Lockhart lay in the scrub, panting. He couldn’t see where Niko and Christos had gotten to, and he didn’t want to shout to find out. He heard bullets whizz over him from both directions. That Manoli had opened fire gave him great comfort, but he was now in the worst possible situation. He was on his own, and caught in crossfire. If he got up, he would be dead within seconds, perhaps killed by a Cretan bullet. If he stayed, the Germans would eventually overrun Manoli’s position and he would be found as they did so. The only thing he could do was to drag himself up the hill, tearing his front on the sharp rocks and the gorse.

Although the ground cut into him savagely, Lockhart could not feel a thing. It was only when he had reached some stone slabs that he realized how rough the going had been. As he paused on their cold surface, with the sound of gunfire all around him, his mind drifted back to another life. He looked at the slabs closely, slowly realizing they were slab stelae, erected over Minoan tombs as markers. The irony. He appeared to have made an archaeological discovery in the middle of a gun battle. What he hadn’t noticed, during this reverie, was a grenade about to land fifteen yards ahead of him.

The andartes in the ditch were fighting well, but Manoli knew that there would come a point when they would have to flee. The Germans were fighting back ferociously, and were making steady progress up the hill. When they got within grenade-throwing range, that would be the time to go. To wait for Lockhart and the others would result in death or capture. That was what logic told him, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave his comrades.

The Germans were within fifty yards of where he had seen Lockhart go to ground. Through the binoculars he thought he could see a dim shape moving through the undergrowth, but he wasn’t sure. He could only look for a few seconds at a time—the German fire was constantly raking the top of the ditch. As he ducked down, Manoli heard the explosion.

He thought his eardrums had burst. Even though it had not landed that close, the force of the grenade smashing into Lockhart’s body momentarily deafened him. For a few moments he lay there, not daring to open his eyes, his brain trying to evaluate what had happened and whether there was any damage to his body. He couldn’t tell if he had lost a leg or merely suffered a scratch. Shock was shutting parts of him down, and his rational side fought against it. He had to keep moving, he told himself, but his brain wouldn’t let him.