Bold Destiny

by Jane Feather

  “What happened to Akbar Khan’s escort?” Kit demanded harshly of Annabel, as if she should somehow have the answer. “He had his fifteen thousand rupees and his hostages! So what the hell does he want now?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered quietly, holding the half-full tumbler out to him. “You have need of this, also … but I do not think he will be satisfied with less than total humiliation. You must do what he says in the hope that he will keep faith with you, but whether he chooses to or not is entirely up to him.” She looked behind her at the chaotic, panicked melee. “There is the Khoord Kabul pass ahead.”

  The men around her said nothing. The Khoord Kabul gorge was five miles long, with steep cliffs rising on either side, a raging torrent at its floor, layered ice and snow edging the river.

  “I think this is our escort,” Bob said suddenly, gesturing toward the ridge where half a dozen horsemen in the garb of Afghan chiefs were riding toward them, behind them a substantial force of tribesmen.

  The chiefs ranged themselves at the head of the column, beside the general and his staff, their followers falling in behind.

  The column approached the entrance to the pass. Annabel looked up at the heights. They were lined with Ghilzais, jezzails aimed down at the floor of the gorge. “The jaws of death,” she said softly, remembering the Ghilzai name for the Khoord Kabul.

  Kit turned at her whisper. “What did you say?”

  “Look,” she said, pointing upward.

  “I saw them,” he said grimly.

  The escorting chiefs shouted something to their followers, who bellowed up at the tribesmen on the heights.

  “They are telling them to hold their fire,” Annabel said. But just as the first line of the advance entered the pass, a volley of shots rang out from above as the tribesmen from a range of fifty yards fired down at the now-trapped troops.

  They could do nothing but press on, running the gauntlet of the deadly fire, while the harassment of their pursuers continued to cut into the column. Tribesmen poured down the steep cliffs, swords in hand, to charge at soldiers and civilians alike. Camels fell under jezzails’ bullets, their passengers scrambling free only to be cut down as they struggled onward on foot. Children screamed as they were swept up by the enemy, some snatched from their mothers’ arms, and Annabel was suddenly paralyzed, frozen in time as she relived the deeply buried horror of the attack in the Khyber pass eight years earlier.

  Akbar Khan watched impassively from a peak near the exit to the defile. Would Ayesha die in that orgy of slaughter? If it was her destiny that she should die from a Ghilzai shot in the Khoord Kabul pass, then he must accept it. It was a risk he had taken by not including her amongst the hostages yesterday. But he wanted her to come to him, as he knew she would eventually, when she emerged from whatever dream she had been inhabiting and once again acknowledged reality.

  “Will you call them off, sirdar?” The question came from a turbanned warrior, who had just ridden along the edge of the ravine.

  Akbar Khan shrugged. “How can I? They are beyond control now.”

  Behind him, Major Pottinger said softly to Colin, “Mackenzie, remember if I am killed that I heard Akbar Khan at the very beginning shout ‘Slay them’ in Pushtu, although in Persian he called out to stop the firing.”

  Colin nodded, his expression an accurate reflection of the shocked nausea churning in his belly at the cold-blooded treachery of Akbar Khan, who promised protection, demanded and received payment for providing it, then incited wholesale murder. The sirdar sat and watched the massacre without a flicker in those bright blue eyes or a twitch of that incisive mouth.

  One minute Bob Markham was riding at Annabel’s side, the next his riderless horse was plunging and cavorting, blood spurting from the main artery in its neck. Bob had died cleanly from a bullet to the head. Annabel found that even this death had little impact on the nightmare.

  Kit had no opportunity to grieve for his friend, recognizing in the timeless hollow of the present hell that grief for so many would fill his days and nights later, if he survived. For the moment, Annabel was his only concern. He did his best to shield her with his body as he fired without cease, picking a face—any face—from amongst the seething, surging mass of the enemy and taking a deadly aim, and there would be a cold satisfaction as he saw the man fall, and then he would pick another, all the while pushing his horse toward the exit from this death-pit.

