The True History of the Strange Brigade Read online

“For visiting types, captain. Empty all the time I have been in here. If they put you in it, beware of snakes.”

  FAIRBURNE’S PAPERS WERE checked with almost insulting care by the sentries on the gate before he was permitted entry. Even then, he wasn’t even offered refreshment after his journey—a fictional trip aboard a chartered train had been manufactured to explain his arrival—but ushered directly into the presence of Colonel Aspern.

  Aspern was well known to Fairburne by dint of his file, and by what there was to read between the lines. Aspern was a veteran of the Great War, during which as a junior officer he had advocated the virtues of rapid movement and flexible logistics, and championed tank warfare. This early vigour, however, had become depleted by the ’twenties. He developed a reputation as something of a martinet. Fairburne had seen it happen to others, and entirely expected to be grilled by an embittered man sent to fritter away the end of his career guarding some distant corner of empire.

  The colonel was a man of good figure in his late forties, and he rose to meet Fairburne with a smile, a not overly rigorous salute, and a firm handshake. “You’ve rather caught us on the hop, captain,” he said, examining Fairburne’s orders. “We were expecting no new personnel at least until after the rain season.” He looked up from his reading. “The Naptons? Aren’t you all supposed to be in Egypt?”

  “There’s a possibility we may be replacing you in a year or so, sir. As I was in Chittorgarh on personal business anyway, my colonel asked me to make the trip here to get a measure of the place. Lay of the land, and so forth.”

  “I see. Not a great deal to take in, to be frank. You seem a capable officer, Fairburne. I doubt it will occupy you for very long.”

  “As you say, sir. The next train is in a week. With your leave, I should like to be aboard it.”

  As he spoke, he looked at the walls of the colonel’s office and noted empty nails and dark patches, where things had hung until fairly recently. Shield shapes and circles, some of them ill-defined around the edges.

  “By all means. Sergeant Major Dickens and I will be happy to speak to you about any operational matters, the locals, quirks of the establishment, and so forth.”

  And so concluded the interview.

  FAIRBURNE WAS ASSIGNED, somewhat to his chagrin and certainly over his polite protests, the ugly little bungalow in the fort’s shadow.

  “The fort has never been attacked, sir,” said Beddoes, the batman assigned to him. “If it is, it’s only a quick trot and we’ll be safe within the walls.”

  Fairburne was looking disconsolately at the rope-operated fan on the veranda, swinging gently in the cool breeze that seemed to run constantly down the hillside. It was scarcely warm enough to warrant a punkah wallah, but Beddoes constituted his entire staff. No locals were employed. From what Janda had told him, they had quietly withdrawn their labour when the sadhu was arrested, and not purely in protest.

  “They are simple village folk,” he had told Fairburne during the drive, “but they are not fools. There has been... how might I say it? A change in the air.”

  The atmosphere. The villagers avoided the fort because it made them uneasy. Fairburne could sympathise. Nothing about the place seemed quite pukka to him.

  Sergeant Major Dickens was a case in point. Fresh from his interview with the colonel, Fairburne found Dickens overseeing drill in the fort’s courtyard and watched until the exercises were complete. In Fairburne’s experience, troops on the edges of the Empire were generally either over-drilled to the point of automata, or altogether slovenly. This exercise, however, was unique in his experience. The sergeant never shouted, yet the men responded perfectly, and without the mechanical motions of soldiers who would prefer death to another ‘present arms.’

  After the men had fallen out, Dickens came over to meet Fairburne. “Captain Fairburne,” he said, “sah!” He snapped a salute, which Fairburne returned. The ensuing conversation was banal in the extreme, touching on Fairburne’s story about a handover, but the sergeant major spent the time quickly working through the fort’s eccentricities and assorted details that would be useful to the officers of a new regiment as and when it took over the site.

  Fairburne made plentiful mental notes of such minutiae, but the larger part of his attention was upon the vexed question of how he had known who Fairburne was, when he had only just introduced himself to the colonel. It was possible, he supposed, that one of the sentries at the gate had told him.

  Yes, that must be it.

