The Far Pavilions - Mary Margaret Kaye [552]
‘Perhaps. But I must try. I have made very few friends in my life – which I suppose is a fault in me. Out of those few, two have meant a great deal to me: you and Hamilton-Sahib; and I can't face losing you both… I cannot.’
‘You will not,’ said Zarin reassuringly. ‘For one thing, they may not send me to Kabul. And if – when – we win back to Mardan, you will see things in a better light. It is only because you are over-tired, and because life has been hard for you of late, that you talk like this.’
‘Oh no I don't. I talk like this because I have spoken to too many men who do not know or talk to the Sahib-log or to soldiers of the Sirkar – and also to very many others who have never even seen either – and from them I have heard things that have made me afraid.’
Zarin was silent for a space, then he said slowly: ‘I think, myself, that this has been your great misfortune: that you can talk to such people. Years ago when you were a child, my brother Awal Shah said to Browne-Sahib, who was then our Commandant, that it was a pity that you should forget to speak and think as one of us; there being few Sahibs who could do so, and such a one might be of great service to our Regiment. Therefore, because of his words, it was arranged that you should not forget. That was perhaps a mistake; for it has been your fate to belong to neither East nor West, yet to have one foot in both - like a trick rider at a Pagal-Gymkhana who stands astride between two galloping horses.’
‘That is so,’ agreed Ash with a short laugh. ‘And I fell between them long ago, and was torn in two. It is time I tried belonging to myself only – if it is not already too late for that. Yet if I had it all to do again -’
‘You would do the same as you have done; that you know,’ said Zarin, ‘– seeing that each man's fate is tied about his neck and he cannot escape it. Give me the pole: by the sound, there are rapids ahead; and if you do not have some rest that wound in your arm will give you trouble before morning. We shall not be attacked in the dark, and I will wake you before moonrise. See if you can get some sleep, for we may need all our wits tomorrow. You had better tie one of those rope-ends about your waist before you lie down, or else you will slide off into the water if the raft should tilt.’
Ash complied with the suggestion and Zarin grunted approval. ‘Good. Now take these. It may help you to sleep, and serve to lessen the pain in your arm.’ He handed over several small pellets of opium which Ash swallowed obediently. ‘Faugh! how the Sahib stinks. Have we anything with which to plug that bullet hole?’
Ash tore a piece of cloth from his turban and Zarin stuffed it into the hole. They had nothing to eat, the stores they had brought with them having been lost when the raft tilted and threw the bodies of the Sikhs into the river, but both men were too tired to feel hungry; and at least they were assured of a plentiful supply of water. Ash surrendered the pole to Zarin, and having washed his arm and bound up the wound, lay down alongside the coffin. But as the raft drifted onward down the Kabul River he found that he could not sleep. His arm throbbed painfully and he lay awake and tried to think out what he should say to Colonel Jenkins when -if they reached Mardan.
He would have to present the information he had acquired in such a way that the Commandant would not only believe him, but be able to convince all those senior officers and officials whom he himself could not hope to make any impression on that this was the truth. But the arguments he needed eluded him, and as the opium took effect, he fell asleep.
The current swept the raft forward out of the shadow of the Mallagori hills and began to lose force as the river widened.
The slower pace aroused Ash, and he saw that the dawn had come and that the land ahead was level plain. They had won through. Though for an appreciable time that meant nothing to him, because he could not remember where he was… Then, as the dawn light broadened over the wide