by John Wilcox
The two strode back to where the three officers and the Sikh were standing, silent in their embarrassment.
‘Sorry to keep you, gentlemen,’ said Simon. ‘One thing is sure: it won’t be possible for the squadron to ride back the way we came to Peshawar, or even Jamrud Fort, if it’s not been taken, now that the Pathans are in command of the Khyber. So the squadron must find a different way back.’
He looked at Appleby-Smith, Dawson and Buckingham in turn. ‘When the Second Afghan War broke out,’ he said, ‘we tried to invade Afghanistan by three routes. Sam Browne tried to force his way through the Khyber, the quickest way, but he was blocked. A second army tried to get through in the south, via Kohjak to Kandahar, but it took ages to win miles that way. It was left to Roberts, with the smallest force, to fight his way through to Kabul. He did it by beating the Afghans at a 9,000ft-high pass called Peiwar Kotal, the only way through the Safed Koh range, up to the right here. We came through to Kabul the same way after him. Do any of you know it?’
Buckingham nodded. ‘Yes. I climbed it with my troop about a year ago, trying to collect taxes from a very difficult headman in a village, who had fought General Roberts in that action.’
‘Could you lead the squadron back to Peshawar, south of the Khyber that way?’
‘Yes, I think so, sir. We would have to climb an even higher pass first to get to it from here, wouldn’t we?’
‘Yes. It’s high at about eleven thousand feet, but it’s the last mountain range leading down to this valley where we are now. You should be able to pick up the road to the pass a little further along here and I doubt if you will meet anyone, except the odd goatherd along the way. That’s where we will part company.’
Appleby-Smith looked up. ‘What? Where will you be going?’
‘Jenkins and I intend to go and find my wife.’
The captain’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Good God! Just the two of you?’
‘Not quite. If you, Captain, and you, Duke, will allow – and if he will agree to join us – we would like to borrow the daffadar here to act as our interpreter should we be accosted. We will all change into Pathan clothing, gathered from these dead chaps here, take three Martini-Henrys, and try to find that encampment due north of the Landi Kotal Fort. At least I have a compass.’
Dawson looked askance. ‘But sir, however well disguised, it will be difficult for you to pass as Pathans. You will be unmasked for sure.’
‘Not if luck goes with us.’ He nodded to his two companions. ‘Inderjit here will be what he is, a Sikh from the borders whom we have hired as guide and interpreter; Jenkins looks more like a Pathan than they do, given a turban and slippers, and particularly now he has been letting his beard grow; and I will be a Persian who has come here to join the Pathan cause and fight the British, whom he hates. I speak reasonable Pushtu, as long as I don’t meet another bloody Persian. Jenkins and I are sunburnt enough not to have to black up and he will be my Pathan servant, who is a deaf mute. Which will be a pleasant change for all of us.’
This brought awkward smiles from the four of them. Simon turned to Inderjit. ‘Will you volunteer for this, old chap?’ he asked. ‘I don’t need to tell you it will be very dangerous work.’
Solemnly the Sikh bowed his head. ‘It will be an honour to follow the sahib in the footsteps of my beloved father.’
‘And an honour to have you.’ Fonthill turned to the captain and Buckingham. ‘Can you spare him? We couldn’t do this without him because he knows the hills as well as the dialects.’
Buckingham nodded. ‘Of course.’
Appleby-Smith frowned. ‘This will deplete our force, you know,’ he said. ‘Buckingham has always told me that the feller is a good soldier. We could well run into more trouble before we get to Peshawar and we shall need good daffadars.’ His tone had now become querulous.
‘Oh, I think we can manage, Captain,’ interjected Buckingham. ‘And I think that Mr Fonthill’s need is greater than ours.’
‘Thank you,’ Fonthill hurried on. He turned to Appleby-Smith. ‘There is one more very important thing.’ He felt inside his jacket and produced the Amir’s letter to the Viceroy. ‘This is self-explanatory and it is vital that it gets through to the commandant at Peshawar for onwards transmission to the Viceroy. I give this into your care, Clarence. It is vitally important that it does not fall into the hands of the Pathans.’
