‘Small traders carrying goods to the coast, perhaps,’ the Greek said. ‘We travel in a different direction. We will let them pass.’
That night they came near enough to a village to hear the furious barking of dogs in the distance and yet no one troubled them. They slept out under the stars once again.
On the second day, they came across the carcass of a horse with two black vultures circling above it.
‘Those villains have left one of our beasts to die,’ Fields exclaimed upon seeing it.
Rallis approached the dark shape on the ground, a kerchief in front of his face. Flies rose from the decomposing animal.
‘It was dead long before we met Lascarides, Professor. It has been here a week at least.’ The Greek lawyer looked up at the birds wheeling menacingly above their heads. ‘Those are not the first to feast on the poor creature.’
‘Why should it be lying out here?’ Adam asked. ‘We are surely many miles from the village where we heard the dogs last night. Who rode it and left it here to die?’
Rallis shrugged. ‘Perhaps, like us, it had wandered far from home.’
Leaving the rotting beast behind, they moved on. The vultures, which had flown off as they examined the horse, returned. Another night in the open awaited the travellers, but as shadows lengthened and they began to think of stopping, Andros hailed his master. He pointed through the gloom to what seemed to Adam no more than a pile of stones in the distance. As they came nearer, the pile slowly transformed itself into a rude shed, its walls battered by the elements but its roof still intact. There was even a wooden door, hanging at a skewed angle on iron hinges. Rallis pushed it open and all but Andros made their way inside. Adam lit a candle and they watched as the flames flickered on the four walls.
‘What is this place?’ he asked.
‘The hut of a shepherd, perhaps.’ Rallis sounded uncertain. ‘Or an outhouse from an old khan. A lodge for travellers.’
‘There are no signs of any other buildings. The khan must have long gone.’
‘Not only the khan,’ Fields remarked. ‘There is no indication that there is any road beside which it might have stood.’
‘It may have been abandoned a hundred years ago,’ the Greek said. ‘Or more. A road may once have passed this way.’
‘It is of no consequence to us now whether this was part of an old hostelry or the retreat of some lonely herdsman.’ Adam held the candle high so it illuminated as much of the building as it could. Some of its stones had fallen to the ground but the walls were largely undamaged. ‘The place is just about large enough to shelter us all.’
There was a silence, interrupted only by the sound of the mules moving restlessly outside. The men in the hut looked at one another in the dancing light of the candle.
‘Quintus is unpleased by the idea, I see,’ the professor said,
after a moment. ‘He is scowling like Stilicho when he looked upon the Goths.’
‘I ain’t a man to ask for much,’ Quint said, sounding aggrieved. ‘A comfy billet, a pint of pale ale and a twist of bird’s eye baccy and I’m ’appy enough. But look at this bleedin’ place.’ He stretched out his arms as if to knock down the weathered walls of the hut. His shadow leapt against the stones. ‘This ain’t a bunk for a bleeding goat never mind a man.’
‘You are too choosy, Quint,’ Adam remarked. ‘It is not as if you have much difficulty usually in entering the land of Nod. On previous nights, you have no sooner retired than you have been snoring loud enough to wake the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.’
‘I ain’t going to get much chance of doing that if we bed down ’ere.’
‘We have no choice, Mr Quint,’ Rallis said, ‘unless you would prefer to spend another night sleeping beneath the stars.’
Quint stared malevolently at the lawyer for a moment, as if the Greek was wholly responsible for dragging him from his urban comforts and out into this rural wilderness. Then he turned on his heel and marched out of the ruined building to join Andros and the mules outside. In the few short days they had been travelling, some kind of odd friendship had developed between the Londoner and the giant Attican. Andros spoke not a word of English. Indeed, he appeared to speak few words in his native tongue. Quint’s Greek was limited to a small and ill-pronounced vocabulary connected to the supply of food, drink and sex. And yet the two men had discovered some common ground. Now they joined forces in unloading the mules and gathering together the materials for a campfire.
Later that evening, after they had eaten their frugal meal, all five men in the small expedition sat around the fire. The night was surprisingly full of the noises of animals. Snorts and screams and distant baying could be heard in the darkness on all sides.
‘How are they off for wolves in this neighbourhood, do you suppose, Quint?’ Adam asked teasingly. ‘Will they venture into our poor shepherd’s hut? Should we worry about being eaten as we sleep?’
‘There ain’t no wolves in this neck of the woods. Jackals, maybe.’ Quint, reconciled by now to their accommodation, was not to be drawn. He tamped tobacco stolidly into his clay pipe. ‘Anyways, it sounds more like wild hog than anything else. That ain’t going to eat you. More like t’other way about.’
That night, despite the discomforts of their resting place and the sounds from the dark, Adam soon fell into a deep sleep. He dreamed more vividly than he had done for years. Strange, hallucinatory dreams in which he was back in Macedonia, digging up tombs long buried in the desolate hillsides. With his nails, he scrabbled at the soil to reveal cold stone coffins. When he pushed aside the lids of these coffins, faces from his past stared up at him from their depths. His mother, dead when he was a small boy, whom he could scarcely remember. His father, still apparently infuriated by the turns his life had taken. Charles Carver, the railway baron, had not been a happy man, his son now realised. His great successes as an entrepreneur had brought him little in the way of joy; the fraud and peculation which had ruined his company had also driven him to the point where he had believed self-destruction to be his only option. Adam was aware of how little he had known his father. Now, in the dream, Charles Carver’s face was twisted with rage. He seemed to be shouting defiance at the fates which had propelled him first towards great success and wealth and had then plunged him into disgrace and despair.
Adam awoke with a start. He lay for a while, thinking of his father, and then turned his face towards the open door. It was still an hour or more to sunrise, but in the faint light of moon and stars that was drifting into the hut, he could see the shapes of his sleeping companions. Idly, he counted three and was about to fall asleep again when he realised that there should be one more. His eyes squinted in the semi-darkness as he strove to see who was in the hut. One of the party was definitely missing. He rolled out from under the blanket which covered him and began to make his way towards the door of the stone shelter. As he crawled past the other sleepers in the hut he could make out the giant form of Andros stretched beneath one wall. Next to him were Quint, snoring gently, and the professor. There was no sign of Rallis. It was only when he ventured outside that Adam located the missing man. The Greek lawyer was standing alone thirty yards from the hut. He was staring out into the darkness. Adam moved towards him.
‘Rallis?’ he hissed.
The Greek lawyer froze at the sound. Then he turned slowly in Adam’s direction.
‘It is a beautiful night, Mr Carver, is it not?’ he said.