And so on up the mountain. The thin air wheezed in his throat and the muscles of his thighs cracked under the strain. His stiff leg did not hurt but it was a hindrance because he had to swing it awkwardly sideways in an arc in order to take a step. But it was beautifully firm when he took the weight on it. Forester’s arms swung limply, tapping against the backs of his legs with every movement and this irritated him for a while until he no longer felt the tapping. Until he no longer felt anything at all.
His body was dead and it was only a bright hot spark of will burning in his mind that kept him going. He looked dispassionately at this flame of will, urging it to burn brighter when it flickered and screening out all else that would quench it. He did not see the snow or the sky or the crags and peaks which flanked him. He saw nothing at all, just a haze of darkness shot with tiny sparks of light flaring inside his eyeballs.
One foot forward easily—that was his good foot. The next foot brought round in a stiff semi-circle to grope for a footing. This was harder because the foot was dead and he could not feel the ground. Slowly, very slowly, take the weight. Right—that was good. Now the other foot—easy again.
He began to count, got up to eleven and lost count. He started again and this time got up to eight. After that he did not bother to count but just went forward, content to know that one foot was moving in front of the other.
Pace…halt…swing…grope…halt…pace…halt…swing…grope…halt…pace…halt…swing…grope…halt…swing…something glared against his closed eyes and he opened them to stare full into the sun.
He stopped and then closed his eyes painfully, but not before he had seen the silver streak on the horizon and
knew it was the sea. He opened his eyes again and looked down on the green valley and the white scattering of houses that was Altemiros lying snugly between the mountains and the lesser foothills beyond.
His tongue came out to lick ice-cracked lips stiffly. ‘Forester,’ he whispered. ‘Forester, we are on top.’
But Forester was past caring, hanging limply unconscious across Rohde’s broad shoulder.
Aguillar looked dispassionately at a small cut on his hand—one of many—from which the blood was oozing. I will never be a mechanic, he thought; I can guide people, but not machines. He laid down the broken piece of hacksaw blade and wiped away the blood, then sucked the wound. When the blood ceased to flow he picked up the blade and got to work on the slot he was cutting in the length of steel reinforcing rod.
He had made ten bolts for the crossbows, or at least he had slotted them and put in the metal flights. To sharpen them was beyond his powers; he could not turn the old grindstone and sharpen a bolt at the same time, but he was confident that, given another pair of hands, the ten bolts would be usable within the hour.
He had also made an inventory of the contents of the camp, checked the food supplies and the water, and in general had behaved like any army quartermaster. He had a bitter-sweet feeling about being sent to the camp. He recognized that he was no use in a fight; he was old and weak and had heart trouble—but there was more to it than that. He knew that he was a man of ideas and not a man of action, and the fact irked him, making him feel inadequate.
His sphere of action lay in the making of decisions and in administration; in order to get into a position to make valid
decisions and to have something to administer he had schemed and plotted and manipulated the minds of men, but he had never fought physically. He did not believe in fighting, but hitherto he had thought about it in the abstract and in terms of large-scale conflicts. This sudden plunge into the realities of death by battle had led him out of his depth.
So here he was, the eternal politician, with others, as always, doing the fighting and dying and suffering—even his own niece. As he thought of Benedetta the blade slipped and he cut his hand again. He muttered a brief imprecation and sucked the blood, then looked at the slot he had cut and decided it was deep enough. There would be no more bolts; the teeth of the hacksaw blade were worn smooth and would hardly cut cheese, let alone steel.
He fitted the flight into the slot, wedging it as Willis had shown him, and then put the unsharpened bolt with the others. It was strange, he thought, that night was falling so suddenly, and went out of the hut to be surprised by the deepening mist. He looked up towards the mountains, now hidden from sight, and felt deep sorrow as he thought of Rohde. And of Forester, yes—he must not forget Forester and the other
norteamericano
, Peabody.
Faintly from the river he head the sound of small-arms fire and his ears pricked. Was that a machine-gun? He had heard that sound when Lopez and the army had ruthlessly tightened their grip on Cordillera five years earlier, and he did not think he was mistaken. He listened again but it was only some freak of the mountain winds that had brought the sound to his ears and he heard nothing more. He hoped that it was not a machine-gun—the dice were already loaded enough.
He sighed and went back into the hut and selected a can of soup from the shelf for his belated midday meal. He had just finished eating the hot soup half an hour later when he
heard his niece calling him. He went out of the hut, tightening his coat against the cold air, and found that the mist was very much thicker. He shouted to Benedetta to let her know where he was and soon a dim figure loomed through the fog, a strange figure, misshapen and humped, and for a moment he felt fear.
Then he saw that it was Benedetta supporting someone and he ran forward to help her. She was breathing painfully and gasped, ‘It’s Jenny, she’s hurt.’
‘Hurt? How?’
‘She was shot,’ said Benedetta briefly.
