Lie down with lions - Ken Follett [134]
Jane looked at her watch. It was two a.m. She felt ready to give up.
“I’ll load the horse,” Ellis said. “You feed Chantal.” He switched to Dari and said to Mohammed: “Will you make some tea? And give Ali something to eat.”
Jane went back into the house, finished dressing, then fed Chantal. While she was doing that, Ellis brought her sweet green tea in a pottery bowl. She drank it gratefully.
As Chantal sucked, Jane wondered how much Jean-Pierre had to do with this relentless pursuit of her and Ellis. She knew he had helped with the raid on Banda, for she had seen him. When they searched the Five Lions Valley, his local knowledge would be invaluable. He must know they were hunting down his wife and baby like dogs chasing rats. How could he bring himself to help them? His love must have been changed to hatred by his seething resentment and jealousy.
Chantal had had enough. How pleasant it must be, Jane thought, to know nothing of passion or jealousy or betrayal, to have no feelings but warm or cold and full or empty. “Enjoy it while you may, little girl,” she said.
Hurriedly, she buttoned her shirt and pulled her heavy oiled sweater down over her head. She put the sling around her neck, made Chantal comfortable inside it, then shrugged into her coat and went outside.
Ellis and Mohammed were studying the map by the light of a lantern. Ellis showed Jane their route. “We follow the Linar down to where it empties into the Nuristan River. Then we turn uphill again, following the Nuristan north. Then we take one of these side valleys—Mohammed won’t be sure which one until he gets there—and head for the Kantiwar Pass. I’d like to get out of the Nuristan Valley today—that will make it more difficult for the Russians to follow us, for they won’t be sure which side valley we’ve taken.”
“How far is it?” said Jane.
“It’s only fifteen miles—but whether that’s easy or tough depends on the terrain, of course.”
Jane nodded. “Let’s get going,” she said. She was proud of herself for sounding more cheerful than she felt.
They set off in the moonlight. Mohammed set a fast pace, and whipped the horse mercilessly with a leather strap when she hung back. Jane had a slight headache and an empty, nauseous feeling in her stomach. However, she was not sleepy, but rather nervously tense and bone-weary.
She found the track scary by night. Sometimes they walked in the sparse grass beside the river, which was all right; but then the trail would hairpin up the mountainside to continue on the cliff edge hundreds of feet above, where the ground was covered with snow, and Jane was terrified of slipping and falling to her death with her baby in her arms.
Sometimes there was a choice: the path forked, one way going up and the other down. Since none of them knew which route to take, they let Mohammed guess. The first time, he stayed low and turned out to be right: the track led them across a little beach, where they had to wade through a foot of water, but it saved them a long diversion. However, the second time they had to choose they again took the riverbank, but this time they regretted it: after a mile or so the path led straight into a sheer rock face, and the only way around it would have been to swim. Wearily they retraced their steps to the fork and then climbed the cliff path.
At the next opportunity they descended to the riverbank again. This time the path led them to a ledge which ran along the face of the cliff about a hundred feet above the river. The horse became nervous, probably because the path was so narrow. Jane was frightened, too. The starlight was not enough to illuminate the river below, so the gorge seemed like a bottomless black pit beside her. Maggie kept stopping, and Mohammed would have to pull on the reins to make her go again.
When the path turned