Path of the Tiger

sensation tickled the nape of his neck with wispy feathers, and he looked up and saw the eyes of the prisoner fixed on him, uncannily bright within the heavy shadows of her hood. An unsettling feeling of discomfort rumbled deep within his guts, and for a second he felt almost like turning and fleeing into the forest.
Still, his curiosity about the outsiders proved to be stronger than his unease, and he got up from his squatting position and traipsed gingerly across the grass, approaching the nearest soldier, a tall, heavily-built Russian with nearly corpse-pale skin and a severe-looking face dominated by a bushy red beard. Ao swallowed slowly, his mouth suddenly dry as he stepped up to the man, who towered intimidatingly over him. Forcing himself to flash a meek, gap-toothed grin at the soldier while avoiding direct eye contact, Ao reached out to touch the man’s gleaming rifle, which was slung over his shoulder via a strap.
The soldier spun around, rage flashing like ignited gunpowder in his green irises, his right hand darting straight for the hilt of the cutlass bayonet sheathed on his hip, but a sharp word from Higgins froze his hand in mid-air before he could draw the weapon.
‘Easy there, Boreyev!’ the Englishman barked in flawless Russian. ‘Allow the lad to inspect your rifle, please. These tribesmen do not share our views on private property, and, after all, these weapons are the carrot with which we intend to tempt the mule.’
Boreyev scowled at Ao but nonetheless obeyed his superior, and he unslung his rifle and handed it to the young hunter, after removing both the magazine and the bullet that was in the chamber. Higgins strode briskly over to the pair of them, eager to make some headway in terms of procuring a guide.
‘The latest, most advanced technology,’ Higgins said in Russian with a congenial smile to Ao, who was turning the weapon over in his hands, a look of quiet awe glowing on his coarse-featured face. ‘Winchester 1907 model, with a fifteen-shot magazine,’ Higgins continued, not bothered by the fact that Ao could not understand a word he was saying. ‘Semi-automatic, .351 calibre bullet. You could drop a deer from nearly a mile away with one of these, and should a bear or tiger ambush you in the wilderness, you’d likely walk away with its pelt slung over your shoulder instead of ending up in its belly.’
The interpreter hurried over to them and breathlessly translated what he had picked up of Higgins’ words. Ao nodded, stroking the polished wooden stock of the weapon with appreciative fingertips.
‘As I said to the elder of your clan,’ Higgins continued, the broadness of his smile half-concealed beneath his walrus moustache, but nonetheless shining brightly in his eyes, ‘if she changes her mind and allows one of you to guide us to the sacred site out there, all of these weapons will be yours when we have completed our mission.’
‘All of this?’ Ao murmured, his awestruck eyes fixed as if by cables to the rifle in his hands.
Higgins did not need to comprehend Ao’s words to understand the young man’s question.
‘All of this,’ he replied in Russian before the interpreter could say anything.
‘Forget what the old crone says,’ Ao hissed. The contempt flavouring his dismissal was biting, and his tone dropped to a conspiratorial whisper as he continued, while his eyes darted from left to right, as if checking to see if they were being watched. ‘She’s a senile fool, blinded by superstition and hamstrung by outdated customs. I’ll take you out there myself before the camp rises tomorrow.’
***
30thJune
‘This damned savage better know where we are,’ Captain Vasilevsky growled, the low sun sparking a flare in his eyes as its rays bled through the endless vertical labyrinth of trees. ‘If he’s leading us in circles through this forest, I’ll rip his blasted entrails out with my bare hands! We’ve been traipsing along behind him like lost sheep in a winter night for nearly ten days now!’
‘Calm down, Vasilevsky,’ Higgins muttered. ‘He knows where he’s going. Haven’t you noticed him making a note of the landmarks and trees we’ve passed? You must understand, my good sir, that these people view the world through an entirely different lens to that which serves as a pair of unseen spectacles to us, who come from civilised places. To these people every tree in the taiga is an individual, its features as distinguishable to them as the faces of people in a crowd are to us. He knows the way, yes, this young man knows the way, of this I am assured. Besides, we’re close … byJove we’re close, I can feel it in the air! Can you not feel it, my good man? That sensation of … of static electricity all around us, almost. I can feel it, Vasilevsky, in my blood, in my very bones.’
Vasilevsky turned away from the scattered shafts of sunlight that had managed to penetrate the tight-packed canopy of leaves and boughs, and stared ahead, looking past Ao – who was leading the expeditionary force – at the ominous, all-encompassing wall of shadow that seemed to be swallowing up the entirety of the forest ahead, turning day into night and creating an unsettling sensation of an inversion of time itself.
‘Bah!’ Vasilevsky snarled. ‘It feels like we’re lost, lost in this cursed wilderness! How long since we last saw a sign of any other people, huh? I’ll tell you when: when we left the savages’ filthy camp, that’s when! Nothing but trees and animals, trees and blasted animals out here! It was good sport to shoot bear, wolves, elk and deer for the first few days, but now I’m even sick of that.’ Vasilevsky’s voice then dropped in register, and his eyes narrowed and darted from side to side. ‘And what’s more,’ he continued, ‘the last day or two, I’ve felt like we’ve been … watched. I can’t shake the damn feeling, Higgins. It’s like this bloody forest has eyes. A