India 1857: The British East India Company's disregard for the religious beliefs of the Indian soldiers who man their army makes mutiny inevitable. With 230,000 Indian Sepoys to 45,000 British soldiers the balance of power has become untenable. When the first English Commandant is killed by a frustrated Sepoy, the entire Ganges valley explodes into war. One British outpost after another goes up in flames along the Ganges. The common man-driven to desperate measures by poverty and generations of inherited debt-is trapped between native kingdoms where convicted felons are trampled to death by elephants and British protectorates where they are blown to bits by canons. Helpless flotsam caught in the backlash are the victims: Sepoy Daulat Ram who risks arrest and execution by carrying his English Captain's five-year-old daughter to safety; his brother Kamal who struggles to support his extended family and protect them from the mysterious terror that stalks the village; while Lila, heir to the impoverished kingdom of Paramgar, forced into a politically expedient marriage with a stranger in spite of her hopeless entanglement with a British officer, is hounded from one end of the country to the other in a bid to escape her almost certain annihilation.