The Karma of Love (Bantam Series No. 14) (17 page)

“Can you see anything?” she asked.

He moved backwards and sat down on the floor to smile at her.

“So you are awake!” he said. “I began to think that you were Mrs. Rip Van Winkle and would sleep for a thousand years!”

“I was so tired,” Orissa answered.

“You walked like a Trojan, you do not need me to tell you that!”

“Where are we?” Orissa enquired.

“That is just what I am trying to find out,” he said. “I am sure you do not wish to walk one yard further than is necessary. I am going to creep out in a little while and take our bearings.”

They ate some of the chapattis which had grown rather dry by now and seemed to stick in Orissa s throat. There was also a small amount of rice to go with them and this she knew was sustaining.

It would be stupid not to eat because that would only make her weaker and undoubtedly incur, if not Major Meredith’s anger, his contempt.

They each drank from the water-bottle which was not very large, and Major Meredith remarked that he would have to fill it again at the next stream they came to.

“What happens when you do this in the summer months?” Orissa asked.

“Then one can be very thirsty,” he answered.

“I have always been told that man can survive without food, but not without water,” Orissa said.

“I once resorted to milking a wild goat,” Major Meredith told her. “It was an unpleasant experience which I hope not to repeat.”

The brilliance of the sun was fading a little; soon the light would gather itself together in a last brilliant burst of colour before it vanished.

Major Meredith crawled through the opening of the cave.

He left his cloak behind him, but he took with him one of the sharp, strangely-shaped knives that the warlike Baluchi tribesmen always carried.

Orissa realised he must have worn it at the back of his loin-cloth.

It was so out of keeping with his impersonation of a Fakir that she was certain that he had only brought it with him as a protection because she was with him.

But she did not say anything, and when he was gone she sat thinking what a strange man he was, and how difficult she found it to understand his motives or to guess what he was thinking.

She was still smarting from his words in which he had told her plainly he had no wish to be encumbered with her, and she wondered if he really disliked her because she must hinder him in reaching his objective.

She sat thinking about him until she realised he had been gone a long time.

Had something happened to him? Suppose he had been seen by a tribesman or bitten by a snake? Could he have fallen into one of the treacherous gorges where a man who fell could so easily break his leg and lie there to die?

With what amounted to momentary panic she crept through the opening of the cave to see if she could see any sign of him.

During the heat of the afternoon she had, with his permission, taken off her turban and released her hair from the pins with which she had arranged it the night before she left the Fort.

Now she felt the faint wind stirring the darkness of her hair and turned her face towards it.

As she stood between the great boulders which were like two sentinels on either side of the cave, the sun was in her eyes and as the shadow of a man’s figure came round the corner she exclaimed:

“Oh, there you are! I was beginning to worry as you have been away so
...”

The last word died on her lips as she saw the man facing her was not Major Meredith but a man with slit eyes and Mongolian features.

He was astonished at seeing her but quickly recovered himself and drew his knife from his belt lifting it high above his head.

Orissa opened her mouth to scream but no sound came. She wanted to move, to run away, but her body would not obey the commands of her brain.

She could only stand waiting for the blow. It seemed as if the man hesitated for a second, perhaps because he had not expected to find a woman in such a lonely spot.

Then even as his arm moved, Orissa saw a figure behind him and with a grunting sound the stranger fell forward to sprawl at her feet, and she saw Major Meredith’s knife deep in his back.

The Major drew it out, the blade now covered with blood, and struck again. Then as a crimson tide flooded over the man’s clothes, Orissa put up her hands to her face to hide the horror of it.

She still could not move, but she knew that Major
Meredith rose from the dead man’s back and picking him up by his feet dragged him around the side of the boulder and out of her sight.

It was then, when she realised she was alone and the only evidence of what had happened was the knife lying on the ground in front of her, she crawled like a frightened animal back into the cave to sit cowering at the far end of it, her hands once again over her face.

She was shivering all over and her teeth were chattering when Major Meredith crawled into the cave and sat down beside her.

“He is dead,” he said quietly. “He will not hurt you and there is no-one else about.”

His voice was kind and soothing and instinctively Orissa turned towards him. He put his arm round her shoulders and held her close against him.

“It is all right,” he said.

She was trembling violently, but now because he was holding her, her teeth no longer chattered.

“I have ... never seen anyone ... dead before,” she murmured, feeling somehow she must excuse herself.

“It is always horrifying the first time,” Major Meredith said calmly, “as your father and your Uncle would tell you.”

She knew he was reminding her that she belonged to the Regiment and must not behave like a coward.

“Who was ... he? How did ... he find ... us?”

Major Meredith’s arms seemed to tighten about her and it was curiously comforting.

“It was in actual fact the best thing that could have happened,” he said.

Orissa was so surprised that she stopped trembling.

“But why?” she managed to ask.

“Because he was carrying messages to a Russian spy-ring in Peshawar.”

Orissa raised her head a little.

“How do you know this?”

