The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

mountains that divided the gorges of the Adonis and its tributary, the plateau stretched open and stony and barren as the valley of dry bones.
    There seemed to be no way to get there except down a rocky track along the side of the tributary stream.
    This Hamid was explaining. ‘And you have to cross the water at the bottom,’ he said. ‘There is a ford with shallow water, but sometimes in the spring, you understand, when there has been rain, it can be very deepand fast, and floods over the stepping-stones. But it will be all right today. You really wish to go? Then I will come with you to show you the way.’
    It did not seem to me that it would be very easy to miss the way. I could see the path as far as the bottom of the hill, and – I am very long-sighted – I could even see the ford from where I stood. There must have been a stone bridge there at one time, for the ruined piles were unmistakable. And no doubt beyond that the track up to the palace would be equally unmistakable.
    I looked at Hamid in his immaculately pressed dark city trousers and equally immaculate shirt.
    ‘That’s very good of you, but there’s no need for you to bother, you know. I can hardly miss the way. If you’d rather stay here with the car, and perhaps find something to drink in the village, some coffee, perhaps, if there’s a café …?’ I looked round me at the singularly unpromising gaggle of huts which was the village of Sal’q.
    He grinned. ‘There is, but with all gratitude, I shall not try it today. I will certainly come down with you. It’s a long way for a lady to go alone, and besides, I believe that the porter there speaks nothing but Arabic. You would perhaps find it a little difficult to make yourself sufficiently understood?’
    ‘Oh, lord, yes, I suppose so. Well, thanks very much, I’d be terribly grateful if you’d come. It looks a pretty tough walk, I must say. I wish we had wings.’
    He locked the car, and dropped the key into his pocket. ‘Along here.’
    The path led round the wall of the mosque, past thelittle graveyard with its curious Moslem stones; the slender pillars with their stone turbans which indicated the graves of men, the lotus-carved steles for the women. The whitewashed minaret stood prettily against the pale hot sky. Past the crumbling corner of the graveyard wall the track suddenly turned downhill in steep zigzags, treacherous with loose stones. The sun was heeling over from its zenith, but still beat fiercely on this side of the valley. Soon we had gone below the lowest of the village terraces, where the hillside was too steep and too stony for anything, even vines, to grow. Some bluff of hot rock hid the stream from us, so that no sound of it came to our ears. The silence was intense. The whole width of the valley seemed to be filled with the same hot, dry silence.
    Round a steep turn in the path we disturbed a herd of goats, black and brown with long silky hair, flop ears, huge horns and sleepy, wicked yellow eyes. They had been grazing on heaven knows what on that barren slope, and now slept in the sun. There were about thirty of them, their narrow clever faces – watching us with calculation and without a hint of fear – giving the impression somehow not that this was a herd of animals owned by men, but that we were walking through a colony of creatures who lived here by right. When one of them got leisurely to its feet and strolled into the middle of the path, I didn’t argue with it. I got off the path and walked round it. It didn’t even turn its head.
    I had been right about the old bridge. The tributary (Hamid told me it was called the Nahr el-Sal’q) wasnot wide compared to the Adonis, but at this time of year there was fully twenty feet of it to cross, swiftly sliding water, shallow in places over white pebbles, in others tumbling with foam over split boulders, or whirling deeper in a hard dark green in pools which must have been breast deep. At the far side the water was