EXCERPT
Broken City (Broken City, #1)
I’m not sure how
it happens, but the next thing I’m aware of is the faintly groggy feeling you
get when you’ve been woken from sleep quickly. A glance at the clock tells me
that forty minutes have gone by, yet the room is still silent, with no noise to
rouse me from what had obviously been a deep sleep. I stand up and meet my own
eyes in the mirror above the fire place. I’m staring at myself in a dazed kind
of way, when I realise that mine is not the only figure reflected in its
polished surface.
I suppose it
must have been the second time he walked through this room and the first time
he didn’t notice me curled up in the depths of the large arm chair. He seems
quite as shocked as I am to find he’s not alone.
A full second
elapses before I utter a strangled scream and leg it through the door and into
the passage way. The first thing I come across is another camouflaged figure
and my panic ratchets up a notch. I think of the children, who in about fifteen
minute’s time, will joyfully be free of the shackles of their lessons.
The two soldiers
are behind me, so only way to go is up the stairs. The knowledge that I am
leading the intruders towards the children, rings in my head. With the sound of
pursuit hideously loud in the stairwell, coherent thought is proving difficult.
I’m half way up the forth flight when I hear Dec’s jubilant voice proclaiming
himself the winner of some unseen race.
“Dec, run!” My
voice cracks and my throat, already sore, tightens.
Dec’s voice exclaiming
above my head is cut short as he sees my pursuers. I hear the door onto the
stairwell open and close above me and a moment later something hit the floor
behind me with a dull thud. A cheer reverberates around the walls.
Dec, bless him,
hadn’t run away when I told him to, instead he’d brought a large book from the
school room above and hurled it at one of my attackers. As that soldier was at
this very moment out cold on the steps, I guess his aim must have been pretty
accurate.
The last of the
men is felled by some sort of encyclopaedia, this time lobbed by Roydon. I
reach the landing they are standing on, completely out of breath. Roydon and
Dec seize a hand each and drag me after Ricky who is holding Tarri in his arms
and has Carris’s hand tucked in his.
From the
direction in which they are going, I think their destination is Ralph’s house.
But we keep running into the strangers that have breached the building and our
efforts bring us almost full circle. We come to a standstill in one of the
rooms with a connecting door and pause breathlessly.
“Who are they?”
whispers Roydon.
“I don’t know,
but they have some pretty neat kit,” answers Ricky. He relinquishes Tarri into
Carris’s arms and places an ear to the door. “Ssh — someone’s coming!”
Ricky steps back
a little from the door and we all wait expectantly. Sure enough it begins to
open, Ricky waits until it is almost half way before he kicks it shut with all
his might. We turn and run though the connecting door in to the room on the
other side and out on to the corridor beyond. We are tantalisingly close to
Ralph’s house.
How it happens I
hardly know, but as Dec passes the open door of the school room, he is dragged
kicking and screaming through the door by unseen hands. I scream and pull as
hard as I can on the handle, but it won’t move. I realise they must have locked
it behind them. Ralph’s door is just a little further on and I grab Ricky’s
arm.
“Ricky, take the
children to Ralph and stay there.”
“But…”
I don’t know
what he had been going to say, but he stops abruptly and nods.
As I turn and
run down the hallway I hear them banging on the Clark's
door.
There is no sign
of Dec when I enter the school room, but from the knocked over chairs it is
obvious that there has been some struggling. I run through the next two rooms
desperately and hear, in the distance, Dec’s voice raised in protest. I burst
into the corridor to find him struggling madly with one of the camouflaged
soldiers. Picking up a stool from the room I have just come through, I use it
to hit the man around the head. He sinks to the floor moaning and I taking
Dec’s hand. We run down the passage, around the corner and up the steps, slap
bang into more of the soldiers.
Instinctively I
push Dec behind me, below their visors I see derision in the soldier’s faces
and when they step forwards, they pull us apart easily. Trying to tear away
from the vice like grip on my arm, I pull my knee up into the soldier’s
stomach. His smirk changes quickly to a snarl of pain and my struggles become
more desperate. I manage to free an arm long enough to punch him in the face. I
must admit to a feeling of gratification as blood begins to trickle from his
nose.
There is
blinding pain as his fist connects with my face, slapping it sharply sideways
and causing me to lurch backwards. I fall to the floor and it’s only Dec
screaming my name that brings me groggily to my feet. I am rewarded by a
merciless grip on my arm, forcing it behind me and well up my back as the
soldier drives me heavily into the wall. I slip to the floor weakly, again
hearing Dec’s voice calling to me. The sound grows gradually fainter, until my
eyes close and I hear nothing.
Broken
Truce (Broken City, #2)
The keys jangle
in the lock and the soldier pulls the door open, his grin displaying gaps where
his two front teeth should have been.
