The War by Verity A. Buchanan

Author:Verity A. Buchanan [Buchanan, Verity A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Young Adult Christian Fantasy
Publisher: Ambassador International
Published: 2022-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

DARKNESS SWAM OVER HIM, WEBBED and cloudy and faintly imprisoning. But his mind had broken loose of it, and he knew that he was waking and soon his body would come free as well.

He remembered the moon, and the small, soft-eyed dark mare. “Downstream,” said a terse, snapping voice in his head, and then he remembered the chase, the pain in his leg growing worse and worse until his whole world became two words: Hold on. Crossing the Dirion River, and then—then the patrol racing out of the trees to cut them off. They were hemmed in, trapped.

Jedediah Crayes’ voice, hard, cutting through to him: “Mordred, boy, are you with me?” His own answer, fiercely firm, firmer than he was. The responding order: Stay with me. And then Jedediah Crayes’ horse leaping away in a blur, and Mordred pressing his mare after, spurring her on with every word and physical thrust he had, unable to ever quite catch up, the pain of his leg fading away to less than nothing in the intensity and rush. Passing under the nose of the foremost horse, a blade slicing just above his head—and they were away, racing down the shore, the pursuit stringing out behind them and trying vainly to gather up the lost ground. The horse flew under him like a winged thing, and as light rolled up over the sky, he felt wonderfully free, and at the same time empty of breath, weight, or even life . . .

Gathering their horses in at the West Gate, arrows arcing over their heads, but not at them—aimed at the Runnicorans behind; the gate swinging open, and the world crashing over him again in a great wave of heat and vertigo and noise. He remembered feeling sick with the heat, so sick that he might have vomited; he did not remember whether he had; but he knew he had fallen off the horse, because he remembered the mare’s breath snuffling by his ear, while voices babbled dimly through the noise, which he realized now had been mostly in his own head.

And that was the last he remembered.

Where was he now? He knew he had been sleeping a long time; he remembered no dreams, but the darkness behind him felt long and unbroken. He opened his eyes, and saw a distant stone ceiling that looked like it might be cobwebbed.

Without thinking whether it might hurt him, he turned his head to the side. It did not hurt, and he saw a flat grey stone wall that shot up until it met that far-off ceiling with a join of many cobwebs. The floor needed sweeping.

What is the matter with me? he thought. I am turning into Laufeia.

He turned to the other side, and saw rows of rude cots stretching out to the end of a long, bare room, a figure on every one, and more figures, women mostly, moving between them. And then he knew where he was, and he felt tired and a little abandoned.

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