The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth by Michelle Paver Read Free Book Online

with emotion. ‘You’ve grown so tall! I quite have to look up to you now.’
    Cameron couldn’t speak. At one stroke he was a boy again, shocked and bewildered when this man whom he’d loved as a brother had shattered his world. ‘Major Falkirk, sir,’ he said with a stiff salute. ‘Captain Lawe reporting for duty.’
    Ainsley gave a startled laugh. Then with an ironic flourish he returned the salute.
    It had been twelve years, but he hadn’t changed at all. Those warm blue eyes. That wide mouth always ready for laughter. Although perhaps the resemblance to his father had become less marked over time, for he seemed to have lost some of Jocelyn Monroe’s straight-backed authority. Or perhaps, thought Cameron, he never had it at all.
    He watched Ainsley take a sheet of orders from the desk and hold them out. ‘Here you are,’ he said, still absurdly smiling. ‘These are for you.’
    Cameron took the papers in silence. 61377 Cameron Lawe, Captain, ‘B’ Company, 25th King’s Own Scottish Borderers: special attachment to the 65th York and Lancasters under Major Alasdair Falkirk, until such time as the relief of Tokar has been accomplished.
    Ainsley was still smiling. He seemed unable to stop. It made Cameron’s skin crawl. What, he thought in disbelief, does he expect? Does he imagine that after what he did he has only to smile, and I’ll fall on his neck?
    He folded the paper and put it in his tunic pocket. ‘Sir, on whose initiative was this arranged?’
    Ainsley looked surprised. ‘On mine, of course.’ He paused. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw your name in the transport lists. It was like a gift from God.’
    ‘I want a transfer back to my own corps.’
    Ainsley’s smile faltered. ‘I’d forgotten how blunt you can be.’
    ‘I prefer to call it straightforward.’
    ‘Indeed. Then I shall be straightforward too. Your request is denied.’
    ‘On what grounds?’
    ‘I need you here.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘I understand you speak Arabic.’
    ‘A little, but—’
    ‘That’s more than most. I need an interpreter.’
    ‘I’d be of no use to you, sir,’ Cameron said crisply. ‘In this region they speak a corrupt version of the tongue. A sort of – bastard version. If you will.’
    Their eyes locked.
    Ainsley said, ‘You can make this easy for yourself or you can make it hard. It’s your choice.’
    ‘What if I simply refuse to serve under you?’
    ‘Then I shall have you court-martialled for insubordination.’
    Cameron wondered if he meant it, and decided that he did. Beneath the gentleness Ainsley had always had a ruthless streak. Perhaps he wasn’t so unlike his father after all. ‘Why are you doing this?’ he said.
    Ainsley gave him a hooded look. ‘I have my reasons.’
     
    The Arabs say that when Allah made the Sudan, He laughed.
    They’re right. Savage laughter is the desert’s natural music. The cackle of hyenas. The bark of jackals. The leathery thwap of vultures squabbling over their prey.
    But on the eve of a battle, the desert holds its breath.
    They had set out from Suakin in the chill of the night, to avoid the blistering heat of the sun, and had joined the main column at an oasis where they struck camp. It was a dreary little place, no more than a well of brackish water beneath a barren bluff – and as the sun rose, the heat quickly became unbearable. They flung up a line of zeribas with walls of thorn-scrub and camel-saddles and camped inside, the officers in tents, the men in what shade they could create from sacking and store boxes. They would rest until nightfall, march by moonlight, and engage the enemy some time after dawn.
    It was nearly six in the evening, and stillness reigned: the peculiar taut stillness before a battle. Cameron couldn’t sleep. He told himself it was just the pain in his hand, for he’d taken a sabre-cut across the palm in a skirmish during the night, but he knew it was more than that. Something ugly was churning away inside his