Wolf in Shadow by David Gemmell

Author:David Gemmell [Gemmell, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780307797469
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2011-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

The Hellborn invasion of the southlands began on the first day of spring when a thousand riders swept into Rivervale, killing and burning. Ash Burry was captured at his farm and crucified on an oak tree. Hundreds of other families were slain, and refugees took to the hills, where the Hellborn riders hunted them down.

And the army continued ever south.

Forty miles from Rivervale, in the foothills of the Yeager mountains, a small band of men gathered in a sheltered hollow, listening to the tale of a refugee who had lost his whole family. The listeners were tough brutal men, long used to the ways of brigandry, but they listened in growing horror to the stories of butchery, rape, and naked blood lust.

Their leader, a thin, almost skeletal man, sat on a rock, his gray eyes unblinking, his face emotionless.

“You say that they have rifles that fire many times?”

“Yes, and pistols, too,” replied the refugee, an aging farmer.

“What should we do, Daniel?” asked a youth with sandy hair.

“I need to think, Peck. They’re doing us out of our trade, and that’s not right—not by a long haul. I thought we was doing all right what with the three new muskets and the five pistols Gambion brought back. But repeating rifles …”

Peck pushed his hair from his eyes and scratched at a flea moving inside his stained buckskin shirt. “We could get ourselves some of them guns, Daniel.”

“The boy’s right,” put in Gambion, a huge misshapen bear of a man who was heavily bearded and bald as a coot. He had been with Daniel Cade for seven years and was a known man with knife or gun. “We could hit them Hellborn damn hard, gather ourselves some weapons.”

“It may be true,” said Cade, “but this problem is a little larger than just getting guns. We survive off the land, and we spend our Barta coin in towns that don’t know us. These Hellborn are killing off the farmers and merchants and burning the towns. There will be nothing left for us.”

“We can’t take on an army, Dan,” said Gambion. “There ain’t but seventy men among us.”

“You can count me in,” said the farmer. “By God, you can count me in!”

Cade pushed himself to his feet. He was a tall man, and his left leg was permanently straight and heavily strapped at the knee with tight leather. He ran his hand through his thick black hair and then spit on the grass.

“Gambion, take ten men and scour the countryside. Any survivors you come across, direct them to Yeager. If you find a group that don’t know the mountains, escort them in.”

“Men and women?”

“Men, women, children—whatever.”

“Why, Daniel? There’s not enough food for our own selves.”

Cade ignored him. “Peck, you take a dozen men and round up any stray stock—horses, cattle, sheep, goats; there’s bound to be plenty. Drive them back into the Sweetwater canyon and set a pen across the entrance. There’s good grass there. And I don’t want any of you tackling the Hellborn.

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