The Siege of Black Mango Fort

Script

EXT. BLACK MANGO GROVE - NIGHT

A moon like a dull coin. Mangos hang black and swollen over a low ridge. Beyond: a ring of COOKFIRES, a sprawl of tents, and—half-swallowed by trees—a squat mud-brick fort with a single lantern burning at its gate.

SILAS CROWE and ASHA MUKHERJEE crawl through wet grass. Crowe’s red coat is gone; he wears rough Bengali cloth. Asha’s hair is wrapped, her face smudged with ash.

ASHA
(whispering)
No English. If they hear your vowels, we die.

CROWE
My vowels are obedient.

Asha peels back a curtain of leaves. A REBEL GUARD paces, spear tapping the earth in a bored rhythm. On a stump beside him: a COMPANY CRATE, stenciled with a crown—pried open, EMPTY.

ASHA
See? “Captured powder.”

CROWE
Empty barrels don’t explode.

ASHA
They invoice the capture. The prince gets the story.

Crowe’s eyes track the camp—men sharpening tulwars, boys carrying water, a wounded man coughing red into the mud.

CROWE
They look hungry.

ASHA
That’s part of it.

A DRUMBEAT begins—low, deliberate. The camp shifts. Men rise as if pulled by a string.

Asha grips Crowe’s sleeve.

ASHA
Come. Before the drum calls the fort.

They move, crouched, toward the fort’s shadow.

INT. BLACK MANGO FORT - OUTER HALL - NIGHT

Mud walls sweating in the heat. Oil lamps. Asha leads Crowe past stacked sacks labeled SALTPETRE—some split, spilling white crystals like bone dust.

A CLERK in a turban scribbles at a low table. Not a rebel warrior—an accountant’s hands, ink-stained.

Asha freezes. Crowe’s gaze hardens.

CROWE
(under breath)
There are ledgers in every war.

Asha slips behind a hanging cloth. Crowe follows, pressed to the wall.

Through a slit: PRINCE RAGHUNATH (30s, regal, exhausted) sits on a carpet. Across from him: a COMPANY AGENT in plain indigo, face hidden by shadow, a signet ring catching lamp-light.

Between them—papers. Seals. Coin.

COMPANY AGENT
Your men will believe the Company starves you. The villages will believe you butchered them.

PRINCE RAGHUNATH
My oat