In the Palace of the Khans by Peter Dickinson

Author:Peter Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

CHAPTER 14

It was mid-morning, hot and still, by the time they reached the main road north. Nigel had stripped down to shirt and trousers but was sweating under his dahl. They settled to rest in the shade of a few scrawny trees, drinking sparingly from their water-bottles and watching the traffic stream by—cars, trucks and pick-ups crammed with passengers; the occasional group of sweating cyclists; mules under mountains of baggage or with two or even three riders; a camel, once, with four perched on it somehow—all fleeing from the chaos in Dara Dahn.

An empty truck came past going the other way. Rahdan raised an optimistic thumb pointing north. Astonishingly the truck pulled over and a man got out and came across. The haggling—Janey, Rahdan and the man—lasted several minutes before Janey gave him some money, the man waved and the truck drove on without him.

“Gone for collect another lot,” muttered Janey. “I give him twenty dzhin so he stop for us when he coming back, then a hundred sixty if he take us to Podoghal. Varaki town, one fifty kilometres. OK?”

“Thirty dzhin a head?” said Nigel. “That sounds cheap, time like this.”

“Is cheap,” said Janey. “Not much trusting him, case he making a run for it when truck coming back, all full. Taking our twenty dzhin, leaving us here. I tell Rahdan keep an eye at him.”

Nigel didn’t like the look of the man either. He smiled too much as he chatted to Rahdan, and when he was offered a drink of their precious water he downed more than half the bottle. But half an hour later the truck stopped as arranged, and there was just about room on it for six more passengers once Janey had paid the rest of their fare.

For thirty miles or so they ground north along a winding valley, sitting on their bags or perching on the sideboard of the truck, with endless gear changes as the traffic accelerated and slowed. The packed mass of bodies generated its own heat, and the wind of their passage, laden with the exhaust of labouring old engines, gave them no relief.

News and rumours were passed to and fro. Seventeen, no, twenty-four, no, eleven, no, fifty-eight people had been killed when the tanks had fired into the crowd at Iskan Bridge. The soldiers who had stormed the TV station had been dressed in Dirzhaki uniforms but had given their orders in Russian. The Khanazhana had been captured and would be forced to marry the son of Adzhar Taerzha. It was an American plot to prevent Dirzhan becoming an Islamic state. No, it was an al-Quaida plot to make it an Islamic state …

On a hill no steeper than several they’d climbed the engine started to falter. They staggered on with the stinking cloud of their exhaust billowing over the traffic behind, down again and along a level with it sounding increasingly unhappy, until they left the main convoy, turned off along a side road and reversed into a track beside a peach orchard, where they stopped in a cloud of their own smoke.

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