Free Panther's Prey by Doreen Owens Malek

hunger or thirst in these woods? Or be devoured by hyenas? Do you? Or do you want to be set upon by bandits far worse than I, who will slit your throat and then desecrate your dead body until no one could tell that it had ever housed a human being?”
    “I didn’t realize there were degrees of brigandry,” Amy replied, snatching her arm back and rubbing her wrist. “How interesting to know that there are men even you look down upon. They must be very low indeed.”  
    “You should be thanking me for coming after you,” he said, picking up more dry branches from the ground and tossing them onto the fire.
    “Thanking you! If you hadn’t abducted me in the first place I wouldn’t be standing in the middle of this wilderness having a pointless discussion with a common criminal. I didn’t come half way around the world to be treated like this!”
    He put his hands on his hips and glared at her. “And how have you been treated? Have you been beaten or violated or starved? Tell me, for I would like to know!”
    “Oh, that’s right, I forgot. You’re a great humanitarian because you gave your flunkies orders to feed me.”
    He strode away from her angrily, but she followed, sweeping in front of him to face him. “You must think I’m a simpleton. You’re taking care of me to get the maximum price when you sell me to some scoundrel like that odious man Halmad. I felt I needed a bath after he had just looked at me. You’re maintaining me the way a farmer maintains the livestock in his pens. And you came after me to safeguard your investment, for no other reason, let’s be clear about that, agha. So you answer me now, do I really have reason to be grateful?”
    “Your President is not the only American who makes speeches,” he said disgustedly, striding back to the fire and adding some larger limbs to it. “Come over here, sit down, and be quiet. Have something to eat.”
    She didn’t obey but watched him remove a packet of food and a leather bottle of water from his pouch.
    “Is that your kidnapping kit?” she said sarcastically.
    “I keep it with my horse always, for emergencies,” he replied, taking a long drink. Amy licked her lips and took a step forward hesitantly.
    “How exciting to think that I qualify as an emergency,” she said, but took another step.
    He saw her movement and held out a woven sack tied with a string. When she didn’t accept it he set it on the ground.  
    “How did you find me?” she asked, finally walking over to the fire and sitting down next to him.
    “I’ve been tracking people and animals through these hills since I was five,” he replied, handing her the water bottle. “I had a horse and you left a wide trail. You were very easy to find.”
    She took a drink, guzzling the cool water, and he finally ripped the bottle away from her, alarmed.
    “Take it easy, too much at once after a thirst is sick making,” he said.
    It was strange to hear him using British expressions, stranger still to hear the Oxford accent emerging from his bandit’s mouth. What an odd hybrid creature he was: if the newspaper she had read was correct, the daughter of his sworn enemy, the Sultan, was married to his brother.
    And he certainly didn’t speak or smell like her American idea of an outlaw.
    “Did I drink it all?” she asked anxiously, the prospect of going thirsty again alarming her.
    “There’s a brook just through those trees,” he said, nodding to the left. “I’ll refill it in the morning.”
    She opened the sack he had produced and began to eat the contents, strips of dried goat meat mixed with raisins, berries and split hazelnuts.
    “This is like pemmican,” she said, chewing.
    “What’s that?”
    “The western people of my country prepare it for the trail. It’s high in protein and keeps indefinitely without spoiling.”
    He grunted.  
    She chewed some more, thinking. “Look, can’t we make a deal?” she finally said, striving for a reasonable tone. “You want