The Damascened Blade

by Barbara Cleverly

  The next part of the exchange was easier to follow as James with a smile and a bow handed over the package of cigarettes. With an exclamation of delight the chief was obviously thanking James and handing over, in turn, a small gift. Not such a small gift though, Joe thought, admiring the silver snuff box which made its way into James’s pocket. The formalities over, James then embarked on a long speech which included gestures towards himself, the MI troop and many gestures pointing towards the Khyber.

  Joe watched the Powindah’s face carefully. The leathery features to be observed between grizzled beard and voluminous white turban were by no means inscrutable. Joe looked on, fascinated, as one expression melted into another, accompanied at times by deep sighs or hissing intake of breath as James’s story progressed. Finally when James fell silent on a question, the old man’s face grew grave and still. He thought deeply for a moment then called out a question to one of his lieutenants. Considering the response, he nodded and then began to speak. He spoke for quite a while, clearly and openly with gestures which conveyed to all around and to Joe the message that he could not be of any help. He had no answer to James’s questions. Joe was certain that he was lying.

  With expressions of mutual regard, the meeting broke up and the four riders made their way back to the head of the column. As the contingent of young warriors on foot drew level with them, on a word from James the Scouts closed in and established themselves on either side of the track. A bearded Rissaldar began to address the advancing horde.

  ‘He’s saying,’ said James, ‘that they have to leave their arms at the little checkpoint we’ve set up at the next stream crossing. They’re not allowed to carry arms through into British India. They know this perfectly well. It happens every year. I never think it’s tactful to mention it in the presence of their leaders since they must find it somewhat galling and our convention is that they and we pretend it isn’t happening and leave it to the lower orders to sort it out amongst themselves. “Diplomacy Lindsay” they call me!’

  ‘No joy with the Malik, I gathered?’ said Joe.

  ‘Afraid not. No sighting or report of them anywhere along their route and they’ve come, as we expected, straight down the caravan way from Kabul.’

  ‘You know he was lying?’

  ‘Of course. Nothing we can do about it though.’

  ‘I don’t believe this!’ Joe said with a desperate look around him at the tumbling rocks and crevices. ‘They’re up there somewhere! Watching our every movement through field glasses at this very moment!’

  ‘Could well be,’ said James. ‘And if not them, there’ll be others up there, one behind each crag keeping an eye on things. We’ll hang on for a while if you don’t mind, Joe. There’s someone in the caravan I always stay to greet.’

  It seemed to Joe, looking up the track, as though the whole bottom of the pass had worked loose and was moving slowly towards them. Amidst the dust storm he saw the caravan separated into its component parts, sheep in hundreds – no thousands, camels, families on the march, three and four generations loaded on to the same camel. They stayed in place as the caravan rolled by almost overwhelming them with the noise and the stench of the goats and sheep and camels. Joe was amazed by the sight of so many camels each piled high with tottering heaps of trading goods, of tents and equipment and children. He laughed and waved as three children, each clutching a puppy, went by, small heads bobbing in rhythm with the camel’s stalking stride. From time to time they were the subject of inspection by the herd dogs, mastiffs, some as big as ponies, who approached with warning snarls, vicious eyes gleaming under matted black fringes. He cast interested sideways looks at the young Powindah girls who leapt from rock to rock herding the sheep, each with a rifle slung across her back. They went unveiled, tall, brown and beautiful, striding freely in their long brightly coloured dresses.

  After an hour’s assault on the senses Joe thought he could see the end of the caravan coming into view. One or two camels brought up the rear in the company of a number of armed riders. These appeared to be mainly middle-aged men. ‘The veterans,’ Joe thought, admiring the careful deployment of protective measures throughout the caravan. As the last camel swayed by James moved closer and looked up expectantly at the rider.

  ‘Watch’er cobber!’ sang out a shrill voice.

  ‘Watch’er Maggie!’ James yelled back. ‘All well with you, Sweetheart?’

  The figure on the camel, Joe now saw, had dusty grey hair which might once have been blonde. She turned a laughing face to them, as brown and folded as the hills, and shouted back, ‘All dinkie doo! Can’t complain, ducks! Can’t complain!’

