He wondered where he’d got the courage to do it, to do something so alien to him as to stab another living creature to death. It might have been instinct, he supposed, but it was certainly nothing he’d learnt.
He looked up. The balcony was out of reach: he knew he’d never jump high enough to even get his fingertips on it. He looked at the pool of blood, and the smears leading from it, away and out the door. It was that way or no way.
Realising that he didn’t have an option, he dragged himself up. Beyond the door, he could go back to his cell, or keep following the blood, which trailed straight ahead, through the other door he’d noticed on the way in. That door was open too, and there was no one stopping him from going through.
There were high narrow windows, a fire, a rough table and some stools. Another door opened, and the guard came back through, blocking out the view outside◦– a courtyard, a wall, a fire issuing black, greasy smoke◦– before closing the door behind him.
‘Get yourself cleaned up,’ he said, jerking his head at a barrel.
‘Why am I here?’ said Dalip, not moving.
‘To fight.’ The man went to the barrel himself, and plunged his arms up to his elbows into the water. ‘What else?’
‘I didn’t come here to fight.’
‘Then why are you here?’
The circular argument infuriated Dalip. The guard scrubbed at his hands with a brush, then cast it aside.
‘I’m here by accident.’
‘No, you’re not.’ The guard took a towel, if the scrap of filthy material could be called such, and rubbed himself dry with it. ‘No one comes here by accident. You were going to die, right?’
The fire, the heat. ‘Yes.’
‘That’s when you made your choice. Die there or live here.’
‘But killing dogs? That’s not living.’
‘It is if that’s what you have to do to keep living.’ The guard threw the towel at Dalip who instinctively reached up and caught it before it slapped him wetly in the face. ‘Wash. Sit.’
Dalip did as he was told. The water wasn’t clean, but it was cleaner than he was. He carefully avoided washing the wound on his arm, though. But he did gather up his hair and thrust his head into the barrel, emerging with a gasp.
On the table was a wooden plate, with some crude bread and a wrinkled apple. Now he realised just how hungry he was. Opposite was the guard, again indicating with a jerk of his head that this was Dalip’s.
He sat warily. ‘Is this my reward, then?’
‘You’ve had your reward already. This is just food. Eat it or don’t, I don’t care.’
The cup next to his plate had water in it, hopefully not from the same barrel he’d just washed in. He was going to get sick if he didn’t drink it, just as he might if he did. If there was no alternative, like everything else he was having to endure, he’d have to cope.
His teeth still felt loose from the beating he’d had when he’d been captured, so he chewed slowly, watched all the time by the guard.
‘What’s your name?’ asked the man as Dalip moved on to his apple.
Perhaps he shouldn’t tell him, mindful as he was of the wolfman’s words. ‘Singh,’ he said.
‘Singh. What does that mean?’
‘Lion.’
It may have been funny, but it shouldn’t have been funny enough to make a man fall off his chair. When his gaoler had recovered, wiping his eyes and his mouth, and righting his stool, Dalip had reduced the apple to a thin woody core. The pips were lined up on the edge of his plate.
‘So, little lion man. Why are you here?’
‘I’m not here to fight.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘We’ve done all that.’ The urge to wipe the table clean of plate, cup and the guard’s grin was strong. ‘None of us have done anything to anyone. Yet we’ve been lied to, taken against our will, locked up, and now, you’re making me kill dogs for some mad woman’s entertainment. Why?’
‘Because.’
Dalip howled in frustration. ‘That’s not an answer. We don’t deserve to be treated this way.’
‘How else do you think you should be treated?’ The smile slipped. ‘Listen. Until you do something that earns you better treatment, you’re lower than maggots, you’re lower than that, even. Just dirt. You came with nothing, you are nothing: you can stay nothing, I don’t care. No one’s going to be kind to you◦– you can forget all that. You work, and maybe she’ll pay attention to you.’
‘I will not live like that.’
‘Then,’ he said, ‘you’ll die like that.’ He took Dalip’s plate away, and tipped the pips and crumbs on to the floor. ‘It’s not that bad. You’ll get used to it.’
‘That’s what they said about people calling me nappy-head in the street. I didn’t get used to it.’ Dalip clenched his jaw. ‘I want my patka back.’
‘Your what, now?’
‘Patka. My head covering. The black one.’
‘They were taken away for a reason.’ The man reached out for Dalip’s cup, but Dalip snatched it away and drained it.
‘What’s the reason?’
‘Because she wanted me to.’
Dalip passed the cup across the table. ‘It’s important to me. That and my turban, and the steel bracelet, and the comb, and the little sword. They’re what marks me out as a Sikh.’
‘So earn them.’
‘How?’
The man got up from the table, banged the plate against the top and simply put it back on the pile with the others. The cup went unwashed on to a shelf. Dalip looked up and around him, at the soot-stained wooden roof-beams, the cobwebbed corners, the rough, unfinished, unloved nature of everything.
‘Everyone’s different. For you? You know what you need to do.’
‘Fight? I won’t do that.’
The guard put his hand on the knife at his belt. ‘You’ll do it when you’re told to.’
‘No. I’m not going to be some sort of, whatever it is. Performing seal.’
‘Then the next time you go into the pit, you’ll die.’
‘I’m not going in there again. I’m just not.’
The knife, drawn in a flash, lunged across the table at Dalip, and he stepped back. ‘You’ll fight or you’ll die. Doesn’t bother me where you do it.’
Had Dalip imagined a hint of desperation? ‘She won’t be happy if I die in my cell, will she?’
‘I’ll drag you out by your mane, little lion man.’ The guard passed the knife hand to hand and began circling the table. Dalip began to side-step, keeping the man opposite.
‘The moment you touch my hair is the moment you’d better be ready to finish it one way or the other. Just because I won’t fight in your pit doesn’t mean I won’t fight in my cell.’
‘We’ll come in mob-handed and take you down. Fists and feet, just like they did in the forest.’
‘And once you’ve beaten me up and thrown me in front of her, what then? I’m not stupid. I know that that dog was just the beginning. Next time it’ll something bigger, with more teeth, and sooner or later I’ll slip or fall, or drop the knife, or just get beaten. So you can either stop this nonsense, or kill me now. I’m not dying because someone thinks it’s fun to watch.’
He’d moved around the table far enough that the door leading to the outside was at his back, and his guard was between the table and the wall. There was an opportunity, if he was willing to take it.
He slapped his palms on the table’s edge, then quickly turned them so that his fingers were underneath. Then he heaved.
The guard didn’t realise what was happening at first. The table top reared up at him, and caught him squarely in the chest. As it started to fall it kept on turning.
Dalip didn’t wait to see where it landed. He bolted for the door, wrestled with its unfamiliar latch for a second before dragging the wood aside and running through, heedless of where he might end up.