by David Penny
Chapter Five
The village was small, houses scattered randomly so there were no streets, only spaces through which people moved. Apart from the young man with the sword, the only other males were children playing in the dust. The youth followed at a distance, trying to look dangerous but only partly succeeding. Despite the lack of any formal layout there was what passed for a central square, except it was oval. There were no places of trade, but Jamila led them to a house and motioned them to wait outside. The young man went into the house with her. After a moment he returned carrying a low table and set it down. The woman came out with cushions and dropped them to the ground.
“Sit.”
Thomas watched the young man return to stand in the doorway, where he might believe shadows hid him from someone with less keen eyesight, and even less keen instincts.
Jamila folded her legs and sat on a cushion across the table, and after a moment Thomas did the same. Jorge was already reclining on two cushions as if he belonged there.
“When I saw you coming down the hillside I thought you might have been scouts left behind by the others,” said Jamila. “They have done it before, raided then come back within hours. Aban has almost been caught more than once.”
“Aban is the boy?” Thomas said, and when she nodded said, “Your son?”
Another nod.
“And the girl is your daughter?”
This time there came a shake of the head. “Dana is the daughter of a friend of mine. She died, so I suppose Dana is as good as my daughter now, even if she does continue to live in her mother’s house. She and Luis were to be married. At least, Dana thought they were. I’m not so sure what Luis thought.”
“Might he have run away to escape the prospect, if what you say is true?”
“No—he’s been taken. That is what they do, the soldiers. They scour the land for men of a certain age, men like Luis and Aban who can be made to fight for them.”
“You know this for certain?” Thomas glanced up as Dana emerged from the house carrying a clay pot and cups. Aban followed with a platter of fruit, nuts and meat. He set it in the centre so they could all reach it, and then both sat close together. Thomas made a mental note to ask Jorge later what he thought their relationship might be, because Dana appeared far too accepting of Luis’s fate.
Jamila reached out and poured dark wine into two cups and set them before Thomas and Jorge. “You are welcome to our meagre fare. I apologise for our lack of welcome, but you know the reason for it.” She poured wine for herself and drained the cup before refilling it.
“Did you really think we were scouts for the soldiers?” Thomas asked.
“You are not them, I know that now, and everyone will be grateful for what you did for Pedro and Elvira. But you are strangers all the same. Where have you come from?”
Thomas pointed in a random direction, not knowing if it was the right one or not.
“There is nothing there,” she said.
“Then that is where I have come from. Nowhere.”
The woman’s lips thinned in the hint of a smile. “A man of mystery. Where have you been all my life?”
“That, too, is a mystery.” Thomas was rewarded with the full smile. He wondered why he was acting as he was with this woman, but she sparked an unfamiliar pleasure in him he believed had been lost forever. “Why do you keep your son out of sight of strangers? Is it the same reason Luis had a hiding place?”
“I do not need protecting, mother,” said Aban.
“Oh, he is so brave. Until the next time they come.” Jamila returned her gaze to Thomas, Jorge dismissed. “Luis is young and strong. A farmer, so of course he is strong. They will have taken him, no doubt of it.”
“The same men who killed Pedro and Elvira? You need to explain to me what is happening here if I am to avenge them. Those men came to this village first and then left. Did they kill anyone here?”
“Of course not.”
“Yet they killed Pedro and Elvira, and kidnapped Luis.”
“They must have tried to fight them. It was a foolish thing to do. The soldiers punish any hint of resistance, however small. We learned long ago to do as they say.”
Thomas stared at her. A handsome woman. Not young, but not old. He glanced at Dana—young, beautiful, a temptation to any man.
“Why do they leave the women alone? I know how soldiers are. They take what they want, who they want.”
“Not here. They steal food, but nobody touches us. I think they have been told not to. They take the men and leave the women. If you try to avenge Pedro and Elvira you will be taken too.” She tilted her head and examined Thomas. “If you fight, they will kill you. They are hard men.”
“Why did they take Luis? Is that what happened to your man?”
Jamila lowered her gaze and Thomas saw the memory still pained her.
“Have all your men been taken?”
“Apart from those who fought and died, and those too old to fight. There is only one left now, and Ibrahim is sick. Soon there will be none.” She raised her gaze once more. “Unless you choose to stay. You will have to hide with Aban when the soldiers come, but there will be compensations.”
“I want to fight,” said Aban, his attention finally turning from Dana.
“No.” Jamila continued to stare at Thomas while she spoke. “You look like a man who has fought. Talk to my son, tell him being brave isn’t enough. Tell him how men die screaming. He has no idea. No idea at all.”
“Why would he listen to me?” Thomas said.
“He doesn’t listen to me, so likely not.”
“I hide when you tell me to, don’t I?” said Aban
“And argue about it all the time. Talk to him.” Jamila let her breath go and rose to her feet. “I have to take food to Ibrahim. Stay here and tell my son why he can’t fight these men.” She shook her head. “He should know better now Luis has been taken, but the young are headstrong and don’t listen to sense.”
