y eleven o’clock the next morning they finally came across a blue scarf tied on a tree, signaling the end of their first stage. They were running late. Even under perfect conditions, with the narrowness of the road and its tendency to shift, twist, and drop unexpectedly, they would not have been able to gallop at any appreciable speed. But the storm from two nights ago had slowed their progress even further. At quite a few stretches, the rain had washed mud, rocks, and broken tree limbs onto the road, forcing them to pick their way through the debris.

Hamid had two new horses ready for them and food he’d procured at a nearby village. He also had encouraging news. The Khan of Dir had expressly forbidden his people from participating in the Mad Fakir’s schemes. Their safety should be assured for as long as they traveled in Dir.

And as soon as they left Dir, they’d be within view of a British installation. Bryony unwound somewhat—she hadn’t realized how tense she had been, how anxious, as the road stubbornly refused to allow them a rapid progress.

By mid-afternoon they reached Sado, a village that had no significance whatsoever, except that it marked the point where their road would leave the Panjkora Valley and take a sharp turn east-southeast.

From Sado it was thirty-five miles to Chakdarra, and another eight miles to Malakand. She estimated that they had perhaps four hours of daylight left. They’d have to slow down once night fell, so it was likely they’d only manage to get to Chakdarra at the end of the day. But that was fine. At Chakdarra they’d still be completely out of danger and from Chakdarra she could still reach Nowshera in less than a day.

“Are you all right?” Leo asked.

They’d stopped to rest and water their horses by a stream that fed the Panjkora. She was crouched by the water, soaking a handkerchief. Horses sweat; men perspire; ladies merely glow. In damp, cool England perhaps. In India ladies too sweated like horses, especially ladies who rode in the middle of the day under an unsympathetic sun at an altitude of less than three thousand feet.

She looked up at him. He usually shaved in the evenings, but he hadn’t the night before. She wanted to stare at the stubbles on his face—the shadow of growth that kissed the firm set of his jaw and the leanness of his features. She turned her face back to her handkerchief. “I’m fine, thank you. And you?”

“I’m used to this,” he said. “Is the sun getting too harsh?”

He’d been quite lovely to her. Were she to judge him solely by his demeanor, she’d never have guessed that they’d fought heatedly the day before and that he was staunchly opposed to this southward venture.

She wrung the handkerchief dry and patted her face with it. “The sun is tolerable.”

As she rose, he handed her a canteen of water. “You can open a button or two on your jacket if it gets warmer. You are a man today. Enjoy your freedom.”

He’d decided that it was safer for them to appear as two men traveling, rather than a man and a woman. He’d have preferred for them to be in native dress, but neither of them could keep a turban from unraveling, so two sahibs they remained. She was dressed in his spare clothes. His shirt and jacket were loose on her but his trousers had braces and stayed loyally above her waist.

She sipped just enough water to moisten the inside of her mouth—relieving herself was even more of a problem in men’s clothes than in women’s; best to have as little need of it as possible. Capping the canteen, she gave it back to him.

He helped her into the saddle and handed her the reins. “This is not how I would have us part ways, Bryony.”

“Yes, it is,” she said. “So let us get on with it.”

The storm seemed to have bypassed Lower Dir altogether. Southeast of Sado, the road improved nicely, wide and smooth enough for wheeled vehicles. The terrain continued to slope lower; their horses picked up speed.

Along the road there were more travelers than Bryony was accustomed to seeing—she attributed it to the better condition of the road and greater proximity to the more populous Swat Valley. Her mind still clouded with the events of the two previous days, it took her a while to see that for every traveler going northwest, there were ten going southeast.

They were all men—no surprises there—traveling on foot. They were armed—again not surprising, in a land where blood feuds were common and disputes frequent. She considered for a moment whether they were the Mad Fakir’s followers, then dismissed the thought out of hand—Upper Swat Valley lay quite in the opposite direction of where these men were coming from. Far more likely that they were on their way to a wedding or some other such communal celebration.

They were two miles past Sado when they passed a group at least a hundred strong at prayer, their weapons by their sides. Another mile later, under the shade of an enormous banyon tree, some fifty men sat drinking tea and chatting. This latter group looked up as Leo and Bryony rode past, but otherwise ignored them.