He was outraged. ‘This American lady—shot! This is criminal.’
‘Help me take her inside,’ said Benedetta. They got Miss Ponsky into the hut and laid her in a bunk. She was conscious and smiled weakly as Benedetta tucked in a blanket, then closed her eyes in relief. Benedetta looked at her uncle. ‘She killed a man and helped to kill others—why shouldn’t she be shot at? I wish I were like her.’
Aguillar looked at her with pain in his eyes. He said slowly, ‘I find all this difficult to believe. I feel as though I am in a dream. Why should these people shoot a woman?’
‘They didn’t know she was a woman,’ said Benedetta impatiently. ‘And I don’t suppose they cared. She was shooting at them when it happened, anyway. I wish I could kill some of them.’ She looked up at Aguillar. ‘Oh, I know you always preach the peaceful way, but how can you be peaceful when someone is coming at you with a gun? Do you bare your breast and say, “Kill me and take all I have”?’
Aguillar did not answer. He looked down at Miss Ponsky and said, ‘Is she badly hurt?’
‘Not dangerously,’ said Benedetta. ‘But she has lost a lot of blood.’ She paused. ‘As we were coming up the road I heard a machine-gun.’
He nodded. ‘I thought I heard it—but I was not sure.’ He held her eyes. ‘Do you think they are across the bridge?’
‘They might be,’ said Benedetta steadily. ‘We must prepare. Have you made bolts? Tim has the crossbow and he will need them.’
‘Tim? Ah—O’Hara.’ He raised his eyebrows slightly, then said, ‘The bolts need sharpening.’
‘I will help you.’
She turned the crank on the grindstone while Aguillar sharpened the steel rods to a point. As he worked he said, ‘O’Hara is a strange man—a complicated man. I do not think I fully understand him.’ He smiled slightly. ‘That is an admission from me.’
‘I understand him—now,’ she said. Despite the cold, a film of sweat formed on her forehead as she turned the heavy crank.
‘So? You have talked with him?’
While the showers of sparks flew and the acrid stink of burning metal filled the air she told Aguillar about O’Hara and his face grew pinched as he heard the story. ‘That is the enemy,’ she said at length. ‘The same who are on the other side of the river.’
Aguillar said in a low voice, ‘There is so much evil in the world—so much evil in the hearts of men.’
They said nothing more until all the bolts were sharpened and then Benedetta said, ‘I am going out on the road. Will you watch Jenny?’
He nodded silently and she walked along the street between the two rows of huts. The mist was getting even thicker so that she could not see very far ahead, and tiny droplets of moisture condensed on the fabric of her coat. If it gets colder it will snow, she thought.
It was very quiet on the road, and very lonely. She did not hear a sound except for the occasional splash of a drop of water falling from a rock. It was as though being in the
middle of a cloud was like being wrapped in cotton-wool; this was very dirty cotton-wool, but she had done enough flying to know that from above the cloud bank would be clean and shining.
After some time she walked off the road and crossed the rocky hillside until the gigantic cable drum loomed through the mist. She paused by the enormous reel, then went forward to the road cutting and looked down. The road surface was barely visible in the pervading greyness and she stood there uncertainly, wondering what to do. Surely there was something she could be doing.
Fire, she thought suddenly, we can fight them with fire. The drum was already poised to crash into a vehicle coming up the road, and fire would add to the confusion. She hurried back to the camp and collected the bottles of paraffin she had brought back from the bridge, stopping briefly to see how Miss Ponsky was.
Aguillar looked up as she came in. ‘There is soup,’ he said. ‘It will be good in this cold, my dear.’
Benedetta spread her hands gratefully to the warmth of the paraffin heater, and was aware that she was colder than she had thought. ‘I would like some soup,’ she said. She looked over to Miss Ponsky. ‘How are you, Jenny?’
Miss Ponsky, now sitting up, said briskly, ‘Much better, thank you. Wasn’t it silly of me to get shot? I shouldn’t have leaned out so far—and then I missed. And I lost the bow.’
‘I would not worry,’ said Benedetta with a quick smile. ‘Does your shoulder hurt?’
‘Not much,’ said Miss Ponsky. ‘It will be all right if I keep my arm in a sling. Señor Aguillar helped me to make one.’
Benedetta finished her soup quickly and mentioned the bottles, which she had left outside. ‘I must take them up to the road,’ she said.
‘Let me help you,’ said Aguillar.
‘It is too cold out there,
tio
,’ she said. ‘Stay with Jenny.’
She took the bottles down to the cable drum and then sat on the edge of the cutting, listening. A wind was rising and the mist swirled in wreaths and coils, thinning and thickening in the vagaries of the breeze. Sometimes she could see as far as the bend in the road, and at other times she could not see the road at all although it was only a few feet below her. And everything was quiet.