  Then they were out of the shadows and into the open plain where the snow-whiteness momentarily blinded and the silence deafened after the violent reverberations of rifle fire and screams bouncing off the rock face.

  “Stay with the general’s party.” Kit spoke urgently to Annabel. “I have to go back, take a detachment to cover those poor devils still trying to get out. Promise me that you will not move from here.”

  She looked at him blankly, as if she did not see or hear him. Then her eyes focused and she nodded. “Do what you have to.”

  He rode off, back to the pass, commandeering a detachment of the forty-fourth infantry who were milling around, directionless and stunned. But they rallied and followed him to a rocky outcrop at the head of the exit. From there they commanded the exit and maintained a steady fire into the enemy, checking the pursuit until the last straggling survivors of the rear guard had emerged and were drifting toward the campground.

  Five hundred soldiers and over two thousand five hundred camp followers died that day in the gorge.

  The misery at the campground was of such a depth that Kit could only feel that the dead were perhaps the more fortunate. The general and his staff, those who had emerged from the jaws of death, were huddled in despairing conclave, the chiefs and tribesmen who had offered such ineffective escort sitting their horses to one side. Of Annabel there was no sign.

  “Where is Annabel?” He tried to keep the frenzy from his voice but could hear its edge nevertheless.

  “With the ladies,” an exhausted captain told him, as he struggled to staunch the blood from a wound in his thigh. “Lady Sale took a bullet in the hand and there are others in great distress. Miss Spencer went to their assistance.”

  Kit looked around where figures lay in the snow, in various attitudes of defeat. He wondered why the Afghans did not come and finish them off now, so utterly without resources as they were. Again he thought of the cat torturing the mouse, allowing it to drag itself painfully away from the claws, to feel for a minute that escape might be permitted, before batting at it again with the casual, seeming indifference of the predator.

  He found Annabel with the women. She was binding Lady Sale’s hand and did not immediately look up when he spoke her name. All around, women and children sat on pieces of baggage, or just lay where they had collapsed in the exhaustion of terror. Lady Sale, despite her pallor, was sitting upright and maintaining a continuous flow of encouragement to all and sundry. The company and assistance of the shameless hussy who shared Christopher Ralston’s bed Lady Sale clearly accepted without question in this extremity.

  Annabel straightened up from her task and regarded Kit quietly. Her face bore the expression of one who has delved deep in despair, searched for and reached the only possible decision, one that now afforded her the serenity of resignation. “I am going to Akbar Khan.”

  His heart jolted sickeningly. “Do not be absurd,” he said.

  “It has to be done.” She gestured at the desperate scene around them. “I realized it in the pass … It was so like the other time … the noise … the sights.” She began to walk away from the group and Kit caught her arm. “That other time, it led me to Akbar Khan. Things have now come full circle.” She stopped and looked up at him, her eyes intense in their anxiety that he should understand. “It is Destiny, Kit.”

  “Damn your Destiny!” he exploded in agony. “What possible good would it do anyone for you to give yourself up to that treacherous swine? Least of all yourself?”

  “I will have to go in the end,” she asserted softly. “We both k
now that. And I know that he is waiting for me. Perhaps, if I go to him of my own accord, I will have a chance of interceding … for the women and children, at least. I have to try, Kit; surely you understand that? There is no one else who would have the access to him that I have. I know him, in as far as it is possible for anyone to know him.”

  “But what of us?” he said, even as he already mourned her loss, touching her face in his desperation as if he would imprint its shape on his hands.

  “Oh, Kit,” she said. “There is no future. There never could have been. I will return to him. There is possible death there, and certain death here. But I believe I may work some good before whatever happens happens.”

  She had said to him, in another land and another time it seemed to him in his anguish, that she was only lending herself to him, that she would stay with him until “whatever happens happens.” And now that time had come. His hands fell from her face and he stepped back.

