The Lotus and the Wind Read Free

the hill, four Pathans broke cover and ran down on the lone man with the jezail. He twisted around his rock, aimed, fired, and dropped down again. One of the running men fell, the others came on, bounding from rock to rock with their robes flying and the sun in their hawk faces. The soldiers, over to the right, could not see them. The lone man rose, turned, and threw himself with desperate steps down the hill towards the road.
    ‘He’s looking for shelter, he wants help!’ Anne screamed. The two Gurkha riflemen once more raised their rifles. One of the running trio of Pathans dropped to his knee, steadied, and fired. The lone man curled up like a shot rabbit and fell headlong. Where he fell, he crawled and writhed forward still, and still held to the long jezail in his right hand. Wriggling by jerks and spasms, he reached a cleft of the rock. Anne cried, ‘Save him!’ and found herself running up the hill. She forgot the bullets and the tightness in her throat. Her mind was empty of everything but the lone man’s face. He had been so close to safety when the bullet from behind smashed him down; he was not young, but his face was the face of a man lost, a man far from mother or wife or daughter.
    She stumbled up the hill. The running Pathans came on. The two Gurkhas began to shoot, hurrying a few paces, shooting, reloading, running again, yelling to her to come back. She understood the sense, although the words meant nothing. Her mother began to scream once more.
    One of the three Pathans went down, shot in the head by the Gurkha to her right. She saw his bearded face melt, and he was gone. The other Pathans made to stop and shoot, but after a fractional hesitation they changed their minds and ran on. She and the Gurkhas could not reach the lone man before his enemies did. Her breath pumped in her lungs and her face grew scarlet. The lone man lay sprawled on his stomach. A red stream of his blood trickled down the stones. His right hand moved aimlessly across the bare face of the rock slab below his head. He had let go of the jezail. The Pathans reached him when Anne and the riflemen were still twenty yards away. Knives flashed, and the Pathans swooped. A long steel glitter ended in the lone man’s back.
    The Gurkhas’ rifles exploded by her ear, but their hands were sweaty and unsteady, and both shots missed. The Pathans, without stopping their headlong pace, snatched up the lone man’s jezail and swerved around and bounded like stags back up the hill. They ran with tireless, irregular strides, jinking, separating, coming together again, their robes flying. The Gurkhas fired twice more each, but the Pathans ran on. Then they were gone.
    Anne sank slowly to her knees beside the lone man. She did not feel the sharp stones beneath her. She caught hold of the knife-handle in his back and pulled. The blade grated on bone, blood bubbled under her fingers. If she had been told to do it she could not have, but it did not seem horrible now. He needed all she could give him. Anger against his enemies nearly suffocated her.
    The blade grated free. For half a minute the blood oozed out through the lone man’s robe, then it stopped. Anne lifted her head, the tears wet on her cheeks, and saw the two Gurkhas standing beside her. They looked down, their mouths hard; one of them stirred the wounded man with the toe of his boot. ‘Wakhli, badmash,’ he said, and shook his head and wrinkled his nose.
    Anne whispered, ‘It doesn’t matter. We’ve got to carry him down.’ She made motions of lifting the man, who lay still on his stomach, his head turned to one side. She saw that his eyes were open and expressionless. His mouth hung open, but he could not move hand or foot. He had lost his turban, and the blood was clotting under his long hair.
    Boots crunched closer along the hillside towards her. Major Hayling leaned, panting, at her side, his good left hand on his thigh, sweat pouring down behind the black patch on his right eye.