Ransom by David Malouf

Author:David Malouf [Malouf, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: Priam (Greek Mythology), Achilles (Greek Mythology), Historical, Greece - History - to 146 B.C, General, Literary, Loss (Psychology), Historical Fiction, Greece, Fiction, Fairy Tales; Folk Tales; Legends & Mythology
ISBN: 0307378772
Google: 49CQERPRjHUC
Amazon: B00338065A
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2009-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

A company of Argives was on duty in the inner yard. Scattered across the open space, they were squatting round the embers of cookfires where their evening meal was broiling, or sprawled on their cloaks playing at dice. It was the early watch, an easy hour. When a sudden knocking came at the gate the captain of the guard looked up surprised. No signal had come in from the pickets he had posted of strangers approaching the camp.

He climbed slowly to his feet and, with two or three men at his side, started out across the yard. The others, or as many of them as were not too deeply absorbed in talk or in their dice-games, looked on in a casual way to see what was amiss.

But the captain and his companions had barely advanced a dozen paces when, with a crack! that brought the whole yard to its feet, the massive pole that barred the gate, as if moved by some invisible agency, broke from its crutch and slowly began to rise.

The captain and his companions stood as if spellbound, the hands on their half-drawn swords too heavy to lift, the tongues in their open mouths also stopped, and their feet, their breath.

Slowly, as they watched, the leaves of the gate creaked on their hinges and swung open.

A covered wagon was there, five paces outside the gate, drawn by two black mules and with two old men seated side by side on the crossbench.

Only when it had lurched and rumbled on into the camp, and the leaves of the great gate had closed behind it, and the bar, once again as if moved by invisible hands, had dropped with a thud into its lock, did the watchers, all staring now, give voice to their consternation, each man doubting what he had seen.

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