Veils of Silk(154)

David and Zafir led, Kuram and Laura right behind. She suspected that the Afridi had come along because he couldn't resist a good fight.

Finally they reached the point where she could see the cliff where Ian was making his stand. The edge of his cave was visible, barely, though from this position his opponents were out of sight around the bend. Her heart leaped when she saw a curl of smoke and heard the report of his rifle. He was still alive.

David turned to her. "Stay here while we advance, Laura. They've got at least one piece of artillery up there, and I don't want you within range."

A cannon boomed, emphasizing his point. Laura nodded, knowing the time had come for her to be sensible. She wasn't interested in fighting Afghans; her sole ambition was to get Ian safely away. She devoutly hoped he wouldn't feel it was his duty to stay with his brother's troopers.

The cannon boomed again, followed by an indescribable roar, a rumble so deep that it was more a vibration of the earth than real sound. Instinctively Laura looked up at Ian's aerie.

Right in front of her eyes, in agonizing slow motion, the whole face of the cliff collapsed, and Ian's cave with it.





Chapter 34





Laura didn't know she was screaming until David grabbed her and pulled her against him, pressing her face into his shoulder so she couldn't see the catastrophe. Dust and thunder filled the air, and the earth shook beneath their feet.

Gradually the din subsided to the rattle of occasional tumbling stones and gravel. Laura clung to David, her mind refusing to accept that Ian was dead.

Yet no one could have survived what she had just witnessed. The artillery fire must have acted on a fault in the rock until the mountain sheered away. If Ian hadn't been killed outright, he had fallen into the gorge far below and been crushed by boulders. Ian was dead.

Her vision faded and she was tempted to sink into darkness. But the pain would still be there when she regained consciousness and a fainting female would be a nuisance. When she was sure her knees would support her, she pushed herself away from David. His face showed the same anguish that must be on hers.

But he was a soldier and would neither scream nor faint, even though he had seen his brother killed in front of his eyes. "Will you be all right here for a few minutes?" he said tightly. "I'm going forward to see what's happened to the Afghans."

When she nodded, he said to Kuram, "Stay with her." Then he led Zafir and his own men ahead while Laura and the Afridi pressed into the cliff face so the soldiers could file past.

Laura wasn't sure how long it was until David returned, for time had no meaning. Nothing did. Quietly her brother-in-law said, "The rockslide has destroyed a huge section of the track and the gorge below is impassable. No one will be traveling through here anytime soon, and maybe never again."

Shuddering, she buried her face in her hands. So Ian had succeede. He had quenched the fire that Pyotr Andreyovich had set, then lived to regret.

There would be no Afghan invasion through the Shpola Pass. The Punjabis could stick to the business of killing each other rather than invading India. Rajiv Singh would have to learn to live with his resentment of the Sirkar, for in the future he would be so closely watched that he would not have the opportunity to get into mischief.

Yes, Ian had succeeded, at the cost of his own life. No doubt he would think that a fair price for stopping a war.

Laura wasn't so sure.

* * *

He was buried alive. Sandy soil filled his mouth, weighing down his body, crushing his lungs until there was nothing in his mind but panic. Ian tried to scream his submission, to say that he would do anything they wanted, anything at all, if only they would give him an easier death.

But his executioners said nothing. There would be no reprieve. Hopelessly he flailed at the dirt, not because he thought it would make a difference, but because it was physically impossible to lie quiet while they filled his grave.

Abruptly one arm broke through into the air, then the other. He thrashed out and a moment later his face was clear. After coughing the dirt from his throat, he was able to breathe, though the air was thick and dusty. But it was dark, so dark, the heavy, suffocating blackness of a tomb.

At first he thought they had finished the job of blinding him. Yet when he touched his face, he felt only a few days' worth of bristles, not the long beard he had grown in prison.

Like a kaleidoscope, the pieces of his life fell into a coherent pattern. He was no longer in Bokhara. Juliet and Ross, then his own return to India. Laura. Marriage, Dharjistan, a plot to bring down the Sirkar, the Shpola Pass, his attempt to hold back an invasion.

Had there been an explosion? No, artillery fire. Then what?

He pushed himself upright and cleared away the dirt and gravel that pinned his lower body. Then he stood and explored his surroundings. After a few minutes he identified a squarish knob of rock as one that had been in the back of the cave.