The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [551]
‘A scratch only. And you?’
‘I have taken no hurt – as yet.’
But there had been no more shots from the cliff, perhaps because the light was now too poor and the raft no longer presented a possible mark to the watchers among the rocks. The river was a grey ribbon in the dusk and the raft no more than a bobbing shadow, as elusive as a moth or a bat flitting down the gorges. An hour later the two men and their burden were clear of the cliffs with the worst of the rapids behind them, and being swept forward in the starlight through a country less well adapted to ambush.
The day had been very hot, for the monsoon had not yet reached these northern latitudes, and among the parched and treeless hills the ground gave off the stored heat of the sun in almost visible waves, as though the doors of a furnace had been thrown open. But the Kabul River was fed by the snowfields and glaciers of the Hindu Kush, and as the night wind blew coolly off the water the steersman shivered and huddled above his pole.
The coffin had been lashed to the raft with a length of stout country-made rope, but the hemp had become sodden with the night dews and the spray from the rapids, and as the weight that it held shifted to the motion of the current, the rope stretched and sagged so that the coffin moved uneasily, as though it imprisoned someone who was alive and restless.
‘Lie still, Sahib, or we lose you at the next bend,’ grunted Zarin, addressing the dead. ‘Is there a knot on your side, Ashok?’
‘Two,’ said the steersman. ‘But I dare not tighten them in the dark. If we were to strike a rock or rough water while retying them, the whole thing would pull free and throw us into the river. You must wait until dawn. Besides, after steering all day my hands are too stiff for tying knots.’
‘And you a hillman,’ jeered Zarin. ‘Why, the night is as hot as Jehanum.’
‘And the river as cold as charity,’ retorted Ash. ‘It is snow water, and I have been in it twice, so I know. Had I realized that the current ran so swiftly and that the Mohmands would lie in wait for us, I would have thought twice before I asked to come with you on such a journey. It is a mad one, anyway, for what difference does it make where a man's body lies? Will Battye-Sahib care if he rests in the earth by Jalalabad or in the cemetery at Mardan? Not he! Nor would he have cared if after we had gone the Afridis dug him up to spit on him or scatter his bones.'
‘It is we of the Guides who would care,’ said Zarin shortly. ‘We do not permit our enemies to insult the bodies of our dead.’
‘Of our Angrezi dead,’ corrected Ash with an edge to his voice. ‘This war cost us the lives of others. Yet we left their bodies among the Afghan hills and brought away only this one.’
Zarin shrugged his shoulders and made no answer. He had discovered long ago the uselessness of arguing with Ashok who, it seemed, did not see things as most other men did. But presently he said: ‘Yet you would come – and not for my sake, either!’
Ash grinned in the darkness: ‘No, brother. You have always proved fairly capable of looking after yourself. I came, as you know, because I wish to speak with the Commandant-Sahib before it is too late. If I can only see him in time, I may be able to persuade him that this mission that they talk of is doomed to disaster and must be abandoned; or at the very least, postponed. Besides, they say that the Government will send an escort of the Guides with the new Envoy to Kabul, and offer the command of it to Hamilton-Sahib.’
‘SoSo I have heard,’ said Zarin. ‘And why not? It will be a further honour for him: and a great honour for us of the Guides.’
‘To die like rats in a trap? Not if I can help it! I shall do my best to see that he does not accept.’
‘You will not succeed. There is no officer in all the armies of the Raj who