“You’re talking about that thing in his chest, with the symbol?”
“Each avtomat has a unique anima—our mind, memories, and will. The symbol written upon it is his true self, the Word he lives by.”
My fingers creep to my neck, pressed to my throat.
“Without the mind, the body is dust,” says Batuo. “A vessel without its anima is but a husk—it cannot perceive or act. But when placed in the cradle of its own unique vessel, anima will express itself as…avtomat.”
I reach into the neck of my shirt and pull out the relic that hangs there, letting it dangle by its chain. Batuo sees it and his eyes widen, words dying in his throat.
“I’ve been asking myself what this is for a long time,” I say. “And all along I should have been asking who.”
28
INDIA, 1751
The Nawab of the Carnatic is intent on breaking his long siege in Arcot. His plan is to bring down the reinforced front gate of our garrison using one of India’s most incredible natural resources, the brute strength of armored war elephants. As the first hint of predawn stains the sky, I am sprinting at top speed into the middle of our encampment.
“To the walls!” I’m shouting to the malnourished remnants of John Company. “To the Delhi gate!”
Around me, the skeletal British troops are beginning to stir. Bleary-eyed and confused, they stand up beside extinguished campfires made of looted furniture. The boys are starving but well trained, instinctively gathering their flintlocks and powder.
“Prepare for attack!” someone shouts.
Dozens of men are already trotting toward the gate. A sergeant barks orders at those slower to stir, his voice rising as the ground begins to shake.
A sentry at the gate finally sounds his horn.
The meandering line of torches, pikes, and beasts must have become visible in the outer city, siege breakers rampaging toward our gates with a thousand sepoys reinforcing from behind.
I sprint back toward my favorite spot on the parapet, hearing the strange trumpeting screams of the elephants over the chirping of morning birds. Climbing the sagging bones of the wall, I clamber onto my abandoned ledge.
Moving quickly, I reclaim my musket and don my red coat. I jam my tricorne hat over my head and peer over the edge. A river of turbaned sepoys is snaking across no-man’s-land on a side route toward an old breach in the wall, firing arrows and waving swords and spears. Some are carrying ladders hewn of rough wood from the forest.
It’s a dual attack, elephants on the gates and men at the breach.
“Escalade!” I shout to my allies. In the dawn, I can make out pairs of red jackets swarming up the interior fort walls. Surplus muskets from men lost long ago have been laid out to form loading relays. Alerted to this sneak attack, the men take new positions to repel the horde with superior weaponry.
I hear the first snaps of what will soon be near-continuous fire.
Farther along the wall, a contingent of sepoy pikemen are closing in on our main gate, spurring gaudily decorated war elephants onward with jabs to their great quivering flanks. The elephants are a horrific sight, faces wreathed in iron masks, tusks capped in gold, huge armored foreheads already butting into the wood of the gate. If they knock down the barricade, our camp will be flooded by thousands of enemy.
Time slows for me, the seconds counted off by the metronome of gunshots.
Loading my musket, I steady my barrel with a steel grasp and fire a precise shot at the nearest elephant. I ignore the hundreds of human attackers and the splintering gate, targeting the beast’s tender ears, vulnerable to a lateral attack. My first few shots send the lead elephant rearing back in confusion, disturbing its brothers. The monster is graceful and intelligent, and a sadness settles over me as I keep firing.
The beast squeals and thrashes back, lungs heaving in its chest, its trunk dark with blood as it crushes the pikemen attempting to drive it forward. The attackers scream as they fall, writhing like insects under the weight of the panicked elephants, staggered by the withering, ceaseless gunfire from the walls.
The roaring chants and shouts of the attackers fade; and for a moment I pause, simply watching the chaos. The battle at the gate is engulfed in great undulating ribbons of powder smoke and showers of sparks that spray like meteors from flintlock muskets. Atop the walls, a few officers work their weapons with grim intensity, malnourished cheeks sunken and yellow beneath soiled white wigs, moving like animated corpses.
The nawab’s attack is breaking.
A last elephant spins and flees, stamping bodies into the dirt. The behemoth’s small red eyes are bright with panic as it crashes through the reinforcing wave of sepoys, shattering the line. The barrage of musket fire from our walls becomes more sporadic as the men pick off individual soldiers below.
Escalade ladders lay like bits of straw on the field, amid crumpled bodies.
Seeing the vast carnage, I find that I cannot bear to lift my weapon again. Less than an hour has passed, yet the stinging heat of the morning is already rising along with the wailing buzz of insects. The alien screams of a last wounded elephant echo through empty city streets, mingling with the wailing of men who lay dying.
A sergeant calls out orders over the morning cicadas, a comforting staccato rhythm urging us to save ammunition. No mercy shots. A final, timed volley breaks across a broken final line of attackers, sending the sepoys into full retreat.
This is a massacre. Meaningless. One-sided.
As I sit, staring at blood-soaked dirt without seeing, a small movement draws my notice. An enemy sepoy lies at the foot of my wall. He is praying, unarmed and with both legs crushed, having dragged himself here from the gate. Cheek gleaming with a sheen of sweat, his turban and black hair have uncurled behind him like spilled intestines. The mortally wounded man is alone, abandoned by his comrades to an agonizing death.
Without thinking, I climb down. As I descend, I hear only my fingers gritting against the crumbling stucco and the far-off shouts of wounded men. My boots land on hard-packed soil, in the shade of the partially collapsed wall.
The wounded man is before me.
On his stomach, the soldier hears my approach and turns over onto his back, biting down a groan. Young and well muscled, he watches me calmly from above a thick black mustache. His eyes widen slightly as he takes in my height, his gaze lingering on the khanjali hanging at my belt. Only the rapid rise and fall of his chest reveals the pain he is suffering. Both his legs are twisted and trampled.
“Chale jao, aadamakhor,” he pants, sticking his chin out, defiant.
Go away, Man-eater.