Rogue Justice by Geoffrey Household

Author:Geoffrey Household [Household, Geoffrey]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
Published: 2014-09-26T04:00:00+00:00

4

Villages were few, clinging to slopes like a scatter of nesting gulls, one house above another. For the first days I did not visit any of them and spent my time in search for my future headquarters, sometimes sleeping in shallow caves – if they were not occupied by goats – and sometimes in the thick scrub of the ridges. In places this scrub was so dense that if I burrowed into it well away from any path I could not be discovered unless stepped on. It swarmed with ticks and, while admirable shelter for the fugitive until danger had passed, it could not form a base for attack. One could see nothing without standing up.

My first contact was with a goatherd. When I had answered his questions and he had found out that I was British and on the run, his first reaction, typical of all of them, was to say without any regard for possible consequence, ‘You must come to my house and we will have a party.’

I thanked him profusely as one gentleman to another and answered that I would gladly come to his house at night but there must not be any party. At some time I might have to kill and I refused to risk reprisals against them.

‘They don’t come up here much,’ he said. ‘Goats and hunger, that’s all we have.’

‘What troops are there in the district?’

‘Many, many, at Kozani and on the roads.’

My territory was the range running north from the bend of the Aliakmon to Kastoria, with the town of Kozani on lower ground to the east. It seemed to be a crossroads of strategic importance, one running south from Macedonia to Athens over the Aliakmon bridge, the other to Salonica, so a garrison had to be there.

‘And are there partisans to keep them busy?’ I asked.

‘No. All are over to the west. Here is nowhere for a band to retreat and be safe.’

Indeed there was not, but one man could vanish when a dozen couldn’t. However, I did not ask him if he knew of a refuge for me. None of them could be allowed to know where I was.

‘I hear an Englishman shot down an aeroplane by the river. Could that be you?’ he asked.

Rumour had arrived, and with the same exaggeration as a press report. My reputation was safe.

I agreed to come to him after dark, and he led me along the ridge until we could look down on the roofs and I could single out his house and the path to it.

Privacy was hopeless from the start. This was the man who had shot down an aeroplane, and half a dozen males of the village were there to inspect him. They had little to eat beyond bread and cheese and garden produce, but in order that a party should be a party the goatherd laid on the table two precious tins of sardines abandoned the year before by the retreating British.

While on the subject, I asked whether the troops had left no arms behind them.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.