‘Come on. We must move.’

‘Which way?’

‘Into the hills. We must be in high ground by nightfall.’

Now that he had recovered, Ansell felt ashamed and frighteningly exposed. He rose and followed MacConnachie with relief.

‘Sorry about being sick.’

MacConnachie grunted without interest. He had assumed the poised, characteristic posture that Ansell had seen so often before: the curious animal lope of a man sensing the ground ahead, probing it not only with eyes and ears, but with that strange inner device which Ansell neither possessed nor understood, but which he had learned to envy and trust. Feeling, as he always did, released by this, he began to think ahead, saying,

‘What about water?’

‘What about it?’

MacConnachie didn’t turn but continued to scent the ground ahead, as Ansell himself sought constantly for danger to the flanks and rear.

‘We must have some.’

‘So?’

‘We can’t go too far from the river.’

‘We’ve got to get out of the first box of search.’

‘There may not be a village up there for miles.’

‘There isn’t.’

Ansell accepted this without question: if MacConnachie said there was no village, there was none. The fact that MacConnachie had never walked this ground before was immaterial to his particular abilities. Ansell said,

‘Then we’ve got to stay close enough to raid a village down here. There’ll be plenty of them on the river.’

For some moments MacConnachie walked on in silence; then he said,

‘Damn, you’re right.’

Silence fell again. Ansell was unable to discern movement of any kind on any quarter. He found it curious and disconcerting that they should appear, in the circumstances, so utterly alone. He felt threatened. Suddenly MacConnachie pulled violently against his bonds.

‘We’ve got to get our hands free! We’ve got to!’

‘I know.’

They had reached the beginnings of the foot-hills now, and their movements took on a new rhythm as they started to climb.

To the front their field of view was dangerously limited: they could see to a false crest at the top of the slope but, apart from the tips of the hills beyond, nothing more. They walked in the soldier’s most ill-starred territory, the low ground, and it made them uneasy. MacConnachie said,

‘We’ll get to the top. If it isn’t crawling with Goons, we’ll lie up and come down tonight.’

‘Right.’

‘We can go without food, but we can’t without water.’

The terrain grew steeper until, fifty feet below the crest, they were forced to crawl without the aid of their arms. It was the progress of the snake, and by the time they reached the jutting edge above, their cheeks and knees were raw and bleeding, and what had remained of the arms of their uniform jackets had been torn away. Each man had fragments of crust adhering to the corners of his eyes and mouth, and the foul vapour that rose from their clothes under the late sun choked them.

As they wriggled over the lip of the promontory they found that it was only a small, tufted shelf from which, not ten feet ahead, the slope rose smoothly again to another false crest.