the last.

He laughed at his own thought and pointed a shaking hand at the mournful immensity beneath them.

"Your friend will have a wet ride. Look out there--the bridge has gone. It was swept away an hour ago."

He laughed again, and urged his horse past her. He had triumphed, but he did not wish to see her face.

She turned her head in the direction which he had indicated. The night, mingling its sable with the dirty greys of sky and water, shrouded the familiar landmarks, but that very narrowing of her vision widened the boundaries of her hearing. The thunder of the torrent sounded nearer--she heard again the mysterious mutterings which had arrested her at the bridge-head only an hour or two before. She knew that Barclay had not boasted.

"Did you know that too, Ayeshi?"

"Yes, Mem-Sahib."

His voice was callous, toneless. She could not look at him.

"And you let him go? You had forgotten so easily?"

"Have you found it hard to forget, Mem-Sahib--you whom he loved----?" He awoke suddenly from his apathy. He bent towards her, his fevered hand on her arm. "Was not a little of _that_ man's gold, stained with the sweat and blood of men, enough to buy your forgetfulness?"

And now she looked at him. She saw the quivering features--the eyes bloodshot and wretched with scorn of her.

"I went out of his life as you did, Ayeshi," she said gently. "Was that forgetfulness?"

"Mem-Sahib----!" he muttered.

"You tried to save him," she persisted--"as I tried. If we have both failed need we reproach each other now?"

"Mem-Sahib!" In that reiteration there was agony. His hand dropped from her arm. "It was for his sake--? Barclay Sahib threatened you?"

"Yes."

"And now----"

"Now it is for Gaya--for those lives your ambition has jeopardized. And even that may be useless."

The ridge they were traversing began to slope downwards. The water was at their feet. They could hear it sucking at the long grasses. The men immediately behind them were swept forward and lost their footing. A man who stumbled at Sigrid's side clutched at her and then went rolling ludicrously down the mud bank into the rising flood. She saw his head for an instant--his face gazing stupidly up at them. Something square and black and evil that had lain like a lump of wood on the surface of the water moved swiftly forward.

There was a scream. Ayeshi held up his hand before Sigrid's face, but she had seen enough. The man had vanished, and where he had been the greyness of the water had turned to red.

"Oh, God!" she whispered. "Tristram!"

"No, no, Mem-Sahib--not that--not that--they meant that he should die, but I--I who served him and loved him, I know that death cannot touch him when he fights for others. He fights for others now, Mem-Sahib--for those I have betrayed--for my salvation." He laid his hand on his breast with a gesture of unutterable despair. "No--not even he can do that. It is too late. I am accursed--accursed----!"

And, as though in answer, the crowd he led surged up closer to him. Arms were held up to him--thin, supplicating arms.

"Lord--the water--the water--save us!"

"I am accursed!" he whispered. "Accursed!"

She saw his face. The youth in it was dead--stamped out. Yet in that instant she recognized in him the boy, the dreamer who, crouched upon the step of her verandah, had told the story of the Rani Kurnavati. And the pity that surged over her had in it the passion of that memory.

"Ayeshi--why have you done this----?"

His wild eyes met hers for an instant's desperate intentness.

"Mem-Sahib--I loved my country--my gods--the history of them was in my blood. And then in Calcutta--the misery--the thwarted ambition--my people starving--the Englishman in the high place. They told me they were ripe for revolt--only they needed a leader--a leader who would carry the country-people with him. I came back. Vahana lied to me. I believed that my father had been robbed and murdered--that my heritage had been stolen from me--that Tristram Sahib himself had known who I was and made me his servant----" His voice broke. "But it was a lie--I had no heritage--no wrongs to avenge--I was their tool--and now--Mem-Sahib, if ever you should meet him, tell him it was a false dream--but that Ayeshi loved him----"

She nodded. She could not answer him, and they rode on in silence till suddenly, Vahana, whom they could still see dimly ahead of them, turned to the left and pointed up towards the jungle.

"There--there is escape, O Lord Ayeshi! The Sacred Path that leads to the Shrine of the Snake-god. Who follows?"

The shrill cry died into silence. There was no answer. Barclay came splashing back through the water. His face glowed with a sombre excitement.

"It seems there's some secret passage up through the jungle. We may be able to get right away. At any rate, it's our only chance."

But Ayeshi sat rigid in his saddle, and that which Barclay saw in his eyes silenced him.

"There is a curse on all those who profane the Snake-god's sanctity----"

Barclay burst out laughing.

"Good God, man, that silly native yarn----"

"I am a native."

"Still, you can't be such a fool----"

Ayeshi turned in his saddle and looked back at the black, silent mass behind him.

"Who follows Barclay Sahib through the jungle?" he called.

But there was still no answer. They stood there silent and inert, the water rising about their feet. There was no cry of terror from among them now. It was finished.

Those nearest Ayeshi lifted their faces to him in stubborn fatalism.

"Ayeshi, pull yourself together--they'll follow you right enough."

"I dare not," was the desperate answer.

"Afraid--? A coward--? You don't really believe----"

Ayeshi threw back his head. His features were terrible in their frozen composure.

"I believe."

"You accept the responsibility for all these lives----?"

"I cannot help myself--I am one of them."

Barclay made a gesture of angry impatience.

"Do you expect me to stay here and drown like a rat in a trap----?" he demanded.

"No--why should you? What are we to you--or you to us?"

Barclay shrank back. With a sound like a smothered groan, he turned his horse about and rode towards Vahana who still stood motionless and waiting beneath the black shadows of the trees. He dismounted and looked back. Sigrid had not moved. The water had risen swiftly to her horse's knees. Ayeshi bent towards her and laid his hand on her bridle.

