Sahithi's Adventures

The Hunt

21-10-1724; 10:15 pm.

“Damn! Damn! Damn!” William cursed as he ran through the corridors frantic with terror. He had let himself be distracted while on duty and, the craziest of all the worst things he could possibly do, did it in the presence of Lord Robert! “Devil take me!” he cried in anguish as he found the empty garden behind the Ball Room. His first instinct had been to try and cut off the fugitive by racing to the ball room window which was not too high for a person to jump out of. He felt like pulling his hair. “As if she was waiting for me to catch her! Drat my rotten luck!” he collapsed on the grass in despair with his head in his hands. “Where did the b***h go?” he looked around searching for possible escape routes.

It seemed the girl could have taken a hundred routes as his brain, frantic at the prospect of facing the firing squad, refused to work. “Think, think, think.” He took deep breaths to compose himself. “Think William, think. Or you are a dead man.” He closed his eyes trying to focus; despite the crazed state of his mind, he tried to remember what his training sergeant had taught him. “You will face a lot of tight situations, Bill. Situations that will decide whether you are going to live or die. Only one thing will save you from certain death and that is your brain; keep it sharp and you will live to fight another day. Allow it to panic and you have gifted your life on a platter to the enemy.”

“Focus, Bill, focus. You need all your training now to survive this disaster.” He slapped himself to shock his scrambled brains into some semblance of organised thought. “Where did I see her first?” he plucked a blade of grass chewing on it as he recalled the times he had seen her. “It was in the temple that I saw her first. So let me start from there.” He got up, walking swiftly towards the temple with confident, purposeful steps. Though a part of his brain warned him it might be a dead end, it gave him a purpose; something was better than nothing. Action in the face of danger, kept his nerves busy and kept his brains from falling apart. He needed his wits together if he was going to find the troublesome girl and save his ass.

The streets had a deserted look – after all, it was 10.30 pm, past the usual sleeping time of 9 pm. The street dogs looked at him as if unsure whether to bark or not. He looked them in the eye seriously and they turned their heads away, deciding he was not worth the trouble. “Even they seem to have guessed my doom.” He thought ruefully as he kept his face straight, focussing on reaching the temple unmolested by the dogs. Though he always had a weapon, there was no saying what the dogs might do, especially when there were a lot of them. He finally reached the temple, safe and secure. His throbbing heart told him the bad news – it was deserted.

“I should have known.” He thought as he sat on the steps trying to plan his next step. “Let me go to her house. Perhaps I will be luckier there. Time’s running out.” He got up to embark on another wild goose chase, but what option did he really have? He took the path he had taken previously, through the dark alley where he had grabbed her. “I should have knocked her unconscious.” He thought. “Then I wouldn’t be roaming around like a madman trying to save my life.” It angered him that his precious life had been endangered by a simple girl; he had survived battles that were a meat grinder; survived mad, crazy, insane bayonet charges on the enemy, yet here he was, falling apart because one little girl was missing. As he stopped at the gate of the house that was closed, his body stopped involuntarily. “What the heck am I going to say? If this man happens to have connections that matter, I can kiss my career goodbye.” He looked around as if that would provide him with a solution to his predicament.

He placed his hand on the door, clutching his heart that was now in his throat, about to pop out due to the tension. He crossed himself, steeled his heart and gently pushed the door; he almost had a heart attack when it actually swung inwards, revealing a sight he would never forget. The wide hall was filled with sleeping figures – humans, of course. “Probably relatives who came to attend the marriage.” He thought as he stepped inside and closed the door silently. He crept forward trying not to make any noise, feeling like a thief who had come to rob the house of valuables. He tried not to wake anyone as he placed one cautious foot over the other, tiptoeing gingerly across the packed hall. He tried to recognise the faces in a vague attempt to locate the missing girl.

He navigated the hall with the agility of a cat and reached the room which he assumed would be the bride’s room. His face brightened as he found the room full of sleeping women. “What great luck!” he thought as he crept into the room like a shadow, scrutinising each face as best as he could in the room lit by a single candle. He almost stumbled across the table near the bed, nearly toppling the brass tumbler. It took all his trained reflexes to catch the tumbler and avoid another disaster; no one on earth would even listen if they caught him in a room full of young women – they would beat him to death and ask questions later. Even Lord Robert did not dare to touch any woman other than the dancing girls. He went out the same way, the whole task of slipping out of the house uncaught, feeling like a tight rope walk. As soon as he was out, he put a safe distance between himself and the house, taking refuge in the welcome darkness of the dark alleyway. As he leaned against the pillar, he cursed the day he had decided to enlist in the army. “I must have been stone drunk!” he kicked the ground, raising a cloud of dust and finding it too hard to stifle the bout of coughing about to overwhelm him. He had to hold his breath as he moved quickly to another part of the deserted building.

