The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [391]
The prospect of being lost in that trackless sea of hills was one he, Bukta, did not fancy; and besides, had not the Hakim's servant told them that it was the custom in Bhithor to close the city gates an hour after sunset? If that were so, there was nothing to be gained by pressing forward, and in his opinion they would be well advised to time their arrival for dusk on the following day, when men and cattle and flocks of goats would be streaming homeward from the fields and the grazing grounds that surrounded the city, and they would be unremarked among the crowds.
‘He is right, you know,’ said Sarji. ‘In the evening, when the cooking fires are lit and the air is full of smoke and dust, the light is poorer – and men less inclined to curiosity, their thoughts being fixed on rest and food.’
Ash had reluctantly agreed, and they found a cave among the rocks on a high ridge, and having turned the horses loose to graze, ate a cold meal for fear that a fire might attract attention, and spent the night there, going forward again only when the sun was up.
There was still no sign of a path to follow, and as far as Ash could see, not so much as a goat-track marked the bare hillsides where the scanty grass of winter was already turning brown and brittle with the approach of the hot weather. But Bukta led the way as confidently as ever, and the others followed: today for the most part on foot across steep slopes where they and their horses slithered on the brittle grass or picked their way among broken rocks, riding only occasionally in single file along some narrow ravine between sheer hillsides.
There were no springs here, and they were parched with thirst by the time they crossed a high ridge at mid-afternoon and looking down, saw below them, in a rocky hollow, a small pool of water that glittered in the slanting sunlight like a jewel in a setting of brass. It was shaded by a solitary and incongruous palm that had somehow managed to find a foothold among the rocks, and must have been fed by a spring, for the water was unexpectedly cool. To the dry-throated men and thirsty horses it tasted like nectar, and when they had drunk their fill, Bukta allowed them half an hour's rest before they scrambled up the far slope, and reaching the top of another ridge, once again moved downwards.
An hour later they reached the floor of a narrow canyon that wound and twisted between the folds of the hills like the track of some giant snake, and for the first time that day they rode forward at a brisk pace on level ground. It was a welcome change but it did not last long, for after less than a mile the canyon ended abruptly in what appeared to be an impassable barrier: the debris of some ancient landslide that blocked it with a forty-foot wall of boulders and scree.
Ash and Sarji pulled up and stared at the obstruction in dismay, imagining that Bukta had taken a wrong turning and that they would have to go back. But the shikari dismounted, and beckoning them to do the same, walked forward leading his horse; and following doubtfully behind him they rounded a boulder the size of a small house, passed between two more, and entered a narrow crevice some twenty feet in length, where the saddle flaps brushed the rock on either side.
Like the canyon, this too appeared to come to a dead end. But Bukta turned sharply to the left, and after a further ten or twelve paces, right again – and suddenly Ash found himself out in the open, and facing the self-same stretch of valley where the Karidkote camp had been pitched two long years ago.
There was little to show where that great sea of tents and carts had once stood. All that remained of it were the dilapidated ruins of the stout, thatched-roofed sheds that Mulraj