He gave it to the captain. ‘Now,’ he said, addressing the two subalterns, ‘you two gentlemen must ensure that the captain here carries out his duties as postmaster general.’ His tone was bantering but all three understood the underlying meaning: whatever decisions were taken by the captain, who was in nominal command, the letter must get through to Peshawar. ‘If Jamrud has not been taken and the line is open, you may be able to flag down a train.’ Dawson and Buckingham gave sly smiles and nodded their heads.
‘Thank you all.’ Fonthill gestured towards the Pathans lying among the rocks. ‘Now, give the three of us time to rob the corpses and find something that gives us elegance and a touch of class, then we must all be off.’
While the superficial wounds of the three troopers were treated, Inderjit, Jenkins and Fonthill began the sordid task of stripping clothes from Pathans of roughly the same size as themselves and whose deaths had been caused by shots to the head, so removing the need to scrub bloodstains away. They selected reasonably full bandoliers and good rifles and changed into their disguises. Then the column moved away.
Some ten miles or so further a road climbed away to the right to where the mountains towered above them. Handshakes were exchanged and then the column began its climb and one Sikh, one Persian and one rather dishevelled Pathan plodded on foot towards the border.
CHAPTER TEN
Alice slid and stumbled down the scree in the darkness after leaving the Pathans’ encampment. It was difficult going and her first disappointment came with the presumption that she had only to keep descending eventually to hit the road that ran through the Khyber Pass. In fact, the way seemed to undulate so that she was going upwards as much as down. The second disappointment was in realising that she still had not recovered from collapsing at the fort. That, and the stress induced by the threat of the amputation, meant that she quickly began to feel tired and short of breath. She also felt that the inability to see properly was making her crash and blunder through the landscape, creating enough noise to alert any pursuers.
After perhaps two hours of painful progress – or lack of it – she decided to find some sort of cover and wait until daylight, where the sun could give her some guidance at least on the direction to take. Accordingly, she curled up underneath what appeared to be an overhanging rock, ate some of her precious provisions and tried to sleep.
Slumber, however, evaded her. The darkness was far from silent. Alice had a fear of snakes and scorpions and every scrape and scratch from the uncomfortable bed of stones on which she lay made her imagine either that a pursuing party was hot on her heels or that she was about to be overrun by reptiles. The fact that she had only been able to bring from the dead Pathan a small leather bag in which to carry water, tied inefficiently at the top by cord, meant that she could do little to assuage her thirst. Finding a stream of water nearby must be a priority for the morning.
As the night wore on, she also realised that, in attempting to find Simon and his squadron of Guides in this virtually trackless wilderness, she had undertaken a ridiculously difficult task. If, as she hoped, he had realised that the return route through the Khyber was closed to him, then he would probably veer either far to the north to ride via Marden or climb one of the passes to the south. Finding him and his squadron would be like looking for just one solitary pebble in this rocky series of mountain ranges.
So she sat, miserable and occasionally nodding with fatigue, and waited for the dawn.
It came with that sudden flood of light that characterised the beginning of a new day on the Frontier. Another of those small rock movements nearby that indi
cated the presence of something else alive, prompted her to slip a round into the breech of her rifle and cling to the shelter of the overhang. The Martini-Henry had been painfully heavy and awkward to carry among the rocks in the darkness but she had resolved during the night that she would not be taken alive by the Pathans. The rifle, then, would enable her to fight far more effectively than the little handgun she had tucked into her sash.
She waited, breathing softly, but nothing else stirred in the warmth of the morning. Nothing, that is, except the things that were now moving over her flesh and causing her to itch maddeningly. Alice realised, with despair, that the garments she had appropriated from the dead tribesman had obviously been lousy. The thought filled her with disgust and, for the moment, replaced her fear of being found, tortured and killed. Alice had lived rough on campaigns for many years, but to house these crawling, biting parasites was a new experience and she shivered with horror.
