The Ghost Rider Read Online Free

nine sons on the battlefield, was found in a state of profound distress, along with her daughter, Doruntine, who, by her own account, had arrived the night before, accompanied by her brother Kostandin, who died three years ago, alongside all his brothers .
    Having repaired to the site and tried to speak with the two unfortunate women, I concluded that neither showed any sign of mental instability, though what they now claim, whether directly or indirectly, is completely baffling and incredible. It should be noted at this point that they had given each other this shock, the daughter by telling her mother that she had been brought home by her brother Kostandin, the mother by informing her daughter that Kostandin, with all her brothers, had long since departed this world .
    I tried to discuss the matter with Doruntine, and what I managed to glean from her, in her distress, may be summarised more or less as follows:
     
    One night, not long ago (she does not recall the exact date), in the small city in central Europe where she had been living with her husband since her marriage, she was told that an unidentified traveller was asking for her. On going out, she saw the horseman who had just arrived and who seemed to her to be Kostandin, although the dust of the long journey he had just completed made him almost unrecognisable. But when the traveller, still in the saddle, said that he was indeed Kostandin, and that he had come to take her to her mother as he had promised before her marriage, she was reassured. (Here we must recall the stir caused at the time by Doruntine’s engagement to a man from a land so far away, the opposition of the other brothers, and especially the mother, who did not want to send her daughter so far off, Kostandin’s insistence that the marriage take place, and finally his solemn promise, his besa, that he would bring her back himself whenever their mother yearned for her daughter’s company.)
    Doruntine told me that her brother’s behaviour seemed rather strange, since he did not get off his horse and refused to go into the house. He insisted on taking her away as soon as possible, and when she asked him why she had to leave in such haste – for if the occasion was one of joy, she would don a fine dress, and if it was one of sorrow, she would wear mourning clothes – he said, with no further explanation, “Come as you are.” His behaviour was scarcely natural; moreover, it was contrary to all the rules of courtesy. But since she had been consumed with yearning for her family for these three years (“I lived in the most awful solitude,” she says), she did not hesitate, wrote a note to her husband, and allowed her brother to lift her up behind him .
    She also told me that it had been a long journey, though she was unable to say exactly how long. She says that all she remembers is an endless night, with myriad stars streaming across the sky, but this vision may have been suggested by an endless ride broken by longer or shorter intervals of sleep. It is interesting to note that she does not recall having travelled by day. She may have formed this impression either because she dozed or slept in the saddle all day, so that she no longer remembers the daylight at all, or because she and her escort retired at dawn and went to sleep, awaiting nightfall to continue their journey. Were this to prove correct, it would suggest that the rider wished to travel only by night. In Doruntine’s mind, exhausted as she was (not to mention her emotional state), the ten or fifteen nights of the trip (for that is generally how long it takes to travel here from Bohemia) may have blended into a single long – indeed endless – nocturnal ride .
    On the way, pressed against the horseman as she was, she noticed quite unmistakably that his hair was not just dusty, but covered with mud that was barely dry, and that his body smelled of sodden earth. Two or three times she questioned him about it. He answered that he had