  ‘James! Have I gone mad?’ said Joe. ‘Is this the Khyber or Koolgardie?’

  ‘That was Maggie,’ said James. ‘Strange place to find an Australian woman you might think until you know her story. When they discovered gold in Australia they also found they had a problem – the mines were in desert areas and the only transport that worked effectively was camels. Trouble is – camel driving is a very particular skill. They recruited dozens of young camel-handlers from this part of the world to do the job. As you’ve seen from this cavalcade, the average Powindah youth is a staggeringly good-looking chap and our Maggie fell for one . . . and she wasn’t the only one! She was a miner’s daughter and she fled the Australian outback for the Indian outback. She’s happy with them and they’re very happy with her. She’s become quite a matriarch – must be grandmother to half the tribe by now! Every year the British Government in the shape of the fort commander makes a point of checking on her welfare. Hey! What the hell! What’s this?’

  He stopped in alarm as a young boy loitering behind the caravan emerged from behind a rock and with a cheeky yell of ‘Watch’er cobber!’ hurled a stone at Joe.

  Joe felt the stone whiz by his left ear and land in the sand a few feet away.

  Tensely James said, ‘Pick it up. Pretend to throw it back at him. He’ll slip back behind the rock and disappear. Shout something rude and put the stone in your pocket.’

  Smoothly Joe slid from his horse, executing what he thought was a pretty convincing pantomime of an enraged British officer failing to get a shot at target. As they started back for the fort, Joe asked, ‘Are you going to tell me what that was all about?’

  ‘Think about it, Joe! If a Pathan boy wants to hit you with a stone, he most certainly will! You’ve seen a sample of their throwing skills on the cricket field! He was aiming to miss and he was obviously one of Maggie’s brood because he announced himself in Australian. Don’t touch the stone yet – eyes everywhere and I don’t want to get Maggie into trouble – but I’ll bet there’s more to it than you might think. We’ll have a closer look when we get back to the fort.’

  Puzzled, intrigued and with the stone bumping tantalizingly against his hip he rode back and waited patiently while James dismissed the Mounted Infantry then walked with him to the ops room. There they found Fred Moore-Simpson and Hugh poring over the map.

  ‘There you are! Glad you didn’t go off with the gypsies too – we were beginning to get a bit anxious,’ Fred said cheerfully. ‘Hope you fellows have had better luck than we have. We’ve had to tuck the Bristol up for the night but we’ll fly off a dawn patrol first thing tomorrow morning. I have to say, today we’ve drawn a complete blank. We’ve marked the territory we’ve overflown if you’d care to take a look. Just a nil return, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Sounds as though you could all do with a reviving cup of tea,’ said Grace Holbrook entering with a large brass tray. She busied herself pouring out tea and handing round cups and, taking one for herself, she settled down in the armchair to turn the pages of Punch and listen.

  ‘We had no luck either,’ said James. ‘The Powindahs declared they hadn’t seen or heard any news of our target. The only thing of note was that a nomad boy threw a stone at Joe and missed. May be nothing but my imagination of course but let’s have a look, shall we, Joe?’

  Feeling that an anticlimax was abou
t to overtake them Joe fished the stone from his pocket and laid it on the map table. Hugh looked, mystified, from one to the other and said uncertainly, ‘Ah. The very stone, I take it?’

  James peered closely at the triangular-shaped, unremarkable piece of shale, reached out and turned it over. The underside was flat and across it was scrawled, just distinguishable, a word in badly formed capital letters in heavy indelible pencil.

  MARDANCOTAL.

  ‘Thank you, Maggie!’ said James fervently. ‘There! I told you – if he’d wanted to hit Joe, he would have done!’

  Fred looked at him in puzzlement. ‘I say, do you mind telling us what’s going on?’