Half an hour later, however, they came to a third large group of men. The men were about sixty in number and took up almost the entire width of the road. At the sound of riders approaching, the men stopped and turned around. They looked at Leo and Bryony. To Bryony’s dismay, almost half of the men, particularly the younger ones, reached for the hilts of their swords.

She opened her mouth to call to Leo, but no sounds emerged from her suddenly numb throat. But as if he heard her silent entreaty, Leo slowed his horse somewhat and motioned Bryony to draw up to his left.

“We will pass them on the left. You stay exactly abreast of me and you do not stop no matter what, do you understand?”

She nodded, her heart not quite beating.

“Now ride as fast as you can.”

They urged the horses into as much of a gallop as these sturdy beasts of burden were capable of. The men continued to stare at them, as they drew near, as they veered up the slope beyond the edge of the road, Leo passing just out of reach of the men at the periphery of the group.

And the men were behind them. But before Bryony could breathe again, a series of soft metallic hisses made her peer over her shoulder. A good three dozen swords had been pulled out of their sheaths and held overhead, their blades gleaming in the afternoon sun.

Leo beheld that same display of power and belligerence. His face turned to hers. There was no fear in his eyes, but his hand clutched tightly around his revolver.

“They were all wearing white,” she said, her heart now beating like a war drum. “In every group we’ve passed, the men were all wearing white.”

He returned the revolver to its holster under his jacket. “So they were.”

He needed to say nothing more. The men were headed toward a common purpose, and it wasn’t a Pan-Swati game of cricket.

“I don’t—I don’t suppose we can turn back now?”

“No, can’t turn back now,” he said. “Ride faster.”

Bryony was petrified. So much so that when they came to the rendezvous point with Imran, the elder guide, Leo had to pull her off her horse and then pry her fingers one by one from the reins.

She stood with her back against an apricot tree. They were at the edge of a quiet village. The sun had slid behind the top of the slopes. The air, smelling of hoof-trampled oregano, cool with the arrival of early evening, would have been hugely welcome at their previous stop; but now the breeze made her shiver—or perhaps it only made her shiver worse. And the village itself further fueled her fear: It was fortified, with silent, watchful presences behind narrow slits in the high earthen walls.

Beside her, Leo and Imran conferred in whispers.

“I thought the Khan of Dir had forbidden his men to rally to the Mad Fakir,” Leo said.

“These are not Dir men. They come from Bajaur.” Imran’s leathery face was troubled. “They even invited me to join them, an old man like me. You must get away from here as soon as possible.”

Leo did not ask whether there was still time to get away, and Bryony did not dare. The men saddled the new horses and transferred saddlebags that held bare essentials. When they were done, Leo told Imran to be mindful of his own safety and sent the guide on his way back north.

He turned back, looked at Bryony, and frowned. “Did you drink?”

Bryony looked down at the canteen he’d given her after he helped her off her horse. Did she drink? She had no recollection. She’d forgotten altogether that she had the canteen.

He took the canteen, unscrewed its cap, and put it back in her hand again. “Drink. And take more than a sip. It will be dark soon enough and no one will see you if you must relieve yourself.”

She did as she was told with a dumb obedience.

“And eat this.” He pressed a biscuit into her palm.

“I’m not hungry.” Her stomach felt as if it had been stepped on, repeatedly.

“Your nerves may not want food. But your body does. We’ve still hours of riding ahead of us. You must keep up your strength.”

She could not suppress a whimper of panic. Hours. How many more armed men would they come across? The region was crisscrossed with valleys rich in alluvial deposits. Crops pushed eagerly through the soil and grew with a lust that would have amazed peasants who had to eke out their living on less blessed dirt. She could only guess at the size of population this ease of cultivation supported.

“Oh God, Leo, I’m sorry,” she blurted. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s all right, Bryony.”

It was not all right. Things were going dreadfully wrong. “I really, really am sorry.”

He reached up and cupped her face. “Listen, nothing has happened to us. And nothing might yet.”

Or everything could happen to them. He was so beautiful, his eyes the color of tide pools, she could not bear to think, God, to think that—

“I love you,” she said hopelessly. “I love you. I love you. I—”

He took her by the collar and yanked her toward him until their noses almost touched. For a lightning-bright moment, she thought he would kiss her. But he only said, very clearly and firmly, “Shut up, Bryony.”

She blinked in confusion and shock.

“We are not dying—not yet, in any case. So save your farewells for when we actually are. Now pull yourself together.”