  She nodded slowly and turned and walked to where Charlie stood, his head hanging in exhaustion. Kit watched her take from the saddlebags Akbar Khan’s silver bracelets. She slipped them on her wrists and without hesitation closed the clasps. Then she looked up at him. “I must have a veil, or else I will offend.”

  Silently, he unbuttoned his tunic and removed the cravat from his neck.

  She took it and fastened it around the lower part of her face, inhaling the scent and warmth of him, swallowing the tears that filled her eyes and clogged her throat.

  He stepped forward, placed his hands on her waist, and lifted her onto Charlie for the last time.

  “Say good-bye to Harley for me,” she said. “He came through safely. I saw him just a short while ago.”

  “I will.”

  “And …” But there was nothing more to be said. Their eyes held for a moment in memory of shared joy, in acknowledgment of a future of shared loss, then Ayesha turned the weary Charlie and urged him toward the ridge above the Khoord Kabul where the Afghan force was massed, watching with the patience of the cat who knows the mouse has no refuge.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Akbar Khan watched the approach of the solitary figure on the enormous piebald. He felt a surge of pleasure which surprised him, springing as it seemed to from the simple prospect of seeing her again, rather than from the satisfaction of her submission.

  He gestured to the men around him that they should fall back, and he sat alone awaiting her.

  She rode up to him and salaamed, the cuffs of her gloves pushed back as she lifted her joined hands to her forehead, so that the dull gleam of the bracelets caught his gaze. Her own eyes she kept lowered while she waited for permission to speak.

  “So, Ayesha, you have returned,” he said calmly.

  “Yes, khan.” She knew she must not raise her eyes, not here in front of so many men, but the habits of the last two months had created carelessness and it required all her concentration to maintain the posture.

  “Do you bring a message from the feringhee?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No, but I would ask your mercy. There are women and children, babes in arms … what purpose will be served by their deaths?”

  “What purpose will be served by their lives?” he countered.

  “Magnanimity from a position of supremacy can only augment power,” she said.

  “Did you think I was not aware of that fact, Ayesha?”

  “No, khan. I thought simply to express it myself.”

  “You will return to the feringhee commander in the morning and tell him that I will take under my protection the families of the officers.” He paused and let his gaze drift over the bleak landscape, up into the gray sky where a great eagle soared over the mountain peaks. “On condition that their husbands accompany them as hostages.”

  Annabel found again Ayesha’s immobility. Akbar Khan was virtually cutting off the head of the British force by this condition. Most of the senior officers were married and had their families with them. He was slowly, humiliatingly, compelling the surrender of the British command. Why did she no longer sympathize with his driving need to stamp the arrogant invader underfoot? Because she now knew the invader in all his weaknesses, his humor and his anger, his strengths. She knew the invader as individual … as Colin, Harley, Bob, General Elphinstone, Lady Sale … And she knew in the invader passion and love beyond description. But she still understood Akbar Khan’s need, even if she could no longer identify with it. Maybe therein lay the rack upon which she would lie for the rest of her life.

  “As you wish,” she said.

  “There are no women to care for you here,” he said. “You will keep apart from all but myself until you take my message in the morning.”

  Her lowered eyes fixed on the intricate silver manacles circling her wrists. “As you wish.”

  “Come, I will take you to my tent. You have need of rest and food. Your horse, also, requires attention.”

  Ayesha followed him to the cluster of black nomad tents pitched in the snow. There were no fires here, either, but there was order and discipline, strangely at odds with the frenzy of blood lust indulged in the day’s slaughter. She wanted to ask about Colin but dared not jeopardize her reassumption of Ayesha by an inappropriate interest.

  “Your horse will be fed and watered,” Akbar Khan said as she dismounted unaided outside the tent where he drew rein. “It’s an ugly animal, but has stamina, I can see.” He ran a knowing eye over Charlie. “One of Christopher Ralston’s, I presume.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, handing the reins to a hillman groom, hearing her affirmative sound steady and noncommittal.

