The Damascened Blade(3)

Two tall turbaned figures bent with relish over the body lying between them on the ground. Knives flashed in their hands and Harry groaned. Laughing, one of them strolled to a thorn bush and broke off a twig. Jock’s stomach churned. He knew what they were doing. And he’d dismissed it as an old soldier’s story told to frighten the new recruits. The death of a thousand cuts. With special Pathan refinements. Into each cut they were grinding grass and thorns. His sharp eyes swept the area with calculation. Only two men. Why only two? Why had these two been left behind the general retreat? Were they volunteers? Specialists? The night shift left in charge with orders to prolong the death until daylight when they could all muster and enjoy it?

He waited until they were absorbed in their handling and insertion of the thorns with the accompanying screams from their victim, timing his rush for the moment of greatest distraction. They didn’t hear his soft footfall. The skian dhu caught one of them from behind in the heart ribs and the second looked up aghast to hear words he did not understand spat at him by a red-haired, white-faced devil. ‘E’en do and spare not!’ the Highlander hissed and he plunged his dagger into the tribesman’s neck. His severed throat spouting, the second fell across the body of his comrade.

‘Harry! Harry! They’re done for! It’s me, Jock.’

He peered hopelessly down at the naked, shattered body. He was too late. But no. The eyes fluttered open and, he was certain, recognized him. Harry tried to speak but gurgled and choked as a rush of blood, black in the failing light, poured down his chin. They’d torn out his tongue and there was only one way he could get his message through to the horrified young face bending over him. He nodded and tried to smile with his eyes and then, unmistakable to Jock, came the message. The eyes slid down to Jock’s gun and remained fixed there.

‘Right. Right. I understand. Leave it to me. And, look here – if I get back, I’ll say all the right things to those who need to hear them. No need to distress anyone.’ He glanced at the broken, tortured body and added, ‘I can imagine what you’d want me to say.’

The pain-glazed eyes looked up again at Jock’s face and blinked in relief. Tearing a crucifix on a leather thong from around his neck, Jock thrust it into Harry’s palm and closed his hand over it. ‘Rest in peace, my friend,’ said Jock and he put his Browning pistol to Harry’s head.

There was one more thing his intense rage pushed him to do before he left the scene. Pulling up the baggy dirty shirt of the second man he’d killed he took his knife and, in a few swift strokes, he slashed letters into the dead flesh.

With infinite care and guile, Jock began to track his way back along the defile. He had gone perhaps fifty yards when his stretched senses sounded a warning. A glint of dying sunlight on metal high up above his head made him throw himself sideways. As he did the crash of an exploding musket echoed down the canyon and shot showered past him. A jezail? Was that an old-fashioned jezail? Who the hell would be firing such a thing? The Afridi were all equipped – God knows how – with bolt-action rifles to match the Scouts’ own. He’d been told that in these mountain passes thousands of British men, women and children fleeing from Afghanistan had been pinned down and massacred by just such guns. But that had been seventy years ago.

The silence and the darkness bore down on him and, the last of his courage ebbing fast, the terror of the hunted was taking its place. He ran, weaving and galloping like a hare, the sting of several ricochet wounds in his arms and shoulders urging him on.

At the Tit all was ready for the ordered retreat back to Fort Hamilton.

‘Where’s that new chap? Jock, is it? Anyone seen him? Someone tell him this is no time to sneak off for a pee! Wouldn’t like to hear he’d got his cock shot off! He’s what! When? Bloody hell! Why didn’t someone . . .?’

‘Sir! Sir! Look! Over there – three o’clock – that’s Jock. He’s coming in now! Running for it!’





Chapter Two


April 1922

Lily Coblenz was in a foul mood. She’d been in a foul mood for about a month. She could hardly remember the excitement with which she had embarked on her so long anticipated Indian vacation. She could only contrast her high expectations with the drab realities. Here she was where she had longed to be. India. Simla and the swirling glamour of a Viceregal Spring Ball. But really – she might as well have never left Chicago! Apart from the accents (and to her occasionally they still sounded cute enough) she could have been at any grand party at home on Lake-shore Drive. The men were the same, the clothes were the same; the same brilliantined hair, the same little moustaches. Even the food was scarcely different and the drink not different at all. But at least that was something to be grateful for! She took another appreciative sip of the perfectly chilled 1915 Krug and looked petulantly round the room.