Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [132]
They were almost at the summit. Jane leaned forward to take the incline, thinking: Just a little more, just a little more. She felt dizzy. In front of her, Maggie skidded on the loose rocks and then scampered up the last few feet, forcing Mohammed to run alongside. Jane plodded after her, counting the steps. At last she reached the level ground. She stopped. Her head was spinning. Ellis’s arm went around her, and she closed her eyes and leaned on him.
“From now on it’s downhill all day,” he said.
She opened her eyes. She could never have imagined such a cruel landscape: nothing but snow, wind, mountains and loneliness forever and ever. “What a godforsaken place this is,” she said.
They looked at the view for a minute; then Ellis said: “We must keep going.”
They walked on. The way down was steeper. Mohammed, who had been heaving on Maggie’s reins all the way up, now hung on to her tail to act as a brake and prevent the horse slithering out of control down the slippery slope. The cairns were hard to distinguish among the litter of loose snow-covered rocks, but Mohammed showed no hesitation about which way to go. Jane thought she should offer to take Chantal, to give Ellis a reprieve, but she knew she could not carry her.
As they descended, the snow thinned and then cleared, and the track was visible. Jane kept hearing an odd whistling sound, and eventually found the energy to ask Mohammed what it was. In reply he used a Dari word she did not know. He did not know the French equivalent. In the end he pointed, and Jane saw a small squirrellike animal scuttling out of the way: a marmot. Afterward she saw several more, and wondered what they found to eat up here.
Soon they were walking alongside another brook, heading downstream now, and the endless gray-and-white rock was relieved by a little coarse grass and a few low bushes on the banks of the stream; but still the wind hurtled up the gorge and penetrated Jane’s clothing like needles of ice.
Just as the climb had become relentlessly worse, so the descent got easier and easier: the path growing smoother, the air warmer, and the landscape friendlier. Jane was still exhausted but she no longer felt oppressed and downcast. After a couple of miles they reached the first village in Nuristan. The men there wore thick sleeveless sweaters with a striking black-and-white pattern, and spoke a language of their own which Mohammed could barely understand. However, he managed to buy bread with some of Ellis’s Afghan money.
Jane was tempted to plead with Ellis that they stop here for the night, for she felt desperately weary; but there were still several hours of daylight left, and they had agreed they would try to reach Linar today, so she bit her tongue and forced her aching legs to walk on.
To her immense relief the remaining four or five miles were easier, and they arrived well before nightfall. Jane sank to the ground underneath an enormous mulberry tree and simply sat still for a while. Mohammed lit a fire and began to make tea.
Mohammed somehow let it be known that Jane was a Western nurse, and later, while she was feeding and changing Chantal, a little group of patients gathered, waiting at a respectful distance. Jane summoned her energy and saw them. There were the usual infected wounds, intestinal parasites and bronchial complaints, but there were fewer malnourished children here than in the Five Lions Valley, presumably because the war had not much affected this remote wilderness.
As a result of the impromptu