She ran to the window embrasure and, turning, jumped up on to the wide sill. She stood for a moment outlined in the window and gazing down across the baked and empty hillside. She looked defiantly over her shoulder. ‘I didn’t know about the rifles, Joe. And I never asked Rheza Khan to kill anyone for me. I was brought up to tell the truth, remember!’

She twisted her body neatly and let herself down from the sill, hanging on until she was steady, and then released her grip. It was a long drop but she landed with balanced grace. She looked up, hair glowing red in the slanting sun, smiled at Joe and was gone. Helplessly, Joe watched from the window while feet clattered up the stairs and Edgar Troop called from outside the heavy door. Joe shouted to him to come in.

‘What the hell?’

Troop looked from the body to Joe and, startled, looked around for Alice.

‘Rheza Khan had a knife hidden in his boot,’ said Joe pointing to the door post. ‘Just missed me. Alice didn’t miss though! She shot him. She had a gun.’

‘She bloody didn’t have a gun!’ Edgar exploded. ‘God, Joe, you saw me search her! The only bumps under her clothes were legitimately there!’

‘You omitted to search her hat! She took it out of her hat! When she said she was always prepared for betrayal, she wasn’t kidding.’

‘You let her get away! Idiot! Where the hell’s she gone? Did you do this on purpose?’ He bounded to the window, cocked his gun and leaned out covering the path up to the fort. ‘I’ll get her when she makes her dash for the road.’

‘You won’t, you know!’ said Joe. ‘You couldn’t shoot her, any more than I could. You know it and she knew it.’

‘Don’t count on it!’ Troop snarled.

The clatter of horses’ hooves pounding on the loose scree and excited whinnying rose up from below. Troop leant despairingly over the wide windowsill. ‘Bloody hell! That’s our horses! The bitch has spooked our horses! Get down there, Joe, and get them back while I cover the road.’

Joe ran downstairs and took stock of the scene in the rear courtyard. Cut reins – three sets, he noted – were dangling from a willow tree but of horses no sign. With a few slashes, Alice had rendered three unrideable and, tearing down a willow branch, had thrashed them out on to the bare mountain, sending them skittering off back the way they had come. The fourth? Bent twigs showed him where she had ridden through the scrub away from the fort in the opposite direction from the approach road. He guessed her plan was to circle widely, out of rifle range, back to the main track and then on – to where? Would she take the road back to Simla or would she continue on for a while, branching left to Joginder Nagar?

He continued down the road in a desultory way for a while, fatuously whistling and calling for horses long out of earshot. He was not looking forward to facing Edgar Troop again and the idea of spending the night cut off from civilization with him in this dreadful place was infinitely depressing.

The sound of a rifle shot behind the fort as he trudged back up the road startled and alarmed him. He made slowly towards it, approaching carefully at the last until, peering round a corner of the building, he saw Edgar Troop returning from the scrub carrying his rifle and a bunch of wild sage in one hand and a fat golden pheasant in the other.

‘This is our supper,’ he said, catching sight of Joe, good humour seemingly restored. ‘Better than the bully beef tin I had in my saddlebag. No luck with the horses? Didn’t really expect it. Silly buggers’ll be half-way to Simla by now! Come on – I’ll get the fire going if you pluck the bird. Not much improved by being hit amidships with a round from a service rifle but still better than bully beef.’

Back in the main room of the fort only a stain on the floor remained of Rheza Khan.

‘What have you done with him?’ Joe asked.

‘Down in the cellar with the other rats,’ said Troop cheerfully. ‘Now all we have to do is get through the evening as best we may. We’ll take it in turns to watch through the night until first light and then we both stand guard and hope that when we hear horses coming up the road, they’re carrying Charlie Carter and his mob and not Rheza Khan’s followers coming to check the contents of the cellar and wondering why they’ve not been whistled up by the boss!’

The pheasant was tough but full of flavour and night fell suddenly as they cut it into strips with Edgar’s knife and shared it out. Edgar won the toss and decided that Joe should take the first watch. Rifle in hand and a prey to many misgivings, Joe sat looking over the empty hills as twilight turned to moonlight, and listened to the sounds of forest creatures all around, snuffling and padding under the open window. Here and there he spotted the gleam of strange eyes.

Somewhere out there, he thought in sudden dismay, is Alice. Alone, virtually unarmed and miles from civilization. Reliant on a tired horse. Come back in, Alice! Don’t be alone! We’ll think of something! I know we will!

As he watched, the night was assailed by a wavering, blood-chilling scream which brought Joe to his feet, alarmed and in terror. From a corner beyond the circle of firelight came Edgar Troop’s gravelly voice, ‘Jackal, Joe! Take it easy!’

Joe gathered Charlie’s poshteen tight about his shoulders and shivered on.

He took up his second watch when the night was at its blackest two hours or so before he could expect to see the first flush of dawn over the rim of the eastern hills. He rubbed his gritty eyelids and peered, unbelieving, into the darkness. No, he was not mistaken. There was light in the distance where no light should be. A moving light. No – lights. He watched on. The eerie sight of a swarm of glow-worms wriggling its way through the hills and onward towards the fort startled him into full wakefulness. Hurriedly he shook Edgar who leapt, instantly alert, to the window. He snatched the binoculars from Joe, saying at last, ‘We’ve got company! Lots of it, I’d say. Judging by the spacing of those torches – at least fifty men.’

As the glow-worms drew level with the fort the bobbing torches were suddenly extinguished and there was movement which told Joe that men were spreading out to cover the fort. Joe asked uneasily, ‘Ours or theirs? And if ours, how are we going to attract their attention? They might take us for enemy and open fire.’

‘They might be a party of Rheza Khan’s people coming to take delivery of a bundook or two. Possible but not likely. Too many of them. But get the torch out of my right saddlebag. Got it? Signal something. Anything.’

Standing in the window embrasure Joe began to signal.

‘What are you sending?’ said Troop.

‘Well, anyone who was on the Western Front might recognize it – something we used to use in the trenches. “O… K” – something we picked up from the Yanks. I think it stands for “orl korrect”.’

At once someone at the head of the advancing column began to signal back.

‘What’s that?’ said Troop anxiously.

‘Dee dah, dee dah, dee dah. Ack, ack, ack,’ said Joe. ‘ “A” for “Acknowledged”. Didn’t they have the Morse code in the army of Imperial Russia?’

‘If they had, there wouldn’t be anyone down there who’d know it and if there was anyone down there who knew it, they wouldn’t have a torch and if anyone down there knew it and had a torch it wouldn’t occur to them to reply, if I know anything about the Imperial Russian Army.’

Soon they heard the clatter of advancing hooves and then the jingle of curb chains and the clash of equipment. Just below the fort the column halted and two men cantered up the hill alone.

‘Who goes there?’ said Joe.

‘Friend.’

‘Advance one and be recognized,’ said Joe remembering the formula.

‘This is getting all very Sandhurst!’ said Edgar Troop.