When The Lion Wakes - H. C. Turk (a court of thorns and roses ebook free .txt) 📗

be fought.

Immediately the city came to him as vast and open compared to the building he had vacated, a space constricted by bigotry. Running bent, he tried not to trip on a dead cat, a broken umbrella. He tried not to stumble on a crack in the curb as he crossed an intersection. Though reflex encouraged him to look up, seeking snipers behind dark windows, he did not bother. If they showed themselves on the street, he would not be able to dodge their shots; so how could he avoid the unseen?

A huge, stinking pile of refuse brought relief, for he felt himself concealed behind its mass in those seconds required to pass. Thinking of the apple, he looked down to his empty hand. Dense and dead, the refuse was created by war and caused disease. He felt that he was carrying it, concealing it.

A light wind came, Alex feeling that the breeze lifted him. He had traveled several blocks. At this rate, he would soon leave the city. Now he ran more upright, his arms moving freely. Catching his finger in that hole in his jacket, he winced.

The sight of an assailant ahead caused him to stop. Staring at the man, Alex fell to the walkway, trying to hide in the open. To his side, the roadway held a large hole. Though seeing nothing but soil within, Alex expected more attackers to leap out. Buildings loomed like mausoleums. Though he could safely hide within, how would his cowardice aid the peace?

The man was unarmed, and did not attack, but moved slowly away, not noticing Alex panting with his face against the pavement. The man moved slowly until several rifle shots from an upper-story window hit the pavement at his feet, then his legs, then his body.

Too terrified to look up, Alex hoped that the adjacent truck would shield him. Staring along the pavement at a coward’s level, he saw those hard strikes move toward him, rapidly marching ants that would eat instantaneously through his body, leaving bloody trails.

The sound seemed innocuous, so high and far away, causing injury in another war. Rolling to his side, Alex rose and rushed to the nearest building, not seeing a door. The deadly ants marched near, accompanied by the distant cracks that sent them. Alex threw himself backwards through the window, the grenade striking first, glass collapsing as he landed on his heels. Unable to remain upright, he thrust backwards to avoid the glass, hands and elbows smacking the hardwood floor. He landed on his back, and the grenade.

Pain so completely rushed through his skeleton that he noticed nothing else, not cuts across his body, not bullet holes in his limbs. The clearest thought striking rigid, agonized Alex was that he would die suddenly, utterly, and not suffer as he did from that meager fall.

His agony did not last, soon replaced by manageable discomfort. Sitting slowly, Alex felt an added pain in his buttocks and the heels of his hands. He saw no blood, no bullet wounds, no glass cuts. He gained good thinking in time to see a family of average citizens thrust old bolt-action rifles and single-shot revolvers at the intruder, then pull the triggers.

A sound so vast filled the room that Alex felt the source had leapt into his head. He had already leapt away, not concerned with glass on the floor or the grenade’s striking his spine again. Seeing the broken window, the light beckoning him toward another foolish version of safety, Alex began crawling, hands crunching the glass. For those seconds, he felt utterly numb, the firearms’ explosions filling his head with a static clog. Aware that he would not reach safety before the family ran out of shells, he stopped, raising his hands in a plea, seeing two rifles and two handguns fall to the floor, that multiple thump of failure coming as a peaceful expression of relief.

As Alex sat upright, a child began crying. Seeing that his grandmother, parents, and older brother had shot one another in the knee and ribs and back and hip, all of them sprawled in more misery than Alex, all bloody and agonized and astonished, the boy grasped the nearest knife from the kitchen table and made to exorcise the demon that had destroyed his family, hand and lips trembling as he ran to Alex.

Alex scrambled through the window as the child stabbed him in the calf. Wincing, Alex fell to the pavement only to stand and begin running. Gunshots sounded from a bank, the CLOSED banner hanging limply from a tarnished pole. The bullets struck behind Alex, who vanished around a corner, not suffering the first bullet wound, only cuts on his hands and a throbbing gash in his leg.

The grimace and wince that accompanied each step made him feel foolish. Could anyone hear? In this alley of trash cans, broken crates, and basement entries, Alex would have no opportunity to avoid a clandestine attacker. Abandoning worthless fear, he rubbed his palms together and pressed them against his pants until the bleeding slowed. Despite feeling a trickle emerge from that leg gash, he did not attend to it. The flow was not a gush, but a leak, he hoped.

Early morning light cut large, angular volumes in the alley’s dark air. Alex proceeded to the end of the cobblestone without being assaulted, until an alien sound pricked his ears. Several voices burst out in laughter, their joy not muffled by concealing walls. Losing his inattentive lethargy, Alex found an even greater sensory jolt. He had lost the hand grenade. It had fallen off. Reaching behind, he felt the grenade clipped to his belt. Numbness in his spine had concealed his awareness of the tiny bomb. Tiny for a bomb, but formidable for a cancerous growth likely to kill its bearer.

