Witch: The Moondark Saga, Books 7-9 (The Moondark Saga Boxed Sets Book 3) by Don McQuinn

Author:Don McQuinn [McQuinn, Don]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Raven's Call Press
Published: 2014-06-08T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 21

Emso bristled at his first sight of Baron Ondrat’s fortified village. The ugly heap shouted presumption, squatting broadly on its knoll, lording it over the small walled town. An ostentatious banner flew from the castle’s central tower. Emso conceded there was a certain rightness in the design, at least. Whichever ancestor chose a boar’s head as the Ondrat totem must have anticipated his presiding descendant.

The outer defensive wall was made of huge vertical logs. Emso sniffed. Although they’d require great heat to ignite, once aflame, they were certain to set off the buildings behind, which were far too close. Secondly, the rank vegetation growing in the fields around the walls was untrimmed and ungrazed. There was abundant cover for a surprise attack. Grass even hung over the outer edges of the downed drawbridge, proof that it hadn’t been raised and the mechanism checked for a long time. There weren’t even guards on the wall. A muddy trail led from the east gate to a mounded midden at the edge of the forest. Rats scampered on the accumulated offal in broad daylight. Emso muttered, “This kennel belongs to the man who thinks to correct Gan Moondark? Agh! Ten hungover Wolves, that’s all I’d need. Flatten this festered wart before breakfast. Needs burned just to get clean.”

“You spoke?” The Violet Abbess fixed him with a challenging glare.

“Only thinking what to say to the Baron when we discuss military matters.”

“We’re here to speak of helping Gan. There won’t be any need of that.”

“Oh, there may be,” Emso said easily. Ondrat’s slovenly barony was the only hopeful subject to come along all day, he considered sourly. More, it was the first thing he’d completely understood. And now there was going to be more discussion, more argument. He fell in listlessly behind the Abbess. She led the way across the drawbridge. A lone guard, slouched inside the wall, picked his teeth with a twig as they rode past.

Despite the general decrepitude of the buildings, despite the litter cluttering the streets and narrow alleys, Emso smiled, tried to appear friendly. The people of the town who bothered to meet his gaze did so with blunt curiosity. Emso felt it as half antipathy, half repressed hostility.

A man bellowed angrily. Emso turned to see him standing over a woman. Disregarding a veritable rain of shouted abuse, she scrambled on hands and knees, snatching at a spilled basket load of apples that bounced and rolled brightly in the street rubbish. Another woman, accompanied by a man Emso assumed to be her husband, bent to help. Her escort yanked her uptight. She yelled at the pain, but that was all. The man making all the noise looked to the husband who smiled openly. “All alike,” he said, jerking a thumb from his wife to the other woman. “Always in the way. I saw what happened. You all right?”

The angry man grunted. “Ran right into me. Lucky I didn’t get juice on me, or something. Ought to put them back in the women’s market, where they used to be.

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