The Water Road by JD Byrne

Author:JD Byrne [Byrne, JD]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-06-21T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

After telling her that they had much to discuss, Goshen inexplicably had walked away, leaving her alone in the tent. The time gave her a better chance to become familiar with the periphery of the common hall. Skins, presumably of beasts killed by Hirrek and his comrades, were hung at irregular intervals, providing the room with a bit of color, in addition to further insulation against the cold outside. There were no trophies of war, at least not that Antrey could tell from a casual examination. It gave the room a permanence that it did not deserve. She admired the design.

To one side of the room, almost exactly at a 90-degree angle from where Ushan’s throne sat, there was a small table with a short stool at one side. Antrey crossed the room and saw that it was covered with some papers and some other familiar objects—her notebook, the bottle she had used for carrying water, and the elaborate dagger that had been Alban’s. She concluded that this must be where Goshen normally sat when business was conducted here, when he was not in front of Ushan translating.

She was just about to reach out and grab her things when Goshen came back into the tent, carrying another stool similar to the one at the table. He sat the stool down across the table from the one already there and motioned for Antrey to sit. As she did, he scampered away again, but only after he had taken her notebook with him, stashed under the layers of his clothing. Curiously, he left the other things, including the dagger, in plain view. Before Antrey could ask a question, he was gone. She sat and sighed. She had nowhere else to be, but she hated being out of whatever loop Goshen was operating in.

When Goshen slipped into the tent again, who knows how many minutes later, he had a wooden bowl in each hand, out of which steam was rising. He placed them on the table, one in front of Antrey and another in front of his stool, before he sat down. In the bowl was a combination of large chunks of meat—from the elk, Antrey assumed—and vegetables, all clinging together in a dark thick stew. It didn’t smell good, but after weeks of dining sporadically on whatever she could find in the wild, Antrey was not going to complain.

Goshen pulled what looked like a small loaf of bread from somewhere unseen, tore it in half, and handed one half to Antrey. “Now,” he said as he sat down, “we may talk.”

“Is that how it works?” Antrey asked. “You quiz me for all the information you can get before I get thrown out of camp in the morning?” She tried to slurp some stew out of the bowl but it was so hot that it nearly burned her. She reached for the dagger, unsheathed it, and used it to spear a chunk of meat, letting it hang in the chill air until it cooled enough to be eaten.

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