“Well come on,
stop hiding in the shadows, no need to be scared of me.”
Tom doesn’t
answer him but walks past him and in to the room beyond. Presented with Tom’s
back the soldier seems to lose what little sense he has, he launches himself at
Tom. Tom twists away from him, catching his collar as he passes and ramming him
in to the opposite wall.
A dull crack
fills the room as the soldier’s head connects with stone work, he collapses,
sinking to his knees and groaning. With a sharp expletive, the second soldier
comes at Tom slowly, very cautiously.
They circle each
other measuringly, looking for weaknesses, for any opening. This soldier is
younger than the first, not so beefy, but still strong. He holds back, studying
Tom even as Tom studies him.
He’s better
trained, Tom realises, not the mindless thug that usually passed for a Lewis
soldier. This man had been taught caution, to think three moves ahead of his
opponent. This man was dangerous, but he used his brain, so maybe there was a
chance that he could be reasoned with.
“We don’t have
to do this.” Tom holds his hands up, palms outward. “I’ll go back into my cell
and we can forget this happened.”
The soldier
smiles menacingly.
“You’d love
that, wouldn’t you; to get your own way here, just like you do in the City.”
His left hand
falls to his waist and he pulls free a six inch long blade. One edge is curved
down into a point, the other carved into jagged notches that gleam in the
artificial light. Tom’s face loses all expression, his hands curl into fists
and he raises them slightly.
“You shouldn’t
have done that.”
“What’s wrong?”
spits the soldier tauntingly. “Are you scared?”
Tom’s eyes never
waver from the face, filled with fury, before him.
“You fight with
fists the worst you’re going to get is some bruises, maybe a few broken bones,
but you had to go and pull and knife. One of us is going to end this bleeding.”
Tom’s voice drops, his tone blank. “It won’t be me.”
The soldier
laughs, an angry, mocking sound.
“Arrogant son of
a…”
Before the
soldier can say another word, Tom’s fist crashes into his mouth silencing him
abruptly. He staggers back, eyes dilated in shock.
“If you want to
make it out of this fight alive, I suggest you leave my mother out of this.”
“You crazy bas…”
Tom’s eyes snap
coldly.
“I mean it;
you’ll leave my mother out of this if you want to continue breathing.”
With a quick
thrust, the soldier slashes his knife through the air. Tom jerks back and
pivots, catching hold of his knife arm. They sway together dangerously,
crashing into chairs and the table.
It isn’t a
pretty fight, there’s no time to do anything but react, and more than once Tom
finds himself deflecting the blade at the last possible second. They struggle
together a little longer, beginning to pant as their exertion slows them down a
little.
Tom reflects
grimly that if he wasn’t being so careful about hurting the guy, he would have
finished him already. He couldn’t cause the brute too much damage, it would
only mean more trouble in the long run, more of these pointless, posturing
fights.
Tom knew if he
gave in to his desire to have it over and done with quickly, it would become a
point of honour, and the rest of the soldiers would consider it their duty to
grind the prisoner into the ground. That was the last think he needed, he had
enough to worry about without taking gladiatorial events in to account.
Ned’s voice
interrupted his thoughts, calling out a frantic warning and Tom turned just in
time to see the first solder, recovered from his close inspection of the wall,
baring down on him with a chair levelled at his head.
Tom has no time
to avoid the blow, but raises his arm slightly to deflect it from his head to
his right shoulder. The force sends him reeling backward, clutching at his arm.
The first soldier stands, the chair now a splintered wreck in his hands, and
glares Ned.
“You warned
him.” His voice is filled with shock.
Ned’s eyes
widened in fear, and his mouth opens and closees a few times without any sound
coming out.
“What’s wrong
with you, shrimp?” The furious soldier advances on the boy slowly. “Forgotten whose
side you’re on, have you?”
Ned backed away
nervously, his hands rising in a pleading gesture.
“C-captain Max
said…”
“Captain Max
said,” mimics the soldier. “Take a look around you, shrimp: Captain Max isn’t
here.”
He makes a lunge
for the boy, catching him by the collar, but Ned manages to twist away. He
skids across the floor to stand beside Tom, his retreat only making the two
soldiers angrier. With a deft flick of his wrist, the second soldier throws his
knife and Ned closes his eyes, bracing himself for the pain of impact.
The moments pass
and the boy pries one eye open.
Tom’s arm is
stretched out in front of him, on a level with Ned’s throat. The knife is buried
deep in his forearm, blood beginning to ooze from wound to drip on the floor.
The room is silent, Ned’s horrified gaze transfers from the gruesome sight of
the blade protruding from Tom’s arm, to Tom’s white face and icy expression. He
coldly appraises the men before him, and the two soldiers expressions fill with
horror and fear.
