Pech shrugged, took out more food from his package and settled down. The sun was high and moving around the monastery. From his vantage point Pech could see nothing of the gardens and greenhouse, but had a fine view of the library, the monks quarters, and across the central area, the Abbot's dwelling and the guest rooms. It was starting to get hot, and the soldiers marching around the perimeter of the monastery slowed their pace, and allowed their rifles to slump.

By mid-afternoon the steam had finished rising from the wet stones, the roof of the monastery no longer had a wet shine, and the roads were dry again. Nothing had happened for several hours and the whole monastery appeared to be slumbering in self satisfied contentment. Every once in a while a flight of swallows would spiral and twist out of the trees above Pech's head and execute incredible feats of aerial artistry over the cultivated gardens. They appeared to be trying to catch flying insects.

With nothing better to watch, Pech followed their flight patterns as they swooped and soared up and over the monastery walls, then high into the eves of the main buildings, where they had some sort of resting place, or possibly a nest. At this distance he couldn't quite see. Each bird paused for a moment, then darted off again in search of food. It became a regular pattern that was both soothing and exciting at the same time.

Then suddenly, one group changed it's behavior. Instead of collecting insects and returning to their nests, the birds appeared agitated and disturbed. They twittered loudly and flashed up and over the roofs of the monastery. Within seconds the whole flock had vanished.

At first Pech could not see what had scared the birds away from their feeding, but as his trained eye moved along the eve edge he suddenly saw the cause. A thin curl of smoke was coming from one of the windows on the top floor of the Abbot's quarters. For a second he could not be sure. The sun was directly behind him and its glare bounced back from the glass in the guest room windows. The bright reflected rays made it hard to see the transparent smoke.

But seconds later he was sure; something was on fire. Black coils of smoke were now clearly visible, but they were coming from only one room. For a moment Pech did not know what to do. It was very unadvisable for him to reveal himself, it could lead to all kinds of complications, but to do nothing might mean a serious fire. Even Pech realized that.

Running across the road he pounded on the door of the sleeping gate porter. "Fire, fire," he yelled at the top of his voice, and when the day porter finally woke up, Pech poked him violently in the chest and turned him in the direction of the smoke. "Up there," he shouted to the still befuddled porter, "there, up there. Smoke, fire - do something about it!"

Then he ran off. He had done all he could do and he wanted to be out of sight before the fire started to attract too much attention. In his haste he forgot the rest of his wife's food parcel.