They advanced towards Delhi all at once, more or less, and they fell on the Muslim army retreating up the Ganges on both sides of the river, as soon as the Chinese were in position at the foot of the Nepali hills.

Of course the right flank extended up into the hills, each army trying to outflank the other. Bai and Iwa's squad was counted among the mountain troops now because of their experiences in the Dudh Kosi, and so orders came to seize and hold the hills up to the first ridge at least, which entailed taking some higher points on ridges even farther north. They moved by night, learning to climb in the dark along trails found and marked by Gurkha scouts. Bai too became a day scout, and as he crawled up brush choked ravines he worried not that he would be discovered by any Muslims, for they stuck to their trails and encampments without fail, but whether or not a mass of hundreds of men could follow the tortuous monkey routes he was forced to use in some places. 'That's why they send you, Bai,' Iwa explained. 'If you can do it, anyone can.' He smiled and added, 'That's what Kuo would say.'

Each night Bai went up and down the line guiding and checking to see if routes went as he had expected, learning and studying, and only going to sleep after observing the sunrise from some new hideaway.

They were still doing that when the Indians broke through on the south flank. They heard the distant artillery and then saw smoke pluming into the white skies of a hazy morning, the haze a possible mark of the monsoon's arrival. To make a full breakout assault with the monsoon coming passed all understanding, it seemed possible it would go right to the head of the list of the recently augmented Seven Great Errors, and as the afternoon's clouds bloomed, and built, and dropped black on them, blasting foothills and plain with volleys of thick lightning which struck the metal in several gun emplacements on ridges, it was amazing to hear that the Indians were pressing on unimpeded. They had, among all their other accomplishments, perfected war in the rain. These were not Chinese Daoist Buddhist rationalists, Bai and Iwa agreed, not the Fourth Assemblage of Military Talent, but wild men of all manner of religion, even more spiritual than the Muslims, as the Muslims' religion seemed all bluster and wish fulfilment and support of tyranny with its Father God. The Indians had a myriad of gods, some elephant headed or six armed, even death was a god, both female and male life, nobility, there were gods for each, each human quality deified. Which made for a motley, godly people, very ferocious in war, among many other things – great cooks, very sensual people, scents, tastes, music, colour in their uniforms, detailed art, it was all right there in their camps to be seen, men and women standing around a drummer singing, the women tall and big breasted, big eyed and thick eyebrowed, awesome women really, arms like a woodsman's and filling all the sharpshooter regiments of the Indians. 'Yes,' one Indian adjutant had said in Tibetan, 'women are better shots, women from Travancore especially. They start when they are five, that may be all there is to it. Start boys at five and they would do as well.'

Now the rains were full of black ash, falling in a watery mud. Black rain. The call came for Bai and Iwa's squad to hurry down to the plain and join the general assault as soon as they could. They ran down the trails and assembled some twenty li behind the front line of the battle, and started marching. They were to hit at the very end of the flank, on the plain itself but right at the foot of the foothills, ready to scale the first rise of the hills if there was any resistance to their charge.

That was the plan, but as they came up to the front word came that the Muslims had broken and were in full retreat, and they joined the chase.

But the Muslims were in flight, the Indians close on their heels, and the Chinese could only follow the two faster armies across the fields and forests, over canals and through the breaks in bamboo fences and walls, and groups of houses too small even to be called villages, all still and silent, usually burned, and yet slowing them down somehow nevertheless. Dead bodies on the ground in knots, already bloating. The full meaning of embodiment made manifest here by its opposite, diesel bodiment, death – departure of the soul, leaving behind so little: a putrefying mass, stuff like what one found in a sausage. Nothing human about it. Except for here or there, a face undestroyed, even sometimes undisturbed; an Indian man lying there on the ground for instance, staring sideways but utterly still, not moving, not breathing; the statue of what must have been a very impressive man, well built, strong shoulders, capable a commanding, high-foreheaded, moustached face, eyes like fish in the market, round and surprised, but still impressive. Bai had to say a charm to be able to walk by him, and then they were in a zone where the land itself was smoking like the dead zone of Gansu, pools of silvery gassed water reeking in water holes and the air full of smoke and dust, cordite, blood haze. The bardo itself would be looking much like this, crowded now with new arrivals all angry and confused, in agony, the worst possible way to enter the bardo. Here the empty mirror of it, blasted and still. The Chinese army marched through in silence.

Bai found Iwa, and they made their way into the burned ruins of Bodh Gaya, to a park on the west bank of the Phalgu River. This was where the Bodhi Tree had stood, they were told, the old assattha tree, pipal tree, under which the Buddha had received enlightenment so many centuries before. The area had taken as many hits as the peak of Chomolungma, and no trace of tree or park or village or stream remained, only black rendered mud for as far as the eye could see.

A group of Indian officers discussed root fragments someone had found in the mud near what some thought had been the location of the tree. Bai didn't recognize the language. He sat down with a small fragment of bark in his hands. Iwa went over to see what the officers were saying.

Then Kuo stood before Bai. 'Cut is the branch,' he said, offering a small twig from the Bodhi Tree.

Bai took it from him. From his left hand; Kuo's right hand was still missing. 'Kuo,' Bai said, and swallowed. 'I'm surprised to see you.'

Kuo gave him a look.

'So we are in the bardo after all,' Bai said.

Kuo nodded. 'You didn't always believe me, did you, but it's true. Here you see it ' waving his hand at the black smoking plain. 'The floor of the universe. Again.'

'But why?' Bai said. 'I just don't get it.'

'Get what?'

'Get what I'm supposed to be doing. Life after life – I remember them now!' He thought about it, seeing back through the years. 'I remember them now, and I've tried in every one. I keep trying!' Out across the black plain it seemed they could see together the faint afterimages of their previous lives, dancing in the infinite silk of lightly falling rain. 'It doesn't seem to be making any difference. What I do makes no difference.'

'Yes, Bai. Perhaps so. But after all you are a fool. A good natured fucking idiot.'

'Don't, Kuo, I'm not in the mood,' though his face was attempting painfully to smile, pleased to be ribbed again. Iwa and he had tried to do this for each other, but no one could bring it off like Kuo. 'I may not be a great leader like you but I've done some good things, and they haven't made a bit of difference. There seem to be no rules of dharma that actually pertain.'

Kuo sat down next to him, crossed his legs and made himself comfortable. 'Well, who knows? I've been thinking these things over myself, this time out in the bardo. There's been a lot of time, believe me – so many have been tossed out here at once that there's quite a waiting line, it's just like the rest of the war, a logistical nightmare, and I've been watching you all struggle on, bashing against things like moths in a bottle, and I know I did it too, and I've wondered. I've thought sometimes that maybe it went wrong back when I was Kheim and you were Butterfly, a little girl we all loved. Do you remember that one?'