Chapter Eleven - Scourged
His eyes were swollen shut; blood stained his teeth, his hair, and his clothes. He could taste the bile in the back of his throat and wretched again, but had nothing left in his belly to give up. His eyes were dry but he could feel the dried tear tracks upon his cheeks. He felt empty, utterly, completely empty.
The golden woman had ordered her minions to bind them, to subdue, but not to injure. No, that pleasure she had kept for herself. It had been her pale, shimmering hands around his newborn son's ankles when his brains were dashed out against the wall. His fresh, beautiful new life snuffed out, reduced to nothing more than a chunky crimson splash upon a whitewashed wall. Finn, that is what Janis had wanted to name him. Finneas Griegar Trubor, he would have been named after her long-dead older brother Finneas and after himself.
He winced, dragging his left arm forward, then his right. That bitch, the golden lady, had really worked him over. Griegar crept along, blind and on all-fours. A rifle was strapped across his back, but should something attack him it would be more useful as a club for bludgeoning than as a firearm.
After a time, Griegar knocked his shoulder into a tree and sighed. I'll never find them like this... he leaned his back up against the tree. The lady had scourged his back, and it was excruciating to touch it, but it was just as bad when nothing touched the wounds. He grimaced, and even that expression was painful. At least one of his ribs was broken, all of the toes on one foot. I'll never find... them...
And just as quickly as the hopelessness and doubt crept into his mind, a voice rock-hard with assurance contradicted him. It told him to stand up, to head east, to never give up.
Your living children need you, Greigar Trubor, and your dead ones as well...
The voice was tinged with warmth as it echoed in his mind, and though it was distant and thin, it was not tinny.
It was bronze.
Posted by Pheenie @ 9/11/2008 02:33:00 PM