After she was gone Thomas turned to Luis.
“You think your mother is wrong, don’t you?”
Luis wouldn’t meet Thomas’s eyes. Instead he looked toward Jorge, perhaps sensing he would receive a less stern judgement from him.
“Tell me, what do you think would happen if these men come to the village and you try to fight them? Are you capable of fighting a dozen trained soldiers? Is that what you think?”
Luis shook his head. He reached out a hand and Dana took it, making Thomas frown. There was something strange going on he didn’t understand. Luis had been kidnapped and the girl he had drawn naked appeared barely concerned, and now she was holding Aban’s hand.
“Somebody has to do something,” said Aban.
“But not you. If there were twenty men here willing to fight, then I might encourage it. But one man? One untrained boy?”
“I’m not a boy.” Aban’s gaze turned away from Dana. “And I can fight. I can fight you now if you want. And kill you.”
Thomas returned Aban’s stare, meeting the challenge he saw there. He didn’t like the boy much, but he would prefer him not to die without reason.
“Go fetch two swords and kill me then,” he said. “We will fight here in the clearing, before your mother gets back. You can show her my dead body to prove your worth.”
“No,” said Dana. She shifted closer to Aban, but he released her hand and went into the house.
“Don’t hurt him,” said Jorge. “It is pride, nothing more.”
“I’m not going to hurt him,” Thomas said.
Aban emerged with two swords, neither of them well-made, neither of them particularly sharp, which Thomas judged fortunate. Luis strode to the middle of the clearing and turned to face the table. Thomas knew what had to be done. He shook his head and rose, aware of how weak his body was, hoping his instincts remained as strong as they had once been.
Aban slashed at him as soon as he was close enough, and Thomas sent the boy’s sword spinning to the ground.
<
br /> “Pick it up,” he commanded. “Next time don’t look at my weapon. Look into my eyes—they will tell you all you need to know.”
Aban attacked again, and again. Each time Thomas disarmed him on the first thrust. After the tenth time a sharp voice stopped Luis in mid-swing.
“What are you doing! He is our guest.”
Thomas was glad of the interruption. Disarming Aban had been easy, but he was painfully aware of how weak he had allowed himself to become.
“I’m teaching him,” he said. “A man needs to know how to wield a sword, in case he ever needs the skill.”
“I told you to talk to him, not kill him.” Jamila stood with clenched fists on her hips, her face set stern. “I was going to offer you a bed for the night, but now…” She shook her head. “I think it better if you leave.”
“They can stay in my house,” said Dana, walking to join them. She took Aban’s free hand and stood beside him.
“Your house is empty,” said Jamila.
“Then there is enough room for them. They can have a bed each if they want. Let them stay. Thomas can teach Aban how to fight again tomorrow.”
“I don’t want him to fight,” said Jamila.
“Sometimes there is no choice,” Thomas said. “Better to know how to fight and never need to than be forced to fight and not know how. I cannot teach him enough in the time available but I can show him how to learn.”
Jamila shook her head and looked away. “I would rather he doesn’t know.”
“I have to, mother,” said Aban. “Thomas is right. I thought…” Aban searched for some truth. “I thought I could fight him and win.” He glanced at Thomas. “I would not have killed you.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“How long will it take to train him?” asked Jamila. The four of them stood on the dry ground, Jorge still at the table. Thomas found it difficult to believe anyone else lived in the village, even though he had seen them. He wondered if eyes were watching their encounter.
“Too long. I can show him how to learn, but I don’t have time to teach him everything he needs to know.” Thomas thought of Usaden, the Gomeres mercenary who was training his son and doing a far better job than he had ever managed himself. There were times he wondered if being too close to someone meant you couldn’t help them as much as a stranger. Relationships, and love, got in the way. He knew that was what had happened here between Jamila and Aban. She loved him too much to put him in danger, but in protecting him the youth had failed to learn enough to keep himself alive. Thomas knew it wasn’t his responsibility, and cursed the sense of duty he felt to people who were strangers to him.
“How long can you stay?” asked Jamila, and Thomas shook his head at the look of hope in her eyes.
“A few days, perhaps. I was on a quest and allowed myself to lose sight of my goal.” He turned and walked away, waving a hand for Aban to follow him. Best to start his training now, he thought. Before more soldiers came.
Chapter Six
“Do you think she expects me to go to her?” asked Jorge. He and Thomas shared a bed barely big enough to accommodate them both. They were in Dana’s house, which was meant to be empty, but Dana too was somewhere, presumably in the room she used to sleep in before she lived with Jamila.
“She’s barely a woman. Why would she want you to go to her?”
“Women do,” said Jorge, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and perhaps for him it was. There were times Thomas wondered what it must be like to be Jorge, but could barely comprehend it.
“Aban is in love with her,” Thomas said.
“And she with him, I judge.”
“What about the drawing Luis made of her?” Thomas said into the shadowed dark.
