The Princess and the Captain by Anne-Laure Bondoux

while holding on to her foot, then letting go and standing up as quickly as possible to take a few steps, limping at first, then more easily. Finally she drank several mouthfuls of a bad-tasting medicine that the fisherman’s wife had brewed her, and which she kept in a goatskin bag. At last the cramp would fade, and it was such a relief that she suddenly felt very well.
    â€˜Time to get up, lazybones!’ she told her chambermaid. ‘The sun’s rising, and Elgolia lies ahead!’
    Philomena muttered. She had sworn to accompany her mistress to the end, but by all the Divinities of the Known World, her oath was costing her dear! Some mornings, if she’d had the choice, she would have stayed where she was, lying on the ground, waiting to be eaten by a wild beast or baked by the sun. She would rather have died than set off again for the wretched country that Malva kept talking about.
    â€˜We’ll get there,’ Malva said encouragingly, her eyes gazing eastwards.
    â€˜Yes, well, we’re bound to get
somewhere
,’ grumbled Philomena. ‘Elgolia or no Elgolia, the world has to have some kind of end!’
    â€˜Do you realise,’ said the Princess happily, ‘we’ll be the first Galnicians ever to set foot on Elgolia? No one else has ever gone so far!’
    Malva was already dreaming of the pages she would fill when she wrote down all her adventures. She had lost her notebooks in the shipwreck, but her memory would be enough.
    â€˜Help me to think of a good title,’ she said. ‘What about
Journey into the Unknown
? Or
Two Girl Adventurers in Elgolia
?’
    Philomena looked sideways at her. She could only very vaguely understand her mistress’s enthusiasm. So many dangers could confront them. So many traps could open at their feet. True, they hadn’t met many people in twenty-eight days of walking: some suspicious peasants, a few vagabonds who had offered to let the girls join them, merchants who had tried to sell them jewels. Every time they had hastened to leave such company behind. But over there in those forbidding mountains, who knew what kind of men or monsters they might meet?
    â€˜What a typical Galnician you are!’ Malva laughed, seeing Philomena’s frightened look. ‘Why do you have to see enemies everywhere? I’d rather think the Known World is full of such kind and generous people as the Spertan fisherman and his family.’ And she added mischievously, ‘Anyway, we’re so poor that we have nothing to lose!’
    She put her hand to the Archont’s medallion, which she still wore around her neck, ‘to remind me of his villainy,’ she told herself.
    â€˜This is all anyone could steal from me. But what’s a traitor’s medallion worth?’
    * * *
    A week later, when they reached the first snow-covered pass in the high mountain ranges of Gurkistan, they saw plumes of smoke in the distance.
    â€˜Perhaps there’s a village there?’ Malva suggested.
    She was shivering with cold, hunched on the mule, whose hooves sank into the soft snow. Her lips were tinged purple. Beside her, Philomena was struggling forward, gasping for breath. They must be on their guard, but what option did they have? They had to get over the pass before nightfall and reach the milder temperatures of the valley. As for going back, that was out of the question.
    As they gradually approached the black smoke, they realised that there was no village there. Something on the ground was burning, but it wasn’t a campfire or even an ordinary bonfire. Black forms lay all around: shattered carts, barrels, gutted crates. Silent and chilled, Philomena and Malva moved on. There was an acrid smell in the icy air. When they were close to the fire they froze. Burning there before their eyes they saw …
    â€˜A horse?’ said Malva, hesitantly.
    â€˜No,’ moaned Philomena, feeling her stomach heave. ‘Horses. Lots of