She stared at him a second longer—she would not have believed it of herself, but it would seem he’d just snapped her out of a case of mild hysterics. “Right,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Right.”

She ate the biscuit while he loaded her derringer and stuffed it into her pocket. She managed to not moan again in panic as he emptied a case of spare cartridges into her other pocket. And she listened to him with actual attention as he said, “The next time there are men blocking the road, it doesn’t matter which side of the road I veer toward, ride to my outside. Understand?”

She nodded.

“Good. Let’s go.”

The road climbed before it descended again. Bryony’s arms hurt from holding the reins since dawn. Her seat and thighs ached in acute, unhappy ways. But the discomforts she forgot in an instant each time she caught sight of white-clad men. Fortunately, they usually traveled in threes and fives rather than groups of fifty or a hundred. The one sizable group they passed stood to the side of the road, talking animatedly among themselves.

Their road took them in a steady east-southeast direction. At twilight, they entered a wider valley with a river flowing through its center, and the road, wending between fields of rice and maize, turned due south. Where this particular tributary met the Swat River stood the fort at Chakdarra. It was not too far now.

Ahead, in the thickening gray-blue dusk, a turbaned man appeared, riding across the valley. His path would intersect theirs in minutes. Leo drew his revolver. Bryony swallowed and drew the pistol from her pocket also.

But as they closed the distance, she realized that not only was the man not dressed in white, he was in uniform—a sowar, a cavalry soldier of Indian descent serving under British authority.

Leo had already put away his revolver and hailed the sowar. They all reined to a halt.

“Are you from the garrison at Malakand?” Leo asked.

“The fort at Chakdarra, sahib. Eleventh Bengal Lancers,” said the sowar. His English was spoken at the speed of Italian and singsongy, but perfectly comprehensible. He pointed west. “I was sketching at the foot of the hills.”

Since Bryony didn’t think his commanding officer would provide him a mount and an afternoon off for his personal enjoyment, she assumed by sketching he meant some sort of land survey.

“I was starting back for the fort when I was set upon,” continued the sowar. “There were men, at least a hundred of them. They took my compass, my field glass, and one rupee and six annas from me. I must return to the fort immediately to warn everyone.”

Bryony looked anxiously toward the direction the sowar had pointed. But she could not see anything except the air and the slopes fading together into a smudged indigo. At the top of the hills, a lone pine thrust into an unseen sky, lit by the last scattered rays of a distant sunset.

on his fresher, faster horse. The first stars were already out in the eastern sky, tiny and isolated, as if they were lonely outposts in a galactic wilderness.

“Scared?” Leo asked.

“Witless.”

He handed her his silver flask. She took a large gulp, almost finishing what remained of Mr. Braeburn’s special whiskey.

When she gave the flask back to him, he took hold of her hand. They both wore riding gloves, yet she felt his warmth solidly.

“Do you trust me?” he asked.

His features were shadowed by the coming of night, beginning to become indistinct. But his eyes were clear and lucent—and calm, when she was all cold sweat and dread.

“Yes,” she said.

He smiled, a smile that went straight to her heart. “Then trust me when I say we will be all right.”

It was strange to lay his hand on the waist of a fully dressed woman and feel, instead of ruffles and bows, the pocket of his coat, with the button just slightly loose on the flap. But this adoption of masculine attire was only a surface affair. Beneath his jacket and his shirt, she still wore her corset, a smooth, hard impediment against the pressure of his hand. He was certain that if it had been at all possible, she’d have worn her petticoats too beneath the trousers.

Ten minutes after their encounter with the sowar, Leo’s horse had thrown a shoe, and they were forced to share Bryony’s horse, a sturdy, cheerful mare which did not seem to mind too much the additional weight. But their speed, already less than impressive—this particular mountain breed was more durable than swift—suffered even further.

They did not speak. The sliver moon and the stars were mere decorations in the firmament, their light too diffuse to be of any use at all. In the near complete darkness, she needed all her attention on the road.

The night smelled of cool water, ripening orchards, and more faintly, turned manure. And there sitting behind her, not doing much except keeping his eyes and ears open and holding on, Leo was strangely optimistic.