  “Remain within the tent. Food will be brought to you.”

  She slipped through the narrow aperture. It was still freezing, but there were additional furs piled on the rough carpeting laid over the snow and an overpowering drowsiness hit her without warning. Whether it was the fatigue of despair, of exhaustion, of terrified memory she neither knew nor cared. She simply crawled into the warming, comforting heap and slept, her last waking thought of the strong circling arms that had held her through the last bitter nights, warding off both cold and danger in symbol if not in reality.

  Akbar Khan came into the tent some two hours later and stood looking down at the curled, unconscious mound beneath the furs. She had eaten nothing, but presumably her body knew what it needed most. Tendrils of copper hair wisped beneath the hood of her cloak. Her eyelashes lay straight and thick on her cheekbones. All else was concealed with due modesty.

  He knew she had slipped away from him … had known it from the moment she had come close enough for him to sense her spirit. Ayesha herself was no more, for all that she knew how to play the part and would do so if it were the only way to achieve her aims. But did he want her to play the part? Could he be satisfied with the appearance and form of Ayesha, when the reality was lost … gone from him forever?

  He left her in sleep and went out into the bitter night, where for the moment only the cold was the enemy and it bit both pursuer and pursued alike.

  Ayesha awoke at dawn, bewildered at her extraordinary warmth. Then memory returned, sharp-etched and lacerating. The tent flap fluttered and a disembodied hand pushed something inside: a bowl of soured milk, a flat round of bread spread with goat cheese. It was rough nomad fare to which she had been long accustomed, but it tasted strange now, although her appetite was such that she would have refused nothing.

  When she had eaten, she adjusted the makeshift veil, drew her hood well over her face, and left the tent.

  Akbar Khan was mounted, Charlie standing in well-trained patience at his side. The horse looked refreshed, Annabel noted. But then he would have been well cared for by these people who recognized the value of a good animal. Her heart lifted for a second as she saw Colin and his two fellow hostages behind Akbar Khan. They looked drawn, their eyes filled with the dull anger of frustration, but they appeared unharmed. Dropping her gaze modestly, she walked across the snow toward the waiting group, rackin
g her brain for a way to mount her horse without a helping hand. No Afghan would offer such assistance to a woman.

  She salaamed and waited for Akbar Khan to acknowledge her difficulty and rule upon it.

  He looked over his shoulder, requesting in English, “Would one of you gentlemen be good enough to assist Ayesha to mount?”

  Colin moved forward with telltale speed, but as he approached her eyes lifted fractionally, signaling caution. He wiped all expression from his face, bent, and offered his cupped palms. She went up lightly and settled herself in the saddle.

  Akbar Khan spoke clearly in Persian. “You will tell the feringhee general that I most sincerely deplore the condition of the ladies and children in the party and offer my protection, on condition that their husbands accompany them. You will tell him that I pledge myself to offer escort through the passes in the rear of his force.”

  A pledge that was not worth the air it was spoken upon, Ayesha knew, but she merely nodded and prepared to leave.

  “And Ayesha …” Something in his voice sent a shudder of apprehension creeping over her skin. “You will number Ralston, huzoor, amongst the hostages.”

  For a second, apprehension was banished by a surge of happiness. Even if she were never to lay eyes upon him, just the knowledge that he was in her vicinity would be balm. She had not been able to face the thought that she would never know how or when he met his death, as he surely would if he remained with the retreat. Then fear returned. Akbar Khan would do the man who had stolen his possession no favors. So what game was he going to play with them?

  “As you wish,” she said in customary neutral docility.

  “Go.”

  She rode off down the ridge toward the forlorn huddle on the plain. Those who had not frozen to death during the night were slowly pulling themselves out of their snowy lairs to face the third day’s journey into death.