Far Pavilions (157 page)

Relieved of their weight, the clumsy craft righted itself and Zarin rose to his knees, and wringing the water from his uniform said bitterly: ‘There go two good men; and in these times we cannot afford to lose even one such. This has indeed been a costly campaign for the Guides. Too many have died or been sorely wounded already, and now four more of us are gone – and if it does not get dark soon, you and I may well die too. A plague on these sons of warlocks. Would that I…’ He broke off and his eyes narrowed: ‘You are hit!’ he said sharply.

‘A scratch only. And you?’

‘I have taken no hurt – as yet.’

But there had been no more shots from the cliff, perhaps because the light was now too poor and the raft no longer presented a possible mark to the watchers among the rocks. The river was a grey ribbon in the dusk and the raft no more than a bobbing shadow, as elusive as a moth or a bat flitting down the gorges. An hour later the two men and their burden were clear of the cliffs with the worst of the rapids behind them, and being swept forward in the starlight through a country less well adapted to ambush.

The day had been very hot, for the monsoon had not yet reached these northern latitudes, and among the parched and treeless hills the ground gave off the stored heat of the sun in almost visible waves, as though the doors of a furnace had been thrown open. But the Kabul River was fed by the snowfields and glaciers of the Hindu Kush, and as the night wind blew coolly off the water the steersman shivered and huddled above his pole.

The coffin had been lashed to the raft with a length of stout country-made rope, but the hemp had become sodden with the night dews and the spray from the rapids, and as the weight that it held shifted to the motion of the current, the rope stretched and sagged so that the coffin moved uneasily, as though it imprisoned someone who was alive and restless.

‘Lie still, Sahib, or we lose you at the next bend,’ grunted Zarin, addressing the dead. ‘Is there a knot on your side, Ashok?’

‘Two,’ said the steersman. ‘But I dare not tighten them in the dark. If we were to strike a rock or rough water while retying them, the whole thing would pull free and throw us into the river. You must wait until dawn. Besides, after steering all day my hands are too stiff for tying knots.’

‘And you a hillman,’ jeered Zarin. ‘Why, the night is as hot as Jehanum.’

‘And the river as cold as charity,’ retorted Ash. ‘It is snow water, and I have been in it twice, so I know. Had I realized that the current ran so swiftly and that the Mohmands would lie in wait for us, I would have thought twice before I asked to come with you on such a journey. It is a mad one, anyway, for what difference does it make where a man's body lies? Will Battye-Sahib care if he rests in the earth by Jalalabad or in the cemetery at Mardan? Not he! Nor would he have cared if after we had gone the Afridis dug him up to spit on him or scatter his bones.'

‘It is we of the Guides who would care,’ said Zarin shortly. ‘We do not permit our enemies to insult the bodies of our dead.’

‘Of our
Angrezi
dead,’ corrected Ash with an edge to his voice. ‘This war cost us the lives of others. Yet we left their bodies among the Afghan hills and brought away only this one.’

Zarin shrugged his shoulders and made no answer. He had discovered long ago the uselessness of arguing with Ashok who, it seemed, did not see things as most other men did. But presently he said: ‘Yet you
would
come – and not for my sake, either!’

Ash grinned in the darkness: ‘No, brother. You have always proved fairly capable of looking after yourself. I came, as you know, because I wish to speak with the Commandant-Sahib before it is too late. If I can only see him in time, I may be able to persuade him that this mission that they talk of is doomed to disaster and must be abandoned; or at the very least, postponed. Besides, they say that the Government will send an escort of the Guides with the new Envoy to Kabul, and offer the command of it to Hamilton-Sahib.’

‘SoSo I have heard,’ said Zarin. ‘And why not? It will be a further honour for him: and a great honour for us of the Guides.’

‘To die like rats in a trap? Not if I can help it! I shall do my best to see that he does not accept.’

‘You will not succeed. There is no officer in all the armies of the Raj who would refuse such an honour. And no regiment, either.’

‘Perhaps. But I must try. I have made very few friends in my life – which I suppose is a fault in me. Out of those few, two have meant a great deal to me: you and Hamilton-Sahib; and I can't face losing you both… I
cannot.
’

‘You will not,’ said Zarin reassuringly. ‘For one thing, they may not send me to Kabul. And if – when – we win back to Mardan, you will see things in a better light. It is only because you are over-tired, and because life has been hard for you of late, that you talk like this.’

‘Oh no I don't. I talk like this because I have spoken to too many men who do not know or talk to the Sahib-log or to soldiers of the Sirkar – and also to very many others who have never even seen either – and from them I have heard things that have made me afraid.’

Zarin was silent for a space, then he said slowly: ‘I think, myself, that this has been your great misfortune: that you can talk to such people. Years ago when you were a child, my brother Awal Shah said to Browne-Sahib, who was then our Commandant, that it was a pity that you should forget to speak and think as one of us; there being few Sahibs who could do so, and such a one might be of great service to our Regiment. Therefore, because of his words, it was arranged that you should
not
forget. That was perhaps a mistake; for it has been your fate to belong to neither East nor West, yet to have one foot in both - like a trick rider at a
Pagal
-Gymkhana who stands astride between two galloping horses.’

‘That is so,’ agreed Ash with a short laugh. ‘And I fell between them long ago, and was torn in two. It is time I tried belonging to myself only – if it is not already too late for that. Yet if I had it all to do again -’

‘You would do the same as you have done; that you know,’ said Zarin, ‘– seeing that each man's fate is tied about his neck and he cannot escape it. Give me the pole: by the sound, there are rapids ahead; and if you do not have some rest that wound in your arm will give you trouble before morning. We shall not be attacked in the dark, and I will wake you before moonrise. See if you can get some sleep, for we may need all our wits tomorrow. You had better tie one of those rope-ends about your waist before you lie down, or else you will slide off into the water if the raft should tilt.’

Ash complied with the suggestion and Zarin grunted approval. ‘Good. Now take these. It may help you to sleep, and serve to lessen the pain in your arm.’ He handed over several small pellets of opium which Ash swallowed obediently. ‘
Faugh
! how the Sahib stinks. Have we anything with which to plug that bullet hole?’

Ash tore a piece of cloth from his turban and Zarin stuffed it into the hole. They had nothing to eat, the stores they had brought with them having been lost when the raft tilted and threw the bodies of the Sikhs into the river, but both men were too tired to feel hungry; and at least they were assured of a plentiful supply of water. Ash surrendered the pole to Zarin, and having washed his arm and bound up the wound, lay down alongside the coffin. But as the raft drifted onward down the Kabul River he found that he could not sleep. His arm throbbed painfully and he lay awake and tried to think out what he should say to Colonel Jenkins when -if they reached Mardan.

He would have to present the information he had acquired in such a way that the Commandant would not only believe him, but be able to convince all those senior officers and officials whom he himself could not hope to make any impression on that this was the truth. But the arguments he needed eluded him, and as the opium took effect, he fell asleep.

The current swept the raft forward out of the shadow of the Mallagori hills and began to lose force as the river widened.

The slower pace aroused Ash, and he saw that the dawn had come and that the land ahead was level plain. They had won through. Though for an appreciable time that meant nothing to him, because he could not remember where he was… Then, as the dawn light broadened over the wide river and the wider land, his brain cleared; and realizing that it was morning, he found it hard to believe that so much time could have elapsed since Zarin had taken the pole from him and told him to rest. It seemed only a moment ago: yet the night was over –

In a little while, fifteen or twenty minutes at most if their luck held, they would be across the invisible border that divided Afghanistan from the North-West Frontier Province; and after that it would only be a matter of floating with the current that would carry them past Michni and Mian Khel to Abazai, and southward, below Charsadda, to Nowshera. They would be back in British India and Zarin could afford to tie up to the bank and sleep for an hour or two; there could have been no sleep for him during the past night, that was certain.

A breath of wind ruffled the glassy smoothness of the river and Ash shivered as it blew on him, and discovered with a vague sense of surprise that his clothes were soaking wet and that the whole raft ran with water. It looked as though they must have had a rough passage through rapids, and fairly recently, for no dew could have been heavy enough to account for it; which presumably meant that he must have slept for at least part of the night, though he could have sworn that he had not closed his eyes. He heard a rush and a fluster of wings and water as a group of paddy-birds took off in startled haste and flew down river, and realized that the raft was no longer in midstream but drifting in towards the left-hand bank.

A minute or two later sand and pebbles crunched beneath it as it drove in on a shallow ledge below a bank fringed with tussocks of grass and a few thorn bushes and jolted to a stop, and he knew that they must be back in British India again. Zarin would not have risked tying up while they were still in tribal territory – or even within gun-shot of it.

Ash stirred at last and made the discovery that he was tied to the coffin beside him by a length of rope. He had forgotten that. He sat up, feeling dazed and stupid, and began to untie it, fumbling with numbed fingers at the sodden knot. As he did so, a voice that he barely recognized said hoarsely: ‘Allah be praised! You are not dead then,’ and turning to look across the dripping canvas he saw that Zarin's face was grey and drawn with exhaustion, that he had lost turban and kulla, and his uniform was dripping wet as though he had been swimming in the river.

He made an effort to reply, but the words clogged on his tongue and he could not speak, and Zarin said huskily: ‘When you did not stir as we were flung like a leaf in a millstream through a mile-long canyon little wider than a city gate, or when the whirlpools caught us and spun us round and round like a top, I was sure that you were dead, because you rolled to and fro at the end of that rope like a corpse and did not lift head or hand even when the waves washed over you.’

‘I… I was not asleep,’ said Ash haltingly. ‘I can't have been. I didn't close my eyes… at least, I don't think so –’

‘Ah; that was the opium,’ said Zarin. ‘I ought not to have given you so much. But at least it must have rested you a little. I myself am an old man before my time, and I hope never to endure such a night again. I am stiff in every limb.’

He drove the pole into the wet sand so as to hold the raft against the bank, and straightened himself wearily. He had fought the river all night, single-handed and without being able to relax for a moment – not even long enough to discover whether Ash had been more severely wounded than he had thought, and was either dead or bleeding to death. His hands were raw and blistered from working the heavy pole that was their only means of steering, and every muscle in his body was so cramped from strain that he could barely move. He was also hungry, thirsty and drenched to the skin. But where a European would have slaked his thirst from the river and then set about finding something to eat, Zarin first washed himself ritually and then turned to face towards Mecca and began the prayers that the Faithful say at dawn.

Ash had learned those prayers long ago. It had been necessary that he should know them (and be seen to say them), during the years when he had helped to track down Dilasah Khan through Afghanistan – and more recently, when he had gone back there at Wigram Battye's instigation in the guise of an Afridi. He had said them daily at the proper times, since they were as much a part of his disguise as the clothes he wore or the language he spoke, and to neglect them would have invited remark; so that now, instinctively, seeing Zarin begin the ritual, he too rose to face Mecca and automatically began to murmur the familiar prayers. But he did not finish them. Zarin broke off, and turning his head said angrily: ‘
Chup
! You are safe here. There is no need for play-acting!’

Ash stopped, open-mouthed, startled into attention by the look on Zarin's face rather than the anger in the harshly spoken words. It was a look he had never seen there before, and had never thought to see, a mixture of revulsion and animosity that was as shocking as it was unexpected, and that made him feel curiously breathless, as though he had walked into a solid object in the dark and winded himself. He was aware that his heart had begun to beat heavily, thudding like a drum in his chest.

Zarin turned abruptly back to his prayers, and Ash stared at him, frowning and intent, as if he were seeing something he recognized but had never conceived of finding here…

Because he had always known that to Hindus, whose gods were legion, caste was all-important, and that the only way to become a Hindu was to be born one, he had accepted the fact that as far as they were concerned he would always remain on the far side of an invisible line drawn by religion and impossible to cross. But with Koda Dad and Zarin and others of their faith (who worshipped one god only, were prepared to accept converts and had no inhibitions about eating and drinking with anyone, irrespective of creed, nationality or class) there had seemed to be no similar barrier; and even though their Koran taught them that the slaying of Unbelievers was a meritorious act rewarded by entry into Paradise, he had never felt less than at home with them. Until now…