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.
Jane felt like bursting into tears. They had walked two or three miles along the bank and that narrow ledge: to turn back meant an extra five miles, including the section that had frightened Maggie so.
The three of them stood for a moment looking at the blockage. "Could we climb it?" said Jane.
"The horse can't," said Ellis.
Jane was angry at him for stating the obvious. "One of us could go back with the horse," she said impatiently. "The other two could rest while waiting for the horse to catch up."
"I don't think it's wise to get separated."
Jane resented his my-decision-is-final tone of voice. "Don't assume we'll all do what you happen to think is wise," she snapped.
He looked startled. "All right. But I also think that mound of earth and stones might shift if someone tried to climb it. In fact I might as well say that I'm not going to try it, regardless of what you two might decide."
"So you won't even discuss it. I see." Furious, Jane turned around and started back along the track, leaving the two men to follow her. Why was it, she wondered, that men slipped into that bossy, know-it-all mode whenever there was a physical or mechanical problem?
Ellis was not without his faults, she reflected. He could be wooly-minded: for all his talk about being an antiterrorist expert, still he worked for the CIA, which was probably the largest group of terrorists in the world. There was undeniably a side of him that liked danger, violence and deceit. Don't pick a macho romantic, she thought, if you want a man to respect you.
One thing that could be said for Jean-Pierre was that he never patronized women. He might neglect you, deceive you or ignore you, but he would never condescend to you. Perhaps it was because he was younger.
She passed the place where Maggie had reared. She did not wait for the men: they could cope with the damn horse themselves this time.
Chantal was complaining, but Jane made her wait. She strode on until she reached a point where there seemed to be a pathway up to the clifftop. There she sat down and unilaterally declared a rest. Ellis and Mohammed caught up with her a minute or two later. Mohammed got some mulberry-and-walnut cake out of the baggage and handed it around. Ellis did not speak to Jane.
After the break they climbed the hillside. When they reached the top they emerged into sunshine, and Jane began to feel a little less angry. After a while Ellis put his arm around her and said: "I apologize for assuming command."
"Thank you," Jane said stiffly.
"Do you think that maybe you might have overreacted a little bit?"
"No doubt I did. Sorry."
"You bet. Let me take Chantal."
Jane handed the baby over. As the weight was lifted, she realized that her back was aching. Chantal had never seemed heavy, but the burden told over a long distance. It was like carrying a bag of shopping for ten miles.
The air became milder as the sun climbed the morning sky. Jane opened her coat and Ellis took his off. Mohammed retained his Russian uniform greatcoat, with characteristic Afghan indifference to all but the most severe changes in the weather.
Toward noon they emerged from the narrow gorge of the Linar into the broad Nuristan Valley. Here the way was once again quite clearly marked, the path being almost as good as the cart track which ran up the Five Lions Valley. They turned north, going upstream and uphill.
Jane felt terribly tired and discouraged. After getting up at two A.M. she had walked for ten hours—but they had only covered four or five miles. Ellis wanted to do another ten miles today. It was Jane's third consecutive day on the march, and she knew she could not continue until nightfall. Even Ellis was wearing the bad-tempered expression which, Jane knew, was a sign he was weary. Only Mohammed seemed tireless.