He could attribute his optimism to the reassuring ordinariness of the manure, surely the very odor of rustic peace. He could further attribute it to the distance they’d already covered; by his calculation, they’d sight Chakdarra any minute now. But he suspected that in truth, his sanguinity had more to do with the back-to-chest closeness between Bryony and himself than anything else.

The warmth of her body, the expansion and contraction of her diaphragm with her breaths, which he felt only barely through the constriction of her corset, the lithe tension in her torso as she moved as one with the horse—it was easy, or at least easier, to believe that they would be all right in the end, when he held her so.

“Look ahead!” Leo whispered.

Bryony did and just barely made out the horizontal glimmer in the distance. “Is that the Swat River?!”

“I think so.”

A huge weight lifted from her chest. Yes.

“Thank goodness! I hope they don’t mind putting us up for th—”

“Shh.”

Something in his voice throttled her incipient euphoria. “What is it?”

“Stop.”

She reined in the horses and listened, not sure what she was supposed to hear above the sound of the tributary hurrying toward the Swat.

“Do you hear that?”

She didn’t. Then she suddenly did. People on the move. A very large number of people on the move, coming down the slopes to either side of the river.

“Run for it.”

She dug her knees into the mare’s flank. She’d slowed nearly to a walk because she could hardly see. But now she must gallop. She stared fiercely ahead, determined to distinguish the road from the nearly uniform darkness of the ground.

“Faster!” he hissed in her ear.

She saw the cause of his urgency. A particular spur of the human tide coming down the hills had almost reached the road—all clad in white, silent, swift, and purposeful.

The pony seemed to sense her fright. Or perhaps the road had assumed a greater downward grade. It ran more swiftly despite its weariness and heavy load.

They dashed past the vanguard of the rebellion—for certain it was going to be an uprising now—with only a few yards to spare. The air hissed. Bryony shrank instinctively down in the saddle. A rock sailed over her head. Another fell short and thudded against the road behind them. Yet another hit something. The other pony, which they kept on a lead, neighed in pain—it had been struck on the flank, but it too kept running.

She had a vague impression that the hills on either side of the valley were receding: The valley was widening.

“Are we getting close?”

“Closer,” was all the answer Leo gave.

The thundering hoof falls of the horses rendered her deaf to the rest of the world. But she imagined she heard things, a crowd closing in on them, so dense that thousands of sleeves brushed against one another in a persistent shushing.

She became aware of the Swat River again, wide and black. They were nearly at the confluence of the two rivers. But where was the fort?

“There!”

There, further to the right, she could just make out the fort’s outline, atop a knoll that rose over the edge of the river. It was rather smaller than she’d hoped for, but a fort nevertheless by its shape and height.

“How do we approach?”

“I have no idea. It’s connected to the bridge, so there has to be a southern entrance.”

That would require her to ride around the edge of the knoll until she found the bridge. She did not think. She gave over her fate to the stalwartness of the mare and to the accuracy of Leo’s direction. More to the right. Straight. Watch out for a slight curve to the south.

The knoll loomed just ahead. Safety was within reach.

Then Leo said something she’d only ever heard men utter in extreme pain. Men sprinted at them, those in the very front actually fleet enough to intersect them. And were those swords glinting in the starlight? Her heart froze.

“Give me the stirrups and pay no attention.”

She vacated the stirrups and pushed away all thoughts of impending doom—of half-successful decapitation, fully successful evisceration, and the two quarts of blood loss she could sustain before she was no good to anyone anymore. She only rode, murmuring meaningless syllables to soothe and encourage the brave filly who’d faithfully carried two strangers who had yet to feed her an apple or a sugar cube.

Leo asked for the lead rope of the horse and gave it a hard thwack on the hindquarter. It neighed and shot forward—he was using it to disperse the crowd ahead of them. She followed closely in its wake, praying for the best.

Behind her Leo’s weight shifted: He’d stood up on the stirrups. Her jacket pulled up abruptly at the right shoulder—he used her for a ballast. She ignored everything and focused only on the road.

There was the clang of metal right by her ear: the barrel of his rifle clashing against a sword. And then it was the butt of the rifle on the side of someone’s head—she knew a concussion when she heard one. The rifle swung—with an acute swoosh—this time it sounded like a clavicle giving away.

His grip on her jacket pulled the collar into a choke hold around her throat. She could barely breathe even with her lips parted wide, panting for all she was worth. Were those stars she was seeing at the edge of her vision? No, she must not do anything so useless as submitting to the vapors. She would not permit it. She would never forgive herself.

