Hero on a Bicycle by Shirley Hughes Read Free Book Online

longer hanging around aimlessly at home. He knew that the coming months, weeks even, were crucial to the next phase of the war, and he was determined to play a part in it.
    He still didn’t really understand why the Partisans had wanted to meet his mother. What part could she possibly play in their plans? Was it something to do with his father? Paolo hoped that by joining them, he would be better able to protect her.
    He pressed on doggedly in the shimmering heat, following every turn in the path as he remembered it from the night before. But he was beginning to wonder if he had taken the right way after all. Things looked so different in daylight, and there was no sign of the dried-up riverbed. He paused to get his breath, regretting that he had brought his bicycle. It was useless up here anyway.
    Suddenly, out of the corner of his eye, he saw three men. They were standing, very still, looking down at him from the top of the nearby bank. One of them lifted his rifle to his shoulder and pointed it straight at him. Paolo froze. There was a long pause. Then one of them said something in a low voice he couldn’t catch, and the three came down the bank with leisurely menace and stood in his path.
    “What are you doing here?” one asked. “Looking for someone, are you?”
    “Yes, I was. I mean — I am looking for you, I think.”
    “You think?”
    Paolo forced himself to keep his voice steady. “Yes. If you are . . . who I think you are . . . I would like to join you.”
    They looked at him in silence. These men had made no attempt to hide their faces. Their skin was tanned a deep brown, and they wore ammunition belts slung over their shoulders and grubby red bandanas around their necks. They were Partisans, all right, but Paolo had a feeling that they were not the ones he had encountered on the road the other night.
    One of them cracked into a contemptuous grin.
    Paolo trembled, but he spoke up as confidently as he could. “I would like to join you,” he repeated. “I know this area well, and I can use a rifle. I can be useful in other ways, too. I can take messages. No one will suspect me.”
    The grinning man said something to his comrade in a low voice. Then he took a step nearer and prodded Paolo in the chest with the end of his rifle.
    “Walk,” he said.
    Paolo turned and walked, pushing his bicycle with one hand. Things were not going according to plan. This was not the reception he had envisioned. Even though they moved in silence, he was painfully aware of the three men behind him. When he reached a fork in the path, Paolo hesitated. Another prod of the rifle.
    “Keep going.”
    But as Paolo moved forward again, he tripped. One of the men had stuck his foot out and hooked Paolo’s leg, tripping him. He sprawled to the ground, and his bicycle crashed down beside him. Paolo lay there, furious, while the man who had tripped him grabbed his bicycle and passed it to one of his comrades.
    “On your feet,” he told Paolo.
    Paolo got up. He tried to keep his voice steady. “That’s my bicycle. Give it back, please.”
    They all guffawed. Then the man who had tripped him gestured to the path with his rifle.
    “You can walk home from here, sonny,” he said. “Get back to your mamma. This isn’t a kid’s war. You can try to find us next year if you like — except we won’t be around.”
    “But my bicycle —”
    “We’ll be hanging on to that. We could use another bike.”
    “But it’s mine!”
    “Not anymore, it isn’t. And if you let on a word about what happened to it, there’ll be trouble for you and your family — capito ? Understood?”
    Perhaps it was sheer exhaustion that made him so foolhardy, but, ignoring the rifle that was still pointing at him, he lunged at the man holding his bicycle. Seizing the handlebars, he tried to drag it off him. There was a brief tussle. Then the third man grabbed him by the shoulders, swung him around, and punched him hard in the stomach. Paolo doubled over.