Jorge rolled onto his side to face Thomas. “What drawing?”
“Ah. I thought I’d told you about the book.”
“What book? What drawing?”
“There was a sketchbook in Luis’s room. He’s a talented artist.”
“What drawing?”
A light showed in the open doorway and Dana appeared, a candle held high. She had changed into a nightdress, the shape of her body showing clearly through the thin cotton which also revealed a small swell to her belly that had not been in the sketch.
“I heard you talking. Do you need anything?”
“Nothing, thank you,” Thomas said.
“I am only next door if you do.” She smiled, hesitated a moment, then moved away.
Thomas waited until he heard the door of her room close.
“There was a drawing of Dana in Luis’s sketchbook,” Thomas said. “She was naked when he did it. The drawing, that is. It was good. Realistic.”
“When were you going to tell me this?” Jorge’s voice was low so he didn’t disturb Dana again.
“Why would I tell you about it at all? It was intimate. Private. It’s none of your business, nor mine.”
“Except you’re telling me about it now, and you saw it and I didn’t.”
“You saw the same thing but for real just now. That nightdress hid nothing.” Thomas glanced at Jorge. “Do you think that was an invitation? Perhaps you should go to her.”
“It’s not me she wants. The invitation was for you. And yes, it was an invitation. Trust me, I know such things.”
“Why?”
“Why should you trust me? You know the answer to that. Because in matters of the heart and loins I am an expert.”
“Why would she want me? I’m old enough to be her father. Her grandfather even.”
“She recognises you as a man who can offer protection.”
“And Aban and Luis?”
“Ah, yes. Aban and Luis. Even had you not told me of the drawing, I already knew.”
“I’m glad somebody does. What is it you know?”
“They are all three young, but not so young they cannot follow their desires. And it seems to me that Dana’s desire was to be with both of them.”
“Playing one against the other?”
“No. Playing with both of them. All three of them together. Dana is manipulative, and I suspect the arrangement was at her instigation.”
Thomas made a noise and Jorge laughed softly.
“Don’t tell me such a thing has never occurred to you?”
Thomas said nothing. He rolled over so he was facing away from Jorge, his mind considering what had been told him.
“It would partly explain why she isn’t as upset as you would expect about Luis being taken.”
“Oh, she’s upset,” said Jorge, “but she’s hiding it. I’m surprised Aban isn’t sharing her bed, unless it’s because she hoped you would be. Those two will be closer now Luis is gone.”
“I wonder which of them is the father?” Thomas said.
“Father?”
“Didn’t you notice the signs? Three or four months, I would say. Dana carries a child … but which of those two is the father?”
Thomas woke in the deep of night and knew he wouldn’t sleep again. He slid from the narrow bed and made his way outside. The wind that had tugged at the streets all through the day was still. He walked to the edge of the village, where the land fell away to a river, hidden but not silent. Frogs called to each other, and Thomas considered hunting a few down. The right kind made good eating, and he thought of the lectures he had given Jorge over the years about how a man could live off the land if he knew how—a man cut free to roam as he wished, attached to nothing. He had been that man once, when he was barely a man at all. It was a barren way to live.
Is that what I want again, he wondered? He had fled to these high hills with a fire inside him, but he had allowed it to fade into embers and then grow as cold as the snow that topped the Sholayr. He had tried to stop thinking of Lubna but knew there would never be a single moment he didn’t.
“I miss you, Lubna,” he said into the night. “I love you still.”
A chill passed through him and he sensed something close without seei
ng it.
“Is that you, my love?” He looked around. There was nothing visible, but Thomas sensed a presence. “Are you still with me? Are you here?”
It seemed something moved inside him, through him, and the chill turned to a warmth.
Thomas shook his head. He didn’t believe in God, nor any kind of afterlife. When you were dead you were dead. There was nothing beyond that final moment. It was why he had once believed a man had to live his life as best he could. To make a difference, so that when he was gone there might be memories to be nurtured by others.
Once again he felt a presence, a familiarity he believed had been lost forever.
Yes, Thomas … make a difference…
Thomas jerked sharply and turned all the way around, but he was alone. He had heard the voice clearly, as if Lubna stood at his side. It was her voice. Could be no other. And he wondered if his mind had slipped at last, its final hold on reality breaking loose. Except the voice had been so real.
“No, I don’t believe!” Thomas shouted the words into the night, answered only by the barking of the village dogs. He waited, half expecting some answer from beyond the grave, but nothing came. Only a presence lodged within him that had not been there before.
When he returned to the room Jorge was sprawled across the entire bed, his breath coming in soft snores, and Thomas turned away. He wondered what Dana would do if he entered her room. Would she make room for him? Welcome him? He shook his head, knowing it would never happen. He could never lie with another woman. He had sworn it.
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
Thomas and Jorge sat at a table, eating last night’s bread and drinking water drawn from the town well. Dana had set their meal out, such as it was, and disappeared, no doubt back to Jamila’s house and Aban.
