Lord Of The Atlas – Colin Falconer

Shepherd boys in striped djellabas drove their herds of goats and sheep into the foothills, looking for fresh feed. Boulders and rocks appeared through the melt, alongside the curled horn of a goat, picked clean now by the jackals and crows. There were smudges of colour on the trees and in the rock crevices as the first buds appeared.

It became Harry’s favourite time of the day, listening to the muezzin calling the townspeople to prayer from the minaret in the town, watching the swallows wheel and arc between the walls of the Kasbah. He even started to feel at ease with himself. There hadn’t been a drop of hard liquor to be had since they left Tangier, and his eyes had never looked clearer. His hands didn’t shake in the morning. He was almost as fit as he’d been when he’d been in the army.

The rains set in. Harry stood on the terrace watching the people in the descending laneways beneath the Kasbah, the children with mangy shaved skulls, the women with their hennaed faces, the men in their sheepskins, long daggers at their belts. He felt as if he had descended into some netherworld where other mortals couldn’t go, but his golden fleece, his two thousand pounds, was as far away as ever. He imagined going home with two thousand pounds, starting his own business perhaps, becoming richer than his father, his brother, proving to everyone they were wrong about him.

Lucy would beg him to take her back, her father would shake his hand and tell him he had underestimated him. Even papa would come, cap in hand. ‘I misjudged you so, boy. I shall make it up to you.’ Just a fantasy, of course. He supposed he would never see any of them ever again. He certainly wouldn’t see the money they promised him. He took out the hollow bone pipe that Zdan had given him and plugged it with the thick black tobacco these Berbers smoked.

His mind wandered from an imagined future to an imagined past, thinking about how his life might have been, if he had married Lucy, if her father hadn’t got in the way, if she hadn’t let him.

‘Lord of the Atlas’ copyright © 2021 by Colin Falconer. All Rights Reserved. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Colin Falconer Visit my website at www.colinfalconer.org Printed in the United States of America First Printing: May 2021 ISBN- OceanofPDF.com 1. LONDON, 1893 What a place, George thought. Greasy, grim and ripe for murder. It was summer, the night was hot, and the air thick as treacle. Not like England at all, more like being back in India. He turned down a side street, past a couple of dimly lit bars. Shadows huddled in the corners and the doorways, women and sailors and young thugs looking for easy marks.

Well, they won’t find one here. He followed the sound of coarse laughter. Two men in capes and bowler hats smoked cigars outside a nondescript building with no windows. They looked out of place among this crowd. George knew he had found what he was looking for. He climbed some narrow wooden stairs and went along a short passageway, grimaced as he pushed through the curtain into the gambling room. The taint of fear and sweat mingled with the putrid fug of stale cigar smoke and made the bile rise to the back of his throat.

George took his watch from his waistcoat pocket. Just after two o’clock in the morning. I should be in my bed. He looked around the room, the moth-eaten red velvet, the fake Vicenzan mirrors, the cigar burns on the scaly Turkish carpets. It looked like the salon in a brothel he had once visited in Alexandria.

Now that was an experience he didn’t want to be reminded of. There were four or five tables with various card games in progress. A few of the players glanced up at him briefly and returned their attentions to the cards.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 02aeb458b9e375ca
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 1,737,189 bytes (1.657 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 339
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 546.37 minutes
• Total Words: 109,273
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