Ruin (The Ruin Saga Book 1) by Harry Manners Read Free Book Online

said, “but we still need more food.”
    “We need a lot more,” Lucian growled. “Whole world’s running on dregs.”
    Norman sighed. “We’ll go back tomorrow. There has to be more somewhere.”
    Allie interrupted in a hurried, high-pitched babble. It was as though a great swell of words had dammed behind her tongue and they were now spilling from her mouth in a torrent. “There were others.”
    Alex stopped and looked at her. Under his gaze she grew timid. He waited patiently for her embarrassment to wane. “Just like we’ve seen everywhere else,” she continued. “They’re all starving. Everybody’s starving.”
    Alex was quiet. They skirted the edge of the river and headed towards the illuminated portion of the city. Voices calling from near the cathedral were now reaching their ears, bouncing off ancient slate chimneys and reverberating along the intervening cobbled alleyways.
    When he glanced at her once more, he saw that her embarrassment had been replaced by a dazed frown. “There were so many,” she said thickly.
    “We’re not going back, not there,” Norman said. “We’ll go somewhere else. If we take anything more from the coast then we’ll be killing them.”
    Alex shook his head. “It’s too late to worry about that.”
    A strained silence followed, but Alex made a point to keep his steady pace. The feather in his hand kept him moving, even as they passed beneath the first of the illuminated streetlights.
    “We saw a lot of people today,” Lucian said.
    Alex cleared his throat. “How did they look?”
    “Skin and bones.”
    They rode along in silence for a moment. They were now only a hundred metres away from the row of restored buildings that the people of New Canterbury had come to know as Main Street.
    “We shouldn’t go back,” Norman said.
    Alex sensed the tension in his voice. By the sound of it, they’d had a rough time in Margate. He decided to offer no resistance this time. If things were about to take a turn for the worse, he needed to keep Norman on his good side. “Alright, not yet,” he conceded. “But soon we’ll have to.”
    There was more to say, more to argue over and report, but none of the three men said a single word further—not in Allison’s presence. He might not have known her name, but people had pointed her out to Alex before; it was common knowledge that the art of subtlety was as alien to her as the greater good. As it was, the least that they could expect was for the story of the encounter with the coast’s natives to be distributed overnight, as if by some infectious magic, to all ears within the city. The last thing they needed was gossip diluted by the hundred reiterations that would occur along such a chain of whispers.
    And so their conversation petered out as quickly as it had begun. They each withdrew into their respective thoughts, their shadowed faces sheer white and bowed against the harsh glow of spluttering streetlights.
    *
    Norman was disturbed.
    Guards—ghostly sentinels, hidden amidst shadow in the alleys overhead—were now appearing as they crossed the perimeter of Main Street. The detail, usually composed of one or two crack snipers, had swelled to a party of over a dozen. Norman had lived in the city for a long time, and not once had there been the need for such a heavy overnight guard.
    Nevertheless, there they were, perched on roofs and balconies like fleshy gargoyles. To the casual eye they would have appeared to be no more than insomniacs staring out at the night. But from their stances and rigid orientation, spaced in a strategic barrier along the pool of light thrown down by the streetlights, Norman could spot them.
    This was no doubt Alexander’s doing. Norman almost spoke of it, but then laid eyes on Allison, still haughty and quiet beside him, and the words died in his throat.
    It was rarely loud, even here, and at night it was often just as quiet as the surrounding dead city. The sound of the horses’ hooves was