He had begun to raise his arm as the blow fell. It was a terrible blow – it seemed to split his skull in two. As he fell he could feel the warm blood running freely over his left ear. Not again, oh Christ, not again, thought Smiley. But he hardly felt the rest – just a vision of his own body, far away, being slowly broken like rock; cracked and split into fragments, then nothing. Nothing but the warmth of his own blood as it ran over his face into the cinders, and far away the beating of the stonebreakers. But not here. Far away.
