by John Masters
The ponies were already exhausted, and after an hour Robin and Jagbir had to dismount and drag them the last eight miles. Whenever they slackened the strain on the reins the ponies faltered to a stop. Worse, they tried the whole time to circle to the left. It was full dark. Time and again the North Star, which should now have been directly behind them, appeared over their left shoulders. Then they swore and wrenched the ponies’ mouths and turned again south.
At last Jagbir said, ‘I smell water.’ In the utter dryness of the desert even that slight dampness blew like a sea breeze on Robin’s cheek. The ponies raised their heads and, instead of pulling left, swung right and broke into a trot. Two hundred yards upwind they came to the water, a muddy pool, and flung themselves into it.
In the morning it took an hour to fill the skins, so shallow and soupy was the water. It lay like a green-black stain in the hollow, and Robin knew that if he had been able to see it the night before he could not have drunk it. That day the ponies marched for six hours, were dragged by the reins for three more, and then lay down. They would not move until Jagbir emptied the noisome water from a skin down their throats. Before the day ended they had emptied two more skins. From midday on recurrent attacks of diarrhoea twisted Robin’s and Jagbir’s bowels and spent their strength. At the next oasis, which they reached about two in the morning after a forty-mile stage, twenty hours on the road, they found a prayer flag and a shallow, unlined well. The well contained no water.
Near the well and the flag, the moon shone on a discarded saddle. It was of a strange pattern and might have belonged to one of Tamerlane’s riders. The aseptic desert had bleached, dried, and preserved it, to remind them that here was the point of no return. With the remaining skins they could either reach the next oasis ahead or go back to the last behind, but only with great hardship in either case. Behind they knew there was water--that filthy puddle. Ahead there might be no water.
A bowel spasm gripped Robin, and with it a similar knot of angry doubt. He found himself here not of his own decision but because someone had sent him, in this case a nomad on a Bactrian camel. Was he too an agent of Lenya Muralev? If so, she intended him to die of thirst in a place where no one would even know that he had died. He might be on the wrong road, but assuredly not on the wrong track. He would go forward.
There was no reason to wait, because they were too tired to sleep. It was best not to break the deadly rhythm of movement. They gave the animals half a skin between them, wetted their own tongues, and moved on.
Late in the afternoon, from the summit of a mountainous dune, Jagbir pointed. A dark-green band of colour, absorbing the light, lay like a blot against the shimmering horizon.
Ten more miles reeled back behind them. With infinite caution the green band separated out and in the moonlight became the dappled shadow of bushes. Jagbir first saw the hollow that held the well; then the horses sensed it and gathered their strength. Robin held Jagbir’s elbow. Together they all ran down the last dune, across the flat, over the moon-washed, sun-dried patterns of trampling hoofs and camel pads and human feet. The ponies won the race by several yards, and each sucked in a long draught. The water was deep and clear.
Even as the first drop passed over Robin’s lips its bitterness, like a serrated knife, ripped his tongue. He rubbed sand in his mouth and shrieked. The poison burned into his gums. He ran to a skin and rinsed and rinsed until he could breathe again. One horse was dead, the others lying sprawled on their sides at the edge of the water, their necks flat along the ground, the lips drawn back over their teeth. Those two lived still but had no strength left to struggle against the poison in them. Soon they would die, as the first had died and as Robin was ready to die, of disappointment and despair.
Robin lay down, collapsing slowly from the knees. When he opened his eyes he saw that all the ponies were dead. There was plenty of food, but it was all dry. The water had been poisoned. Lenya Muralev had lured them into the desert, and they could not turn back. Once, on the road to Karshi, Bahram had playfully bitten her. Now she’d killed him too. He had been a good horse.
Jagbir said, ‘We’ve had to pull the ponies sixty miles. We’re better off without them.’ He moved about slowly but unhesitatingly, collecting the things they must carry--the last water-skin, three parts empty, a bag of raisins, some dates, a dozen discs of unleavened bread. ‘The gold,’ he said. ‘Let me carry your belt.’
