Michel And Axe Bury The Hatchet (The French Bastard Book 2)
Page 29
“You’ll be looked after. Be looked after, all right. Get a shower and meal once you’re in the camps, send a letter home, tell your family you’re safe. No more harm come to you. Be looked after, you will, be looked after, you poor bastards,” he said with emotion strangling each word till he could barely speak—but it did not matter, for his words were neither heard nor understood by the shadows of humans stumbling by.
A group of four came toward him. Only one was in uniform. His face was bloody and mussed; a thin, arrow-straight man in civilian clothing was leading him by the arm. Another with a bad limp leaned on the shoulder of a smaller man who had lost his shirt. They were all covered in mud and blood and dusted head to toe in dirt, the war’s own version of tarring and feathering.
The soldier pointed and mouthed words and the men staggered on. Something about them made him turn. He looked hard. He thought he saw a man who was already dead.
“Michel?”
But he spoke only to himself, for no other could hear him.
The four men continued. The soldier with the slouch hat shook his head. He turned and carried on.
END
AUTHOR MESSAGE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Despite his name—which confuses people the world over—Avan is not Russian, Welsh or Israeli. He was born and raised in the south-west corner of Australia, where he was surrounded by countless books, animals and chainsaws, though which of those had the greatest influence is still up for debate.
As a boy he watched Rumpole of the Bailey and Matlock on their two-channel TV, and dreamed of lawyering (and, of course, more channels). He subsequently went to one of Australia’s most beautiful universities, where he thoroughly sullied a law degree.
Having realized that no number of contracts and forms would ever add up to whatever Matlock and Perry Mason did, he pursued a passion for history with a PhD (at a university famed for its ponds filled with enormous, hungry eels). He taught and won several academic awards, all while putting home-made bread on the table by working as a mover of furniture (his speciality was destroying anything made by Ikea; he is still available to perform this service, gratis).
Avan now works as an editor—a job that was strangely absent from the TV of his youth. His adult TV is now a lot bigger and has more channels. He and his wife (also not Russian, despite her Russian name) live in the north of Spain where Avan has been known to take a long winter dip in the cold Atlantic, after which his words are always slurred, though only sometimes on the page.