Right now, it's untitled and for a reason. This is the opening page of a novel that I am just starting. I hope that it turns into something, but for now, this is just a teaser. And since I don't title my work until much later into the writing process . . . I think you see where this is going.
Either way, I hope that you enjoy.
Untitled
People
bumped and pushed and shoved Taneid Valar as they moved en mass across the
bridge into the relative safety of the city of Hrith. City was a generous term. It really wasn’t one. There were no walls, no towers, nothing to
protect its inhabitants of from the hordes behind them. Nothing besides the river which looped around
it, protecting three sides while the fourth led out to the plains of Loerien by
a barely maintained road. Any trained
eye could see it wasn’t much. And to
have any hope of surviving longer than a day, they’d have to blow the five bridges
that lead into the city. Assuming that
enough powder could be found.
Valar
looked over his shoulder. People,
refugees all, stretched back as far as he could see toward the darkening horizon. Behind them, the light from fires reflected
off of low lying clouds. Most of those
fires marked funeral pyres for dozens of people. Burned alive in huts and houses. Crops too, adding their glow to the chaos,
making picking off stragglers even easier.
Damn it, they were farmers, not soldiers. At least most of them were. Worse, not everyone would make it. That would be the hardest lesson yet. Sacrifice the few in order to save the many. But that was its own razor’s edge. A death of a thousand cuts.
He
looked at the girl he clutched tight under his right arm. That wasn’t right. Senar wasn’t a girl anymore. She was a young woman in the full bloom of
life. But whenever Valar looked at her,
all he could see was the little child who’d come to him with a scraped knee or
a bouquet of weed blossoms. Forever, that’s
who he saw, not the young woman who’d lost her mother and brother to the . . .
.
Well, Valar
didn’t know who’d done this. That was another
hard truth. If he’d seen something that
gave the puppet masters away, he might have been able to reason it out. As it stood, this seemed like random violence
for violence’s sake. He knew of no one
interested in just that. The Immortal
Lords would have removed them long ago.
Senar
stumbled and Valar caught her weight without even thinking. Should anyone go down on this bridge, their lives
would be in fate’s hands. No one would
stop to help another soul, not when their own lives were in danger. All around, people’s faces looked like
frightened sheep, sent off to the slaughter house and scared of what fate held
for them within the next few hours. And
that was exactly what Valar feared they were.
The
houses on the outskirts of Hrith weren’t exactly hovels, but they weren’t much
better. Most of them were made of clay
and plaster with thatched roofs. Distant
firelight glowed off none to clean white walls.
Already crowded streets were further cluttered with abandoned wagons, broken
water barrels, and other detritus from everyday life. Most of the residents seemed to be gone,
already fled from the armies almost upon them.
Valar could only see a few people remaining as he wove he way through
the hard packed streets—all of them huddled deep within their chosen
coffins.
That
might have been a harsh way to look at it, Valar knew, but unless they wised up
and fled like everyone else, that’s what they would become. A few times, he heard the cry of a baby or
the whimper of child not yet old enough to clothe himself, and he almost
stopped and searched it out. He
resisted, though it tore his heart apart each time. There was little he could do for them, lest
he wanted to be responsible for an army of children. He had his own problems, but he silently
cursed the parents who would lead their children into death. More than once, Senar looked up at him at the
sounds, as if her thoughts mirrored his.
At those times, he added an extra curse for the men who forced him to
seem heartless to his own daughter.
Despite
the press of people attempting to find safety across the bridge, the flow of
people through the streets was a fitful one, with everyone stopping and going
at seemingly random intervals. As they
progressed through the city, Valar started to see why. With the progressively better built homes, soldiers
garbed in the blue uniforms of local militia started appearing, blocking off
streets and directing traffic. More than
once, he saw a family try to dodge down a side street to make better time only
to be pushed back by an officer here, a patrol there. Valar wondered if they were trying to help
everyone or just protect the houses of those wealthy enough to deserve special
treatment. He suspected the later, as occasionally
he’d see a wagon stuffed to the gills escorted by soldiers down the street as
the merchant or lordling and his family rode beside, a look of frightened superiority
written on their faces.
A sudden
boom sounded, echoing through the streets so that it was impossible to tell
which direction it had come from. People
screamed and attempted to run in any direction but that in which they’d been
heading. Cries of “Cannon” and “They’re
attacking” roared from every throat. A
few people even dropped to their knees, clutching their heads in their hands
and crying that they didn’t want to die.
No one wanted to die. That was a
stupid comment if Valar’d ever heard one.
He’d
dropped to a crouch at the noise, still clutching onto Senar. As he returned to his full height, she looked
up at him, eyes searching. “Is that—Are
they here already?”
Valar
shook his head. “No. It’s not possible unless we’ve been stuck in
these streets longer than I suspect.
Even then, I doubt that they won’t make it before sometime after
daybreak tomorrow.”
“Then
what?”
Valar
closed his eyes and pinched his nose.
“The bridges,” he sighed.
“They’re blowing the bridges.”
