Conflagration Read Online Free PDF

wallow of boy-child self-pity and back into the immediate moment.
    “You think this next fight will finish them?”
    The Sergeant of Horse nodded. “If we don’t fuck up.”
    “You mean that?”
    “Aye, lad. It’ll be the end of the Mosul in Virginia and the Carolinas, but it won’t be half as easy as some imagine. I heard there were Mosul reinforcements coming up from the south, and it’ll go hard for us if they get here in time to link up with the sons of bitches we’ve followed down from Richmond.”
    After the two long years of stalemate and occupation, towns and villages like Thakenham accustomed themselves to living under the heel of the Mosul boot, while Albany alone faced the invaders across the Potomac. As Mosul subjects, the boys and girls, like Argo Weaver, had gone through the motions of learning to worship the twin gods Ignir and Aksura, and obey the vast complexity of Zhaithan laws and regulations, as taught by the grownup collaborators, and reinforced by the threat of the punishment stool and the long cane. Times, however, had changed so swiftly and so violently once he’d escaped from Thakenham, he had managed to shut off most memories of how it had been. Caught up in such high adventures, and swimming in the actual flow of history, he had been able to put away the small boy who tried to deal with the daily terror of Mosul rule. Only this return to the lands where he had been born and raised, and the comparative inactivity of the slow advance had allowed it all to come flooding back.
    Argo turned in his saddle so he was facing the older man. “Sergeant of Horse…”
    “Major?”
    “Would you happen to be carrying that bottle you usually have with you?”
    Riordan glanced up at the sun. “A trifle early, young sir, to be starting on the hard stuff?” Riordan never missed a chance to remind Argo of his comparative youth and inexperience at both soldiering and drinking. “Something ailing you, boy?”
    “Memories, Sergeant of Horse. Coming so close to home seems to have let them off the leash.”
    “Memories, huh?” The crippled sergeant must have felt a twinge of battle-hardened sympathy because he reached into his tunic, produced a half-pint pewter flask, and handed it to Argo. “Have yourself a shot, young Major. Memories can be a damned nuisance, and they can get in the way of what matters at the worst possible time.”
    Memories, however, were not the only damned nuisance. Argo’s dreams had also been a problem. Over the last week or so, a new and sinister cycle of dreams had taken control of his sleep. Senseless and surreal, they had brought repeated, but wholly inexplicable glimpses of brilliant white figures, seeming composed of little more than near-blinding light, that had left him with an uneasy aching in his head that only strong drink seem able to cure.
    JESAMINE
    Jesamine held her arms straight out in front of her. Her hands were loosely bound with a length of soft scarlet cord that was part of the ritual. The air in the wickiup was thick with the sweet, pungent smoke that curled up from the bed of hot coals in the upturned Mosul helmet. Her honey-nude skin glistened with sweat in the orange glow, as did the darker bodies of her two companions. The lodge was small and the three of them crouched close. The faces of Oonanchek and Magachee were within inches of her’s, and she could feel the slow exhalations of their breathing. Oonanchek had erected the wickiup especially for the event, ensuring that the hallucinations that drifted in and out of the wreaths of smoke were harmonious and benign, and the three naked figures, one male and two female, were completely in tune one with the other. The last fifteen nights had not been without their occasional fears and moments of intensity, but they had also been one of the most pleasurable times Jesamine had ever experienced. Inevitably, though, it was an interlude that was about to end. All three of them knew that, and the ritual through