‘Nasty.’

‘He’s not bothered. He wants us now, so bad.’ MacConnachie’s voice was as soft as Ansell had heard it. ‘He’ll stick till his petrol runs out.’

‘Soon?’

MacConnachie slowly unlocked his eyes from the helicopter to look back at the last ridge.

‘Not soon enough. The River Boys are very close now. We’ll move.’

Ansell rose with the reassembled gun; MacConnachie took up the undamaged weapon and the suitcase. Ansell said,

‘Where are the other choppers?’

‘Don’t be greedy.’ Then MacConnachie looked up at the helicopter, waved his gun towards the distant heights, and shouted,

‘Oi! We’re going that-a-way!’

Ansell was sure the pilot waved back.

From the pimple, where they retrieved the canteen, they headed for the secondary height, their day’s objective. Already it was afternoon, and the sun was falling towards the horizon. They were badly behind schedule, and had no chance of completing the planned march by nightfall. Ansell said,

‘Is there any point in leading the chopper the wrong way?’

‘No. We have to cross the ridge. They’ll cover the whole thing.’

And so the helicopter came with them, never far ahead, never far behind, an unshakeable and unmistakable marker as to their location. In a curious way, thought Ansell, they were not ungrateful for his company.

The sun lay low, the shadows stretched eerily, and Ansell was tired: for the first time, really weary, dragging himself along. Hill followed hill, gully joined gully behind them, each indistinguishable from the last, or the next. He was at a low ebb, knees aching and ankles unreliable. But, in a daze, he maintained his all-round watch: right and to the rear, left and to the rear, then fully behind. He wondered how much longer he would stay awake.

MacConnachie had been staring at, and through, the country ahead, reaching beyond the heights for each protuberance, shelf and configuration. He had them now. He knew them.

They could march by night.

The two things happened almost together.

First, the helicopter left them, turning back to disappear over the sun-bright ridge behind, giving one last wink of its blades in the dying sun. Sudden quiet. Then Ansell saw, or thought he saw, movement on the ridge.

‘Mac.’

‘What?’

‘I think the River Boys are with us.’

From the comparative darkness of the plain, they could see the still glowing forward slopes of the ridge clearly. Tiny figures appeared on the skyline, forerunners of a larger party.

‘It was bound to happen.’

‘They can’t see us.’

‘They know where we are. That’s why our friend could retire for the night.’

MacConnachie turned forward again to look up at their target feature for the day. He said,

‘We’re four hours from the top of that thing. We’ll get up there, and then decide what to do.’

Ansell nodded wearily.

As they climbed, night overtook them, reaching the summit long before they did. It grew cold, and very dark. Later, perhaps, the translucent glow of the previous night might reappear, but in these first hours there was nothing to warn them of the ankle-wrenching pothole or the foot-snaring cranny. Tedium flowered into every kind of small agony, until their nerves contracted at each jar, and their systems cried out in disproportion for relief. A major catastrophe might have spurred them to greater effort; a shower of rain could have unmanned them completely.