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I cleared my throat. ‘But, um… the riders themselves, the soldiers I mean… they won’t die, right?’
‘Well, probably not.’ Youssef shrugged. ‘They have a few people who seem to know what they’re doing, so some of them are probably going to survive.’
Great. Just great.
‘The sun is already setting.’ Shielding his eyes with his hands, Mr Ambrose gazed towards the horizon. ‘We’ll wait until it is dark and the stars are visible, so we can calculate our exact position. Then we’ll go on. Hopefully, those soldiers will be roasted alive and won’t get in our way.’
*~*~**~*~*
We marched on. When one day, the shadow of a craggy mountain fell on me, I realized the landscape had changed a bit. Why hadn’t I noticed before?
Because you’ve been watching Mr Ambrose instead of hills, dunes and mountains, that’s why!
Well, so what if I was watching him and trying to catch every word he said? It wasn’t because I was interested in him in any way. Oh no, definitely not! There was a far better reason:
We were coming close to the area where the bandits were operating. He knew that, and so did I. And he knew that I knew that he still hadn’t revealed even the hint of a plan of what he was going to do when the bandits attacked. Right from the beginning of our journey I had tried to worm information out of him and failed. That first time hadn’t been the last. Here’s how one of these conversations usually went.
Me: ‘Dick?’
Mr Ambrose: **Cold Silence**
Me: ‘All right, all right. Rick!’
Mr Ambrose: ‘Yes?’
Me: ‘You know how you said you were going to let us be ambushed by the bandits?’
Mr Ambrose: ‘Yes.’
Me: ‘Well… What about it? I mean… you can’t really have meant that, can you?’
Mr Ambrose: ‘No.’
Me: ‘No as in “No, I can’t really have meant that”?’
Mr Ambrose: ‘No. No as in “No, I can have meant it, and did mean it”.’
Me: ‘But… we’ll all be slaughtered!’
Mr Ambrose: ‘Indeed?’
Me: ‘You can’t want us all to be slaughtered!’
Mr Ambrose: ‘Indeed?’
Me: ‘Tell me what your plan is!’
Mr Ambrose: **Cold Silence**
Me: ‘You do have a plan, don’t you?’
Mr Ambrose: **Cold Silence**
Me: ‘Bloody hell, will you open your mouth for once in your lifetime?’
Mr Ambrose: **Even Colder Silence**
Now, taking conversations like that into account, is it surprising that I had a tendency to glare at him, and that I tried to listen in on every single word he spoke? I’m not a very self-centred person as a rule, but I like my neck uncut, thank you very much. And I wasn’t about to let Mr Ambrose’s stubbornness stop me from keeping it that way.