  ON THE SECOND day, Fairburne made the acquaintance of a Lieutenant Oswald, a relatively new addition to the fort’s complement and apparently the former owner of Janda’s Kipling novel. Oswald was the sort of bland young creature that had been washing into the British Army as ‘the thing to do’ since Victoria’s time, and were blithely under the impression that the Great War had changed nothing. They could not see the cracks forming as the Empire began its inevitable decay. Certainly his chatter was as light and amusing as it was devoid of content, right up to the moment when, walking, they passed out of view of the nearest soldier.

  “There’s something very rum going on in Fort Chippenham, sir,” he said, suddenly very serious.

  “Rum? In what sense?”

  “Oh, come now. I’m a freshly minted product of Sandhurst, I know, but we’re terrifically military, my clan. I know how soldiers act and”—he looked around, lowering his voice still further—“this shower just about take the biscuit, wouldn’t you say?”

  “It’s not unknown for soldiers on a long deployment to adopt—”

  “Oh, rot, sir. All due respect, I hasten to add, but we’ve got a sergeant major who barely raises his voice. He smiles at the troops. It’s unnatural. All the non-commissioned ranks are as thick as thieves; sergeants and corporals and privates all awfully chummy. You’re not telling me that’s normal, are you? It’s like something from the Book of Revelation.”

  Fairburne stopped walking. “Are you suggesting that there’s been a failure in military discipline here, lieutenant?”

  “No! That’s the worrisome thing. Discipline is as tight as a drum, but it never has to be enforced. The glasshouse is gathering dust. Well, apart from the cell they’ve got that guru-wallah in. This garrison functions perfectly. But it should be a shambles.”

  “Perhaps they respect the colonel?”

  “Oh, yes, the colonel.” Fairburne had plainly touched on another concern. “I was terrified when I was posted here. The old man has a fierce reputation, you know. Eats a subaltern for breakfast every day, they said. But you’ve met him; he’s a dear! No goose need fear booing from that quarter. And”—again the quick look around—“see here...”

  He led Fairburne to a door further along the corridor, looked around, and opened it. “Look at this lot.”

  The room was being used for a store, apparently of the colonel’s belongings. Most notable by far, however, was a huge collection of hunting trophies from across Asia, Africa, and Europe. Rhino, tiger, wildebeest; even an Indian elephant foot. For Fairburne, they confirmed the suspicion the voids on the colonel’s office walls had put in his mind. Oswald drew the door shut, and said significantly, “The old man’s a famous hunter, yet all of a sudden he can’t bear the sight of his trophies. He’s sworn off hunting.” He leaned forward and said in low tones of horror, “He’s gone vegetarian...”

  FAIRBURNE MENTALLY PENCILLED in Oswald as an ally, although not a very effective one. He had obliquely mentioned the men who had travelled through the fort and whose behaviours had subsequently changed, but the visits all predated Oswald’s time there. Still, it now seemed undeniable that the fort was the seat of the curious changes and, perhaps, where the strange crab-like creatures originated. He was at pains to cook his own meals in his bungalow, to do so from canned supplies, and to thoroughly boil every drop of water that passed his lips. It made his diet unrelentingly dull, but he was mindful that large creatures can grow from infinitesimal larvae; if the men of the fort were being infe
cted that way, at least he might defend himself.

  It was, admittedly, unlikely. The village over the rise had been there long before the fort, yet the villagers demonstrably had not ‘changed’ in the way that the Britons had. He had walked over that way himself to speak with Janda, and the villagers—initially reluctant—had then seemed to accept him, and with visible relief. It seemed they had grown sensitive to the mannerisms of ‘the changed,’ and Fairburne was not exhibiting them. His Hindi was weak, and his grasp of the regional dialect non-existent, so he was grateful for Janda’s magisterial presence as a translator. They could tell him little that Janda hadn’t already relayed, however; relations with the garrison had been distant and not entirely amicable until the sadhu had gone to act as an emissary for the village in an argument over water rights. About a week after that, the sadhu was arrested, “for his own safety.” Members of the village council had been permitted to visit him briefly, and he had seemed perfectly happy in his cell, saying that he was being well treated and speaking to the colonel frequently. He assured them that he was free to leave if he so desired, so they should not worry, but considered it more fruitful if he stayed where he was for the moment. Relieved if confused, they had left him there.

