All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) (60 page)
Read All Who Wander Are Lost (An Icarus Fell Novel) Online
Authors: Bruce Blake
“
Never
has the dark managed to extinguish the light,” he said,
obviously enjoying the opportunity. “But no matter how dark it
may become, the tiniest spark of light has the power to vanquish the
night.”
The boy stared, his
brow creased. A few seconds passed as he formulated his response.
“
Fuck
you, old man.”
And the boy
disappeared as the old man chuckled to himself and returned to
counting the day’s receipts.
####
Bruce Blake lives on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada.
When pressing issues like shovelling snow and building igloos don't
take up his spare time, Bruce can be found taking the dog sled to
the nearest coffee shop to work on his short stories and novels.
Actually, Victoria, B.C. is only a couple hours north of Seattle,
Wash., where more rain is seen than snow. Since snow isn't really a
pressing issue, Bruce spends more time trying to remember to leave
the "u" out of words like "colour" and
"neighbour" then he does shovelling. The father of two,
Bruce is also the trophy husband of
burlesque
diva
Miss
Rosie Bitts
.
Bruce has been writing since
grade school but it wasn't until five years ago he set his sights on
becoming a full-time writer. Since then, his first short story,
"Another Man's Shoes" was published in the
Winter
2008 edition of
Cemetery
Moon
,
another short, "Yardwork",
was
made into a podcast in Oct., 2011 by
Pseudopod
,
and
his first Icarus Fell novel, "On Unfaithful Wings",
published to Kindle in Dec., 2011, has been selected as a
semi-finalist in the Kindle Book Review Best Indie Books of 2012.
The second Icarus Fell novel, “All Who Wander Are Lost”,
was released in July, 2012, with the first book in the four-part
“Khirro's Journey” epic fantasy coming soon after. He
has plans for at least three more Icarus novels, several stand
alones, and a possible YA fantasy co-written with his
eleven-year-old daughter.
Comments
about the book? Send them here:
[email protected]
Find
free stories at:
Smashwords
Be
my friend:
Facebook
Follow
me:
Twitter
See
what I'm up to:
My
Blog
Epic
Fantasy Coming Soon From Bruce Blake:
“
Blood
of the King”
Chapter
One
Khirro
blinked.
Wispy
smoke floated across an otherwise unspoiled sky, marring it,
capturing his attention, bringing him to focus. He realized there
was nothing but sky and the smudge of gray -- no smells, no sounds,
nothing.
Smells
returned first, all of them familiar -- dirt and stone and dust, the
scents of his life that had always been there.
The
farm, then. I’m on the farm.
That
didn’t feel right, didn’t explain the streak of smoke.
Memories were faint, distant, as though seen through the wrong end
of an eyeglass. It couldn’t be the farm, he’d left home
months before... but for where?
Sound
crept back into Khirro’s world. A man’s voice floated to
him on the summer air, then more voices -- not shouts of reverie but
cries of anger and pain. Like a dam bursting, the clash of metal on
metal added to the din.
The
sounds jarred Khirro and memories flooded back like the tide filling
a hole in the sand. Consciousness slammed down on him, brutal and
unflinching. On his left, a sheer stone wall rose thirty feet or
more; his right arm dangled over untold nothing. He moved his head
to see and pain flooded his body, filling every joint and crevice,
leaving no portion free from its touch. Something wet on his
forehead and face, the taste of blood on his swollen tongue. The
feel of it all filled in the last holes in his recollection: the
invasion, the fight on the wall, the king and his men coming to his
rescue. He’d tried to fight alongside the elite knights, but
he was only a farmer forced to dress up in armor and wear a sword.
There’d
be no harvest this year, not for him.
He
spat weakly to clear his mouth; bloody saliva ran down his cheek
into his ear. Ragged breath caught in his throat as he remembered
the warrior breaching the wall, a huge man dressed in closed helm
and black chain mail splashed red -- paint or blood, Khirro couldn’t
tell. The man easily bested him, forced him back until he stumbled
over a fallen knight. He recalled the fellow’s pained groan as
his foot struck his ribs, then he was tumbling end over end down the
stairs, desperate to keep from going over the edge to the courtyard
seventy feet below.