“He was a Tijik. Of Persian origin, they are shrewd
and avaricious men who live around Kabul and do almost anything for money.”

“And the Russians paid him?”

“I imagine quite a large sum by his reckoning,” Major Meredith replied, “and he must have been a man they could trust because what he carried was of considerable importance.”

He paused and added:

“That makes another reason why we must hurry to Peshawar as quickly as possible, and also why it is imperative that we should get there.”

The calm, matter-of-fact way in which he had been speaking had swept away Orissa’s panic better than if he had tried to reassure her.

Now she moved from the circle of his arms and started to pin her hair up again on top of her head, conscious that while her heart was still beating quickly she was no longer trembling.

As she did so, Major Meredith stowed away in his cloak a number of papers she knew he had taken from the Tijik.

Then he re-tied Orissa’s turban, adjusting it comfortably over her hair.

“It is not too tight?” he asked.

“No.”

She had the strange feeling that they might be husband and wife talking in an ordinary, unembarrassed way as he helped her dress.

There was no time for further conversation as the light had now gone and they were once again on their way.

They walked and walked! The route, Orissa thought, was far harder than it had been the night before, but perhaps it seemed so because she was already tired.

Despite her slippers, the stones seemed to cut into the soles of her feet, and she had long ago wo
rn
away the wool covering that Major Meredith had placed over them, so that loose strands of it flapped around her bare ankles.

The night before had been chill, but there had been very little wind. Tonight, unexpectedly, a gale blew up soon after midnight.

It was gusty, violent and seemed to whistle around the mountain peaks to cut icily into their bones.

It blew Major Meredith’s cloak out behind him like the sails of a ship, and Orissa wondered how he could bear the cold of it on his naked body.

She herself felt as if her woollen cloak were made of paper and soon her hands were frozen so that it was difficult to move her fingers.

Tonight Major Meredith suggested no respite but strode ahead until Orissa found herself half running because she was so afraid he would disappear into the darkness and she would be left alone.

They climbed up—they climbed down. They rounded great boulders. They even on one occasion walked along the knife-edge of a precipice which fell for hundreds of feet below them, and Orissa felt at any moment she might go hurtling down into the depths below.

She longed to tell Major Meredith she could not face it. It was too much to ask of anyone, let alone a woman! Then a pride greater than she knew she possessed made her force herself not to speak of her fears.

“Face the rock—hold on to it! Move your feet sideways, one by one,” he commanded her.

She obeyed him, and hated him because she felt he was ordering her about as if she were a sepoy under his command and she had no will of her own.

Only once when she collected a stone in her shoe and had to shake it out did she cry after him to wait.

“What is it? What is the matter?” he asked and she heard the irritation in his voice.

“It is a stone,” she answered, sitting down to take off her shoe, shake it and put it back on her foot which was so cold she hardly knew she had a covering for it.

“We cannot wait,” he admonished.

“No, of course not,” she answered obediently.

They climbed up what seemed to Orissa the barren side of a cliff without a foot-hold and then up another to walk on and on, until finally she knew that the cold had frozen not only her body but her brain.

She could no longer think, no longer force herself to follow the flapping cloak ahead of her.

‘Let him go without me,’ she told herself. ‘It is no use. I cannot do it, I cannot!’

She had not spoken, but perhaps some sixth sense told him what she was feeling, because Major Meredith turned round suddenly.

By the light of the stars he could see her small, sagging figure, her eyes dark with pain.

He did not speak. He merely picked her up in his arms.

Orissa wanted to protest. She wanted to tell him she could manage on her own, but the words would not come. She was too cold—too utterly and completely exhausted.

She put her face against his shoulder and thought if she died at this moment it did not matter...

Orissa was conscious of feeling warm.

Her cheeks were no longer frozen in a face that was made of ice. Her hands were warm and her whole body was relaxed.

Somewhere a clock seemed to be ticking ... she wondered vaguely what it could be.

It was so wonderful to be warm again and it seemed as if she had been happy in her dreams and the feeling of happiness was still with her.

Then suddenly she realised that her cheek was against Major Meredith’s chest and it was the warmth of his bare skin she felt.

One hand was on his naked body and the other was also pressed against him tucked between her breasts.

It
was very dark and she realised that he had covere
d
her with his cloak which enveloped her like a
tent in a warm, almost stifling, darkness, and the sound she could hear was his heart beating.

It was not only an incredible relief to be warm, but also a feeling of joy she could not express to know that he held her close against him so that she was safe and protected.

Then in that moment she knew she loved him!

She knew it as if a star had fallen out of the sky and told her so or a meteor had shot across the firmament.

She loved him! For the moment nothing else mattered!

She shut her eyes and went to sleep again...

It must have been hours later that she felt him stir and when he drew the cloak from off her head she felt the air was hot and knew that the sun was up.

Because she felt shy at the manner in which she had slept, she pretended still to be asleep.

Very gently he moved his arm from under her and laid her down on the floor. Then so quietly she could hardly hear him, she knew that he went from the cave, or wherever it was they had slept, and she was alone.