Cruel Enchantment by Janine Ashbless

Author:Janine Ashbless
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780753523414
Publisher: Ebury Publishing

Bodyguard

AT THE END of the ninth day they came over a rocky hillock just like any other, stubbled with grey stunted thorn trees, and suddenly the Harran Valley was below them: the white scar of the South Road, the hesitant green of the long grasses that flanked the small river – and the sand-coloured blocks of the Inn at Harran squatting between the boulders in the entrance to a minor ravine. Jhearl gave a sigh of relief and turned smiling to her companion, saying, ‘Oh, Ambele – there it is! We’re here. Thank the gods.’

The other woman, her visage set in sombre planes under the ritual cicatrices that defined the lines of her face, did not smile. She watched the dust-clouds blow up the road below them and moved her spear thoughtfully from one hand to the other. It was a long spear, taller even than she was, with a broad bronze head honed to a wicked sharpness. Her dark hands gripped the shaft lightly, with easy familiarity.

‘And thanks to you,’ Jhearl added swiftly. ‘I would have died out there if it hadn’t been for you. I’ll see that you are well paid.’

The mercenary nodded, stony-faced, before indicating a possible path down the valley wall and setting off again. Jhearl watched her with a mixture of bemusement and relief as she followed. Ambele was unlike anyone else she had ever met. In the days since they had been thrown together, she felt that she had come to comprehend the Kledish woman very little better; quiet, patient, always watchful, the grief of her recent loss bottled up and only audible in the keening songs she moaned to the moon each night, rocking on her heels as she squatted with her back to their meagre camp-fire. Jhearl wished that she understood better, that they had been able to talk as they walked through the desert fringe, but though they shared enough of the same language Ambele had clung to silence, breaking it only for practical instruction and warning. Probably it was enough, Jhearl thought, that they had walked together at all.

She placed her own feet in the prints left by Ambele’s bare soles down the sandy, treacherous slope, though she had to stretch her stride to do so. Her feet hurt badly, the remnants of her white silk slippers held together now only by strips of cloth torn from her skirt. Nevertheless she smiled as they scrambled down the slope and the words fell bright and easy from her as they had not done in a hundred miles; ‘Food, and new clothes, and clean water to bathe in,’ she promised. ‘Fresh melon, and kid stewed in milk, and a skin of wine. And I will be able to comb out my hair at last. Ah – the dust!’ Ambele said nothing.

It seemed to Jhearl that they could hardly have offered a greater contrast, as two women, unless by some miracle they had been washed of the dust that coated them and Jhearl had been restored to her previous station upon a white mule with scarlet harness.

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.