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were thrown on to the dying fire and they burned bright. He wore the clothes of a young man from the village.
    That week he was the protected guest of the village while the elders waited for instructions on how the journey to return Caleb to his family could be achieved. And he did not know how long that journey would be, or where it would take him, or to what fate - but he knew that he would make that journey.

Chapter Two
    Caleb's body and face were flooded by the light. The men around him scattered.
    The week in the village had passed quickly. He had rested, then he had worked at his strength and gone into the hills above the village to exercise his leg muscles and expand his lungs. He had eaten well and had known that the villagers used precious supplies of meat, rice and flour to feed him. When he had left the village, armed men had accompanied him; he was never out of their sight. The code of these people, he knew, was pukhtunzvali and it had two principles: the obligation to show hospitality to a stranger, without hope of a return favour, was malmastiya ; the duty to fight to the death to protect the life of a stranger who had taken refuge among them was nanawati.
    Twice in that week, formations of helicopters had flown high above them. Once, in the distance, he had seen a moving dustcloud and thought it would be a fighting patrol of the enemy's personnel carriers. The tribesmen had stayed closer to him - they would fight to the death to save his life because he was their welcomed guest. An old man, blind, sitting astride a donkey led by a boy, had come to the village in the afternoon of the seventh day with the answer to the message. On that last night in the village, they had feasted again, used more of their precious stores. No music and no dancing, but two of the older men had told stories of the fighting against the Russians, and he had offered his of the fighting against the Americans. The fires' flames had lit them, and the old man, the blind traveller, had recited a poem of combat that had been listened to in silence. He had realized at the end of the last evening, the fire dying, that all eyes had been on him, and he had seen in the shadows the furtive movements of the women and knew that they, too, watched him. He had been given a robe of pure white and he had stood and lifted it over his head, over his shoulders, and had let it fall so that it enveloped him. He had not known his own value to the family, but the village men recognized it, and the women, and they stared at him as he stood in the robe while the fires' last flames showed their awe of him. Each of the village men came to him, hugged him, kissed his cheeks. He was the chosen one.
    The next morning, the old man had taken Caleb a half-day's walk from the village. At a point where a path into a mountain pass climbed away, he had held Caleb's hand in a skeleton's grip. Tears had run from his dead eyes, and he had left him. He had sat for an hour on a rock, then watched the little column of men and mules emerge from the pass. A few words spoken, a few sour gestures, and he had gone on with them. For nine days he had been with them as they led him with great caution away from the village and to the west. They hugged the foothills, but had also gone higher where the night air was frosted. From the beginning he had known what cargo they guarded in the bulging sacks strapped to the mules' backs. He could smell the opium seeds. They were villainous men, he had seen no charity in their faces. They carried curved knives at their waists with which they could have mutilated him. From the moment of their reluctant greeting, Caleb had doubted that they acknowledged the code of pukhtunwali. They shared food grudgingly, they did not talk to him or show any interest in his identity. If he had fallen back he did not think they would have waited for him. He had never complained, had never lost the pace of the march, had never feared them.
    But on the eighth day he had