As they rolled, his hand touched the khanjar. In an instant he had it in his hand and struck savagely, slicing the Arab’s belly open from the pubic area to the sternum. The man’s grip relaxed instantly. His scream was terrible as his insides cascaded out in a slippery mass.

A blast sang almost at the Scorpion’s ear, a bullet barely missing his head. He rolled on the ground and almost without taking aim, as he had during the long years of practice, he threw the khanjar at the second Arab. The flashing blade caught him in the chest and he went down like a log.

Suddenly out of the waning smoke on the crest came a line of shadowy figures firing at him. The remaining Arabs had come to the crest. That meant the Mutayr must have broken through, the Scorpion silently exulted. But what of Youssef?

The firing was coming closer now and he had no weapons left at hand. He rolled on the ground towards the climbing rope and as soon as he found it, grabbed hold and kicked himself over the ledge.

He could feel the skin burning off his palms as he rappelled down the face of the slope in an almost sitting position, left hand holding the rope above him, right hand under his hip. Bounce. He kicked away from the face. The clatter of bullets sounded around him and he could hear shouting above in the darkness. Bounce. The shouting became fainter and the shots wilder, further away. In his black bisht among the shadows, he must be almost impossible to see, he thought. Bounce and then he was at the end of the rope and still falling.

He curled himself into a ball, his hands over his head to protect it and tumbled down the incline among the sharp-edged rocks. He took what felt like a hundred blows. It was like being savagely beaten by a gang with clubs. And then he was lying face down, like a shipwrecked sailor on the still-warm sand.

It felt so good not to move. He just wanted to lay there, wherever he was. He somehow managed to roll on his back. The first stars of evening hung over his face, just out of reach like silver grapes above the starving Tantalus. Was it the blind sufi at Mazar-e Sharif who told him that tale, or had he heard it at college? he wondered drowsily.