  Fairburne returned to his bungalow to find Beddoes laying out his mess uniform. “Colonel’s regards, sir,” he said. “You’re invited to dinner in the senior officers’ mess at twenty hundred hours.”

  “I see.” Fairburne regarded the scarlet shell jacket with disfavour; a necessary evil in regimental etiquette. “And will it be a vegetarian meal?”

  “I would think so, sir,” said Beddoes, examining the dress trousers with an eye to a quick pressing. “Eating the flesh of our fellow animals is barbaric.”

  He quite failed to notice Fairburne’s expression.

  VERY AWARE OF how absurd he must appear in mess dress against the rugged Indian hillside, Fairburne made his way from the bungalow to the fort, giving and receiving curt salutes to the men on the gate. He was en route to the senior officers’ mess—formulating a lie about the state of his digestion to avoid eating anything—when he was mildly surprised to see Lieutenant Oswald leaning out of a door and frantically signalling to him, like a supporting character in a West End farce. Checking he himself was unobserved, Fairburne went to see what Oswald had found for him.

  “In here, sir!” whispered the lieutenant in a sotto voce so pronounced he might as well have just spoken aloud. “You have to see this!”

  It might make Fairburne a minute or two late for dinner, but it might, perhaps, be worth it. Inwardly willing Oswald not to be wasting his time, he went quickly to the room and went in.

  It seemed to be an office, possibly Oswald’s own, but all the furniture had been pushed up against the wall. As Fairburne looked around for what might be so important, the door closed behind him, and his heart sank.

  “Sorry, old bean.” Oswald sounded truly sincere. He was leaning against the door. On either side of it stood a corporal and a sergeant. “But this really is for the best. You’ll see.”

  The NCOs rushed him. Fairburne dodged the corporal and landed a straight right on the sergeant’s jaw, knocking him back. “You’ll face court martial for this!” he barked at Oswald. “All of you will!” The corporal reversed his course and grabbed Fairburne around the chest from behind. The two men struggled as the sergeant cleared his head and came to join in again.

  “Don’t be like that, sir,” said Oswald. A note of concern was evident in his voice. “Violence really is unnecessary. Frankly, it’s abhorrent to us, and it won’t change anything, you know. Better just to accept it.”

  Fairburne didn’t fancy his chances against the two burly men, but he intended to go down fighting, violence is unnecessary be damned. He elbowed the corporal hard enough to drive the air from his lungs, and broke the bear hug just in time to be bowled over by the sergeant’s bull rush. Fairburne found himself flat on his back. He struggled, but the sergeant held onto him like grim death, and a moment later the corporal was there too. Fairburne was down again, this time for good, his arms pinned against the office floor.

  “I can’t say that I blame you, sir,” said Oswald, his regret apparent. “I can’t lie; I fought like a cat when they did it to me. But, believe you me, it was all wasted effort. This is all to help you.”

  He went to the desk and opened a drawer; Fairburne watched with rising horror as Oswald took out a small glass jar. Something pale moved within it.

  “Bit unpleasant, I grant you,” said the lieutenant, holding up the jar to examine the crablike creature within. He tapped at the glass with his fingernail, and it scuttled around inside. “But no worse than eating an oyster. Well, not much like that, actually. There’s some blood, and it hurts a bit... hurts quite a lot at first, but then it’s all done, and bingo! You’re a new chap! Better than the old chap, mark you.” He nodded at the NCOs. “Get his mouth open, would you, lads?”

  One hand clamped onto Fairburne’s lower jaw and another onto his forehead. He fought hard, but—a fraction of an inch at a time—his mouth was forced open. He stared helplessly as Oswald found a place to crouch by him and broke the seal on the jar. The creature seemed almost frantic to be out. Fairburne wrenched his face aside, futilely—the men’s grip was still solid—but managed to squirm his left arm out from beneath the corporal as he did.

