‘Time to move.’

‘God, oh God.’

Exhaustion lay over him like a sheet of lead. He struggled to come awake as a man buried under a collapsed building struggles, hopelessly against impossible odds. MacConnachie shook him more brutally.

‘Wake up, damn you!’

His head rattled about, his half-formed thoughts careened, as MacConnachie gripped his coat front and wrenched him violently back and forth. When MacConnachie let go, he put a hand to his head, and muttered,

‘’m tired.’

‘So am I!’

Then MacConnachie struck him across the face, knocking his arm aside.

‘Wake up, you gutless little bastard!’

Ansell woke.

‘Sorry.’

‘That’s better,’ said MacConnachie, and turned away. Ansell felt suddenly very sick but, although he retched, nothing came, and it passed almost at once.

‘Morning sickness,’ he said. MacConnachie said,

‘Get changed and ready to move.’

MacConnachie was busy in the gloom, stripping off his jacket, packing it with the blanket, tying his slacks round his waist again. Ansell said,

‘It won’t happen again.’

‘It’ll be my turn to lie in tomorrow.’

As they worked, preparing for the new day’s march, Ansell came to understand their physical condition. It was now ‘the day after tomorrow’, the moment at which the effect of their initial outlay of effort should overtake them, and it did. He ached at every joint; each limb flared in pain at the smallest movement. His stomach was unnaturally tender, his neck and shoulder muscles cracked audibly, and every time he stooped his head spun. But the greatest pain came from his feet, which were badly blistered, and his left shoulder, which had been eroded by the strap of the canteen and burned persistently. All the same, he knew that MacConnachie was no better off than himself; and if MacConnachie didn’t complain, he wasn’t going to.

As if reading his thoughts, MacConnachie laughed and said,

‘It’ll go.’

‘It had better.’

MacConnachie packed the empty tin and the second breech-block, roped up the case, and thrust the remains of the damaged gun deep into a fissure, where it should lie hidden for ever; the spare magazine was already under his belt. The meat he had scooped on to a little pile of grass, and now they had breakfast, and then a drink. Finally, MacConnachie scratched a shallow hole in the earth but, apart from urinating, it was a forlorn hope for them both.

‘It’ll come.’

They advanced to peer down into the gloom.

‘Damn. We’ll be in low ground when the sun comes up.’

‘At least they won’t see us.’

‘They will when the chopper comes.’

The back slope of the secondary feature proved unexpectedly steep, and they fell many times in the half-light, jarring their bodies painfully. But as the descent unwound, Ansell came slowly to realize that each new impact, with the effort of concentration to which it gave rise, was driving the aching stiffness from his bones, routing the over-sensitivity from cringing nerves. A small victory was being won, and it gave him renewed zest. They would never set out so tired again.