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'Probably bought in the bazaar at Peshawar,' Hamid said. 'But he's an Afridi. They're good fighting men.'

They went outside and Ahmed crouched over the fire, warming his hands. 'What are we going to do with him?' Drummond said. 'We can't afford to wait for him to dry off.'

'No need, sahib.' Ahmed picked up another sheepskin. 'This will do fine. The cold is nothing to me. Hardship is nothing.' He grinned hugely. 'I'm an Afridi.'

'Which also means liar, cheat and rogue,' Hamid said. 'There's goat's cheese in one of the jars. If you're hungry, you'll have to carry it with you and eat on the way.'

'Where do we go, sahib?'

'To the road, where else? The road out of this accursed country. Colonel Sher Dil told us to meet at Bandong if we managed to cross the river. Do you know it?'

'About eight miles south, sahib. I take you there.'

When they climbed out of the hollow, Drummond paused for a moment and looked down at the small hut, the smoke rising into the air. Somehow it represented security and safety and now he was moving into the unknown again. He shivered and hurried after his two companions.

For the first quarter of a mile, Ahmed trailed at the rear scooping handfuls of the soft cheese from the jar, devouring it avidly with groans of delight. Finally, he tossed the jar to one side and ran ahead to take the lead.

Drummond kept a pace or two behind Hamid. The world was a few cubic feet covered on all sides by walls and a ceiling of mist and rain and they were the only inhabitants.

They had been marching for about half an hour when he stumbled into Hamid who grabbed his arm. 'Listen for a moment.'

Ahmed joined them and they stood in a small group, strange figures in their sheepskins, streaming with rain and somehow symbolic like a piece of modern sculpture.

'I thought I heard firing,' Hamid said and at that moment it sounded again, a faint echo to the west.

'Sounded like a machine gun,' Drummond said.

Again, there was a faint, deadly echo of small arms fire and then there was silence.

'Probably back across the river,' Hamid said. 'We're still moving parallel with it, remember, but I think one of us should scout ahead from now on.'

'I will go, sahib,' Ahmed said with a grin and ran into the mist.

They commenced to march again. Drummond's senses were on the alert for danger at first, but gradually he succumbed to his surroundings. There was a safety, an anonymity about the rain and the mist that was vaguely comforting.

He withdrew into himself, an old trick, forgot about fatigue, discomfort, the danger of his present situation. He didn't even feel fear when Ahmed suddenly emerged from the mist and ran towards them.

Hamid grabbed hold of the Afridi and steadied him. 'What is it?'

'There is a village up ahead, sahib.'

'Good, lead the way.'

He walked into the mist and they followed him. Drummond found that he was sweating a little, the ground sloped and then dipped suddenly as they descended into a large hollow.

The houses loomed out of the mist. There were no more than six of them, poor, mean places of mud and wattle like the herdsman's hut scattered alongside the banks of a small stream.

They went forward quickly and Drummond was aware of the acrid smell of woodsmoke on the damp air. Ahmed opened the first door and went in. He reappeared a moment later.

'Empty, sahib, everything gone.'

He ran along the line of huts, opening the crude, wooden doors and finally came back to meet them despondently. 'Picked clean, sahib. Picked clean.'

Hamid looked in through the door of the nearest house at the embers of the fire which still glowed on the hearth. 'I said bad news travels fast, didn't I? They've gone, every last one of them. Horses, livestock, the lot. Taken to the hills I suppose, to wait things out and see what happens.'

Ahmed looked at them enquiringly. 'We move on now? Nothing for us here.'

'That's right, Ahmed,' Drummond said. 'Nothing for us here.'

They moved up out of the