The Damascened Blade(54)
A waistcoat. Judging by its retained warmth, a recently worn waistcoat. Wrinkling her nose at the smell of the hairy afghan poshteen, Lily gratefully slipped it on, holding the reins in her teeth as she manoeuvred.
Enveloped in the warmth of the garment and comforted by the thoughtfulness of the man who had handed it to her and whom she assumed to be Iskander, Lily began to relax and almost to enjoy her experience. But she wasn’t going to be just an unwanted part of the baggage train – no sir! She looked up at the night sky and tried to find the Pole Star. She wished she had listened more carefully to her father when he had explained about navigating by the stars. Having no son, Carl Coblenz had taken his daughter with him and his hands when he patrolled the wide acres of his ranch and it was with senses trained and quickened in the wilderness of Dakota that Lily set about keeping a mental map of her journey into the foothills of the Hindu Kush.
After an hour’s steady slog someone in the leading party lit up a flare. Two more were ignited and positioned half-way along the column in a formation that Lily guessed would have looked like the head of an arrow if observed from a crag overhead. At a signal from the hills and unseen by Lily, the head torch bearer appeared to swing his light around in a particular pattern and the convoy moved ahead. ‘He’s showing his passport,’ Lily thought. The next time, she heard the signal – a high-pitched, short whistle – which precipitated the answering wave of the flare. ‘We’re being passed down the line! But what line? Going where?’ She looked at the sky again and tried vainly to catch a glance at her wristwatch. ‘Sure as eggs, it’s not Afghanistan we’re headed for!’
Plodding along in the moonlight at an easier pace, Lily had time to speculate on the reasons for abducting poor old Rathmore. What on earth did Iskander want with him? He obviously disliked the man and Rathmore qualified as a credible hostage on account of his wealth and influence but Lily was afraid there was more to it than simple banditry. Iskander must have some dark reason for making off with him. Iskander, she knew, had not been satisfied with the official account of his kinsman’s death. He must have reasoned or got evidence that Rathmore was responsible. Lily thought back to the evening of the feast and to Zeman’s challenge to Rathmore’s calculated rudeness. Rathmore’s self-esteem had been badly dented. He had lost face before an audience of military men and the enemy but also, and perhaps more importantly, he had come off worst in her eyes and Lily was in no doubt that Rathmore had set out to impress her. Had Rathmore taken it into his head to punish Zeman? To kill him? She couldn’t see how this could have been managed but Iskander seemed to have worked it out.
And now he was taking him off somewhere into the wilderness to kill him. Probably to torture him to death. Lily remembered with a shudder the appalling treatment meted out to captured prisoners by these men of the hills. In Simla Edward Dalrymple-Webster had embarked with relish on a highly coloured account of the staking-out, the emasculation, the eye-gouging and the skinning-alive suffered at the hands of the Pathan. Lily had assumed he had exaggerated in his desperate attempt to make an impression but she had been chilled by something James had said – ‘We never leave a wounded man behind in Pathan territory. Oh, no. The whole gasht will risk its life to carry every last man – and his rifle – to safety.’ And she had pushed him further with a question. ‘But suppose you couldn’t get back to him? What then?’ And James had replied with slow matter-of-factness, ‘Then we’d shoot him where he lay. Quick and clean. It’s what we would all want. It’s what we all expect.’
The troop ahead seemed to have called a halt at last. Dawn was breaking in the sky over her left shoulder and as she rode up to the main body she found she could make out familiar faces in the pale light. All looked weary and tense and the frequent glances up into the surrounding rocks did not go unremarked by Lily. They were not, apparently, riding into entirely friendly country. The horses steamed gently in the morning mist and made their way down to the stream to drink. She saw Rathmore being cut free and the cloth taken off his head. Was he aware of the danger he was in? Lily was consumed by a sudden rush of hot anger at the difficulties he had caused them by his arrogance and stupidity and now, she suspected, by his murderous guilt. And she would have to stand helplessly by and watch while these bandits tortured the truth out of him.
He turned and recognized her and, face crimson with rage, shouted her name. ‘Traitor!’ he added. And, ‘Baggage!’ The idiot appeared to be blaming her for the trouble they were in. When Lily got angry she didn’t shout back. In any ruckus, she reckoned it was the one who kept his head that won. Sitting as tall as she could in the saddle she fixed him with a stare in which she hoped hauteur was blended with an equal amount of derision.