The Twilight Box by Troon Harrison

Author:Troon Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-988211-07-7
Publisher: Moonshell Books, Inc.

Chapter 13

Against the sky, the men’s faces hung in Ambro’s line of vision, contorted with rage, disgust, amazement, contempt.

“Webs! He has webs between his toes!”

“Shit of the kiffa!”

“He’s a webbie bastard!”

Ambro struggled to sit up. “I am a Kiffa-walker!” he yelled. “Open your eyes and look at me! Lord Tafari, who pays you, knows that I am a Kiffa—ask him!”

“We do not need to ask! We have eyes of our own!”

“We see your webs!”

“No Kiffa has webs!”

“Have you shown them to Lord Tafari? What would he say if he knew?”

“He would not want you for a nephew then!”

Their jeering voices hammered at Ambro; sounds that seemed to ricochet in his skull as though it were an empty space, as though fear had emptied his brains out. His chest shook with the hammering of his heart.

“Please,” he begged, “we have traveled together. We have enjoyed ourselves.”

He looked beseechingly at the men but their faces were set in hard lines of disapproval and their lips curled in scorn.

“You can travel alone from now on, dust scum,” Dabali said.

“Take his stuff, take his pony. Let him walk!”

Ambro lunged onto the balls of his feet and grabbed at his boots and his tunic of green Barbari silk where they lay on the sand, but the men tore them away. He ran toward his pony, tethered among the hohoba shrubs, but feet thudded behind him and the weight of a torso knocked him to the ground. Air whooshed from his lungs and dark spots danced before his eyes. His diaphragm filled with a huge pain that swallowed him into itself. He writhed on the ground, struggling for breath, as rope bit savagely into his wrists and ankles, tying them together.

He lay still as the men moved away, his cheek against the hot sand. Feet tramped to and fro in his line of vision, at first bare but then booted. Ponies’ legs shifted and stamped. The ends of reins and ropes swung to and fro. Boots sprang upwards as the men mounted the ponies.

“Lord Tafari will hear of this! He will send you into the gutters!” Ambro cried defiantly.

Dabali laughed with contempt. “It will be a long time before anyone hears anything from you!”

“Cut the ropes.”

Bohra’s boots moved closer; Ambro could smell the water of the pool on the man’s arms as they reached down with a knife. The tip of the blade swung menacingly, mockingly, before Ambro’s face and then was removed; there was a tug as the ropes were cut and fell slack. Ambro thrashed, loosening their coils and hearing the hoof beats of ponies quickening into a trot. He yanked the last clinging strand of rope from his ankles and began to run after the soldiers as they surged up the far side of the hollow toward the open sky and the rolling land that lay beyond.

“Bring back my pony! You have no right to him!” Ambro yelled, panting as he struggled up through shifting sand and loose rock that fractured into thin shining sheets, but the men kicked the ponies into a canter.

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