The Lotus and the Wind (7 page)

It would be Jagbir--slow-witted, kindhearted, animally aggressive, seventeen and a half years old. Had he no remorse for killing, almost as a demonstration of marksmanship, a passing stranger? That was unfair; Jagbir burned with fierce loyalty and affection for his clan. The man with the two rifles had not belonged to the clan.

Jagbir trotted back up the hill, grinning widely, and brandishing one of the dead man’s rifles. He came straight to Robin. ‘For you, sahib. A present. There’s a place for it on your wall in Manali.’

Robin took it from his hand and turned it over. ‘Thank you, Jagbir. Look, it’s engraved, chased. It’s an old jezail and beautifully made.’

‘I saw.’ The orderly shifted his feet, mumbling, ‘I knew you liked old things. The Afghans ought to practice with their rifles instead of writing on them. If they did, we--’

He didn’t finish the sentence. He had already spoken for an unusually long time.

Robin said, ‘I suppose the man’s dead?’

‘Yes. There was another. Got away.’

‘I saw.’

Jagbir held out his hand. ‘I’ll carry it.’ Robin handed the rifle over.

Subadar Maniraj hurried up, puffing and holding his side, creases of anxiety deep between his bloodshot eyes. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere for you, sahib.’ He turned on Jagbir. ‘Porcupine’s prick! Little lump of owl shit! Why don’t you--?’

Robin interrupted. ‘It was my fault, Subadar-sahib. I’ve been sitting in this old temple. I found--this.’ He pulled the coin from his pocket. Maniraj did not look at it but gave Robin a sharp, purse-lipped glance, mixed of vexation, despair, and love. That expression had become familiar to Robin since he got command of the company.

The old man said, ‘The Highlanders went over their hill and right on down, out of sight. I think we ought to go too, or their left flank will be in the air. They’re just like all British troops--never look where they’re going, never listen, chatter-chatter in the ranks. We ought to have gone before this.’

Robin leaned back against the temple wall, noticing now for the first time that it gave him shelter from the bullets that continued to crack over the hill and smack short into the earth. The sniping blew up into one of its little flurries. The subadar knelt beside him. Jagbir stood in the open in the rigid position of attention he had assumed when the subadar started upbraiding him. Robin motioned him down and said to Maniraj, ‘Our orders are to stay here until the main attack goes in. It hasn’t yet, has it? There was to be artillery preparation. I haven’t heard any.’

‘I don’t know. The guns have been shooting. It sounds as if they’re still ranging. No messages on the flag. Can hardly see back there now. But we ought to go forward or those Highlanders will get into trouble.’

‘We’ll wait a bit,’ Robin said, after thinking briefly. ‘Until the main attack goes in, this hill is just as important as the valley down there. If we go there’ll be nothing to stop the Ghilzais walking along here and retaking it. Then they’ll be on the flank of the main attack and above our people when they get on down into the valley. Look.’ He pointed.

The subadar shrugged his shoulders. ‘Very good, sahib.’ He rose, saluted, turned, and hurried off. Then he remembered that the riflemen could all see him and that he was being shot at. He straightened his back and slowed his pace to a stroll. Robin watched him go. If the old man were to talk to any other British officer of the regiment in the way he habitually spoke to Robin, he’d be under arrest in no time. But then the subadar knew that the other sahibs lived in the same world that he lived in, while Robin Savage was half the time somewhere else.

Robin heard the crunch of nailed boots on the stones, sighed, and put away his coin. A voice from just below the crest cried, ‘Hey, Johnnie! Whaur’s the sab?
Sahib kidder hi?
’

Jagbir answered the speaker. ‘
Sahib y’heen chha
.’ Robin thought: There must have been a gesture--no, there was no need, because there was also the other thing he hadn’t got, the mysterious sense of clan. He had seen Gurkhas and Highlanders lying side by side on the hills, holding eager conversation, each in his own language.

A private and a corporal of the MacDonalds burst over the low wall into the remains of the temple. In spite of the raw cold the sweat poured down their sunburned faces under the tall, conical topis. Robin sat up and said, ‘Are you looking for me?’

The two bearded soldiers drew to attention, sloped arms, and at a muttered
‘Hup!’
from the corporal saluted together by slapping the butts of their rifles with the extended palms of their right hands. Robin saw at once that the private’s right hand, his saluting hand, was torn and bleeding. He said, ‘You’re wounded. Here, kneel down under cover. Let me look at it.’

