“Captain Russell, I am gratified by your eagerness, but you will please wait until one or the other of them is down.” With the reminder, I could feel the guards behind me, knew they had raised their guns in preparation. I loosed my grip on the spear I had unconsciously lifted, and stared across the terai at the fast-closing figures, burning with fear and with the painful irony of the entire situation: If the man on the white Arab had known who his magician was, known he had Sherlock Holmes in his collection, he would have been more eager to hide him than to hunt him.

I nearly whooped when I saw Holmes leap into the trees, bare yards in front of the rider, who reined back hard before his mount pelted headlong into trunk and branch. The horse half-reared at the harsh hand on its reins, and Nesbit began to circle, looking for a more congenial way in. He might have followed on foot, but it looked as if he wished to preserve the advantage of height in the face of his prey’s longer spear. He trotted south thirty or forty yards, then turned back and cantered past the place where Holmes had disappeared.

Thick, dark forest began in earnest two miles away, rising up to the endless snow-capped mountains that sheltered Kashmir and, beyond it, Tibet. Unfortunately, this stand before us was in no way connected with the greater forest—had it been, the prisoner would never have been allowed anywhere near it. Still, Holmes could use it as the pigs had, as shelter and weapon against the hunter. It’s the hidden tusks that kill, the maharaja himself had said.

Abruptly, a herd of pigs launched itself out of the stand fifty feet or so from Nesbit. My horse jerked in response, eager to get on with the business of the day, but I kept him in line, murmuring for him to wait, that he’d get his turn to run in just a while. The sudden flushing of game loosed a chatter among the men behind me, but it quickly died away as realisation of the nature of the prey returned to them. None of them would risk speaking out against their master, I thought, but I noted their fear, and beneath it their disapproval, as something that might be used.

Nesbit had reached the northern end of the trees and slowed to circle around. We could still see him, his light coat and the colour of the horse flitting behind the trees. The guards did not care for his vanishing from their sights. One of them said something in the local tongue, but the maharaja’s sharp reply evidently told them not to move. And indeed, while I was there, they did not need to; I knew better than they did that Captain Geoffrey Nesbit would not ride away and leave me.