Seconds passed and his vision gradually returned. The man above him — an officer, Nicolson could see now, he had a sword by his side — had not moved, the bayonet still rested on his throat. Slowly, painfully, as best he could without moving head or neck even a millimetre, Nicolson let his eyes wander slowly round the hut, and the sickness came back to him again. Not from the bayonet, this time, but from the bitterness, the hopelessness that welled up in his throat in an almost physical tide of despair. His guard was not the only one in the hut. There must have been at least a dozen of them, all armed with rifles and bayonets, all with rifles and bayonets pointing down at the sleeping men and women. There was something weird and ominous about their silence and stealth and unmov-ing concentration. Nicolson wondered dimly whether they were all to be murdered in their sleep, and had no sooner done so when the man above him shattered the idea and the brooding silence.
“Is this the swine you spoke of? “He spoke in English, with the precise, grammatical fluency of an educated man who has not learned the language among the people who spoke it. “Is this their leader?”
“That is the man Nicolson.” It was Telak who spoke, shadowed just beyond the doorway. He sounded remote, indifferent. “He is in charge of the party.”
“Is that the case? Speak up, you English pig!” The officer emphasised his request with another jab at Nicolson’s throat. Nicolson could feel the blood trickling slowly, warmly, on to the collar of his shirt. For a moment he thought to deny it, to tell the man that Captain Findhorn was his commanding officer, but instinct immediately told him that things would go very hard with the man whom the Japanese recognised as the leader. Captain Findhorn was in no condition to take any further punishment. Even a blow, now, could easily be enough to kill him.
“Yes, I am in charge.” Even to himself, his voice sounded weak and husky. He looked at the bayonet, tried to gauge his chances of knocking it aside, recognised that it was hopeless. Even if he did, there were another dozen waiting men ready to shoot him down. “Take that damned thing away from my neck.”
“Ah, of course! How forgetful of me.” The officer removed his bayonet, stepped back a pace and then kicked Nicolson viciously in the side, just above the kidney. “Captain Yamata, at your service,” he murmured silkily. “An officer in His Imperial Majesty’s Nipponese Army. Be careful how you speak to a Japanese officer in future. On your feet, you swine.” He raised his voice to a shout. “All of you, on your feet!”
Slowly, shakily, grey-faced beneath his dark tan and almost retching with the agony in his side, Nicolson rose to his feet. All around the hut others, too, were shaking off the dark fog of sleep and pushing up dazedly off the floor, and those who were too slow, too sick or too badly hurt were jerked cruelly upright regardless of their moans and cries and hustled out towards the door. Gudrun Drachmann, Nicolson saw, was one of those who were roughly handled; she had bent over to roll a still sleeping Peter in a blanket and gather him in her arms, and the guard had jerked them both up with a violence that must nearly have dislocated the girl’s arm: the sharp cry of pain was hardly uttered before she had bitten it off in tight-lipped silence. Even in his pain and despair Nicolson found himself looking at her, looking and wondering, wondering at her patience and courage and the selfless unceasing devotion with which she had looked after the child for so many long days and endless nights, and as he looked and wondered he was conscious of a sudden and almost overwhelming sense of pity, conscious that he would have done anything to save this girl from further harm and hurt degradation, a feeling, he had to confess to himself with slow surprise, that he could never remember having had for any other than Caroline. He had known this girl for only ten days, and he knew her better than he would have known most in a dozen lifetimes: the quality and the intensity of their experiences and suffering in the past ten days had had the peculiar power and effect of selecting, highlighting and magnifying with a ‘brutal and revealing clarity faults and merits, vices and virtues that might otherwise have remained concealed or dormant for years. But adversity and privation had been a catalyst that had brought the best and the worst into unmistakable view and, like Lachie McKinnon, Gudrun Drachmann had emerged shining and untarnished out of the furnace of pain and suffering and the extremest hardships. For a moment and incredibly, Nicolson forgot where he was, forgot the bitter past and empty future and looked again at the girl and he knew for the first time that he was deceiving himself, and doing it deliberately. It wasn’t pity, it wasn’t just compassion he felt for this slow-smiling scarred girl with a skin like a rose at dusk and the blue eyes of northern seas: or if it had been, it would never be again. Never again. Nicolson shook his head slowly and smiled tc himself, then grunted with pain as Yamata drove the heel of his rifle between his shoulder blades and sent him staggering towards the door.
It was almost pitch dark outside, but light enough for Nicolson to see where the soldiers were taking them — towards the brightly-lit elders’ meeting-place, the big square council house where they had eaten earlier, on the other side of the kampong. It was also light enough for Nicolson to see something else — the faint outline of Telak, motionless in the gloom. Ignoring the officer behind him, ignoring the certainty of another teeth-rattling blow, Nicolson stopped, less than a foot away from him. Telak might have been a man carved from stone. He made no movement, no gesture at all, just stood still in the darkness, like a man far lost in thought.
“How much did they pay you, Telak?” Nicolson’s voice was hardly more than a whisper.
Seconds passed and Telak did not speak. Nicolson tensed himself for another blow on the back, but no blow came. Then Telak spoke, his words so faraway a murmur that Nicolson had to bend forward, involuntarily, to hear him.
“They paid me well, Mr. Nicolson.” He took a pace forward and half-turned, so that his side and profile were suddenly caught in the light streaming from the door of the hut. His left cheek, neck, arm and upper chest were a ghastly mass of sword or bayonet cuts, it was impossible to tell where one began and the other ended; the blood seemed to mask the whole side of his body and, even as Nicolson watched, he could see it drip soundlessly on to the hard-beaten earth of the kampong. “They paid me well,” Telak repeated tonelessly. “My father is dead, Trikah is dead. Many of our men are dead. We were betrayed and they took us by surprise.”
Nicolson stared at him without speaking, all thought temporarily blocked by the sight of Telak — a Telak, he could see now, with another Japanese bayonet only inches from his back. Not one bayonet, but two: Telak would have fought well before they struck him down. And then thought did come, pity and shock that this should have happened, and so soon, to men who had so selflessly befriended them, then, swift on the heels of that thought, bitter regret for the words that he himself had just uttered, for the horribly unjust accusation that must have been the last few grains of salt in the wounds of Telak’s sorrow and suffering. Nicolson opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out, only a gasp of pain as a rifle butt again thudded into his back, a gasp synchronised with Yamata’s low, evil laugh in the darkness.
Rifle now reversed, the Japanese officer drove Nicolson across the kampong at the jabbing point of his bayonet. Ahead of him, Nicolson could see the others being herded through the sharply-limned rectangle of light that was the entrance to the council house. Some were already inside. Miss Plenderleith was just passing through, with Lena at her back, then Gudrun with Peter, followed closely by the bo’sun and Van Effen. Then Gudrun, approaching the door, stumbled over something on the ground, overbalanced with the weight of the little boy in her arms, and almost fell. Her guard caught her savagely by the shoulder and pushed. Perhaps he meant to push her through the door, but if he did his direction was bad, for girl and child together crashed heavily into the lintel of the doorway. Almost twenty feet away Nicolson could hear the thud of a head or heads against unyielding wood, the girl’s exclamation of pain and young Peter’s shrill, high-pitched cry of fear and hurt. McKinnon, only a few feet behind the girl shouted something unintelligible — his native Gaelic, Nicolson guessed — took two quick steps forward and leapt for the back of the guard who had pushed the girl: but the swinging rifle butt of the soldier behind was even faster and the bo’sun never saw it coming….