‘I am only slightly wounded, sir,’ the private said in a sing-song voice. The corporal added, ‘We couldna kneel doon, sir. Yeerr Johnnies maucht think we were afrightit.’

Well, aren’t you? Robin thought. You look like it. He saw the corporal’s lip twisted under his beard and believed for a moment that he was smiling at his own joke; then saw that he was not smiling but sneering, and knew at once why. Robin himself was well sheltered from the flying bullets by the inner wall. He could get up. Perhaps he ought to get up. But he was not afraid at all. As before, he was not even committed to this--this emotion, this violence.

He did not get up. He said quietly, ‘What is it, then?’

‘Mr. Mclain sent us, sir, for to tell ye to come quick. We’re a’ but in the bottom doon yonder, an’ there’s a lashin’ of these paythans ever’ which wa’, shut’n’ at us. Ten, twenty, maybe. Mr. Mclain says, sir,’ the corporal went on doggedly, ‘an’ ye’ll excuse me, sir, he says ye shud’ve been doon there an ‘oor sin’, an’ will ye for the Lord’s sake hurry noo--sir!’ Robin wanted time to think it over. Someone had got his orders wrong probably. But who? It needed time to work out what was best to do. He could not think properly while the two soldiers stood there like ramrods, the mist droplets pearling their kilts. The guns began to fire steadily on the left. That sounded more like the beginning of something. They weren’t ranging now. No one could see far. He couldn’t get a message through in time. Mclain might get into a little trouble--but he, Robin, had a job to do here, and clear orders.

He said, ‘Tell Mr. Mclain that we’ll come as soon as I’m sure that the main attack is being pressed home. Those are my orders, and I can’t disobey them.’

‘Ye’re no cornin’ right awa’ on the split double lak’ Mr. Mclain askit, sir?’

‘Not at once. I think it will be within half an hour, though.’

‘Verra gud’, sir. By the right, s’lut’!’ The hands slapped on the rifle butts. The Highlanders turned with a swing of kilts and stumbled away down the hill. Robin stood up slowly.

The firing against his company’s position was dying down. From the valley the guns gave out a continuous thunder. Rifle fire snapped and crackled like erratic lightning along the hilltops. He heard the rapid pop-pop-pop-pop of a gatling, then a hiccup and silence. The rolling clouds now damped the sounds of battle, now drifted apart to give them redoubling echoes.

He waited fifteen minutes. The guns stopped firing. He found Subadar Maniraj and said to him, ‘We’ll go on down now.’

‘It’s time,’ the old man muttered and dashed away around the hilltop in a wide circle, waving his sword and shouting, ‘Fall in! Extended order! By the centre! Hurry, hurry!’--mixed with streams of abuse and blows from the flat of his sword across the backs of the laggards. Robin called out, when they were ready, ‘Bugler,
double bajao!
’

The bugler blew the ‘Double,’ and the line of Gurkhas ran down the hill, packs and haversacks flapping, equipment creaking, boots scraping and striking sparks from the rock, bayonets flashing here and there with a livid glint under the darkening sky.

In the valley Robin could see little. He was not even sure they had reached it until he felt the ground rising again. At his elbow Maniraj said, ‘We’re there, sahib. We’d better wheel right and make contact with the Highlanders. I can hear shooting.’

‘Not much. Sounds like a few snipers.’

The mist swirled momentarily away. The company stood in an empty valley, among gleaming sea-black rocks. Shots and a stifled scream sounded from the right, the direction in which the subadar thought Mclain’s Highlanders were. But there was more firing to the left, and some straight ahead. A pair of Ghilzais charged out of the mist from the left and were into the middle of the company before they recognized the enemies about them. The Gurkhas shot them down after a brief hunt--’There! There!’

‘Ayo!’

‘On your left, fool!’

‘Ayo!’

‘Payo!’

Robin said, ‘We’re going to lose ourselves in a minute, Subadar-sahib, if we’re not careful. Wait.’ He got out his compass. After the needle had steadied he pointed to the north--the right--and said, ‘The Highlanders ought to be down there, very close. Our main body is coming from the opposite direction. They are! Hear the guns?’

‘Yes. Heaven knows what they’re firing at. But the Highlanders must be
there
.’ The subadar swung his hand to the west. ‘That’s where we heard the shots from just now.’

‘Which shots? There’s shooting all over the place. It’s no good chasing around in this, sahib. Mist makes sound seem to come from everywhere. We are in the right place, and the Highlanders, wherever they’ve got to, are in the wrong place. Any Ghilzais who retreat in front of the main attack will come along this valley, from that direction, and we’ve got to be ready for them. That’s been the object of our whole operation. Form a defence here, facing south.’