All the more reason, then, to find a stream to relieve her thirst and wash the lice away.
Cautiously, Martini-Henry extended, she crept from her cover. The heat that bounced back at her from the white rocks almost took her breath away, but she seemed to have this rocky canyon all to herself – at least, to herself and her active little fellow travellers.
The sun was still hidden behind the mountain tops but, from the glow that backlit the peaks, she could define the east, so she immediately began climbing to the other side of the canyon to continue to move away to the west, towards the Afghan end of the Pass. She seemed to slip back as much as climb now, for the ground was a mass of shingle, but she topped the rise and saw a blessed fall in the ground away to her left.
Surely, this must bring her eventually down to the Pass and the road, along the edge of which she could make her way carefully under cover to … to … to where? Alice took a deep breath. Maybe to one of the markings delineating the Durand Line, of course, so that she could at least wait there for Simon to cross it. Then she shook her head. What a ridiculous hope! The Line stretched for more than a hundred miles. What made her think that her husband would cross it just where she sat waiting for him?
She licked her dry lips. Water. Find water. If she could do that she could drink and wash these disgusting clothes. Then she would feel better and think straighter.
Her tongue felt like a hot, dry sponge inside her mouth when, at last, she heard what could only be the trickle of running water. She stumbled towards the sound, not caring now of the noise she herself made and there it was: a little mountain stream, as clear as gin, gurgling and splashing down between the rocks.
Alice plunged her face into the stream and drank deeply. Then she lay back and splashed the precious liquid over her hair. The cool water brought back her sense of danger and she lifted her head and looked cautiously around. Nothing. Just the inevitable jumble of stones and boulders.
Laying the rifle within reach, she began removing her garments and laying them, one by one, in the flowing water, using stones to hold them down. Could lice swim? She summoned a wry grin and began running her fingernails along the seams of the roughly sewn clothing to help remove her lodgers. Then, still cautiously gazing around her, she removed her own undergarments and gave them the same treatment, until she was kneeling completely naked. One by one, she spread out the garments on the rocks to dry.
She realised that she was risking sunstroke but she luxuriated in the warmth for a couple of minutes before she began putting on the clothes, even though they were still wet. She was almost fully dressed before she heard distant voices. She froze, picked up the rifle and huddled behind a large boulder.
The voices were too far away to detect the language, but it seemed, by the slight differentiation in the origins of the voices, that the owners were climbing. Very slowly, her chin close to the ground, she put her face around the rock. Some two hundred yards away, the Sikh, Persian and Panthan were slowly climbing the mountainside. They had spread out and were looking around them, the muzzles of their rifles following their gaze.
It was clearly a search party.
Alice sucked in her breath and withdrew her head. She must have left tracks! How else could she have been followed? She clutched the rifle across her breast and silently drew three, then four, cartridges from the bandolier that lay on the ground beside her knees and laid them out on a flat stone. If she could reload quickly enough, maybe she could kill all three if she heard them stepping nearer.
But she did not. Eventually, the sound of their voices grew more distant until it disappeared completely. She risked taking another look. The men obviously were still climbing for she caught a glimpse of a red and green wound turban among the rocks, much higher now and at least three hundred yards away.
Alice bit her lip and thought quickly. Three of them. There would be others and they were obviously combing the mountain. She must be very careful, for if they were climbing they could look down on her. Better to wait until dark. She slipped the bandolier over her head, replaced her own turban and huddled close to the rock.
She was not sure how long she sat there for the heat and her aching joints made her drowsy, but she came to life as she realised that the sun had slipped behind the mountain tops and that familiar deep purple that so distinguished dusk in the hills was beginning to enfold her. Better to move again.
