“I’m sure you’ll be running around looking for things to blow up before you know it,” Adam quipped.
Ellie’s eyes twinkled before sobering.“Are you managing all right?”
Adam didn’t pretend to misunderstand.“I’m managing.Hell, we might even make it out of this, if things can just stay moderately predictable for the next few hours.”
Borthwick’s voice cut to them from across the ridge.“Bates!”
Adam stiffened with a snap of dread as Borthwick motioned to him from where he lay at the edge of the cliff.
Ellie’s mouth tightened with worry.“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”
“I’ll be fine,” Adam assured her.
“Will you?”Ellie countered skeptically, looking from Adam to the cliff.
Adam sighed and rubbed a tired hand over his face.“Gonna have to be.”
He steeled himself and walked over.His brain began to protest as soon as he came within a few paces of where the ridge sheared away.
Green, thickly forested valley sprawled below him, pierced by the pale finger of the pillar he’d seen from the Shiva stone.The monument was much closer now.
Adam dropped to his knees as the view went a little tippy.He supposed it was a good thing that he was clearly meant to crawl sneakily forward to where Borthwick crouched beside Singh Rao.If he had stayed on his feet, he probably would’ve fallen over.
Just don’t look down, he told himself as he reached the edge… not that he could really avoid it.There was nothingbutdown in front of him.
Borthwick extended a leather-wrapped telescope to Adam.“What do you see?”
Adam wondered whether facing a hundred-foot drop through the instrument would be less taxing on his fear of heights.Wouldn’t the ground seem closer?Couldn’t his brain just pretend he was actually down there?
He put the telescope tohis eye and twisted the lenses to bring them into focus.
Adam’s throat tightened with nausea.His brain was not going to pretend that he was down there.
He followed the line of the stone column down to its foundation, which was visible through a break in the canopy.The lens scanned over tumbled stones and a pale terrace.
A handful of roughly dressed figures moved past the glass, and Adam’s gut twisted in a manner that had nothing to do with his altitude.
Had Borthwick seen it?
Of course, he had seen it.
“Looks like there are some people down there,” Adam reported numbly.
“Natives,” Borthwick elaborated.“I count roughly a dozen.Subedar?”
“The same,” Singh Rao replied.
“Khond, presumably,” Borthwick continued casually.“There are several villages a day’s march from here, across the river.”
Though the focus wasn’t tight enough for Adam to make out the details of the faces below him, he found that he had absolutely no doubt what village they had come from.
“Should we regard them as hostile?”Singh Rao asked.
The question was briskly professional.Adam thought of the thirty armed, disciplined men behind him.
Someone else stepped into the steady circle of the lens, slightly blurred by the mild imperfections of the instrument.
Pale skin framed a brown waistcoat.Gold rims glinted around his eyes.
