They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Hut
The Bear's mare was a tall black one, and she took the yard in three strides with me on her back and his arm around my waist.
I had said I would ride my own.
He had looked at the cook's girl's pony, and then at me.
I had climbed up in front of him without another word.
We went out the front gate at a gallop with six of his riders behind.
Nobody on the east road had hurried.
That was what told me how they meant it.
Four men with a priest and a girl on a horse, riding at a walk in daylight.
Every shepherd on the slope would see a holy man taking an orphan to the sisters.
"They are not going to Larrau," Aitor said into my ear.
"The road to Larrau turns west at the chapel.
"They are bearing east."
"East is the border," I said.
"East is Roncal.
"Whoever hired the priest has paid the Urrutia's price."
I held the mane in both fists and said nothing.
If I said what I was thinking, I would scream.
The snow had begun again by noon, small and hard, blowing sideways off the shoulder of the mountain.
By the second hour the track was gone.
Aitor rode with his head down, reading the ground the way I read a flock.
He saw a bent twig here and a scrape of iron on rock there.
"Three horses and a mule," he said.
"The mule has a rider who weighs more than the horses' men."
My uncle's mule.
I closed my eyes.
We found them at dusk, in a shepherd's hut above the pass.
A thread of smoke went up out of the turf roof.
Aitor reined in a hundred paces off, behind a spur of rock.
He swung down and lifted me after him as if I weighed nothing.
"Stay here," he said.
"No," I said.
"Itziar."
"She is my sister," I said.
"Keep your hands off the men, if you like.
"I will not keep mine off them."
His face softened in the dusk.
I think it was the closest he came to laughing that day.
"Then stay behind me," he said.
"Right behind me.
"If I say go back, you go back."
I said I would.
I did not mean it, and I think he knew.
He went down the slope with his riders spread out on both sides of him.
He did not hurry.
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–6 of They Came to Buy My Sister, So I Went in Her Place as a Boy are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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