  “You are going to feel very silly you made all this fuss in a few minutes, let me tell you,” said Oswald. “Now just hold still and take your medicine. What are—?”

  Fairburne had just used his freed left arm to drag Oswald’s service revolver from its holster. The bark of the shot, so close to them both, was stunning in its ferocity, but the jar and creature alike vanished in a fountain of powdered glass and unnatural ichor.

  The NCOs released Fairburne instantly, and he had the curious sense that they did so not out of fear of the pistol, but in reaction to the creature’s fate. Certainly Oswald clutched at his head as if suddenly prey to a violent migraine. “Oh! Why do you keep doing that?”

  Fairburne scrambled to his feet, seized Oswald by the shirt front and dragged him upright before planting the gun’s still-warm muzzle between his eyes. “What do you mean, ‘keep doing that’? Doing what?” Oswald only looked at him with vague awareness. “Killing those creatures? Is that what you mean? How could you know that?”

  Oswald said nothing, and Fairburne smiled. “You know where we’re going next, don’t you?”

  IT HAD ALWAYS been his plan to pay a visit, sooner or later. In a fort riddled with anomalies, it had stood out right from the first. The fort’s cell block was designed to double as a last redoubt in case attackers somehow breached the outer walls; Fairburne kicked Oswald away, slammed the heavy door in his face, and bolted it in the reasonable expectation that it would give him at least a few minutes’ grace. Entirely unsurprised to find no guard on duty, he took up a lantern from the rack by the door and the bunch of keys from the hook, and descended into the gloom of the cells built beneath ground level.

  He found the sadhu sitting cross-legged on a bunk in an unlocked cell at the end of the row on the right hand side. He was bearded and long haired, his whiskers as white as the loose robe he wore. It was open at the chest, and Fairburne noted his flesh was soft and rounded. He had seen monks such as him before, and they tended towards boniness. This one did not seem unusually well fed, and the lack of visible ribs was one more thing to trouble him.

  Fairburne drew the cell door shut and locked it, then stepped back and regarded the man. “You were no doubt expecting me,” he said.

  The sadhu said nothing, but only watched Fairburne keenly, a slight smile on his lips. Fairburne sighed. “Don’t pretend that you can’t understand me. You understand English as well as I do. Perhaps better.”

  “You are very perspicacious, captain,” said the sadhu. “An unusually open mind for your race.”

  “I work with facts, and I go where they take me, no matter how unpalatable.
When you say race, do you mean white, English”—he leaned against the wall opposite the cell—“or do you mean human?”

  “English, to be specific. The English want everything in its place, and a place for everything. They do not deal so very effectively with anything that falls outside the norm.”

  Fairburne found himself thinking of DA-01 and its airship. “You may be selling us short on that last point.”

  He heard a clatter as someone tested the door to the cell block, then the thud of a kick against it. It seemed to make little headway against the heavy door, and Fairburne was grateful for the thoroughness of the fort’s architects.

  “They will get in, captain. You are only delaying the inevitable.”

  “Perhaps.” His brow furrowed. “I recognise that voice. Sergeant Murdoch, isn’t it?”

  “I like the burr of it,” said the sadhu. He spoke again, and his voice shifted, becoming very Home Counties in the process. “Perhaps you’d prefer this, old bean?”

  “Oswald. Poor bloody Oswald. When did you take him?”

  “He was snooping around. He’d have joined us sooner or later, anyway.”

  “Not by choice.”

  “Only I joined by choice, but change is always painful, and really, old man, it’s all for the better. Once all humanity is joined as a single great mind, nothing will be beyond us; and so much will be left behind. Bigotry and prejudice are impossible when every man, woman, and child shares every thought and experience.”

  “And what of the individual?”

  “Overrated,” said the sadhu in the voice of Colonel Aspern. “Really, Fairburne, you only cherish individualism because it’s all you’ve ever known. Don’t be such a dry stick. All art, all science, all thought in a single mind, a whole world of Renaissance men and women.”

  “Sounds utterly stultifying. History is built on the backs of great men, and you’ll have rather a shortage of them.”