Ken Follett: Lie down with lions

Jane watched him, petrified. Between the horse's rump and the face of the cliff there was not room enough for both of Ellis's feet side by side: he had to stand, with his feet one behind the other, like a figure in an ancient Egyptian wall painting. He bent at the knees and slowly lowered himself into a crouch, then he reached for the complex web of leather straps holding the canvas bag of emergency rations.

At that moment the horse decided to get up.

It bent its front legs and somehow managed to get them under its forequarters; then, with the familiar snakelike wriggle of a horse getting to its feet, it lifted its front end and tried to swing its rear legs back onto the ledge.

It almost succeeded.

Then its back feet slid away, it lost its balance, and its rear end fell sideways. Ellis grabbed the food bag. Inch by inch the horse slipped away, kicking and struggling. Jane was terrified it would injure Ellis. Inexorably the animal slithered over the edge. Ellis jerked at the food bag, no longer trying to save the horse, but hoping to snap the leather straps and hold on to the food. So determined was he that Jane feared he would let the horse pull him over the edge. The animal slid faster, dragging Ellis to the brink. At the last second he let go of the bag with a cry of frustration, and the horse made a noise like a scream and dropped away, tumbling over and over as it fell into the void, taking with it all their food, their medical supplies, their sleeping bag and Chantal's spare diaper.

Jane burst into tears.

A few moments later Ellis scrambled up onto the ledge beside her. He put his arms around her and knelt there with her for a minute while she cried for the horse and the supplies and her aching legs and her frozen feet. Then he stood, gently helped her up and said: "We mustn't stop."

"But how can we go on?" she cried. "We've nothing to eat, we can't boil water, we've no sleeping bag, no medicines. ..."

"We've got each other," he said.

She hugged him tightly when she remembered how near to the edge he had slipped. If we live through this, she thought, and if we escape the Russians and get back to Europe together, I'll never let him out of my sight, I swear.

"You go first," he said, disentangling himself from her embrace. "I want to be able to see you." He gave her a gentle shove, and automatically she began to walk on up the mountain. Slowly her despair crept back. She decided her aim would simply be to carry on walking until she dropped dead. After a while Chantal began to cry. Jane ignored her, and eventually she stopped.

Sometime later—it might have been minutes or hours, for she had lost track of time—as Jane was rounding a corner, Ellis caught up with her and stopped her with a hand on her arm. "Look," he said, pointing ahead.

The track led down into a vast bowl of hills rimmed by white-peaked mountains. At first Jane did not understand why Ellis had said Look; then she realized that the track was leading down.

"Is this the top?" she asked stupidly.

"This is it," he said. "This is the Kantiwar Pass. We've done the worst part of this leg of the journey. For the next couple of days the route will lie downhill, and the weather will get warmer."

Jane sat down on an icy boulder. I made it, she thought. I made it.

While the two of them looked at the black hills, the sky beyond the mountain peaks turned from pearl gray to dusty pink. Day was breaking. As the light slowly stained the sky, so a little hope crept into Jane's heart again. Downhill, she thought, and warmer. Perhaps we will escape.

Chantal cried again. Well, her food supply had not gone with Maggie. Jane fed her, sitting on that icy boulder on the roof of the world, while Ellis melted snow in his hands for Jane to drink.

The descent into the Kantiwar Valley was a relatively gentle slope, but very icy at first. However, it was less nerve-racking without the horse to worry about. Ellis, who had not slipped at all on the way up, carried Chantal.

Ahead of them, the morning sky turned flame red, as if the world beyond the mountains were on fire. Jane's feet were still numb with cold, but her nose unfroze. Suddenly she realized she was terribly hungry. They would simply have to keep walking until they came across people. All they had to trade, now, was the TNT in Ellis's pockets. When that was gone they would have to rely on traditional Afghan hospitality.

They were also without bedding. They would have to sleep in their coats, with their boots on. Somehow Jane felt they would solve all problems. Even finding the path was easy now, for the valley walls on either side were a constant guide and limited the distance they might stray. Soon there was a little stream burbling alongside them: they were below the ice line again. The ground was fairly even, and if they had still had the horse they could have ridden her.

After another two hours they paused to rest at the head of a gorge, and Jane took Chantal from Ellis. Ahead of them, the descent became rough and steep, but because they were below the ice line the rocks were not slippery. The gorge was quite narrow and could quite easily get blocked. "I hope there are no landslides down there," said Jane.

Ellis was looking the other way, back up the valley. Suddenly he gave a start, and said: "Jesus Christ."

"What on earth is the matter?" Jane turned and followed his gaze, and her heart sank. Behind them, about a mile up the valley, were half a dozen men in uniform and a horse: the search party.

After all that, thought Jane; after all we went through, they caught us anyway. She was too miserable even to cry.

Ellis grabbed her arm. "Quick, let's move," he said. He started hurrying down into the gorge, pulling her after him.

"What's the point?" Jane said wearily. "They're sure to catch us."

"We've got one chance left." As they walked, Ellis was surveying the steep, rocky sides of the gorge.

"What?"

"A rockfall."

"They'll find a way over or around it."

"Not if they're all buried underneath it."

He stopped at a place where the floor of the canyon was only a few feet wide and one wall was precipitously steep and high. "This is perfect," he said. He took from the pockets of his coat a block of TNT, a reel of detonating cable marked Primacord, a small metal object about the size of the cap of a fountain pen, and something that looked like a metal syringe except that at its blunt end it had a pull ring instead of a plunger. He laid the objects out on the ground.

Jane watched him in a daze. She did not dare to hope.

He fixed the small metal object to one end of the Primacord by crimping it with his teeth; then he fixed the metal object to the sharp end of the syringe. He handed the whole assembly to Jane.

"This is what you have to do," he began. "Walk down the gorge, paying out the cable. Try to conceal it. It

doesn't matter if you lay it in the stream—this stuff burns under water. When you reach the limit of the wire, pull out the safety pins like this." He showed her two split pins which pierced the barrel of the syringe. He pulled them out and put them back in. "Then keep your eye on me. Wait for me to wave my arms above my head like this." He showed her what he meant. "Then pull the ring. If we time this just right, we can kill them all. Go!"

Jane followed orders like a robot, without thinking. She walked down the gorge, paying out the cable. At first she concealed it behind a line of low bushes, then she laid it in the bed of the stream. Chantal slept on in the sling, swaying gently as Jane walked, leaving both of Jane's arms free.

After a minute she looked back. Ellis was wedging the TNT into a fissure in the rock. Jane had always believed that explosives would go off spontaneously if you handled them roughly: obviously that was a misconception.