It was past midnight and he was not even in a position to find her whereabouts. He still had only 20 hours left to find her. He sank off the pillar he was leaning against as despair clouded his tired mind. Sleep was now a luxury; yet he couldn’t afford to stay awake – more mistakes were made when his mind was numbed with terror and sleeplessness. “The third place is the pleasure house.” He mused. “The problem is, it is next to impossible to enter it, let alone search for her in the vast mansion.” He would need help from his superior officers but he had to be one thousand percent sure that the girl was in there. Lord Robert would skin him alive if he failed again and ended up offending the Madam who ran the establishment. He couldn’t afford to make a fool of himself; especially when his life was hanging by the thinnest possible thread.

Two guards were marching a soldier dressed in a dusty, torn uniform; the prisoner was dragging his feet as if he didn’t have any energy to walk at all. As he glanced at the soldier, he found that there was blood on his feet and hands. He realised the prisoner had been shorn of his skin while he was still alive. Each step would be an inhuman torture for the unfortunate man. He left behind bloody footsteps as he was marched forward mercilessly by the two guards whose faces had been covered by black masks. “They are the executioners!” he realised.

“The prisoner, as ordered sir!” one of the guards reported, while the second one lifted the prisoner’s head with a gloved hand. The head was also dripping blood. The prisoner looked at Lord Robert with bloodshot eyes.

“Carelessness while on duty can have disastrous consequences for the army.” The Lord rumbled, looking at the whole regiment that was standing at ease on the parade ground of the regimental centre. “Let this be an example of what happens when you are caught sleeping on duty by the enemy.” He glared the unfortunate prisoner in the eye. “Are you ready to face the firing squad?” he asked.

“NOOOOO!” Private Willam Smith woke up with a thundering heart. That had been his worst nightmare in his 21 years of existence. He wiped his sweat as he gulped in terror, looking around frantically to make sure no one had heard his scream. He even retreated further into the building, stumbling as he fell headlong into a deep pit with a thud, losing consciousness again.

He didn’t know how long he was like that; his head throbbed from the fall, but he was otherwise unhurt. His head swam as he sat up – he used all his willpower and training and waited for the feeling to pass by. He waited for a few more minutes, running through some basic checks he had been taught. When he was finally satisfied that he was uninjured, he gingerly stood up, waiting again expecting his head to reel. There was nothing. He took a deep breath and tried to take stock of his surroundings and realised he was in the same cellar he had used to try and enjoy the girl he had lost not a few hours ago. He cursed his luck as he slowly climbed the steps and came out, shielding his face against the bright light seeping in through what had been the entrance hall of a once majestic building.

He allowed his eyes to adjust to the brightness; he had been out for the whole night and had lost many precious hours of his life. Despair overcame him as he sank to the floor again leaning against a pillar for support. “What do you do at a time like this?” he asked himself. “Why didn’t you stay hidden in the safety of the pleasure house? Why did you have to come to the party? Why, Satan, why? I didn’t make any deals with you!” his crazed mind was now convinced that the girl had been sent by the devil himself to destroy him. Otherwise, how could the girl simply vanish just like that? He stared ahead, his shoulders slumped in resignation, convinced that he was going to be tortured to death for dereliction of duty. In his crazed state of mind he refused to question the sanity of the thought or the relevance of his nightmare. It seemed to him that Lord Robert would definitely give him the most painful death.

At that moment, something caught his eye and, despite himself, he turned around to a spectacular sight that washed his body with hope and new energy. It was the green pallu of a woman fluttering in the air as she walked hurriedly towards the small hill that no one uses these days. He didn’t care if the woman was Sahithi. He didn’t care if it was another woman. All that mattered was that the female was the right age and most importantly, she was wearing a half saree. With a new spring in his step fuelled by a renewed hope, he pursued the woman.