Race of Scorpions - Dorothy Dunnett [215]
The last thing Nicholas saw as he rolled into the straw and the lantern was withdrawn was the gleam in Boulaki’s eyes. He had seen them gleam with cupidity, amusement and tears. Tonight, it seemed to him that he detected anxiety. Then the fleas started to bite, and Nicholas sighed and, dismissing it all, tried to settle to sleep, but not so thoroughly that he couldn’t be roused if Carlotta, the Knights or the Genoese turned up to kill him. He remembered distinctly, afterwards, settling to sleep with that intention.
The next thing he remembered was Boulaki’s spread hand digging into his shoulder. Next, Boulaki kicked him. Nicholas sighed again and, rolling over, lifted his sword. Boulaki flinched back, and the light went out. ‘No!’ said the fisherman. ‘Christ, I wish I’d never brought you. Listen. The boys are telling the Knights. They’ll be down for you first thing in the morning. You’ve got to go.’
‘Your cousins?’ said Nicholas in the dark. He had his roll pulled together already.
‘Filth,’ said his saviour in a hoarse whisper. ‘And my old mother’d sell her old mother for silver. I got it out of her later. The Flemish woman’s at Lindos. That’s on the opposite coast, twenty miles over the mountains. It is not far from Pharaclos, where my aunt lives, who is an angel as my mother is a devil. You lost money to Yiannis last night?’
Nichlolas had been careful to lose money to Yiannis; the spokesman, it was clear, among the dice players. He nodded, and Boulaki continued. ‘He says you are a good man. He will sell you his mule, and lend you his grandson for guide, for the right sum of money. You must go now.’
For the right sum of money, Nicholas found himself presently padding barefoot from shadow to shadow until, at a safe distance from the village, a voice hissed, and a shadow resolved itself into a boy leading a mule. ‘Lord?’ said the boy. ‘For much money I run beside you to Lindos?’
Nicholas tied his roll on the saddle and then, mounting, bent and scooped up the boy to perch behind him. He said, ‘For much money given to your grandfather Yiannis you ride with me to Lindos, and we get there before dawn, and without being seen except by the goats. Is it understood?’
‘And then I have much money?’ said the boy.
‘And then perhaps I will not beat you,’ said Nicholas. ‘And if I feel like it, there may be a little money as well. Now, go! Go! Go!’
The mule was slow and steady, like a bored man, and, climbing, followed unseen tracks among rocks whose hot dust rose into the still air about them. Sometimes they came to a level place and broke into a trot between thickets of thorn, or heath or broom; sometimes they skirted a dark forest of pine or cypress or oak, or descended to wind among olive trees and across a dry stream. Goats rustled and the mule shuddered at the squawk of a frightened bird. Moths passed like thistledown and he smelt a fox, once. After the steepest part he stopped to rest the animal, and the boy produced cheese and a flask from a saddlebag, and they sat and shared it, speaking almost not at all. The boy seemed uneasy, or frightened, or perhaps merely apprehensive of what the big stranger might do. After obtaining a few unwilling answers, Nicholas left him alone, although he never let him out of his sight. If the plan had been to run away, the grandson of Yiannis was given no chance. Then they resumed their silent journey.
Soon after that, Nicholas became conscious of the first change. The thick warmth of the night seemed here and there diluted, veined with something like freshness, and ahead, for the first time, he thought he could distinguish hill from hill, earth from sky; sky from