anymore. So she gave a small, defeated sigh and
made up her mind. “Permission to accompany the new settlers with my
team. Just to be on the safe side.”
Fatique smiled at her, “I was going to ask
you to, anyway.”
She gave him credit for acknowledging the
danger of the mission at least. Now all she had to do was pack, get
her team, set up camp on an alien planet and protect the workmen
and the settlers from any possible threat. Including, she added, a
strange, naked woman who was lying unconscious in a medical
emergency tent for now.
* * * *
Chapter 8: Back to the Lighthouse
It was a blood bath. John had anticipated
that, but in between the fighting and the running, his brain used
every second it could to reprimand him on how much the magnitude of
this massacre had not been properly taken into consideration
beforehand.
He managed to free the businesswoman’s son.
He almost lost an eye, two legs, and six fingers, but in the end,
when he exchanged the mangled bundle that had once been a son for
the priceless colony ticket, John decided it had been worth it.
That the man was not much more than a cripple wasn’t John's fault,
he’d found him that way. As far as John was concerned, the woman
should be glad she got anything back at all, even if it was hardly
recognizable as a human being anymore.
After the exchange and his payment, John
withdrew into the library to tend to his wounds. He had all but
forgotten about the old bootmaker and his offer until he checked
the pigeonhole in the crypt the next day. A pair of sturdy and
comfortable boots was stashed inside. The cobbler had kept to his
word. So John would keep to his.
He got out his horse the next day and called
on Abdul-Wahid. Then, stocked with two goats, three chicken, a bag
full of dried fruits and nuts, as well as one loaf of bread, John
went to see the old man and his pregnant wife.
It took a while. John didn’t know exactly
where they lived, so he had to ask around. Alexandria’s East was,
if possible, even dirtier and more dangerous than the rest of the
city. Mostly peasants lived here, people who couldn’t pay for the
protection from the gangs that ruled the area, who lived in
constant fear of being hunted by them and forced to pay their share
after all. Yet the shared fear bound these people together. They
helped each other, as if they were a family instead of a bunch of
exiled, penniless paupers. Sometimes ten or more of them had to
live in the ruins of a building, not enough room to house all of
them, not enough food to feed any of them properly, and still they
got by. The crime rate in this part of the city was minimal. In a
way John respected them highly for their way of life; he never
worked for them, though, because either they outright told him they
had no payment, or they lied. But the boots he wore now made him
belatedly rethink his reluctance to work for them. Maybe they could
have paid even better, or at least with more useful goods, than
some of the other criminals who had needed his services in the
past.
However, those thoughts were meaningless now.
He was going to leave. As soon as he had given the cobbler his
goods, he would take his belongings and go. He wasn’t even going to
wait until the snow melted, not after the businesswoman had given
him a piece of free information with his payment, advising him to
be vigilant, because she wasn’t the only one who knew about his
roaming, and those who were on his tracks wanted him dead.
The old cobbler’s home was in a third story
flat of one of the less destroyed buildings. There was no entrance
door; the blizzard had blown a thick carpet of snow inside,
covering the floor and the staircase right up to the first
landing.
John dismounted, but lead his horse upstairs
along with the goats he had brought along as payment so it wouldn’t
have to wait in the snowstorm. When he knocked for the fourth time,
a soft female voice begged him to go away.
“It is Yuhanan, woman. I have come for