In Honour Bound

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They had been coming back for four days.

Four crippling, painful days of tramping out a stride across the knife rock of the mountains. Brutal days because the pace was set by a guide who moved as if he were ignorant of the bitter sharp of the stone and the scree as they climbed, then descended, then climbed again. When they moved by day there was the ferocious heat of the sun.

And when they travelled by night there were bruising falls and the stumbles and the cutting of the rock on their shins and knees and hands and elbows.

Going had been easier. The outward journey had been in a caravan of a hundred fighting men, and in the midst of a mule train column. The going had been the time of anticipation. Joey Dickens was not an athlete, he was not especially strong, but as Royal Air Force technicians (Maintenance) went, he was tough and fit. The pace of the outward journey had not been difficult for any of them, because the mules had been loaded down with food and weapons and ammunition and Joey Dickens and Charlie and Eddie had kept up with them without discomfort.

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