‘Achchi bat, sahib
. But--‘

‘I’m afraid we must, sahib.’ Robin did not want to argue any more, though he knew the old man’s mind was obstinately set on heading for the firing, wherever it was.

The company settled down in their positions, some standing, some kneeling. Clouds drifted about the valley, and soon, through a long, misty corridor, Robin saw the dull lustre of bayonets working down a hill. The drab-coloured uniforms told him the troops were men of the Frontier Force. The clouds closed down again. From the middle of his company he could not see the outer ranks, forty paces from him. Twice, running Ghilzais broke through the mist, dragging tendrils of it with them. Then the Gurkhas fired quickly, and the mist wrapped them all once more. Every minute it grew colder. A bitter wind began to blow the cloud in grey billows past him. More firing, in fits and starts. He walked to various points of his line and asked what had happened. ‘Some Pathans, sahib. We missed them, they veered away,’ or, ‘We got one. There he is’--and a body lying crumpled at a rifleman’s feet. But only ten or twelve Ghilzais in all had come this way. The sound of the bullets clacking overhead changed. They were Sniders now, not the muzzle-loaders that most Ghilzais had. The brigade was getting close. Wherever the main body of the Ghilzais had gone, it had not come down this valley. Mclain hadn’t stopped it either, or there would have been the roar of a big battle close by.

Soldiers loomed up like giants in the fraying mist. The Gurkhas of Robin’s company shouted,
‘Sathi, sathi!’
The Frontier Force sepoys stopped among them, lowered their rifles, and began to chat in low whispers. Soon horses appeared behind the sepoys.

The general rode through and approached Robin. ‘Ha! So you got here, young man. Did you have good killing?’

‘No, sir. Only a dozen of them have tried to pass.’

The general gazed down in surprise, absently stroking the drops of condensed mist off his whiskers. ‘I didn’t hear any firing, of course, but I thought you must be getting at ‘em with the bayonet. The Frontier Force and the main body of the MacDonalds certainly chased four hundred Ghilzais off those ridges. Where in blazes have they got to? Where are Mclain’s lads?’

‘Over there, I think, sir.’ Robin began to tell the general what had happened but cut off his explanation with a cough. Mclain might get into severe trouble. He’d better say as little as possible.

The general said sharply, ‘You think! You lost touch with him, then?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘H’m. I hope it’s all right. This is a bad country to lose touch in, even for a few minutes.’ He turned to the Highlanders’ commanding officer. ‘Findlater, Savage here and your lad Mclain lost touch with each other. Savage thinks your people are over there somewhere. Perhaps they’ve had better luck. But you’d better send out a patrol to find them and bring them back into the column. We must get on, bivouac on the pass to-night.’

‘Very good, sir. Which way did Mclain go, Savage?’ The Highland lieutenant-colonel turned on Robin with a frown. ‘How did you lose touch? Why weren’t you keeping contact by the inward flank? Why--?’

Robin began to answer, seeking his words carefully. The Frontier Force sepoys formed up to continue the advance. The horses of the general’s staff stood with heads up and ears pricked, nervous in the moving mist, like islands in the stream of marching men. Two guns of the mountain battery went past, known long before their coming and remembered long after their going by the steady clank and crash of their loads in the harness. Then all sounds died down to the squink of boot-nails on the rock, the breathing of tired men, the scuff of the Frontier Force sandals. The cloud and mist dissolved, the wind dropped, and thin, gritty snow began to fall.

As the cloud lifted all those in the general’s party saw a man in a kilt stumbling down the western hill towards them. The general had begun to move, but reined in his horse. They all heard the running man’s gasps and sobs. First of all of them it was Robin who recognized the man as Mclain. He had no helmet, and blood covered the side of his face and hung congealed in thick patches on the front of his tunic. While the watchers remained numb-struck the young officer fell the last twenty feet down the hill and struggled forward on hands and knees. He raised his bloody head. His once-bright blue eyes were blank as pits.

Then at last the officers and orderlies around the general ran forward to support Mclain, and put their arms under his and lifted him up. His tunic hung in ribbons about him. His claymore was broken off six inches below the steel basketwork of the hilt. Robin saw every detail as he ran forward to help. But Mclain clung now to his own colonel’s knees and recognized no one else. He babbled ceaselessly, all the officer gone, and all the brave, moustachioed young gallant. In those seconds he seemed to speak from one of the other worlds in which Robin habitually lived, and Robin felt very close to him.