05 The Scourge of God by S. M. Stirling

05 The Scourge of God by S. M. Stirling

Author:S. M. Stirling [Stirling, S. M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780451462282
Publisher: Roc
Published: 2008-01-01T00:00:00+00:00


Closer, she slowed, ghosting from tree to tree. If Mary was still up the tree watching, she’d . . .

Then she heard the scream. It came from the right place, and she slowed still further. Her left arm was still weak, too weak to use her bow.

Move swiftly, but don’t dart; it draws the eye.

The rain had tapered off to a falling mist, but that cut visibility, too. A snort from a horse as it caught her familiar scent; their dappled Arabs were tied up to a line strung between two trees, but there was a third there—a strong nondescript brown beast, looking worn down as if by long hard riding. She ghosted closer . . .

Mary screamed again; she was up against the hundred-foot pine she’d been using as a blind, and a man in a robe the color of dried blood was holding her by the throat. Holding her off the ground, and squeezing, and her face was a mass of blood. The Dúnedain longsword lay on the ground nearby, and a shete; they were both red, the sticky liquid turning thin and dripping away as rain washed the steel.

“Look . . . at . . . me,” the man—the priest—in the robe said. “I—see—you.”

His other arm ended short of a hand, and it had a rawhide tourniquet bound around it; even then Ritva found a fractional instant to be astonished. An injury like that would leave a man flat on his back with shock for days, at a minimum! And the hand was lying not far off.

“Look . . . at . . . me,” he said again. “Tell . . . me . . .”

The words sounded dark. Not just deep or gravelly; as if they had more weight than words could bear, as if they were suffused somehow, like a man’s face when he strained at a heavy load, like a weight that dimpled the surface of the world as a heavy footstep would a sheet of taut canvas. Suddenly the cold wet sapped at Ritva’s strength with a feeling of dreary hopelessness. A wrongness that only flight could cure, enough space between her and this thing that she wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. She couldn’t walk towards that.

Instead she ran to him. “Try looking at me!” she screamed, gathering her will.

The sword flashed down as he turned and released her sister; he batted at the gray-silver streak with his injured arm, but the blade raked across his chest. The wound wasn’t instantly deadly, but she could see the skin split and blood well out . . . and then stop.

And he smiled. He smiled at her.

“I—see—you,” he said.

Lord of Blades, be with me! she thought desperately; and the fear blew out of her. Maiden of the sword, aid me!

She set both hands on the hilt of her longsword as he came towards her.

He’s like the guy Rudi fought. He doesn’t feel pain, her mind thought dispassionately. Or shock. And so he won’t faint or go wobbly.



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