Free The Lotus and the Wind by John Masters

any firing, of course, but I thought you must be getting at ‘em with the bayonet. The Frontier Force and the main body of the MacDonalds certainly chased four hundred Ghilzais off those ridges. Where in blazes have they got to? Where are Mclain’s lads?’
    ‘Over there, I think, sir.’ Robin began to tell the general what had happened but cut off his explanation with a cough. Mclain might get into severe trouble. He’d better say as little as possible.
    The general said sharply, ‘You think! You lost touch with him, then?’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘H’m. I hope it’s all right. This is a bad country to lose touch in, even for a few minutes.’ He turned to the Highlanders’ commanding officer. ‘Findlater, Savage here and your lad Mclain lost touch with each other. Savage thinks your people are over there somewhere. Perhaps they’ve had better luck. But you’d better send out a patrol to find them and bring them back into the column. We must get on, bivouac on the pass to-night.’
    ‘Very good, sir. Which way did Mclain go, Savage?’ The Highland lieutenant-colonel turned on Robin with a frown. ‘How did you lose touch? Why weren’t you keeping contact by the inward flank? Why--?’
    Robin began to answer, seeking his words carefully. The Frontier Force sepoys formed up to continue the advance. The horses of the general’s staff stood with heads up and ears pricked, nervous in the moving mist, like islands in the stream of marching men. Two guns of the mountain battery went past, known long before their coming and remembered long after their going by the steady clank and crash of their loads in the harness. Then all sounds died down to the squink of boot-nails on the rock, the breathing of tired men, the scuff of the Frontier Force sandals. The cloud and mist dissolved, the wind dropped, and thin, gritty snow began to fall.
    As the cloud lifted all those in the general’s party saw a man in a kilt stumbling down the western hill towards them. The general had begun to move, but reined in his horse. They all heard the running man’s gasps and sobs. First of all of them it was Robin who recognized the man as Mclain. He had no helmet, and blood covered the side of his face and hung congealed in thick patches on the front of his tunic. While the watchers remained numb-struck the young officer fell the last twenty feet down the hill and struggled forward on hands and knees. He raised his bloody head. His once-bright blue eyes were blank as pits.
    Then at last the officers and orderlies around the general ran forward to support Mclain, and put their arms under his and lifted him up. His tunic hung in ribbons about him. His claymore was broken off six inches below the steel basketwork of the hilt. Robin saw every detail as he ran forward to help. But Mclain clung now to his own colonel’s knees and recognized no one else. He babbled ceaselessly, all the officer gone, and all the brave, moustachioed young gallant. In those seconds he seemed to speak from one of the other worlds in which Robin habitually lived, and Robin felt very close to him.
    ‘They’re dead, nearly all of them. All. I fought till--couldn’t fight. They didn’t kill me. Couldn’t. McPherson’s dead. Graham. Robertson. McIntosh and McKenzie. McLaughlan. All the MacDonalds. Laidlaw.’ He dragged in breath between the names and wept so bitterly that the watchers and the men supporting him cast down their eyes in order not to see the young officer’s utter loss of himself. But Robin watched every tear and heard every sob and recognized them all. He did not remember seeing and hearing this thing, but from his earliest years he had known it. This that he now experienced again, not this time as a halfmemory from babyhood but as a fully felt reality, was the root from which he had grown and must continue to grow. Mclain spoke from the pit where men are not men but so many grasping fingers of evil; where love and courage, hate and cowardice, are