The Piper on the Mountain

back, but when I didn’t go back promptly enough he came looking for me. He must have found the van. He’d know I was still up here, somewhere. If he’d arrived while we were exposed out there, we should both have had it. Therefore he didn’t. He didn’t reach these parts until we were inside here. And he didn’t know there was anyone in here until he heard the fujara. What else could it be? That would be worth investigating, wouldn’t it? He was looking for a musician. He only had to wait and see who emerged, to find out if he was wasting his time. Now he knows he wasn’t. He knows we’re both here. He’s seen us.”

“You’re taking it for granted,” said Alda equably, his lean cheek flattened against the wall beside the dusty pane, “that he’s someone who’ll know me on sight.”

“He’ll know you. I’m sure.”

“And that I’m critically dangerous to him. But I swear I know of no reason why I should be.”

“I don’t understand why, either, but I’m sure I’m right. Welland was killed because he was determined to find you, and he looked like succeeding. Tossa and I are marked down because Welland might have told us what he knew. But you’re at the heart of it. There’s something in your past, in your connection with England, that can ruin somebody, and if he can silence you, the urgency’s over. And I brought you and pinned you here for him!”

“Up to now,” said Alda, “we are still alive. If he knows where we are, let’s see if we can find out where he is. He must be on this side, since he has the doorway neatly covered.” He reached a hand out of shelter to rub away the dust from the window-pane. There was no shot. “The sun probably reflects from the glass, it’s directly on it. So much the better. Come here!”

Dominic came, slipping along the wall and pressing intently at his shoulder, to peer out at the pale corduroy hillside curving away from them round the side of the bowl, until it reached the talus. He looked down the broken, scoured, almost grassless fall below to the bottom of the basin, and again up from the talus by the bare, polished funnel to where the level of firm rock conducted the path across it. The whole bowl seemed, at first glance, to be void of cover, but when he considered it in more detail there was scattered and meagre cover everywhere.

“I am supposed,” said Alda serenely in his ear, “to be somewhat of a prodigy at mathematics. Let’s see how precisely I can calculate. I don’t propose to open the door again simply to try and examine the bullet-hole, but I estimate that he was shooting obliquely into the doorway. The angle I should judge to be something like thirty degrees. And he’s certainly on a higher level than we are. The scar makes things easier—at least we can write off the areas where he can’t possibly be.” He was silent for a moment, his eyes roaming the exposed stretch of country intently, his hand on Dominic’s shoulder. “I make him approximately on the level of the rock path up there. Draw a line along from the distant end of it, say twenty yards. Somewhere within ten yards above or below that line, according to my estimate, he should be. You have that area fixed?”

“Yes.” There were low clumps of bushes there, and some irregularities in the folded ground; it looked a possible hide.

“Keep it fixed. Watch for the slightest movement there, when I give you the word. I’ll see if I can draw him.”

It was extraordinary; his voice sounded gay, his step was elastic, there was no doubting his pleasure now. Dominic, faithfully fixing the oblong of ground he had marked down, longed to turn and look at his companion. Maybe it was true that they were all born Janosiks, venturers by instinct, even the artists.

“A hat wouldn’t be convincing,” mused Alda cheerfully, somewhere behind him. “A shirt-sleeve, perhaps. You’re ready?”

“I’m ready,” he said huskily, his eyes already aching with concentration.

The shot made him leap and shrink inside his skin all the more violently because he was waiting for it with so much passion. Alda made a small, echoing sound on the heels of the impact, half hiss, half laugh, drawing in breath through his teeth. And in the low bushes at the very edge of the rock path, that were quivering faintly and constantly in the breeze, there was a sudden tiny convulsion for which the wind was not responsible.

“He’s there! I’ve got him!” He could turn his head now, and he did, in a frenzy of anxiety, reaching a hand for Alda’s arm as he came slipping back to him. “You’re all right? He didn’t touch you?”

“I’m all right.” He was laughing to himself, a small, inward rhythm like a cat purring. “Where was he?”

“Right at the edge of the scar, a yard or so above the path. It’s all still there now, but I’m sure. I saw him move. Only he may not stay there,” he said, his heart contracting ominously. “If we don’t return his fire soon, he’ll know we’re unarmed. If once he gets the idea, he can come down at leisure and get us. We’d have to cross open ground every way if we ran for it.” He had got his companion into this, and he must get him out. “Even if we could kid him we had a gun here,” he said, “we might keep him frozen where he is.”

And suddenly it occurred to him that they were not totally defenceless. One man with a gun here on the door side of the hut, and the enemy would have to keep cover, and fix his attention upon that danger. There was the window at the back, and a sporting chance of reaching cover from it, and escaping into the valley. That fellow up there couldn’t look everywhere at once.

He turned his head again and looked at Alda, who was scanning the rifleman’s hide with narrowed, eager eyes.

“Would you mind terribly if I borrowed your fujara?”

Alda started, shortened his ardent stare, and looked with amusement and delight at his ally. He was very quick on the uptake.

“You won’t take in a Slovak that way,” he warned indulgently.

“No, I know that,” acknowledged Dominic, gazing back at him with eyes wide and steady. “But I haven’t got to—have I?”

They understood each other perfectly. In some incomprehensible way they had borrowed from each other, and even words had become almost superfluous, so companionably did their minds confer.

“You know the lie of the land here better than I do. You speak the language, I don’t. And you’re the more essential witness now. I don’t understand why, either, but you are. Let me hold his fire here, and you get out by the window and run for help. I’m awfully sorry,” said Dominic, picking his words as fastidiously as a drunk in his anxiety, “to be cornering the safe job for myself, but it’s quicker and easier this way. If you’ll let me try to use the fujara for camouflage, I shall be safe enough. He won’t dare rush me, if he thinks I have a gun.”

It was perhaps the most important speech of his life, up to that moment, and he had to get it right. He licked