  James explained who Maggie was and the trick she had played to give them this information. ‘Normally the old dear would just bellow out any information we needed and quite a lot we didn’t need but today she was silent and eager to hurry on. Friendly as ever but silent. The whole tribe must have been put under some pressure not to tell us what they knew! And it doesn’t take much wit to work out what the pressure was! The Powindah have to travel for hundreds of miles through Amanullah’s country. If they crossed him – or one of his lieutenants, let’s say Iskander – he could make their lives very unpleasant. I thought the old Malik was making quite a show of not telling us anything. Someone was watching him and us. Maybe one of our own Mounted Infantry, maybe someone up in the crags, most likely one of the three men of his escort. Now he’s squared with the Amir and his bully boys as far as appearances are concerned but Maggie – Maggie must have found out something she didn’t quite like the sound or sight of and found her own way of letting us know.’

  ‘I’ve known Maggie for years,’ said Grace from her armchair. ‘It would be my guess that she knows there’s a girl involved. I don’t think she’d risk the well-being of the tribe for any old chap – I mean, I can’t see Rathmore’s plight tugging at her heartstrings – but, bless her, she’s always stood up for her sex. If it came to her ears – and there’s not much that doesn’t – that a young girl had been carried off against her will, she’d go out of her way to make sure the right people knew about it.’

  James pointed to the map. ‘Mahdan Khotal. I’ll bet anything that’s where the buggers are!’

  Hugh stirred excitedly and peered more closely at the map. ‘I say! There! But that’s near where I saw the flash of light on my way over here! Look! Can’t be more than five miles east of . . . what do you call it? Mahdan Khotal, did you say? What is that anyway?’

  ‘It’s the village, the fortified village of Ramazad Khan. The father of Zeman Khan,’ said James. He looked carefully again at the map and, smiling, shook his head. ‘Clever Iskander! Can you see what he’s done?’ His finger traced the route the Afghanis had taken from the fort up towards the Khyber. ‘He leads us off in this direction – the direction we expected him to take, straight back to Kabul – but then he disappears before he gets half-way through the pass. He must have gone down one of these defiles. There are plenty we’ve never explored. And then he slogs it over these ridges and down more defiles, thirty miles or more of tough riding, I’d say, but all through Afridi country, and approaches Mahdan Khotal from the back. He’s done a huge loop, put us right off the track and now he’s sitting up there in that eyrie above the Bazar Valley watching us! He can’t be more than fifteen miles away as the crow flies!’

  ‘Hooting with laughter every time he sees the plane take off towards Afghanistan!’ said Fred admiringly. ‘But look, James, if that’s where he is it’s an afternoon’s stroll down the valley to get at him, isn’t it? What do we do now? Gather the troops? Get reinforcements from Peshawar? Attack in force? Not yet! First we get a flight of bombers up from Miram Shah and give the buggers a surprise. Soften them up a bit. It worked for us last year in Mahsud territory. I’ll just go and check how many we could muster – if we got the go-ahead, of course.’ And he hurried off to the communications room.

  He left Joe, James and Hugh looking at each other in consternation.

  ‘Hadn’t realized Fred was such a fire-eater,’ said James, with a speculative look at Hugh.

  ‘Who would blame him?’ said Hugh awkwardly. ‘I mean . . . after what happened to his nephew last year.’

  ‘What did happen to his nephew?’ said James. ‘Can’t say it’s generally known up here in army circles.’

  ‘Philip . . . I think he was called Philip . . . came out from England a fully trained pilot, eighteen years old, eager to see some action, regretful to have missed the war . . . you know the sort of thing . . . and his first sortie was a recce over Waziristan.’

  James sighed. The Wazirs were the most fierce and least tractable of all the surrounding Pathan tribes. He didn’t want to hear the rest of the story.

  ‘He never came back.’ Hugh spoke reluctantly. ‘No sign of the plane and his body was never recovered. The whole op was being run by Fred.’ He fell silent, uncomfortable with the information he had just imparted.

  In silence they continued to study the map.

  ‘Nothing comes to mind yet, I’m afraid,’ said James slowly. ‘But if we’re going to see Lily and Rathmore alive again, I think we’d better come up with something a bit more subtle than the scheme Fred has in mind. In fact, the more I think about it, the more concerned I become.’ He traced the short route from the fort and down the Bazar Valley with his finger and up into the hill country above. ‘Oh, I know it looks a doddle on the map but on the ground, and believe me, I’ve been on that ground, it’s not so easy. In fact, I’ll tell you – it’s impossible.’

