Hannibal Rising Read Online Free PDF

beneath his coat, he took a crust of stale bread and put it in his mouth. When it was soft, he gave it to her.
    Grutas drove one of his men outside every few hours to shovel the doorway, keeping a path to the well. And once Pot Watcher took a pan of scraps to the barn.
    Snowed in, the time passing in a slow ache. There was no food, and then there was food, Kolnas and Milko carrying Mischa’s bathtub to the stove lidded with a plank, which scorched where it overhung the tub, Pot Watcher feeding the fire with books and wooden salad bowls. With one eye on the stove, Pot Watcher caught up on his journal and accounts. He piled small items of loot on the table for sorting and counting. In a spidery hand he wrote each man’s name at the top of a page:
    Vladis Grutas
Zigmas Milko
Bronys Grentz
Enrikas Dortlich
Petras Kolnas
    And last he wrote his own name,
Kazys Porvik
.
    Beneath the names he listed each man’s share of the loot—gold eyeglasses, watches, rings and earrings, and gold teeth, which he measured in a stolen silver cup.
    Grutas and Grentz searched the lodge obsessively, snatching out drawers, tearing the backs off bureaus.
    After five days the weather cleared. They all put on snowshoes and walked Hannibal and Mischa out to the barn. Hannibal saw a wisp of smoke from the bunkhouse chimney. He looked at Cesar’s big horseshoe nailed above the door for luck and wondered if the horse was still alive. Grutas and Dortlich shoved the children into the barn and locked the door. Through the crack between the double doors, Hannibal watched them fan out into the woods. It was very cold in the barn. Pieces of children’s clothing lay wadded in the straw. The door into the bunkhouse was closed but not locked. Hannibal pushed it open. Wrapped in all the blankets off the cots and as close as possible to the small stove was a boy not more than eight years old. His face was dark around his sunken eyes. He wore a mixture of clothing, layer on layer, some of it girl’s garments. Hannibal put Mischa behind him. The boy shrank away from him.
    Hannibal said “Hello.” He said it in Lithuanian, German, English and Polish. The boy did not reply. Red and swollen chilblains were on his ears and fingers. Over the course of the long cold day he managed to convey that he was from Albania and only spoke that language. He said his name was Agon. Hannibal let him feel his pockets for food. He did not let him touch Mischa. When Hannibal indicated he and his sister wanted half the blankets the boydid not resist. The young Albanian started at every sound, his eyes rolling toward the door, and he made chopping motions with his hand.
    The looters came back just before sunset. Hannibal heard them and peered through the crack in the double doors of the barn.
    They were leading a half-starved little deer, alive and stumbling, a tasseled swag from some looted mansion looped around its neck, an arrow sticking in its side. Milko picked up an axe.
    “Don’t waste the blood,” Pot Watcher said with a cook’s authority.
    Kolnas came running with his bowl, his eyes shining. A cry from the yard and Hannibal covered Mischa’s ears against the sound of the axe. The Albanian boy cried and gave thanks.
    Late in the day when the others had eaten, Pot Watcher gave the children a bone to gnaw with a little meat and sinew on it. Hannibal ate a little and chewed up mush for Mischa. The juice got away when he transferred it with his fingers, so he gave it to her mouth to mouth. They moved Hannibal and Mischa back into the lodge and chained them to the balcony railing, and left the Albanian boy in the barn alone. Mischa was hot with fever, and Hannibal held her tight under the cold-dust smell of the rug.
    The flu dropped them all; the men lay as close to the dying fire as they could get, coughing on one another, Milko finding Kolnas’ comb and sucking the grease from it. The skull of the little deer lay in the dry bathtub, every scrap boiled off it.
    Then there was