The horse to my left bucked and reared in front of me, pulling its tail from my hand. Trying to retrieve it, I lost my footing in the dark and slid to my knees, my face scraping against the rock wall. My own horse was terrified, as frightened as I was myself, and it struggled forward on the narrow path, following an impulse to run. I still held the reins, and I used them to pull myself to my feet, but the horse rammed into me again with its head, and I felt myself slide backward from the path. Fear stabbed into my chest and crushed my heart as I stumbled, slid, and fell off the path into the lightless void. I fell the full length of my body, and stopped with a wrenching snap as the reins in my hand held fast.
I was dangling in free space over a black abyss. Millimetre by millimetre I felt the downward creep, the easing, slipping creak of leather as I slid further from the edge of the narrow ledge. I could hear the shouts of men, all along the ledge above me. They were trying to calm the animals, and they were calling out names to account for their friends. I could hear the horses screaming their fear and snorting in protest. The air in the ravine was thick with the smells of piss and horseshit and frightened man sweat. And I could hear the scrabbling, scraping clatter of hooves as my own horse struggled to maintain its footing. I suddenly realised that as strong as the horse undoubtedly was, its foothold on the crumbling, jagged path was so precarious that my weight mightVe been enough to drag it over the ledge with me.
Flailing with my left hand in the impenetrable dark, I grasped the reins and began to drag myself back up to the ledge. I put one set of fingertips on the edge of the stony path and then choked a scream as I slipped backwards into the dark crevasse.
The reins held again, and I dangled over the gap, but my situation was desperate. The horse, fearing that it would be dragged over the edge, was shaking and dipping its head violently. An intelligent animal, she was trying to rid herself of the bridle, bit, and harness. At any moment, I knew, she would succeed. I gave a snarl of rage through clenched teeth and dragged myself to the ledge once more.
Scrambling up to my knees, I gasped in sweating exhaustion and then, working to an intuition that starts in fear and spikes on a jet of adrenaline, I jumped up and to my right as my neighbour's horse kicked out in the black, blind night. If I hadn't moved, it would've struck me on the side of the head, and my war would've ended there and then. Instead, the life-saving reflex to jump meant that the blow struck my hip and thigh, driving me into the wall and against my own horse's head. I threw my arms around the animal's neck, as much to comfort myself with its touch as to support my numb leg and aching hip. I was still cradling her head in my arms when I heard shuffling steps and felt someone's hands slide from the wall onto my back.
"Lin! Is that you?" Khaled Ansari asked into the darkness.
"Khaled! Yeah! Are you okay?"
"Sure. Jet fighters! Fuck me! Two of them. Not far overhead. A hundred feet, man, no more than that. Fuck! They were really smashing up the sound barrier! What a noise!"
"Were they Russians?"
"No, I don't think so. Not this close to the border. More likely they were Pakistani fighters, American planes with Pak pilots, crossing a little into Afghan space to keep the Russians on their toes. They won't go too far. The Russian MiG pilots are too good.
But the Paks like to remind them they're here, just the same. Are you sure you're all right?"
"Sure, sure," I lied. "I'll be a lot better when we get out of this fuckin' dark. Call me a weak motherfucker, but I like to see where I'm going when I'm trying to lead a horse along a ledge outside a ten-storey building."
"Me, too," Khaled laughed. It was the small, sad laugh, but I drenched myself in the reassurance of it. "Who was behind you?"
"Ahmed," I replied. "Ahmed Zadeh. I heard him swearing in French back there. I think he's okay. Nazeer was behind him. And I know Mahmoud, the Iranian, was near him somewhere. There were about ten behind me, I think, counting the two guys herding the goats."
"I'll go check," Khaled said, giving me a comforting slap on the shoulder. "You keep going. Just slide along the wall for another hundred yards or so. It's not far. There's still some moonlight when you get out there, outside this ravine. Good luck."
And for a few moments, when I reached that pale oasis of moonlight, I felt safe and sure of myself. Then we pushed on, hugging the cold, grey stone of the canyon-silo, and in minutes we were in blackness again, with nothing but faith and fear and the will to survive.
We travelled so often at night that we sometimes seemed to be feeling our way to Kandahar like blind men, with our fingertips.