So
that’s where he was -- lying on the first landing,
precariously close to death, as King Braymon and his guard defended
the fortress from a Kanosee army.
King
Braymon.
Everything
hurt: back, arms and legs, hips. His head pounded. Warm blood oozed
down his forehead from above his hairline. His throat worked
futilely; it was a struggle to draw breath. Instead of his lungs
expanding in his chest, panic grew in their place. He’d
survived a bombardment of fireballs and the first Kanosee breach of
the fortress wall, how ironic it would be to die falling down the
stairs.
When
he could breathe again, he gasped air past the bloody taste on his
tongue like a man breaking the surface of a lake after a long dive.
He took inventory of his body, wiggling his fingers and toes,
flexing his muscles. They hurt, every one of them, but they all
worked.
What
do I do now?
The
thought was fuzzy, as though spoken by someone with a mouthful of
cotton. Another thought came fast on the heels of the first:
The
king needs me
.
Even warriors as fierce as King Braymon of Erechania and his guard
couldn’t defeat so many. He wanted to get up and rush to his
king’s side, to stand against the enemy, but more than the
pains in his body kept him from it.
He
thought of Emeline, and of his unborn child. His heart contracted.
Idiot!
All you had to do was push over a couple of ladders. What kind of
soldier are you?
He
was no soldier, that was the answer. Spade and hoe were his tools,
horse and plow, not sword and dirk and catapult. But he had a duty,
and he’d made a promise to Jowyn before the hellfire claimed
his life. Khirro scrambled away from the edge; his head smacked the
stone landing sending a fresh jolt of pain through his temples.
I
don’t want to end up like Jowyn.
Fighting
sounds tumbled over the edge of the walk thirty feet above, carried
to Khirro on a hot summer breeze that petered out long before it
reached him. The thought of King Braymon and his guards fighting for
their lives filled him with guilt. He heard the king’s voice
call for aid. Someone answered, far away and small, and Khirro felt
relief. The clangs and clatters intensified and the king called out
again, but this time his cry cut short. Khirro gasped and held his
breath, waiting for a sign of what had happened.
He
should be at the king’s side, repelling invaders. He was no
one’s equal with a weapon, but another sword was a sword
nonetheless. Pain flared as he tensed his muscles and his body
tilted dangerously in the direction of the painful death awaiting at
the bottom of the wall. He scrambled a few inches away from the
edge, sweat beading on his brow, leather breast piece scraping on
stone stair. A couple of deep breaths pained his ribs but slowed his
racing heart. Part of him wondered if he could just stay there, wait
for the battle to end. His sword arm would be of such little use to
the king, anyway, perhaps more of a hindrance.
Live
to fight another day,
as
the saying went. His father, a lifetime farmer who never hefted a
sword, would said that was a coward’s saying. His father still
considered himself the best judge of such things, but ever since the
accident that cost him his arm, everything Khirro did made him a
coward, or useless, or no good.
He
wouldn’t prove his father right.
Khirro
stared up the wall at the sky, its promise of summer seeming so far
away now. He gathered his strength, drew a few short, sharp breaths.
The muscles in his shoulders and back bunched painfully. He stopped
and released them, allowing his body to go limp again as a figure
appeared at the edge of the wall above.
The
angle and distance made it difficult to see the man until he leaned
forward and peered directly down at Khirro. The black breastplate
splashed with red made him unmistakably the same man who nearly
killed him. Khirro stared up, mimicking a corpse, as anger filled
his chest, partially directed at the invader for his actions, partly
at himself for playing the coward his father accused him of being.
The
man disappeared from sight, but only long enough for Khirro to
release his held breath and half-draw another. When he returned, the
Kanosee warrior held a limp form in his arms. Sunlight glinted on
steel plate as, impossibly, he hefted the armored body above his
head, presenting it to the heavens as if an offering to the Gods.
Something
caught the man’s attention and he looked away for a second
then hurriedly, ungracefully, heaved the body over the edge.
Time
slowed as the limp body twisted through the air toward Khirro. He
saw the blood caked on lobstered gauntlets; dents and scuffs on
silver plate; an enameled pattern scrolling across the top of the
breastplate. The armor seemed familiar but his pounding head gave no
help in recognizing it as the limp form tumbled toward him.