“I fear nothing. I welcome an ambush.” Aspe grabbed hold of the elephant’s ear, preparing to descend.

“Ride through.”

“With respect, Colonel,” said Thanakar, “if there is an ambush, they won’t spring it for us. They’ll wait for us to say the road is clear.”

Aspe shifted his hand to support himself on the doctor’s flagpole. “Intelligent,” he sneered. “What if I go?

They won’t resist trying to kill me.”

“Your life is too valuable to risk,” said the doctor.

“Valuable! But I don’t care if the world is destroyed this instant. Listen to me. Ride through. Take my bugle. If Argon has stones or missiles lined along the cliff, blow an A sharp. If there are soldiers on the other side, blow an E flat.”

“I’m sorry, Colonel. I don’t know how.”

“Barbarian! I’ll do it myself, then. Does this beast know how to walk?”

Goaded, Thanakar grabbed the commissar’s spike and pushed it into the soft flesh around the elephant’s tail. The animal shambled forward, wagging its huge head, Aspe standing on its neck. But when it reached where the colonel’s adjutant stood in a group of officers and men clustered around the colonel’s ensign, it stopped by itself.

“I am going,” Aspe called down. “Pass me my flag.” A man uprooted it and threw it up to him; he caught it and thrust it through the socket in the carriage rail that already held the doctor’s and the commissar’s. It flew above theirs, meaningless red squiggles on a black background.

Aspe shouted orders, some in speech and some in music, and soon the officers were running to their stations, rousing their men. One stood still, a handsome man in a red uniform, a priest, the bishop’s liaison. “Colonel,” he shouted. “The abbot’s body must be recovered. There are certain ceremonies I must perform to free his spirit’s flight to Paradise. You must send men to cut him down.”

The colonel looked up at the abbot’s body, revolving in the last of the sun. “But your Paradise is just a lump of rock,” he said. “I wouldn’t waste the tenth part of a second on that fat carrion. Be thankful that there is no life to come. If there were, he’d rot in hell. Ride on,” he said, and then he paused. “Garin,” he called, and a young boy stepped out of the shadow of a boulder.

“Yes, sir.”

“I left my horse down by that arch of rock. Strip him and comb him. Give him oats mixed with red wine.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.”

In front of them the sandstone wall rose like a rampart. The elephant ambled up the road towards the notch where the river ran out. A hundred feet above them, enemy soldiers started to shoot as they came in range. Commissar Micum lit a cigarette, and the sweet marijuana smell was comfortable to Thanakar as he held the elephant to a walk, to pace their bravery. And in a little while, the lower rocks around the Keyhole sheltered them from the soldiers. The rock formations, petrified remnants of old sand dunes, pink and scarlet in the setting sun, blocked their fire. But there were some soldiers on the bridge between the cliffs. They threw down firebombs and bags of what seemed like excrement as the elephant passed underneath.