Ken Follett - Lie down with lions

Jane looked at her watch. It was two A.M. She felt ready to give up.

"I'll load the horse," Ellis said. "You feed Chantal." He switched to Dan and said to Mohammed: "Will you make some tea? And give Ali something to eat."

Jane went back into the house, finished dressing, then fed Chantal. While she was doing that, Ellis brought her sweet green tea in a pottery bowl. She drank it gratefully.

As Chantal sucked, Jane wondered how much Jean-Pierre had to do with this relentless pursuit of her and Ellis. She knew he had helped with the raid on Banda, for she had seen him. When they searched the Five Lions Valley, his local knowledge would be invaluable. He must know they were hunting down his wife and baby like dogs chasing rats. How could he bring himself to help them? His love must have been changed to hatred by his seething resentment and jealousy.

Chantal had had enough. How pleasant it must be, Jane thought, to know nothing of passion or jealousy or betrayal, to have no feelings but warm or cold and full or empty. "Enjoy it while you may, little girl," she said.

Hurriedly, she buttoned her shirt and pulled her heavy oiled sweater down over her head. She put the sling around her neck, made Chantal comfortable inside it, then shrugged into her coat and went outside.

Ellis and Mohammed were studying the map by the light of a lantern. Ellis showed Jane their route. "We follow the Linar down to where it empties into the Nuristan River, then we turn uphill again, following the Nuristan north. Then we take one of these side valleys—Mohammed won't be sure which one until he gets there—and head for the Kantiwar Pass. I'd like to get out of the Nuristan Valley today—that will make it more difficult for the Russians to follow us, for they won't be sure which side valley we've taken."

"How far is it?" said Jane.

"It's only fifteen miles—but whether that's easy or tough depends on the terrain, of course."

Jane nodded. "Let's get going," she said. She was proud of herself for sounding more cheerful than she felt.

They set off in the moonlight. Mohammed set a fast pace, and whipped the horse mercilessly with a leather strap when she hung back. Jane had a slight headache and an empty, nauseous feeling in her stomach. However, she was not sleepy, but rather nervously tense and bone-weary.

She found the track scary by night. Sometimes they walked in the sparse grass beside the river, which was all right; but then the trail would hairpin up the mountainside to continue on the cliff edge hundreds of feet above, where the ground was covered with snow, and Jane was terrified of slipping and falling to her death with her baby in her arms.

Sometimes there was a choice: the path forked, one way going up and the other down. Since none of them knew which route to take, they let Mohammed guess. The first time, he stayed low and turned out to be right: the track led them across a little beach where they had to wade through a foot of water, but it saved them a long diversion. However, the second time they had to choose they again took the river bank, but this time they regretted it: after a mile or so the path led straight into a sheer rock face, and the only way around it would have been to swim. Wearily they retraced their steps to the fork and then climbed the cliff path.

At the next opportunity they descended to the riverbank again. This time the path led them to a ledge which ran along the face of the cliff about a hundred feet above the river. The horse became nervous, probably because the path was so narrow. Jane was frightened, too. The starlight was not enough to illuminate the river below, so the gorge seemed like a bottomless black pit beside her. Maggie kept stopping, and Mohammed would have to pull on the reins to make her go again.

When the path turned blindly around an abutment in the cliff, Maggie refused to go around the comer and became skittish. Jane backed away, wary of the horse's shuffling rear feet. Chantal began to cry, either because she sensed the moment of tension or because she had not gone back to sleep after her two A.M. feed. Ellis gave Chantal to Jane and went forward to help Mohammed with the horse.

Ellis offered to take the reins, but Mohammed refused ungraciously: the tension was getting to him. Ellis contented himself with pushing the beast from behind and yelling hup and git at it. Jane was just thinking that it was almost funny when Maggie reared, Mohammed dropped the reins and stumbled, and the mare backed into Ellis and knocked him off his feet and kept coming.

Fortunately Ellis fell to the left, against the cliff wall. When the horse backed into Jane she was on the wrong side of it, with her feet at the edge of the path as it pushed past her. She grabbed hold of a bag that was lashed to its harness, holding on like grim death in case it should nudge her sideways over the precipice. "You stupid beast!" she screamed. Chantal, squashed between Jane and the horse, screamed, too. Jane was carried along for several feet, afraid to loose her hold. Then, taking her life in her hands, she let go of the bag, reached out with her right hand and grabbed the bridle, got a firm footing, pushed past the horse's forequarter to stand beside her head, tugged hard on the bridle and said "Stop!" in a loud voice.

Somewhat to her surprise, Maggie stopped.

Jane turned around. Ellis and Mohammed were getting to their feet. "Are you all right?" she asked them in French.

"Just about," said Ellis.

"I lost the lantern," said Mohammed.

Ellis said in English: "I just hope the fucking Russians have the same problems."

Jane realized that they had not seen how the horse had almost pushed her over the edge. She decided not to tell them. She found the leading rein and gave it to Ellis. "Let's keep going," she said. "We can lick our wounds later," She walked past Ellis and said to Mohammed: "Lead the way."

Mohammed cheered up after a few minutes without Maggie. Jane wondered whether they really needed a horse, but she decided they did: there was too much baggage for them to carry, and all of it was essential—indeed they probably should have brought more food.

They hurried through a silent, sleeping hamlet, just a handful of houses and a waterfall. In one of the cottages a dog barked hysterically until someone silenced it with a curse. Then they were in the wilderness again.

The sky was turning from black to gray, and the stars had gone: it was getting light. Jane wondered what the Russians were doing. Perhaps the officers would now be rousing the men, shouting to wake them and kicking those who were slow to climb out of their sleeping bags. A cook would be making coffee while the commanding officer studied his map. Or perhaps they had got up early, an hour ago, while it was still dark, and had set out within minutes, marching in single file alongside the river Linar; perhaps they had already passed through the village of Linar; perhaps they had taken all the right forks and were even now just a mile or so behind their quarry.

Jane walked a little faster.

The ledge meandered along the cliff and then dropped down to the riverbank. There were no signs of agriculture, but the mountain slopes on either side were thickly wooded, and as the light brightened, Jane identified the trees as holly oak. She pointed them out to Ellis, saying: "Why can't we hide in the woods?"

"As a last resort, we could," he said. "But the Russians would soon realize we had stopped, because they would question villagers and be told we had not passed through; so they would turn back and start searching intensively."

Jane nodded resignedly. She was just looking for excuses to stop.

Just before sunrise they rounded a bend and stopped short: a landslide had filled the gorge with earth and loose rock, blocking it completely.