Riding the Unicorn by Paul Kearney

Author:Paul Kearney [Kearney, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantástico
ISBN: 9781781081914
Publisher: BernyBenuyas
Published: 2015-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

IT WAS WARM in the tent with the brazier glowing, and the dips smoking brightly. Willoby drank in the scene, savouring the smells of leather and wet earth, burning wood and oil, feeling the velvety fleece of the furs under his palms, the warm sear of the spirit in his gullet. Real medieval stuff.

And the girl. What was she up to? This tactile business. She gave him goosebumps. Too beautiful, too perfect to be truly interested in him, and yet here she was pawing him all over the place. And where was she going to sleep? With him? He shook his head over the flask of liquid they called wine. He would have called it moonshine himself. It was strong enough. No, there was something else going on here, some agenda hidden to him. Beauties did not go pie-eyed over John Willoby without a reason. And then there was her comment as she thought him asleep. Why had she called him a fool?

Hell, Willoby, he thought. Lie back and enjoy it. It’s only a hallucination. What an entry in the log this’ll make! Franks will wet himself.

Jesus, I hope I’m not just lying on some wet pavement somewhere. I could catch my death.

So real, though. God, I love it. Monsters out in the snow, wizards and princes. That frostbitten bloke—what had his name been? Kardalak, it had sounded like. That had been a real sword at his hip. Willoby would have liked to have examined it. Still, he had seemed a decent bloke, a real soldier type. More straightforward than the other two.

He wondered if it were possible for him to stay here long enough to see the sun come up over the snows, to see dawn in another world. That would be a hell of a thing. Worth catching a cold for.

He watched the girl as she moved about the tent, taking simple joy in her movements. God, she was lovely, like some long-limbed animal. She was small-breasted, lithe, slim-fingered. Her hair fell forward over her face and she tucked it behind one ear. He would have liked to kiss that ear.

Like Maria, yes, but yet unlike.

Yep, Franks would get an infinite amount of mileage out of this one; fancying his daughter’s doppelganger.

What was she doing, kneeling before that chest? He could smell something gamey, meat near to going off, overlaid with a sharp herbal pungency. And bread—she was heating bread over the brazier. The wholesome scent filled the tent and brought the water springing into his mouth.

Oh, don’t let me wake up, he thought. Not just yet. I want to taste everything, to guzzle it down and remember it, hold it in my head.

Inexplicably, he found tears burning in his eyes, and blinked them away.

‘Are you hungry?’ she asked, and he nodded. Easy, Willoby.

Dreams can become nightmares. Tread softly.

She brought him warm bread with a hard, stale crust. It was full of husks and tiny pieces of grit that crunched between his teeth like sand, but it had a solid taste to it, as though it had been baked from the very soil of the earth.

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