Interregnum Read Online Free Page A

disappearing momentarily from view as a brief change in the wind drove the column of choking smoke across in front of him. A couple of seconds later, the scout appeared out of the grey and jogged back up to the wall, out of breath and wild-eyed.
    “The other camps are…” he gasped “all on fire and the enemy … are everywhere. I think … we’re the last.”
    “Shit! Fuck!” The captain spat. “They’ve done this deliberately to catch us!”
    Kiva stood for a moment, fighting the obvious decision. He hated abandoning a contract, but if the rest of the army had gone, what chance did twelve men stand against thousands? He sighed unhappily and gestured once more at Athas.
    “Get the kit together as fast as you can” he ordered. “We’re leaving, and we’re leaving now !”
    Without questioning, Athas relayed the orders to the men. As the company gathered their gear, two men still on watch for the enemy to reappear, Kiva jogged back to the young man in white, crouched by the wall and keeping a close eye on the burning mass.
    “We gotta move, so you’re on your own, lad” he said. “Surrender fast and they’ll probably just rob you; they can’t mistake you for a soldier.”
    He turned to retrieve his kit bag just in time to see Athas glaring at him.
    “What?” he growled.
    The sergeant merely shook his head and then returned to his work. The company’s bags were already shouldered when one of the lookouts called out the warning.
    “Here they come again!”
    Athas waved Kiva away. “Take the rest and get to the farmhouse, sir. I’ll keep Thalo. We’ll cover you for five minutes, then follow on ourselves.”
    Kiva nodded. The two were quite capable of taking care of themselves. Better to risk two than to condemn twelve. He followed as his men started moving out, and then stopped. Some strange need drove him to turn at the last minute and look at the lad in white, standing by the wall with a look of defiant despair. There was something hauntingly familiar about that look and Kiva tried very hard to push it to the back of his mind. Deliberately turning his back on the boy he joined his men as they rushed down the hill, around the perimeter of the forest fire and into the concealing darkness.
     
     

Chapter II.
     
                The marble columns wreathed in fire. The purple and gold drapes blazing and falling away into burning heaps on the floor. A chalice of wine on a small table by a couch, boiling in the intense heat. The panicked twittering of the ornamental birds in their golden cages as the room around them was consumed by the inferno. And in the centre of the room, standing in robes of white and purple, a man. He doesn’t look frightened, though the flames lick at his whole world and his face is already grimy with the smoke. What he looks is disappointed, his arm extended toward the sealed and barred door separating him from a future and a life. Extended toward the figure standing behind that door, turning the final key in the final lock.
    Kiva woke, the grimy soot and dirt on his forehead running down and into his eyes with the sweat. Despite the sweat, he felt so cold and so agonisingly sad. Of all the thoughts jostling for a return to his mind after the horror of the nightmare, strangely, his first and most insistent thought was ‘did the birds die?’
    He glanced around the room. The farm had been unoccupied for three or four days at most. When they’d made their way to the field to meet up with the rest Lord Bergama’s army, they’d found this building the night before the battle, already empty. There had still been half-eaten meals on the table and the fireplace had been warm. Yet another case of the constant feuding between Lords disrupting the lives of the ordinary folk. This family had probably heard tell of the armies descending upon their district and fled, hoping to return after the trouble and find their home intact. He clicked his tongue irritably. He was starting to