The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [119]
His interest was at first no more than idle. But all at once it ceased to be so, for the moonlight glinted on something that was not horns, but metal. He had been watching men, not wild game: armed men who carried muskets.
As they came nearer Ash could see that there were only three of them, and the sudden tension of his nerves relaxed. He had imagined for a moment that they might be a party of raiders from across the Border, swooping down to attack some sleeping village and carry off cattle and women. But three men could not do much harm and possibly they were only Powindahs – wandering, gipsy-like folk who live in tents and are always on the move. He did not think this very likely, for now that the days were pleasantly cool again, few men would choose to travel on foot by night. But whoever they were he preferred not to meet them, as their reasons for being abroad at such an hour were almost certainly discreditable, and cattle-thieves and outlaws were apt to shoot first and ask questions afterwards. He therefore stayed very still and was grateful for the lengthening shadows, and for the fact that the moon was behind him and shining straight into the eyes of the advancing men.
Secure in the knowledge that if he did not move they were unlikely to see him, he was able to relax and watch them approach with curiosity and a touch of impatience. He was beginning to feel chilly and he wished that the strangers would quicken their pace, for until they had passed and were well out of range, he himself would not be able to leave. Ash yawned – and a split second later was tense and listening.
The sound he had heard was a very small one, but it had not been made by the men who were moving towards him. It had come from much nearer and from somewhere behind him: at a guess, from not more than twenty or thirty yards away – though in that windless silence any sound would carry a considerable distance. This one had been no more than the rattle of a displaced pebble; but except for the mound on which he sat the plain for several hundred yards in every direction was as flat as a board, and no pebble could have dislodged itself, or struck against another with that degree of force, without assistance. He held his breath to listen and heard another sound that was as easy to recognize as the first had been: the click of an iron-studded chuppli striking against a stone. There was at least one other man approaching the mound, but from a different direction.
Several separate possibilities flashed through Ash's mind, all of them unpleasant. Blood-feuds bedevilled the Border country, and the man or men behind him might be laying a trap for those ahead. Or was he himself the quarry and had he perhaps been seen and followed by someone who had cause to hate the Guides? It had been a mistake to come out unarmed. But it was too late to regret that now, for once again metal clicked on stone and a pebble rattled, and Ash turned his head cautiously in the direction of the sound and waited with every nerve and muscle in his body tensed and ready.
There was a rustle close by as someone brushed against a thorn bush below the mound, and a moment later a lone man hurried past and went on without turning. He had gone too quickly for Ash to gain more than a fleeting impression of a tall figure, muffled in a coarse woollen blanket and further protected from the night air by a length of cloth wound about his head and neck. Once past he was only a hurrying shape in the moonlight, and if he were armed it was certainly not with a musket, though the blanket probably concealed a Pathan knife. It was also clear that he had neither seen Ash nor suspected his presence. Yet there had been an indefinable suggestion of furtiveness about him – in the hunch of his shoulders and the way his head turned sharply from left to right, giving an impression of nervous