Cautiously, she raised herself and began to descend once more, looking carefully all around her as she went and working her way diagonally across the hillside towards the dull glow that marked the west. Soon, however, the nature of the terrain made it impossible to walk further, for she was continually gashing herself against the rocks in what was now virtual darkness. Sighing, Alice found another little clearing and settled down for another miserable night.
This time it was the cold that revealed itself as her greatest enemy. Her clothes still seemed damp and she began to shiver. She had long ago eaten the last of the bread and meat taken from the encampment and hunger began to gnaw. Pulling the poshteen tightly around her, she rolled into the foetal position and tried to assess her position.
Her thoughts raced. It was clearly stupid to trudge blindly towards some point where Simon and his squadron might cross the border. Apart from the obvious odds against them being at the same point at the same time, he was most likely to have taken a completely different route back to Peshawar to avoid the Pathans in the Pass. So … what to do? It seemed to her, as she lay cuddling her rifle and shivering, that she had two choices once she reached the western end of the Pass. She could either cross into Afghanistan and follow the road that led to Kabul – hadn’t Simon said that it was comparatively easy-going across the plain to the capital? – or turn right and climb the hills again and head for Marden, the home of the Guides.
Alice found that tears were now beginning to trickle down her cheeks at the hopelessness of it all. Either way presented huge problems. Even if she was able to reach Kabul without being molested, could she hope to find succour with the Amir? Wouldn’t he suspect her of being some strange spy and shoot her out of hand? The other alternative seemed worse. Without map or compass or knowledge of the language, she would almost certainly get lost in the mountains to the north. And hungry now, she would surely starve or die of thirst in those barren hills.
She licked her lips and lowered her throbbing head onto the cool muzzle of the rifle. Ah, the rifle! Perhaps tomorrow she might be able to sight a mountain goat and shoot it? She had caught a glimpse of one or two. Surely she had outdistanced her pursuers now, sufficiently at least to risk a shot? And she had taken matches from the tent and there was just about enough bone-dry kindling about to light a fire and cook something. The very thought activated her long-redundant taste buds and she licked the skin of her still damp but now empty water bag.
Another dawn and she cautiously stretched and slipped a hand underneath her poshteen. She was as stiff as an ungreased wagon spring but at least the lice were gone. Up above her, in the now bright-blue sky, two eagles wheeled, but they seemed to
be the only living thing in view. But were they …? Down below to the left, there, just there. A movement of some kind, where the rocks opened out a little.
Alice raised a hand above her eyes to shield from the glare. Yes, there it was again. Something brown was moving slowly. She concentrated. Glory be! A mountain goat!
She swivelled her head and studied the terrain carefully. Nothing else, just the unrelenting boulders and rough scree. She looked back again and the goat was now nonchalantly walking towards her. With great care she knelt and slowly raised the rifle. Resting it on a large rock, she raised the backsight to give herself a range of two hundred yards, squinted along the barrel to where the foresight rested just behind the creature’s right shoulder and then slowly, very, very slowly, squeezed the trigger.
The subsequent report boomed like a canon, sending echoes bouncing back from the mountain tops and causing black crows to rise in a hysterical flutter. The unexpected savagery of the kickback sent Alice back on her haunches and the rifle clattering to the ground. But the goat now lay still, oozing blood.
Seizing the rifle and slipping another round into the breech – ‘always reload first’ had been Jenkins’s mantra – Alice looked around once again. Silence and inertia had settled back onto the mountain and she scrambled to her feet and began stumbling towards the inert body of the goat. Damn! It was still breathing. She had despatched dozens of foxes, pheasants and partridges back home in Norfolk, but giving the coup de grâce to this brown-eyed creature, with its fine horns and elegant legs, was far more daunting.
She withdrew the Pathan’s long knife from its scabbard at her belt and felt the edge with her thumb. Razor-sharp. Then, in a quick, almost desperate movement, she pulled back the goat’s head by the horns, exposing the throat, and slashed it with the knife. Blood gushed out and Alice fumbled to untie the water bag at her waist to retain some, at least, of it. Thirst once again was becoming a problem.
