Exile (Bloodforge Book 1) by Tom Stacey Read Free Book Online

and he panicked, afraid
that he had lost his sight after all. However he soon realised that it was
simply night time. He suppressed manic laughter. His eyes were as useless to
him as if they had stayed shut.
    The Soldier fumbled
around on his knees, wincing with pain as the ragged wound on his left hand
touched cold metal, then damp soil, then grave-cold flesh. He had fallen amidst
a mound of bodies, his helmet lost somewhere among the pile of broken rag dolls
that had once been men. His good hand closed around the warm leather hilt of a
sword. He lifted it with a grunt and inspected the metal. From what little he
could make out it was a simple straight short sword with a wooden cross guard
and a thick blade in good condition. There was no gore on the blade — its
owner had died unblooded, then.
    The Soldier planted the
point in the ground and used it as a crutch to haul himself unsteadily to his
feet. His eyes were still adjusting to the gloom but he could make out the
shapes and shades around him. It was a world stained with a grim palette of
grey, black, and red, though a red rendered so dark in the light as to be
nearly black. The extent of the butchery around him made him shudder. It
stretched as far as he could make out, shattered forms of men lying in intimate
groups or scattered loosely like individual leaves on an autumn day. Every now
and again a spear or planted standard jutted upwards forlornly from the misery
below.
    A groan that was not his
own caught his attention
    He froze, aware that
there had been a noise but unsure of where it had come from. The silence of the
night stretched out until it was almost maddening. He stood and waited,
straining his ears.
    There . Another
groan. He turned his head towards the noise. The sound had been so faint that a
stronger breeze would have smothered it entirely. The Soldier began to shuffle
towards the groans, favouring his left leg. As he moved he felt heat build in
his right thigh, and then wetness as blood began to flow freely again. He
cursed but hobbled on, desperate for contact with the living — or as
close as he could find.
    The pain in his leg was
a steadily burning fire now, licking upwards towards his groin with every
laboured step. He gritted his teeth and pulled himself onwards. Blood had begun
to pool in the neck of his leather boots, making every step a stomach-turning squelch . He stepped over torn armour and
broken helms, outstretched hands and severed limbs, past scorched grass still
smoking with the memory of fire, and puddles of water inked with vital fluids.
The Soldier clambered painfully over the ruin of a bowman whose unarmoured
belly had been split into a wide grin, spilling entrails into the mud. As the
Soldier placed his weight upon what he thought was solid footing, he slipped
and fell across the archer with a crash, coming face to face with the source of
the groans.
    A boy in rough homespun,
no older than fourteen summers, lay stricken on the field. An axe was sunk deep
into his shoulder, pinning him to the ground. Its owner — a heavily
armoured warrior more than twice the boy’s age — still held grimly on to
the wooden haft. He had died with a weapon in his hand and a spear in his back.
The boy’s face was ghostly pale except for his lips where blood had stained him
in a parody of noble beauty. He moaned again in pain, bubbling pink foam from
the corner of his mouth.
    The Soldier crawled
forwards on his elbows until he was inches from the dying boy’s face. He made
to speak and then coughed, spitting blood and dust from his mouth. He had not
realised how thirsty he was. He cleared his throat, and when he spoke, his
voice sounded strong, reassuring. “Brave lad, you fought well.”
    The boy turned his
glassy stare towards him. The Soldier reached down and found the boy’s wrist.
He gripped his hand as a man would greet an equal and held it before the boy’s
eyes.
    This was no warrior.
This was a terrified farmhand with a borrowed sword