The Damascened Blade(60)

Covering the port side, Joe swept the bare crags, all depth reduced from up here to ripples on a shingle-strewn sandy beach any one of which could be sheltering an invisible troop of thirty horsemen. In minutes they were overflying the Khyber Pass which snaked, dark and sinister, even from a height, making its tortuous way following the track of the rushing Khyber river for thirty miles. The only sign of life was a huge dust cloud beneath which nothing was discernible. The nomad Powindahs on the move towards the fort? Joe assumed so. The fort at Landi Kotal when they reached it was barely distinguishable from the surrounding khaki-coloured rocks but Joe was heartened to see a friendly signal flicker up at them from below as they flew over. They flew on right to the Durand Line marking the extent of British claimed territory and, having no wish to start an international incident, Fred turned before he reached Afghanistan but not before they had a chance to survey from an even greater height the routes into the country. Still no sign of a troop of horsemen. Fred gave a thumbs down and signalled that he was about to turn for home.





Chapter Twelve


Lily, a few feet upstream of her horse, eagerly scooped up the ice-cold water and drank. That was the first and perhaps the most urgent of her needs attended to and now her mind was filled with the remaining two. She looked around her. The men seemed to have decided to settle down by the stream for a while. Lily noticed with interest their order of priority. First each had taken a small mat from his luggage and, kneeling on it, said his morning prayer, then they had attended to their horses and now at last they were turning their attention to unpacking promising-looking bundles from the pack mules. Breakfast? She walked tentatively through the developing encampment, leading her horse to join the others tethered some yards away. She noticed that each man as she drew level with him averted his eyes. In their own territory again presumably native rules applied once more and being a woman she became virtually invisible. To look away so as not to embarrass a woman was Pathan politeness.

This just could have its advantages. Boldly, she walked to the far side of the encampment and kept on walking. No one watched her; no one followed her and with relief Lily found a large sheltering rock and spent some unsupervised minutes there. When she strolled casually back she found a fire had been lit and cooking pots had been set to boil up. Two men scrambled down from the hills carrying the carcass of a sheep and this they proceeded to butcher and prepare to roast, threading the chunks of meat on to long metal skewers which they held over the flat and now red-hot fire, fragrant with juniper and apricot twigs.

Lily, almost insane with hunger as the scents of the roasting meat and herbs drifted towards her, sat apart from the group, unremarked and apparently invisible. She found a sheltered spot in the sunshine with her back to a rock and stared ahead, trying to make out where on earth they had come to. She was puzzled. All her instincts and the geographical information before her eyes told her that they were now facing and travelling south and must have done a wide loop – a detour of at least thirty miles through the hills. The land fell dramatically below them into a lush green valley stretching from east to west. ‘Wherever else we may be, that is definitely not Afghanistan,’ she concluded.

She was quite certain that they were still west of the Durand Line that separated the North-West Frontier Province from its warlike neighbour to the east, still under, technically at least, the jurisdiction of the British Government, still the responsibility of Joe and James. Would they try to get her back? She couldn’t believe that they wouldn’t come for her at least. Her romantic imagination conjured up a picture of loyal Bengal Lancers riding knee to knee from the hills, sounding cavalry trumpets. And what about Rathmore, who only had himself to thank for his present perilous position? He was, after all, a Lord and Lords cut ice under the British flag. Hard to believe but she guessed he must be about as important as a US senator and certainly not dispensable, however stupid. The British would turn over every stone to find him. They’d send out the Mounted Infantry. They would muster every available soldier. Lily thought she knew about the British. Her original perception of ‘egotistical bastards’ had, thanks to her dramatic change in circumstances, mutated to ‘chivalrous rescuers’. They wouldn’t just let her be dragged off into the wilderness. They must know by now that she was missing. What were they doing about it? Her hopes of rescue, she found, always centred on Joe. It was Joe’s grim face and tall figure she expected to see around every twist in the trail. He would come.

But in rescue lay another problem. Iskander. She watched him as he moved amongst his men, sharing the menial tasks with them, talking easily, always alert. He appeared quite unfatigued by his night in the saddle, unlike Rathmore who sat miserably slumped, no longer tied up but still under guard on the other side of the fire. And there they had made their first mistake, she thought with a secret smile. To waste energy on guarding that barrel of hog’s grease when they should have been keeping an eye on her showed a rigidity of attitude that could only work in her favour. Iskander, she was certain, knew more about the death of Zeman than he had declared so, by staying close to him, she ought to be able to find out what that knowledge was. He might come to regret taking her with him.