Outside the cave entrance, daylight burned, too bright to look at. Three Nephthysians were on guard duty out there. They talked in low voices and smoked acrid-smelling cigarettes incessantly. Every so often one of them would come in to check on the captives and deliver the odd kick.

David wished there was something he could say to lift his men's spirits and give them hope. But there was nothing he could think of. It was all very well to believe that you would be brave in a situation like this, that you'd tap into some hidden reservoir of courage which would enable you to tough it out. But the truth was, a bunch of strangers intended to hurt them as cruelly as possible then kill them, and no amount of bravery could counterweigh that. Nor did it make any difference that David and his men had undergone capture scenarios as part of basic training. A capture scenario was an unpleasant experience, but was, all said and done, just theatre. Sitting there blindfolded while members of your own regiment yelled at you and battered you with sticks — it was like hard-boiling an egg in the hope that it might survive a hammer blow.

David was shit-scared. That was all there was to it. He was shit-scared and he knew it and he didn't mind admitting it to himself, and this was the only thing that made him feel the slightest bit less miserable. No false bravado. No illusions. He was man enough to acknowledge that most unmanning of emotions, plain terror.

Two Nephthysians came for Private Henderson.

Henderson's suffering went on for longer than Martineau's, perhaps three-quarters of an hour all told. At some point during that period, Private Gibbs pissed himself.

An hour after that it was David's turn. He was dragged out of the cave, hauled down some stone steps carved into the hillside, and deposited in a larger cave. This one had been hollowed out to form two adjoining chambers, a larger outer one and a smaller inner one, linked by a low doorway. The outer chamber had slit-like windows, several alcoves, and what had clearly once been a cooking area, with a flue for the fire smoke and a recessed hearth framed by the remains of a tiled surround.