The Damascened Blade(2)

‘Anybody with him? You! Ahmad!’ The Colonel switched easily to Pushtu and continued, ‘Did you see what happened?’

It emerged that the three men who’d been with him had succeeded in negotiating the cliff face, one slightly wounded, one slashed across the face by a flying chip of stone. But Harry had been hit climbing the cliff and had fallen to its foot. He’d been shot through the shoulder and one arm was useless. He’d broken his leg in two places falling down the cliff.

Harry had tried to move but he couldn’t get his limbs to obey him. In his trouser pocket was a cyanide pill but he couldn’t reach it. With years of experience of the frontier behind him he understood the situation in all its stark reality. If he was lucky he was within a few hours of death; if he was unlucky, within a few days. Uncomplicated, honourable and kind-hearted, Harry was well liked by all and loved by his men. The Pathan troopers he commanded were as uncomplicated as himself. They had no question at all as to what they should do. Slinging their rifles across their shoulders, they were already forming up to go straight back in and get him out but the Colonel took one further look at the terrain. Harry lay at the end of a narrow defile, thirty feet wide at the most at its base, overlooked on both sides by towering cliffs and by Afridi, each commanding a wide field of fire through which a rescuing force would need to pass. It was a lethal option.

‘I’m going to have to give the order.’

He did.

‘Leave it!’ he said. ‘Leave it! Prepare to fall back.’

Jock mopped his red face. His hands were shaking and his eyes unfocused with remembered terror at the mad forward dash. ‘Bloody country!’ He said it again to himself. ‘Who wants the bloody place? And these people? Leave them, for Christ’s sake, to kill each other as they always have and as soon as possible!’

He squinted up at the hills. Was he imagining it or had the enemy fire subsided? It was nearly dusk and the dark fell abruptly in these hills. Had they given up for the day and gone home to their tea? Not willing to answer back to the Lewis guns probably. He’d heard the Afridi, like all Pathan tribesmen, were clever tacticians, brave mountain fighters certainly – none braver – but they were careful and knew when to retreat. They had the skill to disappear into the hills as silently as they had arrived. Save your men and bullets to fight another day was their policy. He listened hopefully. Yes, that’s probably what they were doing. Getting out while the going was still good. It’s what he would have done himself.

The men had fallen silent and were obeying the Colonel’s command to prepare to withdraw back to the original position half a mile away, from where they could, under cover of darkness, make it back the five miles to their base at Fort Hamilton. Wounded were being tended, stretcher bearers were falling in.

The stillness was shattered by a thin and wavering scream. Rigid with fear, Jock said, ‘For God’s sake! What was that?’ His fellow officers couldn’t meet his eye. ‘What the hell was that?’ he asked again.

‘That was Harry,’ said one of them at last.

The scream was repeated again and again and again. The shrill note changed abruptly to a bubbling gurgle. The silent company went methodically about their business, flinging an occasional stony glance at their commander. But for Jock, disgusted terror and helplessness were turning to furious rage. He’d only met him short days ago but Harry had been kind to him from the moment of his arrival at the fort on attachment to the Scouts, welcoming, encouraging, joking and now in the throes of a hideous death. The subaltern was a Scotsman. He was, moreover, a hill man himself, a stalker by upbringing and, reared on tales of ancestral gallantry, he had considered himself a match for anyone. The cry – the despairing cry from the gathering darkness – was heard again and was now accompanied by shouts of laughter muffled by distance but ribald and derisive.

It was too much for Jock. He cast a calculating eye on the progress of the well-drilled movements around him then began to inch away and disappeared into the shadows. Fuelled with rage and hatred he set off into the hills, remembering the terrain which he had surveyed earlier in the day, marking down occasional remembered landmarks, using the jagged country, exploiting skills acquired from a boyhood in the Trossachs. He advanced as fast as caution would let him towards the deadly defile at the bottom of which Harry lay agonizing, his screams now loud beyond bearing, even his sobs audible.

No one shot at him from the crags above. Could it be that they had all climbed down to watch the entertainment? Crouching behind a boulder he checked his pistol and felt the handle of the skian dhu that he wore, up till then as a gesture of bravado, in his sock, preparing for his assault. Red battle rage, the rage of his Pictish ancestors was burning in him, and his hands which in the race under fire to the Tit had been shaking and uncontrolled were now steady and purposeful. A creeping shadow amongst the shadows of the ravine, he inched his way forward until he had a view of the scene under a cliff overhang.