The City by Gemmell Stella

Author:Gemmell, Stella [Gemmell, Stella]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2013-04-24T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

FELL ARON LEE was a patient man. It was a patience won by necessity and practice. The life of a soldier consists of long days of mind-numbing boredom interrupted by moments of gut-wrenching terror. Fell had learned to harness the long days, sometimes weeks, occasionally months, of inactivity. When he was young he had found that by closing his eyes and clearing his mind he could reach a place of calm, a sanctuary from the sights and sounds around him. It took a great deal of practice, for it was easy to be distracted by laughter, a loud conversation, or by the itching in his clothes, or the pleasant fantasies of intimacy that any young man enjoys. But then he had had a great deal of time.

Fell had been a soldier for more than thirty years. The state of calm still did not come easily to him, particularly in a cold cramped cell with two other prisoners, but when he achieved it it sometimes rewarded him with revelation.

After weeks of captivity he realized he no longer wanted to be a soldier. He had spent his life killing other men, and some women, even a few children. He rarely met anyone who was not either a soldier or the men and women who serviced them. But Mason was not a soldier, or at least not one on active duty. Fell enjoyed their conversations more than he could say, for they roamed across the world, encompassing religion and history, astronomy, music, and agriculture and animal husbandry. Mason was knowledgeable and well read. Fell had not read a book in his life, but he had spent his years of service listening to the conversations of other men, many of whom were, in other lifetimes, farmers or blacksmiths or scholars, or had trained in the priesthood, before the war enveloped them all. He was surprised how much information he had retained. Each day he looked forward to meeting Mason and afterwards, back in his cell, he would ponder their discussions.

It came to him as a shocking realization that he preferred this life to being back on the battlefield, but it was the truth. And he wondered how impoverished his former life had been for this to be the case. When he returned to the City, he resolved, he would leave this war to others. He had no idea what he would do with the rest of his life, but he hoped it would include Indaro.

He had known many women, from the grimiest whores who patrolled the harbour front to ladies of wealth and leisure, and once, deliciously, a general’s daughter. He had become attached to none of them. They were just a resource to him. He used their bodies in the same way as he used the female soldiers he sent to their deaths daily. He did not despise them, as he knew many men did. He liked some of them and disliked more than a few. He only had one rule, one

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