Robin said, ‘It’s not heavy. Can you manage the water? I don’t think I can carry my rifle any more.’
‘We’ll leave it. I have mine.’
Being beyond hope, they could sleep. In the freezing dawn they faced the last stage but one. If there was no water at the end of it, it would be, for them, the very last. Robin’s fingers were so numb he could not tie his load on his shoulders, and Jagbir had to do it for him.
Robin thought he must have marched unconscious for half the day, because next the sun was glaring down, and the wind stung his neck. The effort to march became a physical pain, increased to agony, was surmounted, and became an effort to live. That in turn increased as the other had, but it would be the last. Only death or water could surmount this. The words of the song Jagbir had sung in that camp near Karshi thrummed and drummed and rumbled in his head--jaun,jaun,pareli, in time with his steps, stumbling when he stumbled. Jagbir gave him water, and he cried because he could have no more. Ankhen ma gazeli, and Mclain came running down from the slaughter at Tezin Kach, and here were the faces of all the men who had not seen him shoot himself, and the snow whistled past his ears. Samajaunchhu Dehra Dun, and Anne Savage, who ought to have been Anne Hildreth or even Anne Hayling, loved him and believed she could lift him by force of love out of the deserts to a place of water and shade and no wind.
He only wanted water.
‘It is finished,’ Jagbir answered.
Jagbir’s feet kept on and on, left, right, left, right, just in front of him. There was a length of rein reaching back from Jagbir’s waist, connected at the other end to--well, his own hand, towing him along.
When he found it was black and hot and he had sand in his mouth, Jagbir picked him up.
So when he found it was black and cold and he had sand in his mouth, but no firm hand lifted him, he rolled over on his back and prepared to die while he yet had the strength. He must not be carried helpless and feeble past those gates. He must walk in wide-eyed and strong, looking about him.
Jagbir had gone. According to his pompous father, Colonel Rodney Savage, C.B., Jagbir had deserted him, spat on the glorious tradition of the regiment, and behaved like no true Gurkha. Nonsense. But it was strange that Jagbir, who did not fear death in battle, should run away from death in the desert. And foolish, because in the desert death would only follow him the more relentlessly. He would be lonely when he died.
He was not lonely himself. All the people had gone away. Jaun, jaun, pareli had gone away. The imperial danger had gone away, and the Czar, and Lenya Muralev, and Jagbir of course and at last even Peter Muralev. Being undisturbed, he was able to concentrate on the immediately pressing problem--what was God’s purpose in giving man awareness of God?
The water in his mouth caused his arms and legs to twitch, then the cold to bite and the wind to blow and his stomach to bind in a spasm of cramp. A quarter of a mouthful, and his throat swelled so that he could not swallow. The water that was in his mouth trickled down his face to the sand. He rolled over and licked at it, but it became grit.
‘Slowly, sahib, there is enough.’
Soon he found strength to take another sip. After an hour he went to sleep.
In daylight he saw that Jagbir, asleep beside him, nursed a half-full goatskin in his arms. His face had filled out, and he opened his eyes when Robin moved.
Robin said, ‘What happened?’
‘I was not tired, not very. The moon was up, and I could go faster by myself. You were resting.’
‘Dying.’
‘I went on, though I became a little more tired.’
O--master of the matter-of-fact, Jagbir. You were lonely and dying.
‘I knew we must be near the oasis. After a mile--three, perhaps--I saw a camel. When I went down to it I saw a man asleep. The sand deadened the sound of my feet.’
‘And he gave us water? It was a--miracle. It was the work of----’ He paused. He did not like to use the name of God aloud when he did not know whether God was like a man or like a thought or like a pamir.
Jagbir did not answer directly but said, ‘Let us go forward to the water now.’
Robin found he could not walk by himself, but Jagbir helped him. Soon he saw the camel, ridiculously close and large and alive, squatting by the waterhole and chewing cud. He saw its saddle and load neatly stacked beside it. He saw the man lying curled up ten yards off, still asleep.
