The Moonspinners by Mary Stewart Page B

petticoat—’
    â€˜Don’t worry. I won’t give you anything else. If it comes to that, I’ve nothing else to spare. There, that looks better, and it’ll keep dry. How does it feel?’
    â€˜Wonderful. No, honestly, it does feel better. No more throbbing, just beastly sore, and hurts like blazes if I jar it.’
    â€˜Well, there’s no need for you to move any more. You stay where you are, and keep a lookout on the hill. I’m going to bury these rags, and then I’ll bring up a fresh supply of water, so that we can stay up here if we have to.’
    By the time I had got back with the water and fresh kindling, and relaid my fire in readiness, it was a few minutes short of eight o’clock. I lay down beside Mark, and propped my chin on my hands.
    â€˜I’ll watch now. Lie down.’
    Without a word, he did as he was told, closing his eyes with that same air of fierce and concentrated patience.
    I looked down the long, bare wings of the mountain. Nothing. Eight o’clock of a fine, bright morning.
    It was going to be a long day.

6
    Push off . . .
    TENNYSON : Ulysses
    It was, in fact, barely twenty minutes before the man appeared.
    I saw the movement, far down the hillside, south-east of where we lay. My first thought was, naturally, that this might be Lambis returning, but then, as the tiny figure toiled nearer, it struck me that he was making remarkably little effort to conceal himself.
    I narrowed my eyes against the sun. At that distance I could make out very little, except that the man was wearing something dark, which could have been Lambis’ brown trousers and navy-blue jersey; but he did not seem to be carrying anything except a stick, and not only did he walk openly across the barest stretches of the hillside, but he seemed to be in no hurry, pausing frequently, and turning to stare about him, with his hand up to his eyes as if to shield them from the glare of the sun.
    When he had stopped for the fourth time in as many minutes, I had decided – still more in curiosity than apprehension – that it could not be Lambis. Then, as his hand lifted, I caught the flash of the sun on something he held to his eyes. Binoculars. And then, as he moved on, another gleam, this time on the ‘stick’ that he carried under one arm. A rifle.
    I lay flattened against the juniper needles that strewed the ledge, watching him, now, as I would have watched a rattlesnake. My heart, after the first painful kick of fear, settled down to an erratic, frightened pumping. I took deep breaths, to help control myself, and glanced down at Mark beside me.
    He lay motionless, with shut eyes, and that awful look of exhaustion still on his face. I put a hand out, tentatively, then drew it back. Time enough to disturb him when the murderer came closer.
    That it was the murderer, there could be no possible doubt. As the small figure, dwarfed by distance, moved nearer across an open stretch of the mountainside, I caught a glimpse of red – the red headband of which Lambis had spoken – and the impression of the baggy outline of Cretan dress. Besides, the man was patently hunting for something. Every minute or so he paused to rake some part of the hillside with his glasses, and once, when he turned aside to beat through a stand of young cypresses, he did so with his rifle at the ready . . .
    He came out from the shadow of the grove, and paused again. Now the glasses were directed upwards . . . they were swinging towards the ledge . . . the shepherds’ hut . . . the way Lambis would come . . .
    The glasses moved past us, back eastwards, without a pause, and were directed for a long look at the tree-thicketed rocks above the cypress grove where he stood. Finally he lowered them, gave a hitch to his rifle, and began to make his way slowly uphill, until a jutting crag hid him from view.
    I touched Mark gently. ‘Are you