5: The Holy Road Read Online Free PDF

animals.
    People had come out just to watch this, John realized. That was why the blood market was more crowded than it had been this morning. The lane was packed with people, making it difficult to move without bumping into someone.
    John stepped back as the wagon rolled slowly closer. An older man grumbled as John jostled him but went quiet when he saw John’s gray coat and cassock. The bodies of strangers pressed up against John’s back, chest, and sides, resisting his every movement.
    Just to his left, a skinny barefoot boy pushed his way out from between two men. He held something dull red and glistening in his hand. As the wagon came close, the boy hurled the mass of weasel intestines at the prisoner. The offal splashed against the prisoner’s shoulder, but the man didn’t even lift his head in response. One of the guards riding in the wagon grinned. The tall sides of the wagon were already stained with red and brown spatters where other refuse had been hurled with less accuracy.
    John wanted to turn back, but there was too much of a push behind him.
    Then, suddenly, the loud crack of a rifle shot burst through the air. The guard driving the wagon fell back, blood gushing from his chest. The guards on the ground rushed to grab the bridles of the startled tahldi. A second shot tore through the head of one of the guards riding in the wagon.
    A wave of panic rolled through the gathered crowd. People shouted and screamed. The man beside John shoved a girl down as he tried to distance himself from the wagon. John heard another rifle shot, but he couldn’t tell where it had come from or what damage it might have done. He had to fight just to stay upright as the people behind him surged forward, running for the security of the city gates. Hands and arms smacked and slammed into his back. People kicked his legs, stepped on his feet, and tripped against his body, but he didn’t go down.
    He heard a tahldi scream and then saw the side of the wooden wagon as it swung off the road and came crashing into the crowd. Bodies crumpled, crushed beneath the heavy wagon wheels. The tahldi charged forward, shrieking and trampling the people in their path. An arrow jutted from the neck of one of the animals.
    To John’s surprise, a woman from the crowd raced forward and leaped onto one of the tahldi’s backs. She caught hold of the animal’s bridle and seemed to be trying to rein the tahldi in. An arrow whistled past, then another, and another. The city guards were firing from up on the wall. A child crumpled, an arrow driven through her chest. All around John, people screamed, shoved, and fell beneath each other in a wild directionless flight for some kind of safety.
    A second arrow sank into the shoulder of the already-injured tahldi. The animal reared, screaming, and twisted itself against its harness. The woman and the second tahldi were pulled down with it. The hitch snapped apart as the wagon continued plowing forward.
    People all around John fought to get out of the way. A woman clawed at his arm, desperate to pull herself past him. John braced himself as the wagon swung towards him. It was a stupid, instinctual reaction, but there was nothing else he could do. His hands came up as if the huge wagon wheel were a baseball for him to catch. Even in the moment he thought he must have looked ridiculous.
    The man in front of John screamed as the wagon plowed him under. John clenched his eyes shut. Then he heard the deafening noise of heavy timbers splitting. John opened his eyes to see planks exploding to either side of him as if an invisible saw were rending through them. A moment later, the wagon collapsed into two pieces on either side of John. The naked, bound prisoner slammed into John’s legs.
    Wood shavings and sawdust settled over John like a fine snow.
    An arrow slashed past John and he ducked down behind the wrecked halves of the wagon. The man at his feet groaned. Many of the cuts on his arms and back had torn open. Fat