Bloodrush (The Scarlet Star Trilogy Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page A

tormenting northern sun, six men had been bound tight to the ice with their legs slashed at the calves. Merion held a hand to his mouth as he thought of how much blood must have pumped when the men were sentenced to their exile, how they must have screamed. They were far from screaming now. What hadn’t been picked at by the gulls and petrels now lay, heads yawning at the murky air around about, empty-eyed, but still blissfully sailing the seas.
    ‘What did these men do?’ Merion asked in a hollow voice, whilst trying to hold back the crashing wave of nausea surging up his throat.
    ‘Who can tell? They don’t look nomad, not in the slightest. Soldiers, by the look of their black fingers. Powder will do that to you, it will, should you play with it long enough. White folks from the places where the wild pines meet the ice and stop dead. Hunting folk. Must have crossed paths with the nomads, then crossed swords. That’s what you get when you go wanderin’ into nomad territory. They were punished, the fools,’ she lectured, almost spitting the last word. But then, in a silent moment of respect, she held her hand to her chest and watched them drift on by, just until they disappeared back into the fog.
    Merion shuddered, as if the ghosts of the dead men had tickled his spine. ‘I, er, thank you,’ was all he could think of to say.
    ‘Welcome, young’un,’ she nodded, and then stuffed her hands into a pair of deep, fur-lined pockets. ‘So where you headed?’
    ‘Probably back to my cabin …’
    The woman laughed then, a harsh cackle, and clapped him heartily on the shoulder. Merion’s jolted stomach performed a somersault, and he felt that wave rising again … ‘I meant in the motherland, son, the big wide open, the Endless Land.’
    Merion scratched his head. ‘Wyoming, I believe.’
    The woman threw him an odd expression, the bottom half of her face pressing into her neck as her eyes and her ears lifted. A high-pitched hum rose and fell in her throat. ‘Been there before, have you?’ she asked.
    ‘No.’
    ‘Seems an odd choice, is all, for a young willow like you.’
    Merion found himself trying to stand wider, thicker somehow. He failed. ‘Trust me, madam, there was no choice in the matter.’
    ‘Don’t know many folk from Wyoming. Don’t know many heading there neither, ‘cept for workers.’
    ‘Should I be worried?’
    ‘I’d be worried about her instead. She’s mad as a bucket of smashed crabs,’ Rhin hissed, his voice a skinny whisper on the icy wind.
    ‘Gods, no, young’un. I don’t suppose you shouldn’t,’ she shook her head vehemently, but that last sentence stuck like a fishbone in Merion’s gullet. Suppose . He hoped it was just the old woman’s strange drawl, or her astoundingly appalling grammar, that made him start to sweat, even in the cold.
    ‘Well,’ the woman said, and clapped her hands. ‘Best be back to my supper. Good luck to you, son. Fare well.’
    ‘Madam.’ Merion sketched a shallow bow. He abruptly felt a little foolish. Bowing, there on a rusty deck in the middle of the wide Iron Ocean. Well, he may not be in London any more, but he was London-born, a son of a lord, and that meant that it wasn’t just blood flowing through his veins, but manners as well, stout, Empire-grown manners.
    If you’re going to get stabbed, then get stabbed by a gentleman. At least then you get an apology along with his cold length of steel. Merion had heard that whilst hiding under his father’s desk during one of his long and stuffy meetings. The young Hark had been unearthed and captured shortly after, unable to stifle a sneeze. His father had beaten him in the garden. Not enough to bruise, but enough to make him think twice the next time.
    ‘You’re incorrigible, you blaggard,’ Merion snapped at his rucksack, once he was good and alone.
    ‘That one’s definitely missing a few tiles from the roof,’ Rhin sniggered.
    Merion rolled his eyes. ‘Let’s just go inside