The Faraway Drums

The Faraway Drums
Jon Cleary

In India in the 1910s, the coronation of King George V as Emperor of India is to take place at the Great Durbar in Delhi. High in the Himalayas Major Clive Franol, soldier turned political agent, hears rumours of a plot to assassinate the King.The year is 1911, the place India. The coronation of King George V as Emperor of India is to take place at the Great Durbar in Delhi.High in the Himalayas Major Clive Farnol, soldier turned political agent, hears rumours of a plot to assassinate the King. Hurrying south, trying to piece together hints of the plot, he finds himself a target for assassination.Joining a caravan of an exotic mix of characters on their way to the Durbar, he meets Bridie O'Brady, American newspaper-woman and anti-Imperialist. They fall in love, but their different backgrounds and the constant threat of death offer little hope that anything will come of their romance. But Jon Cleary's story is full of surprising twists and turns …Under the waning sum of Empire, this is high adventure tinged with sadness for the era that is lost, as imperfect as it was glorious.

Copyright (#ulink_aecd2921-794d-5035-afb9-906990383737)

Harper An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1981

Copyright © Jon Cleary 1981

Jon Cleary asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

Grateful acknowledgement is made for permission to reprint extracts from:

Woman Correspondent by Bridget O’Brady Farnol

(New York, 1966: William Morrow and Co. Inc.)

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

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Source ISBN: 9780006167112

Ebook Edition © JULY 2015 ISBN: 9780007569007

Version: 2015-06-01

Dedication (#ulink_07bc8ac4-b978-5ebe-af82-a46db533c1d1)

For Alberto and Jorge

Contents

Cover (#ude3a1ad3-1ea3-5a3c-9a1b-c1f3454a324b)

Title Page (#u85deeed6-8fdb-5d03-880c-39334b8eb33a)

Copyright (#ulink_0b7737a6-0d0e-5a92-a987-66e40bfb8cb5)

Dedication (#ulink_588ea3c4-57f6-5c1b-94c8-b79e6730ad82)

Chapter One (#ulink_d7be3077-bd8c-55bc-b601-84831212869f)

Chapter Two (#ulink_e898acc0-fa34-53b1-8b04-423dff55d11f)

Chapter Three (#ulink_df484b12-de02-5f66-9c61-7d59ebf686d0)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Also by the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_45d8a45e-9bd3-50a2-944b-1d036c71e205)

1

It was a beautifully clear day for an ambush. Clive Farnol was working his way up from the Satluj River towards the Tibet Road, climbing a steep rocky ridge, when it happened. The first bullet hit one of the four Paharee porters, tumbling him backwards down the slope, and the next three shots sent chips flying from a rock right beside Farnol.

He heard Karim Singh swear and the three surviving porters cry out in fear. Then he swore himself as another bullet whined away off the rock only inches from his face, flicking grit into his face. He tried to roll himself into a ball behind the rock, no easy task for a man as tall as himself, and squinted over his shoulder at Karim. The Sikh was equally tall and he looked awkward and embarrassed as he tried to make himself as small a target as possible. The three porters, all small men, were already sliding back down the ridge, their packs abandoned, their swiftly retreating backs declaring neutrality.

‘Coward buggers,’ said Karim, spitting down the ridge.

Farnol felt he couldn’t blame the porters; it wasn’t in their contract that they should die for five annas a day. The shooting had stopped, but he knew that it was not finished. The ambushers, whoever they were, were probably working their way to better positions to pick off him and Karim. But who were they? Why had they chosen to shoot at this small party of travellers? He and Karim were both in hillmen’s dress: baggy breeches, faded shirts, goatskin vests and turbans. True, they both carried Lee-Enfield rifles, but the chances were that the rifles firing on them were also Lee-Enfields; stolen British Army weapons were a mark of honour amongst the hillmen, a sort of self-conferred, lethal Order of the Indian Empire. But why waste bullets on what, from a distance, would have looked like nothing more than a small party of villagers moving down from the high mountains to Simla? Any ordinary band of dacoits would have waited till the party had climbed up to the road, then set on them, cut their throats with kris and taken what loot they wanted from the packs carried by the porters. And, of course, taken the two rifles.

Farnol suddenly rose up, scrambled up the hill and fell into a depression behind a larger rock; bullets chased him but missed. Karim remained where he was, now lying flat on his back behind a thin spine of rock; he had worked out that the shots were all coming from one direction, a ridge above them and to their left. He was an old hand at ambushes, having seen them from both sides.

Farnol looked around him. In the far distance, whence they had come, he could see the Eternal Snows, the last barrier of the Himalayas; the morning sky was absolutely cloudless and the mountains had the sharp-edged look of white glass. Nearer, the hills fell away as steep ridges, some of them patterned with the corduroy of terraces; he could see the tiny figures of peasants tilling the rocky ground, sowing the wheat that would turn the terraces into bright strips of green in late March. On a ridge up near the road a man and a woman were digging stones and rocks from a new terrace and carting them up to the roadway where they would be used as fill: the ridges were harvested for everything that would bring in a few annas. Still nearer, on a ridge across a deep ravine, Farnol could see a goat-herd and his herd moving, like a small cloud-shadow, up towards the road. The goat-herd had stopped and was looking Farnol’s way, a disinterested spectator of the ambush: he looked at the distance as if 1 e were as unconcerned as his goats.

A flash of movement tugged at Farnol’s eye: a man ran down from the road to an outcrop of rock high to the left. Farnol turned his head and looked at the ridge on his right. A thick cloak of silver fir that ran up its spine was broken for a few yards by a gully, then continued across to cover the top of the ridge on which he lay.

‘I’m going up to the road, Karim.’