The Golden Sabre by Jon Cleary

Author:Jon Cleary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-09-19T00:00:00+00:00

[2]

Twenty miles back along the road Pemenov came into the hamlet through which the Rolls-Royce had passed. His horses were weary and one of them was lame. He pulled up, sat his horse while he looked around at the dozen or so wooden houses, all of them with their shutters closed tight on their windows. Some hens scratched the earth between the houses and a rooster sat on a post and jerked its head at him, as if telling him to move on. Then he heard a dog bark in one of the houses and he moved the horses towards the house and kicked on the front door.

There was no answer at first and he kicked again, shouting for whoever was inside to come out. Then the door opened a couple of inches, then slowly slid back. Three women edged out of the doorway: a grandmother, daughter and granddaughter, the family resemblance even more pronounced by the common fear smearing their faces. They looked mutely up at him and he waited for them to laugh; now he was alone, without General Bronevich’s protection, he expected to be pelted with laughter at every meeting. But these women had no laughter left in them: they were miserable and afraid.

‘Where are your menfolk?’ he said in Turkic.

The women looked at each other, as if afraid of giving something away. Then the granddaughter, a girl of about twenty, plain beyond hope of being anything better, said, ‘The soldiers came and took them away. After they had killed my father and two other men.’

‘Which soldiers?’

The women looked at each other again, then all shook their heads. Weren’t all soldiers the same? ‘We don’t know. They came two days ago and took all our men. My father and some of the men tried to fight them …’ Her voice trailed off; behind her her mother choked off a sob. ‘It’s the same with the women in the other houses. There’s no one here now but women and children.’

‘Has anyone else passed through here? Today, I mean.’ He was not interested in the soldiers and what they had done. War was war: women never seemed to realize that.

‘A motor car – a grand one. We saw it go past, but it didn’t stop.’

‘How long ago?’

The women looked at each other once again, then all shrugged. What was time? Just sunrise and sunset, the four seasons. ‘Not long.’

Then Pemenov heard a horse whinny somewhere behind the house. ‘Do you have horses?’ The women’s faces closed up and he angrily repeated: ‘Do you have horses? Answer me!’

‘They are all we have left to pull our ploughs and carts.’ The mother spoke this time; she looked as old as her own mother, aged by grief. ‘Please don’t take them—’

Pemenov rode his horse round to the back of the house, pulling the lame horse on its lead-rope. In a barn he found three horses: a draught horse and two small sturdy horses such as the nomads often rode. They were not as big as his own horse, but he knew they would have as much stamina.

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