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out.
    â€˜Would the sahibs like tea?’ Sami flattened himself against the wall when Adjabi opened the inward-facing door.
    â€˜Please, Sami,’ Tom answered, ‘and any biscuits or cake on offer.’
    â€˜Adjabi and I will forage, Sahibs.’ The bearers left.
    Tom’s disembodied voice floated down to Michael. ‘Do you think we should tip off intelligence? Tell them to give up paying spies in favour of planting an agent among the bearers. That way we’ll know everything that’s about to happen before it does.’
    â€˜I was thinking of moving down to the Indian deck so I could get the news before I write my copy.’
    â€˜An excellent idea. I might actually have enough room to breathe if you do.’
    â€˜Considering I’m half your size, you’ve no cause for complaint.
    â€˜I can’t help my size and I’m not complaining about you but the accommodation.’ Tom stretched down his hand and offered Michael a pack of Golden Dawn and a box of Lucifers. ‘Smoke?’
    â€˜Thanks.’ Michael took one and handed the pack and matches back up. ‘You think a tent’s going to be roomier than this?’
    â€˜At least we won’t have to share.’
    Michael remembered Harry’s description of camping in the desert. How the only saving grace in blistering heat, freezing cold, and relentless rain was the companionship of his fellows. He wondered how long it would be before he and Tom felt the same way.
    Kut al Amara, Thursday 9th December 1915
    Major Warren Crabbe approached the north-eastern bank of the Tigris shortly after dawn. The last of the Punjabis were gingerly withdrawing from the dug-outs that had guarded an exposed – as it had turned out dangerously exposed – make-shift boat bridge. One of the first things the engineers had done after the Expeditionary Force had occupied Kut was cobble together the bridge from battered danack rafts lashed together with forty-foot beams and liberal lengths of Major Sandes the chief engineer’s first-class manila rope.
    Crabbe found Sandes standing at a safe distance from the bridge monitoring the Punjabis’ retreat. He joined him, and together they watched the column’s painfully slow progress from the floating planking on to a sandbank that had been pounded into quicksand.
    â€˜My men worked all night in freezing water to secure that last twenty-yard stretch of bridge for the retreat and it’s still not stable,’ Sandes complained.
    Crabbe decided there was no way he could deliver the message he carried tactfully, so he plunged in. ‘General Townshend has received orders from General Nixon in Basra HQ.’
    â€˜And?’ Sandes, whose men had worked tirelessly to improve the defences and sanitation in Kut since the Force had retreated to the town, sensed bad news.
    â€˜General Nixon and HQ believe that Indian Expeditionary Force D …’
    â€˜Namely us.’
    â€˜Would do more good digging in and engaging the Turks in a siege situation, than retreating downstream. They’ve issued finite orders for us to do so, on the premise that we’d tie up more of the Turks’ troops and resources if we remain exactly where we are.’
    â€˜So we’re not following the cavalry, camelry, and tanks and are being abandoned here to rot?’ Sandes winced when a young Punjabi took a bullet in his back from a sniper and fell into the river. He was hauled out quickly but not before one of his rescuers was also hit.
    â€˜Rotting implies inaction. We’re here to take Turkish bullets and brave Turkish artillery shells and bombs.’ Crabbe ducked instinctively as a sniper shot whistled from what until a few minutes ago had been the Punjabi-manned defensive lines. ‘I’ve also been instructed to order you to dismantle that magnificent boat bridge before it’s commandeered by the enemy and used by them to access our