Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine

Author:Rachel Caine [Caine, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy, Young Adult
ISBN: 9780749017279
Publisher: Allison & Busby
Published: 2015-07-05T16:00:00+00:00

By the time they reached the forward positions of the Welsh army, the pace of the Library carriages had slowed to a crawl, lurching over rough and broken roads, through mud, over debris that Jess was glad he didn’t have to look at through the front windows. Someone in the back had asked what the smell was, and the gunner had answered, woodenly and accurately, ‘War.’ It was a foul mix of things that worked on the brain in terrible ways, and Jess was fairly certain that what they were smelling had to be the bodies of unburied dead.

When they finally ground to a halt, Jess felt as sore as if he’d been run through the same number of hours of Wolfe’s brutal training, and he knew everyone felt the same.

‘Everybody out,’ the gunner said, and slid open the door at Jess’s back. Jess had to catch himself from tumbling to the mud. His legs had gone to sleep, and he endured the sharp-prick pain of blood reviving dulled, sleeping nerves. While he leant against the muddy surface of the carriage and helped the others out, he realised that they were all being watched.

The Welsh were camped here in wide tents – hard, dangerous-looking men and women sitting on camp stools, cleaning weapons. Some were talking together, but they all had their wary, assessing eyes on the newcomers.

The Welsh wore dark green, dappled with brown, but the colours were camouflaged further by the ever-present mud. The only colourful spot on them were the red Welsh dragons embroidered on their shoulders. Jess returned their stares for a second before helping the others down from the carriage. When they were all assembled in a tight, anxious cluster, Wolfe arrived, with Captain Santi. Santi, like his men, was dressed in black, with the Library’s symbol prominently displayed in gold on the front and back. He was also armed to the teeth, and moved more confidently than Jess had ever seen him. This was Captain Santi’s natural home, the battlefield, and his dark eyes missed nothing – not the tension of the Welsh troops, the muttering, the hands gripping weapons a shade too tightly.

‘With me,’ Wolfe said to his flock, and they all scrambled after him and Santi as they strode through the muddy field towards the centre of the encampment. When Jess looked back, he saw that the other Library troops had fallen into a guard formation around the vehicles. They’d also picked up a squad of High Garda men and women behind them.

‘Do we need so much protection? We’re armed, after all,’ Thomas said. He sounded a touch anxious, though he was fighting to press it down. Jess sent him a glance. The young German’s face was tense, but still.

‘So are the Welsh,’ Jess said. ‘And they’ve fired at real targets.’

Thomas wasn’t the only one feeling unsettled; every one of them seemed to be, even Dario, though the Spaniard covered it by returning challenging looks from Welsh troops with glares of his own.

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