He let go of her jacket. She panted, thankful for the reprieve. Now he was fighting with both hands. His weight leaned hard to the right—too much. He would topple from the horse. But he didn’t. The strength of his legs held him mounted.

He parried. He smashed. He shoved. Good Lord, how many more of them were there? Had she ever known a time when her hearing wasn’t saturated with grunts of effort, grunts of pain, and the creaks and snaps of miscellaneous bones under assault?

Then suddenly they were in the clear. Leo slumped back into the saddle, breathing heavily.

There was the smell of blood in the air. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” Bryony called anxiously. She turned around to look at him, but could see little beyond his form.

“Pay attention to the road and don’t slow down.”

He was injured. “Where are you hurt and how badly?”

“Just ride!”

The hoarseness of his voice frightened her. She pushed the mare the last half mile to the river and maneuvered it up the hillock, barely turning in time to avoid a thicket of barbed wires, which she’d first taken to be badly maintained shrubbery.

The gate of the fort was in the shadow of the suspension bridge that spanned the Swat River. At their approach, it opened silently from inside, revealing a quietly lit bailey. Bryony urged the pony across the last few yards of open space.

Safety, at last.

Leo did not even realize he’d been injured until not one but two sepoys sprang forward to help him dismount. Only then did he look down at himself and see blood everywhere. Bryony took one look at him, swayed, and gripped the saddle for support.

He smiled weakly at her. “Don’t tell me you faint at the sight of blood.”

“Of course not,” she said. “I only faint at the sight of your blood. You idiot, why didn’t you shoot at them?”

“I didn’t want them shooting back at us.” He could protect her from swords better than he could from bullets.

“Gentlemen,” said a young English lieutenant. “What happened?”

Bryony turned and extended her hand. “Mrs. Quentin Marsden, sir. My husband is injured. Please take us to your surgery immediately.”

“Lieutenant Wesley,” said the subaltern, once he got over his surprise at speaking to a woman. “Please follow me. I’m sorry to say our surgeon-captain is at the south camp in Malakand—filling in for the surgeon-major who is ill. I hope our hospital assistant would be equal to the task of mending your husband.”

“Not to worry, sir,” Leo said, as Lieutenant Wesley shook hands with him. “My wounds are superficial. Mrs. Marsden can take care of them.”

The walk to the surgery in the rear of the fort, however, let him know that his wounds weren’t quite as superficial as he’d hoped. Now that their lives were no longer in immediate danger, his left side burned, and every step, even leaning on a helpful sepoy, sent a jagged pain through his right leg.

The hospital assistant, a small, quiet Sikh named Ranjit Singh, was already waiting for them. Leo was instructed to lie down on the operating table. Bryony, in her element in a place full of jars and drawers and the smell of disinfectant, asked for a pair of scissors and cut away at his clothes.

He was injured in two places on his left, one a long but relatively shallow cut down the length of his upper arm, the other a more serious cut along his rib cage. The worst, however, was on his right thigh. As she peeled away the blood-soaked wool of his trousers, she sucked in a breath at the nasty slash she revealed.

“It just missed the aorta,” she said, her voice on the verge of shaking. She turned to Ranjit Singh. “I need a beta-eucaine solution for infiltration anesthesia. I also need a sterilized needle and thread and a pair of sterilized gloves.”

of the room, the hospital assistant looked to Lieutenant Wesley. Lieutenant Wesley in turn looked to Leo. “Mrs. Marsden is a surgeon by profession. She knows what needs to be done,” Leo said impatiently.

That settled it. While Bryony pushed her hair under a cap the hospital assistant provided for her, Ranjit Singh set himself to prepare everything else she needed.

“One part beta-eucaine to one thousand parts water, memsahib?”

“Also eight parts chloride of sodium, to prevent irritating the tissues.”

She donned the gloves and cleaned Leo’s wounds, first with sterilized water, then with carbolic acid. He gritted his teeth against the harsh stinging. Once his wounds had been disinfected, she tapped lightly on a syringe Ranjit Singh handed her and injected the beta-eucaine solution into the tissue beneath his thigh wound.

“That’s it?” Leo asked as she reached for the needle.

“That’s it. Infiltration anesthesia takes effect instantly.”

