Ken Follett - Lie down with lions

Ellis was unwilling to lose any time. He took off his boots and trousers and waded into the ice-cold water. At its deepest it was only up to his waist, and he gained the far bank easily. He returned and led Maggie across, then came back for Jane and Chantal. Halam followed at last, but modesty prevented him from undressing, even in the dark, so he had to walk on with soaking-wet trousers, which made his mood worse.

They passed through a village in darkness, followed briefly by a couple of mangy dogs that barked at them from a safe distance. Soon after that, dawn cracked the eastern sky, and Halam snuffed the candle.

They had to ford the river several more times in places where the path was washed away or blocked by a landslide. Halam gave in and rolled his baggy trousers up over his knees. At one of these crossings they met a traveler coming from the opposite direction, a small, skeletal man leading a fat-tailed sheep which he carried across the river in his arms. Halam had a long conversation with him in some Nuristani language, and Ellis suspected, from the way they waved their arms, that they were talking about routes across the mountains.

After they parted from the traveler, Ellis said to Halam in Dari: "Don't tell people where we are going."

Halam pretended not to understand.

Jane repeated what Ellis had said. She spoke more fluently, and used emphatic gestures and nods as the Afghan men did. "The Russians will question all travelers," she explained.

Halam appeared to understand, but he did exactly the same thing with the next traveler they met, a dangerous-looking young man carrying a venerable Lee-Enfield rifle. During the conversation, Ellis thought he heard Halam say "Kantiwar," the name of the pass for which they were heading; and a moment later the traveler repeated the word. Ellis was angered: Halam was fooling around with their lives. But the damage was done, so he suppressed the urge to interfere, and waited patiently until they moved on again.

As soon as the young man with the rifle was out of sight, Ellis said: "I said you are not to tell people where we are going."

This time Halam did not pretend incomprehension. "I told him nothing/' he said indignantly.

"You did," said Ellis emphatically. "From now on you will not speak to other travelers."

Halam said nothing.

Jane said: "You will not talk to other travelers, do you understand?"

"Yes," Halam admitted reluctantly.

Ellis felt it was important to shut him up. He could guess why Halam wanted to discuss routes with other people: they might know of factors such as landslides, snowfalls or floods in the mountains that might block one valley and make another approach preferable. He had not really grasped the fact that Ellis and Jane were running away from the Russians. The existence of alternative routes was about the only factor in the fugitives' favor, for the Russians had to check every possible route. They would be working quite hard to eliminate some of those routes by interrogating people, especially travelers. The less information they could garner that way, the more difficult and lengthy their search would be, and the better the chances Ellis and Jane would evade them.

A little later they met a white-robed mullah with a red-dyed beard, and to Ellis's frustration Halam immediately opened a conversation with the man in exactly the same way as he had with the previous two travelers.

Ellis hesitated only for a moment. He went up to Halam, grabbed him in a painful double-arm lock and marched him off.

Halam struggled briefly, but soon stopped because it hurt. He called out something, but the mullah simply watched open-mouthed, doing nothing. Looking back, Ellis saw that Jane had taken the reins and was following with Maggie.

After a hundred yards or so, Ellis released Halam, saying: "If the Russians find me, they will kill me. This is why you must not talk to anyone."

Halam said nothing but went into a sulk.

After they had walked on awhile, Jane said: "I fear he'll make us suffer for that."

"I suppose he will," said Ellis. "But I had to shut him up somehow."

"I just think there may have been a better way to handle him."

Ellis suppressed a spasm of irritation. He wanted to say So why didn't you do it, smartass? but this was not the time to quarrel. Halam passed the next traveler with only the briefest of formal greetings, and Ellis thought: At least my technique was effective.

At first their progress was a lot slower than Ellis had anticipated. The meandering path, the uneven ground, the uphill gradient and the continual diversions meant that by midmorning they had covered only four or five miles as the crow flies, he estimated. Then, however, the way became easier, passing through the woods high above the river.

There was still a village or hamlet every mile or so, but now, instead of ramshackle wooden houses piled up the hillsides like collapsible chairs thrown haphazardly into a heap, there were box-shaped dwellings made of the same stone as the cliffs on whose sides they perched precariously, like seagulls' nests.

At midday they stopped in a village, and Halam got them invited into a house and given tea. It was a two-story building, the ground floor apparently being a storeroom, just like the medieval English houses Ellis remembered from ninth-grade history lessons. Jane gave the woman of the house a small bottle of pink medicine for her children's intestinal worms, and in return got pan-baked bread and delicious goat's-milk cheese. They sat on rugs on the mud floor around the open fire, with the poplar beams and willow laths of the roof visible above them. There was no chimney, so the smoke from the fire drifted up to the rafters and eventually seeped through the roof: that, Ellis surmised, was why the houses had no ceilings.

He would have liked to let Jane rest after eating, but he dared not risk it, for he did not know how close behind them the Russians might be. She looked tired but all right. Leaving immediately had the additional advantage that it prevented Halam getting into conversation with the villagers.

However, Ellis watched Jane carefully as they walked on up the valley. He asked her to lead the horse while he took Chantal, judging that carrying the baby was more tiring.

Each time they came upon an eastward-leading side valley, Halam would stop and study it carefully, then shake his head and walk on. Clearly he was not sure of the way, although he denied this hotly when Jane asked him. It was infuriating, especially when Ellis was so impatient to get out of the Nuristan Valley; but he consoled himself with the thought that if Halam was not sure which valley to take, then the Russians would not know which way the fugitives had gone.

He was beginning to wonder whether Halam might have gone past the turning when, at last, Halam stopped where a chattering stream flowed into the Nuristan River, and announced that their route lay up this valley. He seemed to want to stop for a rest, as if he was reluctant to leave familiar territory, but Ellis hurried them along.

Soon they were climbing through a forest of silver birch, and the main valley was lost to view behind them. Ahead of them they could see the mountain range they had to cross, an immense snow-covered wall filling a quarter of the sky, and Ellis kept thinking: Even if we escape from the Russians, how can we possibly climb that? Jane stumbled once or twice and cursed, which Ellis took as a sign she was tiring rapidly, although she did not complain.

At dusk they emerged from the forest into a bare, bleak, uninhabited landscape. It seemed to Ellis that they might not find shelter in such territory, so he suggested they spend the night in an empty stone hut they had passed half an hour or so earlier. Jane and Halam agreed, and they turned back.