would not allow him to inspect the knee, but kept on stubbornly along
the trail ahead of him.
They marched mostly in silence for the rest of that day. Nicholas
respected her grief and was grateful for her reticence. This ability to
be quiet and yet not give out a sense of alienation and withdrawal to
those around her was one of the qualities he admired in her. They spoke
briefly late that afternoon while they paused to rest beside the path.
'The only consolation is that now Pegasus will believe that we are
safely buried under the rock-slide and they won't bother to come looking
for us again. We can push on without wasting time scouting the trail
ahead,' Nicholas told her.
They camped that night below the escarpment, just before the path began
the climb up the vertical wall.
Nicholas led her well off the path, into a heavily wooded gully, and
built a small screened fire that could not be seen from the trail.
Here at last she relented and allowed him to examine her knee. It was
bruised and swollen, and hot to the touch.
'You shouldn't be walking on this,' he told her.
'Do I have any option?' she asked, and he had no reply. He wetted his
bandana from the water bottle and bound up her leg As tightly as he
dared without cutting Off the circulation. Then he found a phial of
Brufen in his burn-bag and made her take two of these anti,
inflaminatories.
'It feels better already,' she told him.
They shared the last bar of survival -rations from his pack, sitting
hunched up over the fire and talking quietly, still subdued and shaken
by their experiences.
'What will happen when we reach the top?' Royan asked. 'Will the trucks
still be parked where we left them?
Will the men that Boris left to guard them still be there?
What will happen if we run into the men from Pegasus again?'
'I can't give you any answers. We will just have to face each problem as
it comes up.'
'One thing I am looking forward to when we reach Addis Ababa - reporting
the massacre of Tamre and the others to the Ethiopian police. I want
Helm and his gang to pay for what they have done.'
He was quiet for a while before he replied. 'I don't know if that is the
wisest thing to do,' he ventured at last.
'What do you mean? We. were witnesses to murder.
We cannot let them get away with it.'
'Just remember that we want to return to Ethiopia. If we make a huge
fuss now, we will have the entire valley swarming with troops and
police. It may put an end to our further attempts to solve Taita's
riddle, and to trace the tomb of Marnose.'
'I hadn't thought of that,' she said thoughtfully. 'But still, it was
murder, and Tamre-'
'I know, I know,' he soothed her. 'But there are more certain ways of
wreaking vengeance on Pegasus than trying to turn them over to Ethiopian
justice. Consider for the moment the fact that Nogo is working with
Helm. We saw him in the helicopter. If Pegasus have an army colonel in
