‘We’ll do it. Drink now, then move.’

‘Right.’

Flat against the earth, under the persistent swish of the rotor blades, they edged the stopper out of the canteen and drank a mouthful apiece. Then they started to climb again.

It was easy to say, ‘We can march all night if we have to.’ The benefit of their rest stayed with them for less than a minute, then the horror clamped down over them once again. Far from replenishing their store of strength, the rest seemed only to have sharpened their appetite for pain. It came to them from every sensitive part. The weight of the afternoon sun was massive, pressing them into the earth. Each limb seemed grotesquely swollen, each source of power hopelessly diminished. Soon Ansell moved with the dull absence of an automaton, distantly aware that his face was on fire, that his throat raged with abrasive harshness, and that a rod was being passed up his spine to the base of his neck.

More and more he came to rely on MacConnachie, rising when he rose, crawling when he crawled, falling when he fell. For a time he had raged uselessly at the earth, hating it as a good soldier hates his enemy, wanting to punish it for punishing him; but now he saw only MacConnachie. Whatever coherence remained to him was directed at that man as though, by an effort of projection, he could cause that back to drag up his own body with itself. There was no helicopter, no ridge, no discomfort; just one sole point of focus, a back, broad and strong, untouched by suffering, untouchable.

And a thought that caused him aching pain: in all this time, in all this torment, MacConnachie has never once relinquished his grip on either the suitcase or the gun.

How can I ask him to carry me as well?

MacConnachie knew he would have to stop. He was no longer watching the chopper; he was falling into a rhythm, predictable and dangerous, assuming too much. His arms ached as though his hands were wrought in steel which, stretched too far, had set in an unbreakable grip. He fell against the earth like a man struck down.

Ansell crawled to MacConnachie and, laying his face against his boot, stared unseeing.

In ten hours they had travelled, as the crow flies, less than a mile. As a man crawls, they had covered eight hundred feet of the scarp, two thirds of the way to the top. But they had never once been seen, they were still out of contact.

It was MacConnachie who slept and Ansell who kept watch, dull eyes pointed at the secondary height in dim anticipation.

The helicopter was always with them.

He woke, or became aware, to see small figures milling about on the peak of the secondary feature. Already the sun was close to the horizon, and the helicopter had gone. It was this, perhaps, the sudden silence, that had brought him to himself. He shook MacConnachie’s boot, and a growl came down to him.