Jagbir said, ‘It was not the work of God, sahib. It was the work of the Russian woman.’ Robin thought, Not the woman, surely? She wouldn’t help us. Peter Muralev, you mean? But Jagbir pointed to a glass jar full of blue powder that stood in full sight near the sleeping man. Jagbir said, ‘All this way I prayed for this. I know that woman. We were travelling fast. This man, her servant, thought he was still a day ahead of us. He was going to poison the well in the morning before he went on. Until then he needed the water for himself and his camel.’
Robin looked again at the man and said, ‘Then--he is not sleeping?’
‘No.’
Robin put his head in his hands. After a while he said, ‘We will rest all day here. To-morrow we will take the camel and go to the Akkal. But I did not hear a shot.’
‘I did not fire. I gave him a drink of water.’
CHAPTER 15
So they came, both riding the camel, to the end of the desert. The mountains rose ahead in a pale wall from eastern to western horizon. The Akkal oasis stretched for many miles under the mountains. It was not a single well but an area where melting winter snows formed pools that did not dry up all year, and where the pressure along the hill faults expressed water in a hundred widely scattered springs. The black tents of the nomads dotted the plain. There were clumps of trees and bushes. There were small villages and herds grazing and tiny patches of cultivation.
Had the Muralevs already arrived? It depended whether they had hurried all the way or had gone slowly and spent time collecting specimens to reinforce their role of naturalists. In any case they would soon expect the owner of the camel, the man with the poison bottle, to come and report to them.
After a couple of days they would cause the whole of the route to be searched.
Robin felt strength returning to his body, but his mind fretted, and he was sick. He could not believe that Muralev would pollute the desert with man-made poison. If he had, he’d lost the mysterious quality which united him to Robin and to the secrets of the open places. It could have been the woman alone. He would have to believe so or he would not want to continue. Only one thing was sure, that someone had earnestly tried to kill him and Jagbir. ‘The charade ceases to be pretence when an agent gets hold of something really important.’ He never forgot Hayling’s words. Yet--yet he was here, and alive. So many other methods could have been devised to kill him in the Black Desert, methods that could not have failed.
Jagbir said, ‘We have to get fodder and more food.’ They had already eaten largely at a nomad encampment.
‘What about this camel?’
‘It depends where we’re going next, lord. Either buy another or sell this and buy two horses.’
‘I don’t know where we’ll be going. We’d better get horses and ask about the Muralevs.’
Jagbir considered and said, ‘Isn’t that dangerous, lord?’
‘A little. But we can’t hide the fact that we’ve arrived. They’ll find that out as soon as they begin to inquire. All these nomads have seen us. We must get some information and then disappear again.’
Bearing a little to the east, they came to a small hamlet. Its principal tradesman knew nothing of the Muralevs, but he knew where Robin could certainly get hold of them. If they were Russians, he said, they would be heading for an encampment outside the village of Bezmein. He took Robin up to the flat roof of his house and pointed west. ‘There, that’s Bezmein. It’s over ten miles away. It’s no larger than this, but a lot of the caravans stop there because they have women and liquor and we don’t. A party of Russians arrived several weeks ago and camped outside it, on the far side. Nobody knows what they are doing. They walk about with big boards and tall things on three wooden legs. They won’t let us go near them. But they go into Bezmein, some of them, and get drunk like all kafirs and yell and sing and womanize.’ He spat over the parapet.
Robin said, ‘Thank you. But you misunderstand the purpose of my questions. I do not want to meet these Russians. They say I owe them money. So if they should happen to ask after us, perhaps you will. . .?’ He handed over a couple of silver coins. The merchant nodded and spat again. ‘To hell with all unbelievers!’
‘Amen.’
When they had bought two horses, sold the camel, and transacted their other business, Robin and Jagbir headed eastward out of the village. Bezmein was to the west.
The wind blew all night and hid their tracks as they circled round until in the dawn they camped in a fold of ground at the limit of the hills. It was like a little eyrie. The Bezmein oasis lay among thin trees half a mile in front of them and fifty feet lower, so that they overlooked it. They could see the village and, about a quarter of a mile to its left, a grove of trees. They saw in the grove at least five tents. There was as yet no need to go closer. The party there could only be surveyors. Later, if they could, they must try and find out what the Russians were surveying for, but first they had to be sure that the Muralevs were coming here.
