Supping With Panthers by Tom Holland Read Free Book Online

of sinew; I could see his throat, frothy with blood, as it contracted and opened, for all the world as though hungry to be fed. He took a step towards us; his comrades, who had gathered behind him, now began to inch forward in a single pack.
    ‘Please,’ Eliot begged again. ‘For God’s sake, run!’ He reached for me suddenly and pulled me by the arm; I tumbled, picked myself up and, as I did so, one of the Russians broke from the pack and came stalking towards me like some hungry wild beast. I raised my gun to fire, but my arm seemed turned to lead. I stared into the Russian’s eyes; they were burning with a look of the most terrible greed, yet somehow they were still as cold as before, so that the effect was one of the utmost ghastliness. Despite myself I took a step backwards, and at once heard from my adversaries a queer rustling, whittering sound, so that had it not sounded so damnable I would have called it laughter. Suddenly the Russian bared his teeth, then literally leaped up as though to tear out my throat I put up my hands to push him away and then, from behind my shoulder, I heard a pistol shot, and the Russian fell bade dead with a bullet drilled neatly between his eyes. I looked round to see Eliot standing there, the revolver still in his hands.
    ‘I thought you weren’t prepared to use a gun?’ I asked.
    He shrugged. ‘Cometh the hour,’ he muttered. He looked down at the Russian, who was starting to twitch as the other had done. ‘Now, Captain,’ Eliot whispered politely, ‘now, Sergeant-Major – will you please, for God’s sake, come with me and run}
    We did so, of course. Writing that down now, in the comfort of my Wiltshire study, I know it sounds bad, but it was not the men we were fleeing – rather their hellish disease. By George, though, infected as they were, they could still not half move. For as Eliot, the Sergeant-Major and myself, having found the steps by the side of the shrine, began to scramble our way up the mountainside, so also did the Russians start to follow us. The going on these steps was easier than it had been on the previous rock-face, and we all made pretty fair speed; but remorselessly our enemy followed us. I suppose they were bred to it, for your average Ivan is a hardy brute -and yet our pursuers had little true agility, for even as they scaled the rocks they seemed clumsy and doltish, and one would almost have said that their energy came exclusively from their desire to capture us. Certainly, glancing down at them, they seemed scarcely human at all, so hungry and eager their faces gleamed, like a pack of dhole – the Deccan wild dog – smelling our blood.
    Inexorably they started to catch up with us; at length the nearest was scarcely an arm’s reach away. By now I had had enough of showing him my back; I paused, to tum and face things out.
    ‘No,’ Eliot shouted desperately; again, he pointed east towards the mountain peaks. ‘It’s almost dawn!’ he cried.
    But the Russian was too dose to flee from now. Again cold, burning eyes were staring into mine; the Russian almost hissed with venom, and he tensed and crouched as though ready to leap. At that same moment, however, the first ray of sun spilled up into the sky and the peak of the mountain was lost in a blaze of red. The Russian paused; he fell back; and all the others slowed down as well and then stopped.
    At the same moment I felt a bullet whistle past me an inch from my nose. It bit into the rock, and splinters showered out between our pursuers and myself. I looked up to see Haggard standing on the edge of an outcrop, his rifle aimed, ready to have a second shot.
    ‘What the hell are you doing, man?’ I bellowed. ‘Just get on up the path!’
    But Haggard, so frayed his nerves had become, ignored me – the only time a soldier has ever disobeyed my command. ‘No, sir!’ he screamed. ‘They’re vampires! Vampires, sir! We must destroy them all!’
    ‘Vampires?’ I glanced at Eliot and shook