The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [549]
The voice of the river was a rustling, hissing murmur that filled the gorge with sound but failed to drown the shrill cry of a kite, and the tall Pathan turned sharply – for the sun had already set and that call is not normally heard at dusk: ‘Down! there are men among those rocks,’ said Zarin Khan, reaching for his carbine. ‘Mohmands – may they fry in hell. Keep down: we are too good a target. But the light is poor and by Allah's grace we may win through.’
‘They may mean us no harm,’ said a Sikh, checking the loading of his rifle. ‘They cannot know who we are, and may take us for men from one of their own villages.’
The Punjabi laughed shortly. ‘Do not deceive yourself, Dayal Singh. If there are men on the cliffs they know very well who we are and will have been waiting for us. Perhaps it was fortunate after all that Sher Afzal should have fallen from the raft and been drowned in those rapids, for had that not delayed us we should have reached this spot two hours earlier and been an easier mark. As it is –’ He did not finish the sentence, for the first shot took him in the throat and he leapt up as though jerked by a string, his arms flailing and fell backwards into the river.
The splash and the sound of the shot echoed together through the gorge, and for a brief moment a dark smear stained the colourless water and was whirled away on the current; but the Punjabi's body did not surface again. The raft swept forward into the gut of the gorge, the steersman flinging his weight on the great pole and grunting with the effort as he struggled to keep the unwieldy platform on a straight course, since he knew only too well what their fate would be if they were to run aground.
A vicious spatter of shots whipped the water about them, and the three remaining men of the escort lay flat on the logs and returned the fire with the unhurried precision of long practice, aiming for the puff and flash of the old fashioned muzzle-loaders that thrust out from a dozen crevices on the cliff. But it was an unequal contest, for the enemy lay concealed on ledges and crevices high overhead and could take their time sighting for a shot, while the men of the Guides were handicapped by lack of cover and the uneasy motion of the raft, and had only the speed of their passage and the swiftly gathering dusk in their favour. The coffin provided a narrow margin of protection; but it had been lashed dead centre, and if all three took shelter on the far side of it the raft would overturn.
‘Move the stores,’ gasped the steersman, thrusting off from dimpled water that betrayed an unseen shoal. ‘Over to the left – quick! That will balance one of you.’
Zarin laid aside his carbine, and crawling to the pile of tin boxes that contained the stores and ammunition for their journey, began to stack them on one side of the raft, while Sowar Dayal Singh continued to load and fire. His fellow Sikh shifted his position, and lying down beside him, rested the muzzle of his carbine on the coffin and taking careful aim, pressed the trigger.
Something that looked like a bundle of clothing fell screaming from a ledge of rock to crash down into the boulder-strewn shallows, and Zarin laughed and said: ‘Shabash, Suba Singh. That was good shooting. Almost good enough for a Pathan.’
Suba Singh grinned and retorted with a crude country joke that was uncomplimentary to the prowess of Pathans, and Dayal Singh smiled. They had run into a trap in which one of their number had already lost his life, and their