In the middle of the day the Muralevs came. From the ridge that sheltered their little valley, Robin and Jagbir saw the dust of the caravan miles out in the Black Desert. The Muralevs were riding ahead as usual, on little ponies. A mile behind them followed half a dozen loaded camels, two more horses, and six armed men. Even from that distance the weariness of all of them showed in their paces and in the hunched, rolling way the men sat their animals. Some of the surveyors came out of the camp to greet them, then they all disappeared.
Robin sent Jagbir to search the hillside for water--where they could take the ponies after dark--and a sheltered place where they could light a small fire and cook their food. Then he settled down to watch the camp. He saw men working under the trees, and soon another tent rose. He saw Muralev and a stranger come to the edge of the scrub and stand a while with their backs to him, staring out to the north. In that direction he and Jagbir were supposed to be lying dead. A little later another man rode out on a camel. Robin hoped he would go north into the Black Desert, because then he could not return with news in less than three days. But the rider went first into Bezmein village, came out again after an hour, and headed east for the hamlet where Robin had talked with the merchant on the rooftop. He would learn something there, all right. He would be back late in the evening or early the following morning.
In the twilight Jagbir returned. ‘I’ve found a good place. A little dell two miles up this valley.’
‘Good. We’ll not be able to get close to that camp except at night. And one of us will have to stay with the ponies.’
‘We ought to work together, lord. The ponies will be all right. They’re not frightened. The wolves aren’t hungry yet.’ Robin agreed. Jagbir knew. They hurried to the dell, ate quickly, tethered the ponies with strong cord, and returned to the eyrie. Jagbir said, ‘Lord, when it’s dark I stay here with the rifle. You go forward and find a good place, where you can lie up even by day. You will try to get into the camp to-night, perhaps? You lie in the hiding-place all to-morrow too. Then to-morrow evening we change over.’
‘How are we going to eat, cook, feed the horses?’
‘The one who is here with the rifle can do all that at night. It is only by day that he
must be here, in the eyrie, all the time. With the rifle, by day, he can make the enemy go slowly if they discover the one who’s lying out. By night he can do nothing.’
‘All right.’
They settled down to the new routine. Robin went the first night and found that Uzbeg sentries guarded the camp. Lying on the desert, he saw their black sheepskin caps and their slung rifles against the dim lamps in the tents behind.
There was no hope of entering the grove under these conditions. Before dawn he found a trio of bushes two hundred yards from the eastern edge of the camp, and with his hands burrowed in the sand until it nearly covered him. Then he put down his head, placed a pebble in his mouth to suck, and lay still as the sun came up. He lay still until the sun went down. No visitors came this day to the camp. The nomads grazing their flocks kept away in the distance to the north. Villagers came out from Bezmein but did not approach the camp. The surveyors did not leave, nor did the Muralevs. The messenger on the camel returned early, and Robin heard angry voices. Later Lenya Muralev came to the edge of the grove and stared suspiciously around the horizon, searching the hills with particular care.
The following night Jagbir took over. By day Robin saw from the eyrie that five visitors came to the oasis. They came from the south, where a track emerged from the mountains a mile or two east of Bezmein. At the change-over that evening Jagbir said, ‘Those men who came, they’re still there. They’re not white unless they’re in disguise. They don’t seem to be Uzbegs, Afghans, Turkis, or Persians--at least not the kind of Persians we saw in Balkh and Kabul. They seemed to be speaking a sort of Persian, not Zaboli like ours.’
The next day, lying in hiding behind the three bushes, Robin saw the visitors depart. They returned the way they had come, one by one, at long intervals, passing close by him. He thought they might be tribal chieftains from South Persia, Qashqai perhaps. One other thing of interest he saw--a Russian who left the camp at dusk and returned, very drunk, at midnight. The sentries took no notice of him and did not even challenge him but stood aside and let him find his own stumbling way into the encampment.
