Rogue Angel - 19 - Seeker's Curse by Alex Archer

Author:Alex Archer
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780373621378
Publisher: Gold Eagle
Published: 2009-07-14T04:00:00+00:00

17

“He says he hears rumors of other foreigners about,” Lal translated as Prasad conversed with a wizened old farmer and his grandson, who led their yak by a brass ring through its nose. The beast took advantage of their temporary halt by dropping its big, shaggy, short-horned head to crop at some khaki bunch grass jutting up from a patch of snow. “They’re heavily armed, too. They are rude and make the people uncomfortable. But the word is also out they enjoy the protection of the local Party.”

“Sounds as if Bajraktari and company have joined the fun,” Pan said.

Annja looked at Lal in alarm. “Does he mean the Maoists? Why would they help ethnic-Albanian gangsters from Kosovo?”

“The Maoist Communist Party of Nepal recalls how Albania was the only other officially Maoist nation on Earth,” Lal said. “And that they kept the faith longer than China herself did.”

The answer surprised her. She had to remind herself the young man wasn’t just bright and well educated; he had also traveled a fair part of the world before returning to his mountainous homeland. It wasn’t quite so incongruous for a hill-man guide in a remote country to have a fairly sophisticated knowledge of the outside world as it might seem.

Pan, ever the policeman, had a more cynical take on the subject. “The lure of corruption knows no party bounds,” he said. “Any more than national borders.”

Through Prasad Annja pressed a few dollars on the elderly peasant. Nepal was one of the world’s poorest countries, and the resurging political strife wasn’t helping. The man seemed reluctant to accept until she suggested he could buy something for his grandson. The boy, with round brown sun-reddened cheeks and bright obsidian eyes, was clearly his grandfather’s special pet; the old man’s own eyes twinkled, barely visible within triangular slits in his deeply seamed, copper-colored face. He accepted with bows and profuse thanks.

The yak gave them a reproachful look as he tugged its broad head up and urged it under way through the hemlock forest. Apparently it thought Annja could’ve kept its master occupied a lot longer than that.

“Sorry,” Annja said with a little hand wave at the beast.

They climbed higher. The forest was still around them, except for a slight rustle of wind in the high boughs, the twitter of distant birds, the crunch of snow under their boots. They had come high enough that snow still lay plentifully if patchily on the ground. Annja, who had grown somewhat accustomed to the altitude, found her breath coming a bit short again.

Puffy white clouds concealed the dizzying heights of the White Mountain itself and its attendants to the west, as well as mighty Annapurna to the southeast, which they otherwise might have seen through breaks in the woods. The clouds concerned Annja, who wasn’t eager to get hit with a snowstorm. Prasad assured her one wasn’t coming soon.

“Still,” he said with his quiet smile, “where your path leads you will find snow aplenty.”

“Great,” Annja said.

The head guide now carried an AKM muzzle down.

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