Approaching the alley’s end, Alex saw a woman throw a slop bucket’s contents against the cobblestone, and he could smell the feces. He saw the urine flow and noticed wet pieces of paper cling to the edge of a broken brick. Erect now, he felt the pain in his back and the trickle of blood from his leg and the tenderness in his cut hands and the heavy void signifying the hand grenade, and from around the corner came some mechanical sound, a truck or tank or....

Trying to calm his fearful panting and overanxious awareness, Alex brashly stepped ahead to see several militiamen beside a truck looking toward him. As they raised their rifles, Alex began running, not feeling numbness or blood or soreness from any wound. He ran across the narrow street, entering the next alley, certainly not fleeing along his original path. He could not aid the peace by crawling back home.

Another man ran ahead of Alex, limbs swinging mechanically. No shot came from behind, only the sound of the truck motor racing, the transmission whining, gears efficiently delivering the warriors to their objective.

On the broad thoroughfare leading from palace grounds to city square, Alex ran between buildings and cars. Leaning through windows, many citizens witnessed this chase, the lead man slipping into a doorway or wall rent Alex could not discern, the truck turning to follow directly behind, slowing so the men could fire from the canvas-covered bed. Running without plan, Alex heard no bullets whiz past. He saw no shattered glass or punctured sheet metal. Not until he found his legs blown away did he look behind. No, the street quavered from a blast. As his weak legs collapsed from the concussion, Alex glanced behind to see a mortar hole spewing debris. The truck deftly steered past, into the path of the second mortar round, sheet metal and glass and flesh and bones strewn instantaneously in a hemisphere of ruin.

The truck’s front axle rolled along the pavement like a stick. Alex began running again, though he could not lift his hands. Some personal sound came from the unseen audience, and Alex thought applause, though the clapping might have been dismay instead of appreciation.

Obliterating all personal sounds, invisible arcs brought more demolition to the thoroughfare. The next mortar round struck ahead of Alex, and he stopped, staring. Debris shot from the street at startling speed, asphalt shards falling against motorcars and fabric canopies, accompanied by ripping dust that would eventually settle. Trying not to fall to his knees as the street shuddered, Alex found himself lost, both ends of his path besieged. When an explosion from behind threw him to his face, he followed that direction.

He could make no better progress than stumbling with sagging head. Between explosions, he heard screaming. The sound did not resemble a voice, but a crazed machine, a sentient being stripped of sense. Concussions transformed the block into a dust-filled box shaken by a demon’s hand. Rising from his knees, an irregular shard of metal falling from his foot—the paw of some machine, the finger of a vehicle—Alex considered traversing the street, because the building beside him quavered. He ran past as the front wall fell, followed by the roof, and people. This dense sound of collapse came as a slow, inexorable wave, mortar blocks and wooden beams creating obstacles for the fleeing occupants. Upon arriving in the street’s center, their hands thrown to the sky or pressed against their faces, the people were met by one more explosion. This blast annihilated a woman and crammed her pieces into her home’s debris, an instantaneous, dismissive death. Her husband would last longer. Lying on his back, bleeding heavily from the chest, he faced the sky with wide eyes and reached for aid.

Alex would help him. An amnesty might settle on the nation, but peace proceeds from soul to soul. Crawling to the man over the spongy remains of a stuffed sofa, Alex saw the chest wound, and considered removing his jacket to use as a bandage. But that would reveal his own bomb, likely inspiring attack from every able citizen. Determining to use the man’s own fabric, Alex began pulling on his trousers, and the leg stretched. With an expression of strange surprise, the man looked down to his feet, which were oriented impossibly. His entire person trembled, except for that leg.

More explosions came as Alex moved away. The only emotion he felt was the need to cower. Now his back was sore from bending, ducking. As the explosions continued, the sky itself seemed to be pounding against his head. Needing to rest and to hide for a moment, Alex found himself at the bottom of a crater. Rusty water dripped from iron pipes. Stiff and weak, he had to force himself to breathe in and out, in and out. Wondering how much more of this bombardment he could survive, Alex understood that a total of six mortar shells had fallen.

When they stopped, he began again. Incapable of predicting the vagaries of urban warfare, he did not know where to run. Across the nation, an unwritten vow promised that the Monument of Founding would not be invaded by either party. Having come to retrieve their past, the visitors would not damage the site. Miles. Despite the explosive commotion behind, this area of the city was scarcely damaged. Alex only had to proceed for another few miles. If he were late, would the ceremony wait for him? Willem would, and he knew how to end the war.

Skirting the city’s square, Alex saw that the brick paving was intact, though the fountain’s statue had been neatly inverted by a small explosion. Perhaps a hand grenade. Beneath a haberdashery’s overhang, a woman dragged the butchered leg of an animal, a horse or cow, though Alex thought lion. Past the fountain, a