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By Root 2672 0

that he could not, because his mouth was drawn as though he had swallowed acid; and because there was nothing left to be said. The echoes had faded and the silence shut down again, and presently he became aware of movements in the darkness and knew that Juli was drawing on the tight-fitting riding trousers that he had stripped off – how long ago? It seemed, suddenly, a life-time away, and he felt cold and defeated and drained of all emotion. The air in the cave struck so cold that he shivered, and the sharp, absurd sound of his own teeth chattering reminded him that unless they found Juli's achkan and the remnants of his shirt, there would be no hope of avoiding an appalling scandal, because they would both be forced to ride back to camp half-naked. He retrieved his riding breeches and boots and stood up tiredly to put them on, and having buckled the belt about his waist and made sure that he had dropped nothing from his pockets, spoke curtly into the darkness:

‘What did you do with your coat?’

‘I don't know’ – her weariness was as vivid to him as though it had been his own. ‘I had it over my head, and I must have dropped it when I heard you call.’

‘Well, you can't go back without it, that's certain,’ said Ash roughly. ‘We'll just have to walk round in circles until we find it. Give me your hand. There's no point in losing each other in the dark.’

Her hand was cold and oddly impersonal. It did not clasp his, but remained entirely passive, and he held it as he would have held a stranger's: lightly and almost at arm's length, and solely as a means of keeping in touch in the inky darkness as they moved forward slowly, guiding themselves by the rock wall.

It took them nearly an hour to find the achkan. The shirt had been easier, as Ash had dropped it near the horses in the main cave, and now that the storm had passed, the entrance showed up as a grey, sharp-edged oblong that provided them with a landmark in the waste of blackness.

The depths of the cave had been cold, but the air outside was hot and still and heavy with the smell of dust, and the few stars that could be seen shone hazily, as though through a veil. The moon was either hidden by the hills or by dust clouds, and the valley was in shadow; but after the unrelieved darkness of the caves, both earth and sky seemed astonishingly light, and it was some time before Ash realized that this was not solely due to the fact that the storm had spread a pale-coloured shroud of dust and river sand over many miles of country, but because the dawn was near.

The discovery jolted him badly. He had never imagined for a moment that it could be as late as this, or that so many hours could have passed without his knowing it. He would have put it at two or three: four at most. Instead, it was almost a whole night, and his plan of smuggling Juli back into the camp under cover of darkness and confusion was useless, for by the time they reached it the sky would be light. No wonder there was no sign of the moon; it must have set hours ago. The stars were already fading and despite the dust there was a smell of morning in the air, that faint, indefinable smell that tells of a coming day as clearly as the growing light and the sound of a cock crowing.

‘Hurry,’ said Ash peremptorily, and urged Baj Raj into a gallop. But less than a minute later Juli's mare stumbled and slowed to an uneven trot, and he was forced to stop and turn back.

‘I think it is only a pebble,’ said Anjuli, dismounting to investigate. But it proved to be a piece of flint as sharp-edged as glass, and so deeply imbedded that lacking a knife and hampered by bad light, it had taken Ash the best part of ten minutes to remove it; and when he had done so the mare still limped, for the cut was a deep one.

‘You'd better take Baj Raj and get back as fast as you can, and I'll come on later,’ decided Ash. ‘In fact it's probably a good idea in the circumstances for you to arrive back alone. You can pretend we got separated in the storm, and you spent the night alone in a cave and started back as soon as it began to get light.