White Sky by Lara Campbell McGehee

Author:Lara Campbell McGehee [McGehee, Lara Campbell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Traversing Z Press via Indie Author Project
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

THE REBEL’S BOW

I

IN EARLY AUTUMN of the fourth year that Jem lived with the old rebels, there wasn’t enough snow yet to build snow domes—the bare brown earth was still exposed in several places in the courtyard of the fort—but it had turned very cold. With the days growing shorter, it was gloomier than ever inside the dark fort, and the old kitchen between the walls of stone and sod had a low ceiling and was always smoky, which made them all cough, especially Avakab, and put whiny Waltak into a particularly unpleasant mood. But venturing outside of the gray walls wasn’t much more appealing, with the air painfully cold and the frozen mud in the streets grooved with deep ruts that made walking difficult, running impossible.

Jem was in a foul mood himself as he poked about looking for things to do, wishing over and over that it would snow so he could work on building the illus instead. As he wandered through the fort, he entertained a daydream in which he tricked Rulskar, trapping him alone in the pantry, and stole the fine rifle the madman always carried over his shoulder. He pursued the morbid fantasy through several different conclusions, debating how best to kill the man—using the rifle itself wouldn’t work, since someone might hear the shot—and dispose of his remains in some clever way so no one would ever suspect him.

Largely thanks to Rulskar, fantasizing about rifles, knives, and axes was one of Jem’s favorite past times, though he knew many of those fantasies were childish. And sometimes they were gruesome, and he was ashamed when he imagined what Enkara would think if she knew he had such thoughts. But that didn’t stop him from fervently desiring a weapon. So when he made a remarkable discovery in one of the small storerooms, it was hard not to feel that his wishes had been answered.

He’d found a hole in one of the interior sod walls, where a family of voles had made a nest. When he came around to check the room on the other side, the pale yellow light of his lamp revealed an old wooden trunk constructed of wide solid planks—the kind of wood that was scarce in Kruvak—pushed into the corner adjacent to the wall he was mending. As the lamp’s glow stretched the trunk’s rectangular shadow up the earthen wall, he saw something wrapped in cloth that was partly concealed behind it, leaning against the crux of the corner.

Jem raised the lamp to look closely at the faded red cloth. It was wrapped around something made of pale tan reindeer skin that showed through a gap in the covering. When he touched it, he found a solid smooth shape. His fingers closed on it and he tugged it out, lifting it over the top of the trunk. There was a soft rattling sound, and his eyes grew wide when he saw what it was.

He was holding a quiver full of arrows. The quiver

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