"Go, Mem-Sahib-fear nothing--_they_ will not harm you. You are not of our blood or faith. Go--do not let me have your death on my hands. Mem-Sahib--trust him--he will not fail you----"

She lifted her eyes to his face. Behind his passive despair there shone the old confidence--the re-birth of a faith. She gave him her hand, and he lifted it to his forehead.

"Mem-Sahib--remember that I loved him."

She saw Ayeshi for the last time as on the very verge of the jungle she turned and looked back. His silhouette, cut sharply against the fast-fading light, rose up from the midst of his unhappy followers like a tragic, heroic statue out of a black, uneasy sea. Vahana laughed shrilly, and the sound, breaking the spell of inarticulate terror, let loose a wailing cry which swept in a gust over the rising water.

"Lord--save us--save us----"

She saw Ayeshi lift his hands above his head. She could not have heard his voice, and yet the echo of his impotent agony reached her.

"I am accursed--accursed----"

She saw him no more. Vahana had hurried on into the darkness ahead of them, and Barclay half lifted, half dragged her from the saddle. She made no resistance. But her strength had begun to fail. She tried to free herself from his hold--to stand alone.

"Go on without me--I'm not strong enough--save yourself."

He shook his head stubbornly.

"No--I've nothing left but you. Keep your promise. The path is steep--I can carry you. We're safe now. The ground's rising all the way. We've nothing to fear--nothing. It's dark, of course--hideously dark. Give me your hand." His was dry and cold. It filled her with a nameless disgust--a strange pity. It was as though, helpless as she was, he clung to her.

"Why--you're shivering!" he muttered. "What is it? You're not afraid? What is there to be afraid of? We're safe here----"

"It's those others--Ayeshi----"

He laughed brokenly.

"What are they to me? What am I to them? Didn't you hear him? That settled it, didn't it? I'm not one of them--I've got English blood in my veins. I've nothing to fear--nothing."

She could not see his face. They were stumbling blindly up the steep and broken path, and the dense growth of jungle walled them in from whatever daylight remained. Yet his voice, the touch of his hand, painted him for her against the black canvas. She could see his face, eyes wide-open and distended, the mouth agape, the sweat on his forehead. She knew him to be possessed by an insidious terror.

"What is there to fear?" she asked in her turn.

He muttered incoherently.

Vahana had vanished. They could hear his body brushing against the tangled growths that hung across the narrow path like warning, invisible hands. Barclay called him by name, but there was no answer--only a sudden stillness. He faltered--the hand which still held Sigrid's relaxed. She stood apart from him. But for the sound of his breathing she could not have known that he was near her. The infinite relief of that moment's freedom kept her motionless, and then she realized that he was moving forward--that he had forgotten her, every ambition, every desire in the one formless, all-mastering dread.

"Vahana!"

Stillness. He groped wildly about him. The sudden consciousness of his isolation drove a scream from his dry lips.

"Vahana!"

The answer was almost in his ear--a soft, caressing whisper.

"I am here, Sahib."

"Don't leave me--I can't see--this darkness."

"The path is a straight one, Sahib. Give me your hand."

Barclay cowered back. A chill, foetid breath fanned his face. Something familiar coiled itself about his fingers. He tried to free himself.

"The Mem-Sahib!" he gasped thickly. "Where is she?"

"The Mem-Sahib is safe. The path leads to one end. Come, Sahib!"

The whisper had grown shriller, authoritative. There was a subtle hint of anger in its caress. Barclay heard its echo. Overhead a branch cracked under a moving burden. A thing slid over his foot and went hissing into silence. He threw up his free hand to beat off the invisible attack and touched a slimy, gliding mass which dropped on his shoulder, winding itself about his neck. He flung it from him. He was gasping--choking with fear and nausea. He heard Vahana's whisper, subdued, sibilant:

"Sahib--there are no snakes."

But the very hand that held him was a hideous memory. Something vague, indeterminate, which had begun to hem him in since that night when he had fled from the vision of himself, was closing in faster and faster. This, that was coming, had been from all time, a hand groping up through the black depths of the ages, a monstrous, inert mass rousing itself from long sleep to predestined action. The darkness, the jungle, was a huge prison alive with sound and movement. The sounds awoke under his feet and went hissing and murmuring like a train of fire into the far distance, setting alight other sounds till they surrounded him in an awful, mocking circle. The walls of the prison were narrowing--the air, thick and heavy with an evil sweetness, weighed down upon him till his strength reeled. With an effort he freed himself from Vahana's clutch and began to run. The steepness of the path, the uneven ground, jolted the breath from his body in agonized gasps. The branches of the trees were alive--sensate, twisting, winding bodies, which beat their cold, slimy tentacles against his face--their roots clutched at his stumbling feet, the hissing murmur had become the high, threatening note of a rising wind. And behind him was that pursuing Thing--that formless, familiar menace which he had foreseen, which had hung on the outskirts of his life waiting for its moment. He fled before it because his frantic body demanded flight, but _he_ knew its futility. The Thing was there, silent and invisible, gibing at his pitiful effort. It was not Death--it was Horror itself----

A pale light broke ahead. He neither knew whence it came nor its significance. He made for it with a last call to every nerve and muscle in him. He reached it. He was dimly conscious of a brightening luminousness, of something black, serenely still, rising up out of the grey transparency before him. Then the end. It came upon him with a rush. It closed in in a clammy band about his throat. He turned. A flat head with a wizened face and small dead eyes and pointed mouth swayed before his vision in a sinister, rhythmic measure. It was Vahana--yet not Vahana. It was not Vahana who was slowly dragging his life from him. It was that cold tightening band--and yet Vahana was there--close to him.

He screamed. Again and again. The jungle--the whole world, _his_ world, shrinking about him till it was no bigger than his own brain, echoed with his screams.

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