A crash of water directs me and in a moment I am outside again, and there is agitation, a writhing black thing crosses the river away from me.

“Come back!” I stand on the bank. Where do I go?

Not even a streak in the water shows where he has been. I run in the dark, following the water’s edge; here a gravel mound spans the flow and I can ford across. My splashing legs make a great noise in the dark. I climb the opposite bank peering in all directions. The bank levels then swings up again. Moving from one boulder to another I gain height, hoping to find a good place to stop and look around. The slope is fractured ahead of me—a path. I head toward it.

I stop. These are the heights, where the enemy is. Dropping to a crouch I start dithering sideways below the level of the path, kicking down thick earth but not too noisily. This is a kind of spontaneous compromise between going on and going back—I think in confusion I will arc down toward the river, pausing along the flattened apex at intervals to search for the lieutenant. The path should be avoided, but it seems to draw me, and all the obstacles displaced to clear it now lie in my way. A rocky space like an ingrown wart comes up to me, and, still defying the path, I begin working my way down in among the rocks, holding on with hands and feet. It’s important to keep an eye on the path; it wants to trip me up, but it is the only landmark I have to gauge my height and position from here.

I look up to the path, and see barrel and gun, hand and half-hidden face ... the enemy uniform ... the eye at the sight.

Fifth Chapter

The rain hides them from me. I have to walk with my head down. One goes ahead of me on my right, the other behind at my left, about six feet away. The one behind me took my gun and my pack. I don’t like the disembodied, light feeling that being disburdened gives me. I’m afraid, and there is no ballast of gear to hold. The path is satisfied, its personality is gone.

I don’t want to move my head, let the one behind me know I keep glancing about me, and at the one before me. A filled black uniform shiny with rain, a pale hand waving by the left hip. They are taking me toward the heights. Stuck in a vice I can only stare helplessly at my profuse and hasty thoughts none of them any good, they’re only making me crazy with the rain driving down on top of me. Will I panic? A sure way to die, how wise. How can such inane thoughts be possible now?