She was right. As her needle stuck into him, he felt absolutely nothing. He watched in fascination as she began to close his flesh as if it were but a torn sleeve.

A man in a polo kit hurtled into the surgery. “Captain Bartlett,” said Lieutenant Wesley. “You are back! I was beginning to wonder whether my message reached you.”

So it really was true that the officers still played polo, even to this very day.

“I received your message and started back right away,” said Captain Bartlett, sounding completely out of breath. He was of medium height, a somewhat portly build, and a ruddy complexion. “Surgeon-Captain Gibbs, good to see you back too. And, sir, I see you have survived your initial encounter with the Pathans. Captain Bartlett of the Forty-fifth Sikhs, at your service, Mr.—”

“Marsden,” replied Leo. “And the good doctor here is Mrs. Marsden, rather than Surgeon-Captain Gibbs.”

The captain’s eyes widened. He looked at Bryony again. His already pink face reddened further.

“I apologize, madam. I don’t know how I made the mistake.”

“It would be the men’s clothes and the men’s profession, I imagine, Captain,” Bryony said dryly.

Captain Bartlett chuckled. “Quite true. Quite true.”

“We seem to have picked a most inconvenient time to tour the North-West Frontier,” said Leo.

“I apologize for that too, sir,” said Captain Bartlett. “It has been so singularly peaceful since ninety-five that I’m at a loss to explain these extraordinary events. Now, sir, if you don’t mind, what do you estimate to be the strength of the gathering tribals?”

“Thousands. I should be astonished there isn’t a contingent at least two thousand strong.”

Lieutenant Wesley drew in a dismayed breath. “My God. We have only two hundred men in the fort.”

For a moment nobody spoke. Then Captain Bartlett turned to Lieutenant Wesley. “Quick, send a cable to the main camp to let them know. A large mob is marching on the fort.”

“Captain, I will be glad to remain and assist you and your men in any capacity I may,” said Leo. “But I should like to see my wife escorted south to safety.”

Bryony looked at him and mouthed “No!” He ignored her.

“That is not advisable,” replied Captain Bartlett. “Coming back from the polo field, I passed a very large crowd of Pathans south of the river. Fortunately they took no notice of me—just then I believed it was to be my last hour on earth.”

For a moment Leo thought he must have lost too much blood, because he couldn’t think. But no, it was not that. Judging by the blood on his clothes, which looked worse than it was, he’d lost about a pint and no more. The reason he couldn’t think was because he couldn’t think. The situation had become such that it was impossible for one man to think his way out of it.

“I wouldn’t worry, Mr. Marsden,” said Captain Bartlett gallantly. “We hold the advantage in weaponry and position. My men are well practiced. And we have all the might of the government of India, and ultimately that of the entire British Empire, behind us.”

Leo supposed Captain Bartlett was right. He would have preferred not being anywhere near the Swat Valley tonight. But since he was here, the fort of Chakdarra was not the worst place to be, with its well-practiced men and its advantage in weaponry and position. He nodded. “Let’s hope it will be no more than a minor skirmish.”

“Once you’ve been patched up, sir, you can recuperate in Surgeon-Captain Gibbs’s quarters,” said the captain. “And if you feel up to it, the officers and I would be glad to have you and Mrs. Marsden join us for dinner and—”

“Captain!” Lieutenant Wesley returned, running. “The telegraph line! The line has been cut.”

“Bloody hell. Beg your pardon, Mrs. Marsden,” Captain Bartlett said hastily. “Did our warning go through to Malakand, Lieutenant?”

“It did. And the line was cut as they were wiring the beginning of a return message.”

“Intolerably rude,” huffed Captain Bartlett. “You’d think since the Pathans have no plan to open the first salvo til morning, they’d at least have the courtesy to let us keep telegraph service for the night.”

“Perhaps they intend to attack sooner?” asked Leo. “The men we passed along the way were primed for a fight, not for a nighttime vigil.”

said decisively. “The Pathans always attack at first light—these men of the hills are completely beholden to their outmoded ways.”

Almost before he’d finished speaking, a collective shout went up around the fort, the kind of shout that Leo imagined greeted the sighting of a pirate ship. The two officers sprinted out of the surgery, Ranjit Singh in their wake.

The hospital assistant came back a minute later. “The flare has been lit.”

“What flare?” Leo and Bryony asked in unison.

