“ ‘Marvel thou nothing, for thou hast borne all the world upon thee,’ ” I quoted, hearing the voice of my father as he told the story of the saint carrying the child Jesus safely across the brook. I closed my eyes and tried to hold on to that memory, long forgotten until that moment. I must have passed out then, for the next thing I knew a trio of Afghan villagers was hauling me into a barren orchard, the parched trees looking dead and withered. I struggled for a moment, until Murray laid a calming hand on me.
“Where—?” I croaked
“Safe,” he said. “I left the watercourse when it reached the foothills, and came across these fellows searching for some goats that had wandered off. Their headman fought on our side in the last war.”
“You help our sick,” one of the tribesmen interrupted in heavily accented, but comprehensible English. “No more weep.”
Murray nodded and said something in Persian. Then he turned to me and explained: “When we first met up, I managed to get them to understand we’re medical staff. They’ll hide us from Ayub Khan’s followers, if we help them with some sickness that’s got their families by the throat. I can’t quite understand what he means by ‘weep,’ though. Tears for the dead, perhaps. Or running sores. It’s a symptom common to a half-dozen native maladies.”
I marveled at the equanimity my friend displayed in discussing this unpleasantness, even as I wondered at his strength and stamina. He had carried me for miles in that unbearable heat, yet walked beside me then as if it were still the calm hours before the battle. His military experience, or his faith, or a combination of the two had so well prepared him that no trial seemed beyond his capabilities. I would learn how wrong I was about that later, but at that moment, as we made our way to the largest of the grim, mud-walled houses in that Afghan village, I believed Murray a match for anything we might encounter.
A wizened old man met us at the door. He was clad in typical native dress, save for his ancient Western-style boots, which looked as if they had not left his feet since they were issued to him during the last war. At his side was a small boy, who snapped Murray a salute. The elder slapped the boy’s arm down and growled something in Persian.
“You are right to correct him,” Murray said. “We come as guests, not conquerors.”
The old man eyed Murray, as if he could discern the sincerity of a stranger by look alone. Finally he nodded. “As guests be welcome, then.”
He directed the villagers to carry me to a communal sickroom at the back of the house. The long, low-ceilinged room stank of disease and despair. Two men occupied mats on the floor. Despite the stifling heat, they were wrapped in blankets. Places for three more lay ready for the newly afflicted or abandoned by the recently dead. It was hard to tell which.
They placed me at the opposite end of the room from the door and, at the prompting of the old man, hung a ragged, gauzy sheet to separate me from the others. Murray immediately stripped away the makeshift bandage from my shoulder. Jezail bullets are often composed of bent nails, bits of silver, and any other metal scrap to hand, so that the wounds they create fester quickly. Such was the case with my shoulder. Though the bullet had passed right through my collarbone and out my back, infection had already set in.
Murray had managed somehow to hold on to his field medical kit, and he attended to the wound and the infection as best he could. “You’re going to have to carry on the fight from here, sir,” he said after he had finished his work.
I nodded and let him guide a cup to my lips. After a swallow of tepid water, I opened my right hand. The Saint Christopher medal shone dimly in the light of the candle by my sleeping mat, for night had come while Murray bled away what he could of the infection and closed as much of the gash as he dared. “You can carry me no farther,” I whispered. “Take it, in case you need someone to shoulder your burdens awhile.”
He took the chain from my hand. “If you want it back, just say the word. In the meantime, try to get some rest.” After one final check on the new bandage, Murray carefully lifted the candle and pushed through the curtain.
Several times that night I awoke to find my friend close by, either at my side or tending to the others in the room. Even when he was kneeling by the natives, his shadow on the curtain seemed to be ministering to me, a hunched and wavering form that hovered like some guardian angel. His voice filled the dead hours of the night as he offered gentle words to quiet the ranting of the sick men. I heard the old Afghan in the gray time before dawn, too. He spoke with Murray about the nature of the disease that had swept through the village, all the time using English. He hoped, no doubt, to keep the gravity of the situation from his people.
My fever rallied with the sun, and by noon I became as incoherent as the shivering natives. As with our trek from the corpse river, the days and nights that followed reside in my memory as fragments only: Murray as shadowy protector; the awful heat that washed over me, wave upon wave; the moans and shrieks of the sick Afghans. The latter remain especially vivid, as the incessant chattering of their teeth gave their cries an inhuman, almost insectlike quality.
It was that eerie sound which woke me on the night I first saw the masked priests.
I came awake slowly, but soon realized that my fever had broken. The throbbing ache in my shoulder had lessened, and I could actually feel the chill of the evening air on my sweat-soaked skin. The respite from the fever heat was most welcome, but any relief I felt turned to panic after I thought to call out to Murray and found myself unable to speak or move. I could only stare at the curtain, now a sickly yellow green from some strange light on the other side, and at the tall, unfamiliar shadow that loomed, dark as a mine pit, at its center.
The figure was certainly not Murray. It was taller and thinner, with a vague outline that suggested robes, not a British uniform. Where my friend had knelt close to the sick men, this visitor stood with a straight back, aloof and disdainful. Where Murray had answered their cries with kind words, the stranger remained silent as he stood near first one bawling invalid, then the other. Over each he leaned forward slightly and bowed his head, as if in prayer, all the while keeping his arms rigid at his side.
Finally the shadow on the curtain grew larger, and I knew that the silent visitor was coming for me. Again I tried to call out. Again my shout died, stillborn, in my throat. The shadow now filled the curtain. A hand gloved in bleached leather drew back the ragged cloth, revealing a tall, solemn figure dressed in white robes and a turban. I assumed him to be male from his build, for his dress concealed his gender utterly, just as a porcelain mask hid his features. The mask was plain, the nose and mouth suggested by curves, not revealed by details. A small arcane symbol, yellow against the winter white of the porcelain, lay upon each cheek. Of human features, only his eyes were visible.
Those dark orbs seemed lifeless at first, as if they, too, were part of the mask. The illusion fell away when the silent stranger tilted his head. Only then did I see the tears. So copious were they that the liquid welled up at the bottom of each eyehole until it was ready to spill over the rim. Then, as he had done with the two natives, the masked priest leaned forward. I braced inwardly for those tears to fall on me. Somehow I knew even then to dread their touch.
“Get away from him!”
Murray followed this shout with words in Persian. The first command had been enough to startle the priest, though. The silent figure straightened and turned away, so that his tears spattered the yellow sigils upon his mask and not me. I found myself able to move, too. A long-suppressed cry of horror escaped my lips as I sat up and pushed the curtain aside.
A second masked priest stood near the door. He held an oddly shaped lantern, the source of the weird yellow-green light that suffused the room. Murray strode past him, toward the priest who had loomed over me. He got halfway to his goal when he noticed that the two natives had fallen silent. The men lay still upon their mats, staring up at the ceiling, eyes fixed upon something we could not see.