Tomorrow's Kingdom by Maureen Fergus

Author:Maureen Fergus
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PRH Canada Young Readers

THIRTY-ONE

MANY MILES TO THE EAST, Mordecai and Lord Atticus were, at that very moment, cresting the hill that overlooked the New Man training camp north of the Syon.

“Oh, thank the gods we’ve arrived at last!” brayed Lord Atticus, wiping the back of his dripping nose with the sleeve of his rain-soaked doublet.

As he slouched in his saddle, gazing down upon the sea of grey tents that surrounded the wooden ramparts of the training camp nestled in the valley below, Mordecai did not thank the gods. Mordecai never thanked the gods, for it was the gods that had cursed him with his ruin of a body and, as a consequence Mordecai cursed them.

He cursed them—and at this particular moment, he also thumbed his nose at them.

And that was because he’d done it.

He’d done it!

He’d travelled all the way from the black stone castle to this place that was to be the gathering point for his great army—and he’d done so riding on horseback alongside his men like Bartok or Murdock or any other commanding officer would have done. He’d not even brought along a carriage or litter in which he might rest if riding proved too much for him. Indeed, he’d lashed out at the soldier who’d suggested that he do so!

He was now a military commander, after all, not some woman.

To be sure, it had been an arduous journey—arduous almost beyond endurance. After just a few hours, the rolling gait of the horse had begun to take a toll, as Mordecai had known it would. After a few hours more, the temperature had dropped so low that his gloved fingers had grown stiff, his muscles had seized up, and each laboured breath had hung in the icy air like mist. Then it had begun to rain, and it had not stopped raining in the six days since.

Admittedly, the journey had taken twice as long as it might otherwise have because galloping had been out of the question and they’d had to make camp early each evening that he might have time to recover, but no matter.

He’d done it.

Most ironically, it had been Lord Atticus who’d given Mordecai the strength to carry on whenever he’d thought he could not bear the rigours of the field a moment longer. From the outset, the perpetually inebriated young lord had complained—of the cold and the rain and the muck, of the size of his tent and the thinness of his mattress, of the poor quality of the food and the ineptitude of his attendants and the absence of women. He’d complained so shrilly and so incessantly, in fact, that under normal circumstances Mordecai would have given in to the urge to have his tongue cut out—both to shut him up and to give him something worthwhile to complain about.

But under these particular circumstances, Mordecai had relished hearing him blubber like a woman—and had relished knowing that the men in their company were hearing him do so—for it had surely made Mordecai look all the more stoic and manly by comparison.

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