Hegira Read Online Free PDF Page A

fitfully.
    He struggled awake an hour later and stretched painfully, pulling at the lash stripes across his shoulders. “I wish I hadn't been so thorough,” he said. Bar-Woten smoked beside the small fire. Darkness was complete. The Ibisian's face glowed in the firelight, and the reflection of the pipe coals was a bead of red on his nose. “I wish I knew what I was doing here,” Kiril said, “with a savage like yourself and a pagan.”
    “You gave up one life,” Bar-Woten mused. “Not so difficult to give up another, especially one with no rewards.”
    “I'm a coward, I think,” Kiril said. “I haven't had the conviction to stay with any sort of life.”
    Bar-Woten gave a noncommittal nod and put out his pipe, pointing the stem at the village after grinding the ashes into the ground. “We'll pick up supplies there. We have a long trip ahead — several hundred kilometers, maybe, before we leave Mediweva.”
    “Less than that,” Kiril said. “What happened in Madreghb? You have any idea?”
    “Sulay probably let his guard down. He was getting too old to be vigilant all the time. No doubt he was the last to die, though I think I see him . . . how he died. Not bravely. The way we led our lives, few of us will die bravely now.”
    “You . . . think of yourself as a savage?”
    “Of course,” Bar-Woten said. “Twenty years of March and battle. How could I be anything but a savage? I haven't married a fine woman or fathered good children, and my religion departed years ago at my own hand. I've killed men brutally. And you're an ass to travel with me.” He grinned.
    “Probably,” Kiril admitted.
    Barthel woke quickly and doused the embers with urine. They gathered the horses at their tethers near a small, grassy glade and rode into the village under cover of darkness.
    “Did you enjoy being a scrittori?” Bar-Woten asked. Kiril nodded and said it had been the finest time of his life.
    “Did you ever wish to verify what you read?”
    “No. What's written on the Obelisk is taken for truth. Why else would God have gone to so much trouble?”
    “Sh,” Barthel hushed. A group of men leading donkeys passed them on the road, briefly flashing a lantern. No words passed between.
    Most of the village was shuttered and quiet for the night. A few shops were open still, but the hungry and sleepy owners were grumpy at any customers. They bought food and two small pistols.
    Bar-Woten decided it wasn't wise to spend the night in the village. He could almost smell the pursuers.
    “When people want you dead, you always assume the worst,” he said. Kiril drew his horse closer to the center of the road as they left the town. Barthel stopped, and his mount pawed the ground impatiently. Bar-Woten turned to the Khemite and also reined in his horse. In the dark, with only a few dim fire doves to light the landscape, he could barely see the road, and he couldn't tell what Barthel was thinking.
    “Does the Bey wish me to follow, or does he wish me to go alone?”
    “You are free to choose.”
    “I'm not used to that.”
    “You're free to come with us if you want.”
    “I'm no longer your servant?”
    “You haven't been for a day or so, maybe longer.”
    “I would like to go with you then.”
    “Good.”
    Barthel brought bis horse up even with theirs, and they marched abreast in the dark.
    Bar-Woten was the next to call a halt. He perked his head up and listened intently. “Engines,” he said. Kiril could hear nothing but insects humming. Barthel kept silent, knowing Bar-Woten's senses were sharper than his own.
    “They're about a kilometer back, near the village. Steam buggies. And I think horses, too. We'll have to ride hard to reach the next hills before them.” He spurred his horse, and the group galloped off. Kiril groaned aloud with each lurch. They reached the hills and heard the clear hiss-chug of a steam buggy just as lights appeared on the road behind them. Shadows of horses prancing across the light-beams