She was about to leave, sure that nothing was going to happen, when she heard the faint clatter of a rock from far down the mountain. She felt a moment of apprehension and scrambled to her feet. The others would not be coming unless they were in retreat, and in that case it could just as well be an enemy as a friend. She turned and picked up one of the bottles and felt for matches in her pocket.
It was a long time before she heard anything else and then it was the thud of running feet on the road. The mist had thinned momentarily and she saw a dim figure come round the bend and up the road at a stumbling run. As the figure came closer she saw that it was Willis.
‘What is happening?’ she called.
He looked up, startled to hear a voice from above his head and in a slight panic until he recognized it. He stopped, his chest heaving, and went into a fit of coughing. ‘They’ve come across,’ he gasped. ‘They broke across.’ He coughed again, rackingly. ‘The others are just behind me,’ he said. ‘I heard them running—unless…’
‘You’d better come up here,’ she said.
He looked up at Benedetta, vaguely outlined at the top of the fifteen-foot cutting. ‘I’ll come round by the road,’ he said, and began to move away at a fast walk.
By the time he joined her she had already heard someone else coming up the road, and remembering Willis’s
unless
, she lay down by the edge and grasped the bottle. It was Armstrong, coming up at a fast clip. ‘Up here,’ she called. ‘To the drum.’
He cast a brief glance upwards but wasted no time in greeting, nor did he slacken his pace. She watched him go until he was lost in the mist and waited for him to join them.
They were both exhausted, having made the five-mile journey uphill in a little over an hour and a half. She let them rest a while and get their breath before she asked them, ‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Willis. ‘We were on the trebuchet; we’d let fly when O’Hara told us to—it was ready loaded—and then he yelled for us to clear out, so we took it on the run. There was a devil of a lot of noise going on—a lot of shooting, I mean.’
She looked at Armstrong. He said, ‘That’s about it. I think O’Hara got one of them—I heard a man scream in a choked sort of way. But they came across the bridge; I saw them as I looked back—and I saw O’Hara run into the rocks. He should be along any minute now.’
She sighed with relief.
Willis said, ‘And he’ll have the whole pack of them on his heels. What the hell are we going to do?’ There was a hysterical note in his voice.
Armstrong was calmer. ‘I don’t think so. O’Hara and I talked about this and we came to the conclusion that they’ll play it safe and repair the bridge while they can, and then run jeeps up to the mine before we can get there.’ He looked up at the cable drum. ‘This is all we’ve got to stop them.’
Benedetta held up the bottle. ‘And some of these.’
‘Oh, good,’ said Armstrong approvingly. ‘Those should help.’ He thought a little. ‘There’s not much your uncle can do—or Miss Ponsky. I suggest that they get started for the mine right now—and if they hear anyone or anything coming up the road behind them to duck into the rocks until they’re sure it’s safe. Thank God for this mist.’
Benedetta did not stir and he said, ‘Will you go and tell them?’
She said, ‘I’m staying here. I want to fight.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Willis. He got up and faded into the mist.
Armstrong caught the desperate edge in Benedetta’s voice and patted her hand in a kindly, fatherly manner. ‘We all have to do the best we can,’ he said. ‘Willis is frightened, just as I am, and you are, I’m sure.’ His voice was grimly humorous. ‘O’Hara was talking to me about the situation back at the bridge and I gathered he didn’t think much of Willis. He said he wasn’t a leader—in fact, his exact words were, “He couldn’t lead a troop of boy scouts across a street.” I think he was being a bit hard on poor Willis—but, come to that, I gathered that he didn’t think much of me either, from the tone of his voice.’ He laughed.
‘I’m sure he didn’t mean it,’ said Benedetta. ‘He has been under a strain.’
‘Oh, he was right,’ said Armstrong. ‘I’m no man of action. I’m a man of ideas, just like Willis.’
‘And my uncle,’ said Benedetta. She sat up suddenly. ‘Where
is
Tim? He should have been here by now.’ She clutched Armstrong’s arm. ‘
Where is he?
’
O’Hara was lying in a crack in the rocks watching a pair of stout boots that stamped not more than two feet from his head, and trying not to cough. Events had been confused just after the rush across the bridge, he had not been able to get to the road—he would have been cut down before going ten yards in the open—so he had taken to the rocks, scuttling like a rabbit for cover.
It was then that he had slipped on a mist-wetted stone and turned his ankle, to come crashing to the ground. He had lain there with all the wind knocked out of him, expecting to feel the thud of bullets that would mean his
death, but nothing like that happened. He heard a lot of shouting and knew his analysis of the enemy intentions had proved correct; they were spreading out along the edge of the gorge and covering the approaches to the bridge.
The mist helped, of course. He still had the crossbow and was within hearing distance of the noisy crowd which surrounded the man he had shot through the chest. He judged that they did not relish the task of winkling out a man with a silent killing weapon from the hillside, especially when death could come from the mist. There was a nervous snapping edge to the voices out there and he smiled grimly; knives they knew and guns they understood, but this was something different, something they regarded with awe.