  ‘What do you mean – impossible?’

  ‘I don’t think anyone’s even seen the fort at Mahdan Khotal. There’s a good five miles of rugged ground, stream beds, ravines, overhangs, between the valley bottom and the stronghold. Think of the Persian army trying to take the narrows at Thermopylae. A million invaders were held up for days by a tiny army of three hundred determined Spartans. Ramazad Khan’s men fight like Spartans and there’s a sight more of them! You could send the whole of the Indian Army against him and he’d laugh at you. Perhaps we’ll all fall back on Fred’s strategy after all?’

  ‘But it’s only one small tribe! James, you’re forever taking gashts out and organizing barramptas to teach small tribes a lesson. What’s so special about this one?’

  ‘It’s been tried.’

  He passed a hand wearily over his forehead before continuing. ‘Before the war – 1910, I think it was – Ramazad Khan had a reputation for being a firebrand and he did something that really got up the noses of the military. One thing led to another and it all ended in disaster. Many mistakes made, dead on both sides and no lessons learned. Thoroughly bad show.’

  ‘And the British found another way of taming Ramazad Khan, I understand?’ said Joe tentatively.

  ‘Oh, yes. Not proud! The government tried to buy him off. Offered the old bugger a few sackfuls of cash, technically “in reparation for the lives of his valued clansmen” lost in the fight. Not a usual device but these were special circumstances – the manipulative old sod had had two sons killed and did he ever make the most of that!’

  ‘And Zeman it was who benefited from all this? Didn’t you say he was sent off for his expensive English education on the proceeds?’

  ‘That’s right. And where has all this landed us? Two thousand pounds of English education and a Sandhurst training and where is it all? Under four foot of earth in an abandoned cemetery! What a waste of a man!’ He turned from the table in disgust. ‘And now it’s all happening again! We’ll never break the bloody circle!’

  ‘Another cup, anyone?’

  Grace’s comfortable voice was more appropriate to the calm order of the drawing room than to the tense atmosphere of the ops room. ‘Milk, James? Joe? No use brooding on the past, you know. No use at all. Now, there is a way through this. Oh, yes, a very simple way. I’m surprised that it hasn’t occurred to either of you!’

  Chapter Fourteen

  While Joe and Ja
mes listened to Grace’s suggestion, Sir George Jardine in distant Simla lit a cigar – a thing he did not often do and to those who knew him well it was a sign of agitation. He had been more disturbed than he would have admitted by James’s news of the death of Zeman. He had had his eye on Zeman for some years, an eye blending suspicion and admiration. He had often been heard to say, ‘I believe I could make something of that young man!’ He had seen him as an unreliable friend, as a dangerous ally but, nevertheless, a force to be exploited. And now that promising young man was dead and, as far as Sir George could understand, in circumstances unlikely to reflect credit on the British administration.

  ‘The situation in those parts is always dangerous,’ he thought. ‘I don’t want this! Dammit! I think I’m getting too old.’ He addressed himself to the task in hand which was to finish and enjoy an expensive cigar. This ritual complete, he set in train the complicated process by which he might put a telephone call through to Joe on the ground and set himself down to wait.

  Startled, agitated and finally convinced by Grace’s outrageous solution to their problem, his cup of tea, now cold, still clutched in his hand, Joe turned to listen to the Scouts officer who came to find him. ‘Hurry, Joe, if you can to the communications room – we’ve got Sir George on the telephone!’

  Through the usual swishing and gargling sounds inseparable from the Indian telephone system, Joe heard the voice of Sir George.

  ‘Good afternoon, Commander! I count myself fortunate to be able to engage a few moments of your valuable time. God knows where you’ve been! It’s taken them long enough to find you. By the time they’d searched the football field, the polo ground, the bazaar and apparently Lily Coblenz’s bedroom, the best part of half an hour had passed. My time is valuable. But now perhaps you’ll tell me if I’ve got this right? The Afghanis have snatched my old friend Dermot Rathmore. Correct so far?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joe, determined not to be caught on the back foot by Sir George. ‘In a nutshell, that is one of our problems.’