The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [531]
‘Pity about Barclay,’ said Wigram. ‘He was a good chap.’
‘One of the best,’ agreed Wally. ‘It seems such a waste, somehow. If it had happened in a pukka battle, I suppose one wouldn't have felt so bad about it. But this –!’ He kicked an inoffensive boot-tree across the tent, and after a moment or two added bitterly: ‘You'd have thought that things were tricky enough in these parts without our deliberately antagonizing the locals by turning up in out-of-the-way places armed with drawing-boards, compasses and theodolites, and letting 'em see that we were making detailed maps of their home villages. Ash was right: it's a lunatic thing to do just now. I suppose you haven't heard from him again?’
‘Not since then. I imagine it can't be all that easy for him to send letters. Besides, he must know that each time he does, he runs the risk of being betrayed to the Afghans or blackmailed into paying everything he has in exchange for silence. And anyway, he can have no guarantee that a letter has been delivered.’
‘No, I suppose not. I wish I could see him. It's been such a long time, and I miss him like the devil… I worry about him, too. I keep thinking what it must be like to be alone and on the run in this damnable country, week after week for months on end, knowing that if you put a foot wrong you won't live to repeat the mistake. I don't understand how he can do it. Faith, I know I couldn't!’
‘Nor I,’ said Wigram soberly. ‘God knows I'm no glutton for fighting, but given the choice, I'd rather take part in half-a-dozen full-scale battles than take on the job of spying behind the enemy lines. One can be scared rigid before a battle – I always am – but the other business calls for a different kind of courage: the lonely, cold-blooded kind that most of us don't have. On the other hand, one has to remember that most of us don't happen to be human chameleons, and that Ashton is a freak in that he can think in Pushtu. Or in Hindi, when the occasion arises – it merely seems to depend on where he happens to be at the time. I've sometimes wondered if he ever thinks or dreams in English. Not very often, I imagine.’
Wally turned away to jerk back the tent-flap and stand gazing up at the hills that surrounded Jalalabad, dark now against the darkening sky, while the boisterous March wind tossed his hair into disorder and swirled about the tent, setting the canvas flapping and sending files and papers fluttering to the ground: ‘I wonder if he's somewhere around here, watching us from those hills up there?’
‘I shouldn't think so,’ said Wigram. ‘He's probably in Kabul. Ah! – this sounds like my bath arriving – first I've had in days. The horrors of active service. Well see you at dinner.’
But Wally's surmise had been nearer the mark than Wigram's, for in fact Ash was at that moment in a little village called Fatehabad, less than twenty miles away.
Ever since the outbreak of war, a certain Ghilzai chief, one Azmatulla Khan, had been actively at work fomenting a rising against the British inaders by the inhabitants of the Lagman Valley; and late in February Colonel Jenkins and a small column had dispersed Azmatulla's forces in the valley, but failed to capture him. Now he was known to be back again, and with an even larger following, and on the last day of March Ash had dispatched a further piece of ill news to Jalalabad. The Khugiani tribesmen, whose territory lay barely seventeen miles distant to the south of Fatehabad, were also gathering in great numbers at one of their border fortresses.
On receipt of this information, the Divisional Commander had given orders that certain units were to set out with all speed to stamp