Five Stories for the Dark Months Read Online Free PDF

take
anything else, then she could at least take those. Finally, she
rolled up Peter Grant’s will and stuck it in her pocket. That would
have to do.
    Arica was pacing at the door. “Are
you finally ready?” she said.
    “Do you have snowshoes?” said
Jenna, ignoring the spy’s impatience.
    “In the bushes outside your
house.”
    “Would you grab mine from that
hook there?” Gloves, hat, scarf, and she was ready. “All right.
Let’s go.”
    The wind had died, and the night
was silent. The air smelled heavily of pine and fir. Jenna took the
lantern from beside the door, and the two girls set off southward
down the road.
    For a long time there was no sound
but the even scuff of their snowshoes across the snow. Though the
moon was full, trees crowded close to the road, laying it deep in
shadow. It was hard to see anything beyond the lantern’s
light.
    They had just taken the fork
towards Goldenfield when the lantern began to flicker. Jenna
moaned. “It’s dying. I didn’t even think to bring more
fuel!”
    “You have more
fuel? Why on earth wouldn’t you bring
it?”
    “You were pacing at the door!”
Jenna felt more than a little defensive. “I had no time to think.
Anyway, I thought there was more in the lantern.”
    The spy huffed. “What kind of
soldier are you?”
    “I’m not a soldier! I’m only a
road-watcher. The guard stations are all north of here—you must
have passed them on your way in.” She thought of Pauli again, and
tried to suppress the horrible thought that flashed through her
mind. “I guess... I guess some of them are empty,
now.”
    Arica gave her a sympathetic look.
“We’ll get to town as soon as possible. Once your people know about
the... breach, they can send in reinforcements.” Jenna nodded,
miserable, and pressed on.
    They were two miles from the cabin
when they passed the first mass graves. “This was the Bluebell
Battlefield,” Jenna said.
    Arica looked around. “What
was?”
    Jenna pointed at the great
snow-banked berms that flanked the edges of the road. “Do you see
those? They’re grave mounds.”
    “What, all of them? Is this some
kind of cemetery?”
    “If you want to call it that.”
Jenna frowned. “You never heard of the Bluebell Battle? It was the
first battle of the war!”
    “I thought the first conflict was
the skirmish at Gum Creek.”
    “Is that what you call it?
A skirmish ?” She
found herself outraged on the part of her long-dead compatriots.
“It was a slaughter ! Your full first line of troops against a lot of half-armed
villagers fighting desperately to protect their families... Call it
a massacre if you
want, but don’t call it a damned skirmish .”
    “I—I’m sorry.” Arica sounded
genuinely startled. “I really don’t know that much about
it.”
    “It was a surprise attack,” Jenna
said. “There was no time to rally the troops, even if we’d had that
many to rally. No one had any idea an invasion was coming—we’d
always been on good terms with you.”
    “It was right after our royal
family was murdered,” said Arica. “We—that is, the citizens—thought
at the time that Southern assassins had killed them all. The
generals must have put it around to cement their power when they
took over—and after that we were all too busy fighting the war to
question the change in leadership.”
    Jenna nodded. It wasn’t something
she’d ever heard before, but she supposed it made sense if it was
true. “Anyway, there was nothing we could do, and everyone knew it.
But of course even the peasants wanted to do what they could, so
they took whatever weapons they could find and came out to the
road. Even a lot of the older children.” She shook her head. “All
of them died, of course.."
    Arica was silent. “I don’t know
what you want me to say,” she said after several seconds. “You want
me to apologize? You know I’m no more responsible for what happened
than you are."
    Jenna shrugged. “Just... wanted you
to know, I