Companions of Paradise by Thalassa Ali Page A

move heavy guns about on this sort of terrain?
    She would also not mention that the very length of the cantonment's outer walls, enclosing an area nearly a thousand by six hundred yards, would make it extremely difficult to defend in the event of trouble.
    She looked about her. To her left, past a small artillery park with thirteen guns of various sizes, an orchard had inexplicably been left standing, rendering the high rampart between the northern end of the cantonment and the Residence compound nearly invisible through the trees. To her right, neat rows of mud brick barracks and officers’ quarters occupied a large area. Behind them she glimpsed the walled compounds of the generals. Straight ahead of her on a large parade ground, groups of red-coated infantrymen wheeled to shouted orders. In the shade of the barracks, other soldiers sat in groups, cleaning weapons and polishing brass.
    Pack mules filed past, their harnesses jingling, led by grooms in loose, native clothes. A troop of mustachioed cavalrymen trotted toward the parade ground on tall, handsome chargers. Camels strode through a side gate, carrying heavy sacks of foodstuffs.
    “I shall ask our guide,” her uncle continued, in a businesslike tone, “to show you the full view from each corner bastion, and to give the measurements of the surrounding rampart wall and its parapets. You have already passed the commissariat fort between here and the city many times, of course, and you know that the fresh water supply comes from the irrigation canal outside our eastern wall.”
    He looked about him. “I am certain we shall be allowed to watch the infantry drilling while we are here, but I doubt we shall see an artillery practice today, since no one seems to be anywhere near the guns. Even so,” he added happily, “that should be enough to satisfy you and the Would-Be-General.”
    Lost in thought, Mariana nodded again.
    She did not have to climb the cantonment's corner bastions to know the location of the several small forts that Macnaghten had taken so lightly at dinner. All were within a few hundred yards of the outer walls, one of them almost between the cantonment itself and the commissariat fort where all the food supplies had been stored.
    “Here comes our guide.” Her uncle gestured toward the curly-haired youth who hurried toward them. “It is a pity Fitzgerald has left us for Kandahar. A horse gunner would do a better job of explaining our artillery than this poor little infantryman.”
    Mariana sniffed to herself. Thirteen guns scarcely qualified as “our artillery.”
    She returned the young officer's bow. She must stop worrying and pay attention. After all, Papa would like nothing better than a detailed account of the cantonment.
    But as the young man began to speak, she did not hear what he was saying, for the vision she had seen all those weeks before at Butkhak returned without warning. It filled her mind's eye with mourning figures, and her heart with dread. She blinked, begging it to leave her, but it remained—the same black-clad funeral procession her munshi had refused to explain, marching somberly past her and across the empty parade ground, to the beat of invisible drums.
    Her uncle silenced their guide with an upraised hand. “Is something wrong, my dear?” he asked her.
    “Nothing, Uncle Adrian.” She pressed a damp hand to her forehead. “Nothing at all.”
    He nudged his horse closer, his face full of concern, then signaled to their guide.
    “Forgive us, Lieutenant Mathieson,” he said. “Miss Givens is not at all well. We must return to the Residence compound at once.”
    “No, Uncle Adrian,” she objected. “I—”
    “Nonsense,” he interrupted firmly. “You have gone quite white.”
    As he led her slowly home, Mariana noticed her munshi walking in the lane, on the arm of their strange young visitor.
    What did Munshi Sahib know? she wondered. And why had he given her that hollow look, his hand tightening on the Afghan