'You'll know it, the next time when I hit you.'
Two hours later the column came winding up the hillside path. Barney heard the drumming footfall of the approach of the animals and the chink and rustle of their harnesses. As ghosts the men and beasts went past. He saw the weapons and the ammunition crates. A long, crawling column, and soon Barney and the boy had merged with the chain. A little before midnight they reached the high point of the Kurram Pass, and then the path fell and ran down into Afghanistan.
Chapter 8
They walked in silence and around them floated the column of men and animals. There was little noise. Only the scrape of leather on mule skin, the spitting of phlegm, the soft Pushtun whisper. Most of the walking hours there was a thin cloud lacing the near full moon. A light wash of silver settled on them.
The men walked with a long flowing step, gliding their sandalled feet onto the roughness of stone and rock. Barney listened for the panting exertion that would tell him these men felt the pace of their march, but these were mountain men, they could walk for twenty hours in a day, they could walk for seven days in a week. They went straight backed, they moved with their heads held high. These men danced on the track while Barney's step was awkward and without grace.
The darkness was brushed with grey before the thin dawn light crawled onto the landscape. First the individual stones under his marching boots, then the curl of the path in front of him, then the dull brown blanket draped on the body of the man in front, then the raw opened sores on the flanks of the mule that this man led, then the line of mules and men that reached as far as the path's curl, then a valley beyond escarpments and lesser hills, then the blur of tree foliage, then the shadow of far distant cultivated fields.
With the coming of the day the pace of the column quickened. Barney wondered whether this was from fear of aerial surveillance, or simply the grumble of empty stomachs and the demands of tiredness. Barney looked up the line ahead to see if there was one man who walked separately from the others and kept his head cocked to the small winds for the sounds of helicopter's flight. Barney saw no man who walked separately. They were noisier now, and faster in their descent, as if there was a relief at the return to their familiar places from the refugee camps.
Their war, their battlefield. If he walked in their column he must abide by their rules. If Barney had been a helicopter pilot, and seen this ant-paced column, he would have wet himself with excitement. Their war, their battlefield, their rules. His eyes scanned the top ridges of the hills, his ears groped for the rattle of rotor blades. He heard nothing and he saw nothing.
Beside a river bed of stones was a village, a smear of dun brown amongst the green surround.
They came down off the open slopes and hit the tree line and Barney saw figs hanging ripe in the branches and further on the track there were peaches in an orchard, and the sun was shaven from the back of his head by the leaves' shade. The mules tried to stop and graze between the trees and were dragged on.
When they were close to the village they skirted a blackened crater. They walked on a raised path between two irrigation channels and came to a place where rockets had breached the channels, spilled the waters, dried them. Barney felt the tightness crawling on his skin. The village was a cluster of earth brick compounds with the walls smeared with more earth as if to make a plaster covering. Barney saw the brick work where rocket fire and cannon shells had gouged away the smooth mud skin. The homes were small fortresses, each an individual refuge, with narrow doors of heavy planked wood.
Over one building at the far end of the village was a rough crenellated tower, the mullah's mosque. A desperate scent of poverty and of filth. Small children in the bright clothes that made a nonsense of the dust dirt in which they lived ran to greet the column. A knot of men, young and old, had gathered at the point where the path came from the orchards and fields to the outer line of the village.
The boy hurried to Barney's elbow.
'They are strangers, these people, to the ones we have come with…We have to be patient.' Gul Bahdur made the explanation with awkwardness, as if the tribal divisions of his nation were a personal responsibility.
'What happens?' Barney asked.
'They talk a bit, they flatter a lot. There is a protocol…' The boy shrugged. 'The village is often used by the Resistance caravans, that is why it is often bombed.'
The column broke from its line and took sanctuary under the trees. The mules hacked at the thin grass and weed growing from the dry earth. At the entrance to the village, men from the column and men from this small community negotiated their credentials.
'How long will they be?'
'They will be as long as it takes them to discuss what has to be discussed.'
Now that the column was halted, now that the sunlight was full on the trees, now that Barney could be seen, he became the object of detached interest. Coffee eyes watched him and followed his movements.
'Will we sleep here?'
'Probably it is best that we sleep here, but we go no further with these people. They are going to the west, we are going to the north or the east.'
'Will they give us food?'
'The Pathan has pride in the hospitality of his home. He will share what food he has. You have walked all night, Barney, why now do you want to hurry?'
Why indeed? Barney Crispin had flouted an order. He had ripped to shreds a whole career, broken the chain to the superiors he had obeyed in every waking moment of his army service. So why hurry? Nothing to go back to, unless everything he did from now on was well done, thoughtfully done, done without haste.
The man who led the column embraced the mullah of this village. The protocol was completed. The men of the column rose from their squatting rest under the peach trees.
The mules were hobbled. Barney saw the boy tie the back ankles of their two animals together and then loop the rope around the base of a tree.
Barney walked carefully alongside a ditch that ran the length of the central aisle of the village. The stream of the ditch was the colour of polished jade, a green shine of oil. Because he was hungry, Barney thought he might be sick. The smell of the ditch caught in his throat. Still the men of the village stared hard and distantly at Barney.
Some of the roofs of the buildings carried the marks of a rocket strike, torn holes, scorched woodwork. The walls were pocked by cannon fire, but not pierced. From the slope of the walls Barney could sense their thickness at the base, a width sufficient to absorb the strike of a helicopter's machine gun fire. Be against the base of a mud wall if you have to take cover.
They sat on the floor of a darkened room. The nan bread was already cooked, for the villagers had been watching the advance of the column down the hillside for a long time. The men who were heading for Hazarajat were dispersed amongst several huts.
The light around Barney was faint, filtered through one small window with a cracked pane, and the half opened door. The nan was passed to Barney on a plate of beaten metal. He broke the pieces, dipped them singly into the central ironware pot of meat juice. He had been so hungry that he had not looked for the boy, had not seen that the boy had not come into the hut with him. On the earth floor behind them the men had laid their personal weapons. There were Soviet made Kalashnikovs, and old bolt-actioned Lee Enfields manufactured for the British Imperial army half a century before, a single Heckler and Koch rifle from Germany.
He heard shouting outside, a dispute, an argument.
Barney ate wheat bread, and then scooped with his fingers at a bowl of rice that had been drenched with a bitter orange juice.
Again he heard the shouting, something shrill and desperate.