And bards burn what they call their 'midnight taper',

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they To have, when the original is dust, imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

That merchants climb and fall again as fast,

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they That roisters brag above their betters' room, imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

As if they had been threshing of corn.

him. "Just as soon as we fire and they find out where we are." "Gawd help us," Miller muttered. "Fragmentation bombs, you said!" He lapsed into gloomy silence. "Any second now," Mallory said softly. "I only hope that our friend Turzig isn't among this lot." He reached out for his field-glasses but stopped in surprise as Andrea leaned across Louki and caught him by the wrist before he could lift the binoculars. "What!s the matter, Andrea?" "I would not be using these, my Captain. They have betrayed us once already. I have been thinking, and it can be nothing else. The sunlight reflecting from the lenses . . ." Mallory stared at him, slowly released his grip on the glasses, nodded several times in succession. "Of course, of course! I had been wondering. . . Someone has been careless. There was no other way, there could have been no other way. It would only require a single flash to tip them off." He paused, remembering, then grinned wryly. "It could have been myself. All this started just after I had been on watchand Panayis didn't have the glasses." He shook his head in mortification. "It must have been me, Andrea." "I do not believe it," Andrea said flatly. "You couldn't make a mistake like that, my Captain." "Not only could, but did, I'm afraid. But we'll worry about that afterwards." The middle of the ragged line of advancing soldiers, slipping and stumbling on the treacherous scree, had almost reached the lower limits of the blackened, stunted remains of the copse. "They've come far enough. I'll take the white helmet in the middle, Louki." Even as he spoke he could hear the soft scrape as the three others slid their automatic barrels across and between the protective rocks in front of them, could feel the wave of revulsion that washed through his mind. But his voice was steady enough as he spoke, relaxed and almost casual. "Right. Let them have it now!" His last words were caught up and drowned in the tearing, rapid-fire crash of the automatic carbines. With four machine-guns in their handstwo Brens and two 9 mm. Schmeissersit was no war, as he had said, but sheer, pitiful massacre, with the defenceless figures on the slope below, figures still stunned and uncomprehending, jerking, spinning round and collapsing like marionettes in the hands of a mad puppeteer, some to lie where they fell, others to roll down the steep slope, legs and arms flailing in the grotesque disjointedness of death. Only a couple stood still where they had been hit, vacant surprise mirrored in their lifeless what is digital elph camera faces, then slipped down tiredly to the stony ground at their feet. Almost three seconds had passed before the handful of those who still livedabout a quarter of the way in from either end of the line where converging streams of fire had not yet metrealised what was happening and flung themselves desperately to the ground in search of the cover that didn't exist. The frenetic stammering of the machine-guns stopped abruptly and in unison, the sound sheared off as by a guillotine. The sudden silence was curiously oppressive, louder, more obtrusive than the clamour that had gone before. The gravelly earth beneath his elbows grated harshly as Mallory shifted his weight slightly, looked at the two men to his right, Andrea with his impassive face empty of all expression, Louki with the sheen of tears in his eyes. Then he became aware of the low murmuring to his left, shifted round again. Bitter-mouthed, savage, the American was swearing softly and continuously, oblivious to the pain as he pounded his fist time and again into the sharp-edged gravel before him. "Just one more, Gawd." The quiet voice was almost a prayer. "That's all I ask. Just one more." Mallory touched his arm. "What is it, Dusty?" Miller looked round at him, eyes cold and still and empty of all recognition, then he blinked several times and grinned, a cut and bruised hand automatically reaching for his cigarettes. "Jus' daydreamin', boss" he said easily. "Jus' daydreamin'." He shook out his pack of cigarettes. "Have one?" "That inhuman bastard that sent these poor devils up that hill," Mallory said quietly. "Make a wonderful pietare seen over the sights of your rifle, wouldn't he?" Abruptly Miller's smile vanished and he nodded. "It would be all of that." He risked a quick peep round one of the boulders, eased himself back again. "Eight, mebbe ten of them still down there, boss," he reported. "The poor bastards are like ostrichestrying to take cover behind stones the size of an orange. . . . We leave them be?" "We leave them be!" Mallory echoed emphaticaliy. The thought of any more slaughter made him feel almost physically sick. "They won't try again." He broke off suddenly, flattened himself in reflex instinct as a burst of machine-gun bullets struck the steep-walled rock above their beads and whined up the gorge in vicious ricochet. "Won't try again,