Romulus Buckle & the Engines of War Read Online Free PDF

into some chasm of shock. He saw that his left glove was soaked with warm, steaming blood, bright-crimson Martian blood, absolutely dripping with it. He realized that his legs and the front of his coat were wet with blood, too.
    Buckle lifted Max in his arms, leveraging the slender, light mass of her body over his left shoulder. He knelt to snatch up the torch and paused, just for an instant. The light of the flames, playing upon the depression in the snow where Max had been trapped beneath the horse, revealed a large, ever-spreading stain of blood.
    It was a horrific amount of blood for a lithe creature such as Max to lose. Her Martian heart, stout as it was, could barely still be beating.
    Buckle ran.

WHITEOUT
    B UCKLE STUMBLED UP TO C RONOS and lifted Max onto his back, ramming his boot into the stirrup and swinging up into the saddle behind her. Cronos threw his head back and forth, scuffing his hooves.
    Buckle drew his sword, slashed through the stretch of the reins between Cronos and the girder, and kicked the horse in the ribs. “Hah! On, boy! On!” Cronos, his shivering muscles firing, charged into the blizzard. Buckle leaned forward, gripping Max, letting the horse run. They were on the upslope, as far as he could tell, but he had no sense of direction now—he could see nothing. His whipping torch did no more than illuminate a wavering waterfall of snow that he could not see through.
    Buckle clung to Max, who slumped forward like a rag doll, with little tension in her form, her head lolling with the rock of the horse’s motion. Through the raging storm and the battering of the horse’s muscles, through the clutch of his fingers against the blood-smeared coat, he sought to feel a movement from Max, a twitch, a heartbeat, to reassure him that she was still alive—but he could feel nothing.
    Confound the disobedient Martian! Buckle thought. She shall not trade her life for mine. She shall not.
    Cronos slowed a bit, beginning to tire, but Buckle let the animal run on. Buckle wanted to return to the ravine and hole up in one of the caves for the night—if only the wind would let up a moment, give him a view of the landscape about, he could surely point his mount in the right direction. He hoped that the horse, experienced on the mountain as he was, would instinctively head home along the ravine, seeking his stable and its hanging bag of feed.
    A whiteout blinded Buckle for an instant. The memory it triggered came on so hard and fast it startled him, leaping from the darkness and bursting in the forepart of his brain. He was a boy again, in his parents’ cabin on the mountain. He was terrified, perhaps no more than six years old, clutching a sword that was far too big for him. His mother had her arms clutched around him—and Elizabeth. His strongest impression was that of his mother’s heart, a youthful organ, drumming hard against his back.
    The sabertooths were attacking. Outside in the night, they roared. A horrible screaming came from the horses in the stable. The two cabin windows, both made of heavy, translucent glass, had been broken in by the beasties, and shards were scattered across the floor rugs in glittering bits. