Murdo's War (25 page)

He folded the map and eased his aching legs. Then, wondering how he could explain to Colonel von Kramm, field officer in command of Operation Flood-Tide, the threat of a fourteen year old boy, he turned reluctantly from the lodge and made his way back down the long drive. The snow drifted through the trees. Already the tracks they had made twenty minutes earlier were almost obliterated.

At the same time Murdo was high above the valley, and climbing. Uncertain of his position, and doubtful that Kinbrace could really have lain round the next bend in the valley, his only thought was to keep ahead of the Germans. All his energies were directed into pushing on, pushing on, for the moment it did not matter where, so long as his feet might take him beyond the reach of those whipping bullets. But truly he did not have much strength left. He seemed to have gained a little time through entering the house and crossing the copse, but the nervous energy which had sustained him during the chase round the loch and down the road to the lodge, had gone. In its place a state of physical and mental weariness had settled like a blanket about his shoulders and legs. But his determination, though numb, burned as strongly as ever, and never faltered as he plodded up and up towards the shoulder of the long slope and the eastern summits.

Far below, the black clump of pine trees had long vanished into the swirling snow. His entire world had shrunk to a white circle of hillside two hundred yards across, flecked with black in the lee of rocky outcrops and clumps of heather. An arctic hare burst from under his feet and sprang off at incredible speed up the steep slope of the hill. A pair of grouse clattered away, calling loudly as they swung in a long low circle behind him, to settle again not very far from where they had risen.

He bent and broke a crust of snow from the edge of his footprint. The ice was beautifully sharp in his throat, and he crunched the aching-cold crystals in his teeth as he walked on.

Although only an hour or two after dawn, the morning was darkening as the clouds thickened and the snow fell still more heavily. The little world closed in upon him. The slight breeze drifted the flakes against his face, where they settled on eyebrows and eyelashes, cheeks and lips, tickling and bitterly cold as they melted. His toorie had vanished in the loch, and his shock of black hair, still wet from the ducking, was covered with a cap of snow. The whole front of his body, khaki blouse and thick blue trousers, was obliterated in a clinging white blanket that shivered off as the cloth wrinkled beneath it. Socks and trouser bottoms were thick with little balls of ice, moulded solid, packed tight around the gaps at the top of his boots. As he breathed, the whirling flakes pricked the inside of his nose and mouth.

And so he plodded on, unaware after a time how far he had come, thoughtless of where he was going. Behind him the moulding drifts filled in his footprints. The slope levelled out into a broad plateau. All around him the land spread out into the falling snow, flat and featureless.

After a time he noticed that his feet and ankles were black, smearing clots and stains of mud across the snow. He looked back at the line of inky footsteps, wondering which way to go to climb out of the bog. But there was no way of knowing, so he trudged on, noting the direction of the snowflakes so that he could keep a fairly straight course by the wind.

Abruptly, not a minute later, he fell sidelong as a leg was gone from beneath him into the mire. He struggled upright, trapped in the ooze right to the fork in his legs. He pulled his free leg beneath him, and levering with his hands and knee dragging the leg out. It was covered to the thigh with an evil-smelling mantle of black mud, which oozed down and fell in gobbets on to the snow.

Grunting, he pulled himself to his feet and looked for a way round the soft patch. He imagined it looked a little better to the left and turned his face in that direction. For a few steps the earth supported him, then again his leg slipped from sight and he lurched forward, wrenching his wounded thigh as he fell. For long moments he lay there, collecting himself, then a second time hauled his fouled leg from the sucking mud. Lumps of snow fell into the black crater. Panting with fatigue, he pulled the hair from his eyes with a muddy hand and peered once more into the veils of white.

How long that nightmare crossing of the bog took, Murdo never knew. Time and again he plunged into the mud. There seemed no way of telling the treacherous places from firm ground, for the frosts had covered the earth with a crust of ice and the snow was over all. At each footstep he hesitated, uncertain whether the ground would support him, or merely take his weight for a moment before he broke through once more into the soft mud beneath. At length he learned to steer clear of the smooth, level patches.

Half an hour – an hour. Murdo was panting. His sweat mingled with the melting snow in his face. His body was hot, burning – then chilled through and through, gripped down his back and across his stomach by the sodden clothes. He felt so weak. His legs trembled and would hardly go where he wanted them. He was frightened; he had never felt like that before. He cast about, this way and that; there seemed no way out of the terrible bog. He forgot to check the wind direction and retraced his steps, then circled and crossed them again. Where were the Germans? Where was he? No landmark, no slope of land. He might be no more than a hundred yards from where he set off. The stumbling, blind passage had completely destroyed his sense of direction. The very wind seemed to veer and switch direction as he stood still, the snowflakes whirling about him in the gloom of the morning. Morning – midday more like!

He forced himself to take ten deep breaths. ‘Your head, Murdo,’ he said out loud. ‘Use your head!’ But he could not think straight, his head was swimming. For a long time he stood, and the wind froze him to the marrow, shivering and cramping. Vaguely he tried to recall the wind direction he had followed. Had the snow been into the left side of his face? He thought so, and turning once more so that the flakes drove on the whole in that direction, started forward yet again.

‘One – more – step – Murdo. One – more – step – Murdo,’ he chanted underneath his breath at each footfall, forcing his uncertain legs to support him and carry him forward over the treacherous and uneven ground. It seemed as if he would never reach the other side, as if there
was
no other side. How he longed to lie and rest; how he mistrusted that wind. His struggle against the Germans seemed nothing compared with the struggle he was now having to put up for his life, against the Highland winter and the very mountains themselves.

But at last, when he felt he could surely stand no longer, he became aware of rising ground ahead, saw a little hillock, and dragged himself heavily towards it. The earth was firm beneath his feet. Too numb with exhaustion even to be thankful, he found a boulder and sank behind it into the drifts of snow.

The struggle was over. His breathing was deep. It was so warm and sheltered there. A comfortable glow spread through his body, and his relaxing legs trembled pleasantly as the heat stole through his muscles. It was so restful. He was so tired. His eyes slowly closed, and his head nodded on to his chest.

The rough, icy feel of the cloth jerked him back into consciousness, Black eyes wide with alarm, he pulled himself back from the brink of sleep. No – no sleep! He could die if he fell asleep, more than once he had heard the men say it: as you grew colder you sank deeper and deeper into unconsciousness, and did not wake up. But he must have rest, his body craved for it. Brushing the snow from beneath him, Murdo pulled his jacket close and huddled into the shelter of the rock.

His stomach ached, hot fires burned in his throat. Time and again he sucked a lump of snow to cool it down. It would have been good if he had held on to the whisky bottle to put some warmth into him, but that too was gone into the depths of the loch. He wondered where the Germans were. Wherever they might be, there was nothing he could do about it.

Murdo need not have feared. By the time Gunner and Arne had reached the summit of the slope above Strath Halladale, his tracks were no more than slight irregularities in the snow-smooth wilderness of heather and long grass. The bog had defeated them completely. Worn out and black to the waist, they had turned their backs to the wind and headed down into the comparatively sheltered country of the strath. An hour and a half before Murdo found shelter behind the rock, they were smoking cigarettes in one of the stables at the lodge, keeping themselves warm beneath a good thickness of clean straw. Two pairs of foul and miry trousers hung over one of the beams, frozen rigid and not drying out at all.

Henry Smith joined them an hour later, smothered in snow and in savage mood, though a second troop train had roared past him on its way south, revealing the success of the German plan. There had been no sign of the wretched boy or Peter. He had discovered, however, that the telephone was working in the village of Kinbrace, three miles to the south. Having heard Gunner’s discouraging report, he set out after a short rest to report to Colonel von Kramm.

When he returned, late on that Saturday afternoon, his face was pale and pinched, from the conversation as much as the blizzard. He shook the snow from his jacket and flung himself down in the straw, too depressed even to swear. As he had anticipated, the colonel had not been impressed by his story. He had not said very much, that was not his way, but he had a certain way of saying it.

‘I see. A boy of… fourteen, did you say?… And four men dead?… You told him all about ‘Flood-Tide’ and now you don’t know where he is... How old did you say?… and there were ten of you… Yes, I appreciate there only seem to be a handful left. And Bjorn Larvik isn’t with you – that’s a pity… Well, there isn’t much one can say. None of the other groups seem to be having your trouble: everything has gone splendidly. I’ll get in touch with the Inverness group and they can come up and help – anyone who remains by then… I agree, one doesn’t want to say more than necessary on the telephone… Yes, you can expect me tomorrow… There is no need? You realise, I take it, that there was a hold up in – down the line, and there are still seven days to go. The boy has to be silenced. If you can’t do it any other way, take a leaf from Carl Voss’s book… Oh, I see, he is no longer with you. Ah, a great loss indeed… I will see you at the hotel, then. I trust the food is acceptable. Do they have a good cellar?’

Henry Smith flushed as he recalled the cultured voice, and the fiery home-made whisky which was the best he had been able to scrounge from the innkeeper. For Colonel von Kramm, he had no doubt, the man would have been able to find something better. He was disgraced. When Arne asked how he had fared he was suddenly angry with his subordinate and told him to shut up and mind his own business. Burrowing into the straw, he pulled huge armfuls around himself and closed his eyes. At least he could get some rest. But for a long time he lay awake, remembering the events of the past ten days, cursing the boy and his old fisherman friend, the colonel’s ironic words burning in his mind.

Meanwhile, out on the moors, a few hundred feet beneath the eastern summits, Murdo saw that daylight was beginning to fade and the snow was easing off. Guessing that it must be some time after three, he dragged himself to his feet. The world spun about him and his legs felt so weak that he had to steady himself with a hand against the rock. He brushed the snow from his jacket with vague fingers, and set off up the gentle hill ahead. His knees buckled and his feet dragged in the patched heather.

In an hour he made at most one mile of ground. The effort was supreme, but the snow was easing off and at length it stopped. Around him the landscape opened up to the last pale veils of the dusk.

He was standing on the top of the hill. Behind him a long curving ridge, miles long it seemed, swept down and around, its roots merging invisibly with a limitless expanse of shadowy plain
– the bogs: far off, the advancing shadows welded sky and plateau, a dark barrier which made its awful size seem greater still. Ahead lay a huge valley, with an impressive mountain rising sheer on the far side, its ragged flanks heavy with the mantle of snow. Right and left the hillsides fell steeply away, down and down, until in the half-light they levelled into a desolation of moor. Through the opening clouds a bitter sky, ice-pale with frost and glittering brilliantly with a host of tiny stars, promised a blindingly cold night. It was very beautiful, and as inhospitable as the moon. Over the endless miles of waste, limited only by encroaching darkness, not one light gleamed, not one animal moved. Then a hundred yards below, a solitary red grouse burst noisily into the air. ‘Go-back go-back go-back’ it called, sailing over the valley towards the mountain beyond. In seconds it was gone, the harsh call faded into silence. The wind stirred the boy’s hair, the dusk and mountain solitude closed round him once more.

Murdo was swaying where he stood, and sat sideways in the snow to steady himself as he surveyed the scene. He could not go much further, he had to have shelter for the night. But there was no shelter.

At length he chose the long hillside on the left. There appeared to be a sizable stream at the bottom, studded with rocks and half frozen over. With luck there would be sheep fanks or some old ruin down there. Slowly he headed across the shoulder of the ridge and began to descend the steep slope.

His legs would carry him properly no longer. Time and again he stumbled and fell headlong, sprawling head over heels down the hillside, landing with a sickening jolt against some boulder. The hidden stones tricked his feet so that he turned his ankles with a wrench. The angle of the slope taxed his already exhausted muscles, so that by the time he was halfway down his knees had lost the last of their strength and his legs trembled uncontrollably.