Veils of Silk(149)

"Good idea. I'll do that while I'm waiting for company." Ian turned and went back into the cave. His voice sounding hollow, he said, "This is larger than I expected."

Laura followed. The cave expanded into a chamber high enough to stand in, then narrowed again and disappeared back into darkness. Ian indicated a trickle of moisture down one wall. "Since there's water here, I can hold out indefinitely. The cave might have another entrance as well. Feel the air moving?"

Laura scarcely heard his words. Her main reason for climbing to the cave was to give her husband a private farewell, and now her emotions were paralyzed by the knowledge that they were about to part, possibly forever. Voice choked, she said, "Be careful, doushenka."

He pulled her into his arms and kissed her fiercely. "I will be. For God's sake, you do the same. Believe me, I hate the idea of sending you off even more than you hate the idea of leaving me here.''

She clung to him, willing herself to memorize this moment exactly. The feel of his body, the sound of his voice, the sense of completion she had found only with him. All were so intensely real that it was impossible to believe she might never experience them again. "I love you, Ian," she whispered.

His embrace tightened until her ribs hurt. "I've had a great deal of good fortune in my life, Larissa Alexandrovna, but none greater than meeting you." His faint accent thickened to a Scottish burr. "God gae with ye, my bonnie lass."

He gave her one last kiss, aching and sweet. Then they climbed down the cliff to the trail, Ian below so that he could catch her if she slipped. But she didn't slip. She could not afford to falter, for Ian's life might depend on whether she could bring help in time. Though the cave might be almost impregnable, his ammunition was limited, and there was only one of him to an army of Afghans.

Laura mounted and set off, Gulzar Khan behind her on Ian's horse. She looked back only once. Ian stood watching her go, as still as the stones surrounding him. He hadn't donned his turban yet, and his hair glowed with dark red fire in the cool winter sun. She wanted to turn and race back to him.

Instead she lifted her hand and blew him a kiss, knowing that she would never forget how he looked at this moment. He smiled, then turned away.

As Laura picked her slow way back through the pass, she was mutely grateful that Gulzar Khan knew that she was female. Otherwise he might have sneered at her tears.





Chapter 33





Ian heard the Afghans long before he saw them, for it was impossible for masses of men to move through the mountains soundlessly. At first it was a vague noise, like the buzzing of distant bees. Eventually it resolved into individual components. Voices, including an occasional shouted curse. Footsteps and the clatter of hooves and sometimes the heavy thumps of equipment and supplies. Any soldier would recognize that an army was on the move, though the sounds were curiously thin because they were spread over miles of winding track.

It was midmorning and Ian was waiting patiently. He had made all his preparations the day before. After building a crude defensive wall on the front of his ledge, he had climbed down to the track and piled stones into barricades at several points. The Afghans would have to shift the rocks to pass, and they would have to do it under his rifle. Though such defenses might not be needed, he would rather be overprepared than the opposite.

The night had been quiet. Using dry fuel that wouldn't smoke, he'd built a small fire. After cooking all of his flour into chapatis so he'd have a supply of cold food, he leaned against the wall of the cave and watched the fire fall into embers. It was a simple pleasure, the kind that prison had taught him to appreciate.

His mood was a blend of resignation and fatalistic calm. In spite of his reassuring words to Laura, he thought it unlikely that he would escape this engagement with his life. In combat, there were a thousand things that could go wrong. Even if all else went well, eventually he would run out of ammunition.

Yet there was a fitness to dying this way, for sacrifice in a worthy cause was the only way he might redeem his lost honor. Not that anyone else would ever know or care how he had betrayed himself in Bokhara, except Laura, and she had shown herself to be remarkably tolerant of his weaknesses.

But he cared, and his sense of failure had made it impossible for him to tell his wife how much she meant to him. Even if he had been poet enough to find adequate words, he would not have done so. Laura deserved a man of untarnished courage and integrity, not an all-too-human failure whose greatest talent was an unheroic knack for survival.

Even though he had hated sending Laura away without his protection, she should be safe. Meeting Gulzar Khan had been a stroke of blinding good fortune. Not only had the havildar supplied vital information, he and his clan were honor bound to protect Laura because of the assistance she and Ian had rendered, and it was far better to have an Afridi as a friend than an enemy.