He stared again at the moss-covered marble instruments.
But I'll be back. If she'll be here, absolutely nothing could stop me.
CHAPTER NINE
The two chitahs tensed at the same instant and pulled taut the chains on their jewel-studded collars. They were tawny, dark-spotted Indian hunting leopards, and they rode in carpeted litters, one on each side of the elephant's back. Each wore a brocade saddlecloth signifying its rank, and now both began to flick the black-and-white striped tips of their tails in anticipation.
Prince Jadar caught their motion and reined in his dun stallion; the bright morning sunshine glanced off his freshly oiled olive skin and highlighted the crevices of his lean angular face and his tightly trimmed short beard. He wore a forest-green hunting turban, secured with a heavy strand of pearls, and a dark green jacket emblazoned with his own royal crest. His fifty-man Rajput guard had drawn alongside, and their horses tossed their heads and pawed impatiently, rattling the arrows in the brocade quivers by each man's saddle.
Then Jadar spotted the nilgai, large bovine Indian deer, grazing in a herd upwind near the base of a low-lying hill. With a flick of his hand he signaled the keepers who rode alongside the to begin removing the leopards' saddlecloths. He watched as first the male and then the female shook themselves and stretched their paws in readiness.
"Fifty rupees the male will make the first kill." Jadar spoke quietly to Vasant Rao, the moustachioed young Rajput captain who rode alongside. The commander of the prince's personal guards, he was the only man in India Jadar trusted fully.
"Then give me two hundred on the female, Highness."