“The Khan of Dir’s men promised to light a flare from their position in the hills to warn us of an attack.”

And now the flare had been lit.

“I need you to lie with your head where your feet are now, so I can stitch the cut on your side,” Bryony instructed, white-faced.

He looked down at his leg, which he’d forgotten about entirely. Not only had she finished stitching the wound, she’d dressed it too. She helped him turn around, injected him with more local anesthesia, and set to work.

“Do you keep any crutches around here?” he asked Ranjit Singh.

“In storage, I think. I will look, sahib.”

“Are you all right, Bryony?” Leo asked, when the hospital assistant had gone.

She did not look at him. “Would you let me apologize now?”

He sighed. “No. We are safe.”

“We are going to be attacked.”

“The fort is going to be attacked. We will be fine.”

“You are not fine. You could be fighting for your life now, had the cut on your leg gone any deeper.”

“But it didn’t go any deeper. And I’ll be able to get around with a crutch as soon as you are done.”

She set down the needle and thread, lifted him very gently to a sitting position, and bandaged his side and his arm. “Don’t move. I’m not done yet.”

She took off the rubber gloves and wetted a towel. There was still much dried blood on him, in patches, rivulets, and smears along his arm, his side, and his leg. She cleaned him carefully, thoroughly.

“Listen,” he said. “It’s not your fault. I thought staying behind was more prudent, but I didn’t believe for a moment that by going forward we’d end up in the middle of an uprising. So it wasn’t as if you coerced me into this.”

“I did coerce you into this.”

“But I was responsible for our safety. I should have known better.”

She sighed, a long, unsteady exhalation. “If anything happens to you, I am going to kill Callista with my bare hands.”

“I think the headline would be far more interesting if it read ‘Lady surgeon attacks sister with scalpel.’”

She laughed, startled.

He placed a hand on her cheek. “Do you still trust me?”

“Yes.”

“Then trust me when I say that nothing will happen to me and nothing will happen to you.” He kissed her lightly on her forehead. “This too shall pass.”

Surgeon-Captain Gibbs’s quarters was as neat as his surgery, with a bed, wardrobe, desk, chair, and two laden bookshelves. There was also an attached bathroom with a flat tub and a bath stool inside, to stand on while washing.

Their few things had been brought in already and laid in a corner of the room. Leo’s rifle was there, looking as if it had been gnawed by an iron-jawed beast, full of nicks, cuts, and gouges both on the stock and along the barrel.

Leo leaned against the edge of the desk. “Could you help me with my boots?”

“Of course.” She carefully pulled them off.

“I need to change clothes.”

He did. His jacket and shirt were both missing the left sleeve and the left side, his trousers missing the right leg. She checked his saddlebag and brought out the kurta pyjama.

“No, I only wear those to sleep.”

“Which is exactly what you are going to do now, aren’t you?” she asked suspiciously. “Right after I find us some food.”

He shook his head. “I’m not injured so severely that I can take to my bed with a clear conscience while the men of this fort are outnumbered ten to one.”

Her jaw went slack when she realized he wasn’t speaking in jest. “Absolutely not. You will not leave this room.”

“I must. It’s a matter of duty.”

“You’ve no duty to anyone here. You are a passerby and you are injured, while this fort is full of able-bodied men, trained and paid to fight. Let them fight. You rest.”

“The officers and soldiers of this fort have offered us shelter in our most desperate hour. I will not rest easy if I don’t do something for them in return.”

She sighed, knowing a lost cause when she saw one. “Wait here. Let me change out of your clothes and I’ll help you dress.”

She did her changing in the bath and returned in her blouse and skirt. With great care she disengaged him from his ruined garments, eased him into clothes yanked off her back, and pulled on his boots for him.

“Promise you will be careful about the stitches?”

“I will. I will sit in a corner and load rifles, which is all I can do now.”

“And you will be careful otherwise too?”

“Of course. I plan to live a long and much-laureled life yet. You stay here. Some of the men marching on the fort have firearms. There will be loose bullets flying about.”

She handed him his crutch and his rifle and walked ahead to open the door for him.As he passed under the lintel, he stopped and turned toward her. “About what I said night before last, I’m sorry. It’s because I cannot forgive myself that I think you too cannot possibly forgive me.”

Tears stung the back of her eyes. She rose to her tiptoes and kissed him on his chin. “Just come back.”