The Damascened Blade(105)

Yes, that’s what he was planning to do! Leave James’s body on top of Zeman’s grave. The symbolism was obvious. A grave for two warriors! Joe could hardly breathe. The hot air was scorching his lungs and through cracked lips he gasped and heaved as he ran. Sweat ran down his face blinding him. He swept his eyes clear to see that the two men walking companionably together had arrived at the grave-side and Iskander had tethered his horse and taken up a position facing the fort. James, across the grave from him, still had his back to Joe and his head was bent in prayer. Joe screamed again and fired the gun. James almost turned around but Iskander spoke to him and reclaimed his attention. Iskander had spotted Joe.

He put his left hand into his tunic, drew something out and extended his right hand to James. James leaned nearer. The old Pathan trick! Grasping their target warmly by one hand they would use the other to stick a knife in his ribs.

‘James! No! The knife! James! Watch for the knife!’ Joe could hardly raise the breath to shout. Too late, Joe saw James turn towards him, hearing him at last but now, by the very act of turning, exposed and fatally distracted. Joe had played into Iskander’s hands. The deflection of James’s attention left him wide open to the inevitable quick lunge.

The crack of a rifle shot threw Joe automatically to the ground. He crashed down, raising a cloud of dust and sand that clogged his mouth and filled his eyes. Unbelieving, he raised his head and rubbed the grit from his eyes to see the body of James lying over the grave. Iskander, weaving from side to side, his left arm shattered and bloody, had been sent spinning back several yards by the force of the shot. As Joe watched he staggered back to the grave, stood for a moment and collapsed across James’s body.

Careless of further rifle fire, Joe surged to his feet and hurled himself forward, arriving, lungs bursting, to stand groaning helplessly over the two blood-drenched bodies.

‘Shit! God Almighty! Fucking hell!’

Joe sobbed with joy to hear a stream of curses such as he had not heard since he and James had shared a trench.

‘Course I’m all right! When a bloody .303 bullet whizzes past your ear, you hit the ground! See you did too! How did you know, Joe? My God! Get this murderous bugger off me, will you? And who the hell fired that shot? Wasn’t you with that little pop gun!’

They looked back to the fort where for a second a blonde head bobbed between the battlements and disappeared.

‘Oh, my God! Annie Oakley!’ said James.

Together they raised Iskander’s body, from which the blood was pumping at an alarming rate. The left arm was a shredded mass of flesh and ribbons of khaki sleeve. But, ‘He’s alive!’ said Joe. ‘James, he’s still alive! Give me your lanyard and I’ll try to get a tourniquet on this.’

With practised hand, Joe worked swiftly to stop the blood flow. ‘Grace! Where are you?’ he groaned. ‘Half-way to bloody Kabul by now! Here, put a finger on this, James.’

As they worked on him a knife slipped from the shattered left sleeve and fell on to the blood-soaked earth. Rubies winked in the black jade hilt and Joe recoiled from it as from a rearing cobra. Iskander’s eyes flickered open for a moment and Joe caught a familiar green gleam of amusement.

‘God! That was meant for me!’ said James. And with relief of tension came a flood, a rush of confused words. ‘He asked me to come out here with him. To discuss the siting and wording of a headstone for Zeman . . . said he wanted to say one last prayer for him . . . thought it would be a good idea if I joined him. Least I could do, I thought. He was going to kill me,’ said James. ‘Wasn’t he, Joe? For Zeman. He was finishing the job for him. Look.’ He reached over, shuddering, and took something from Iskander’s right hand.

Joe peered at it. ‘It’s a crucifix,’ he said in puzzlement.

‘It’s my crucifix,’ said James. ‘I put it into the hand of Harry Holbrook seconds before I shot him. He was a good man. A man of God. I thought it might bring him some comfort at the last. He firmly believed that God was with him in these hills. Though the behaviour of those two bloodthirsty tormentors must have tested his faith to the limit . . . They were torturing him, Joe. The very worst they could think of . . . He could never have survived such treatment. He couldn’t ask me not to give Grace all the dreadful details – they’d torn out his tongue – but I knew what he wanted me to say when I got back and I said it. I’ve never told anyone the truth until now. But Zeman must have found the crucifix on the body and kept it all those years. A talisman? A reminder? A clue to the identity of the man who killed his brothers?’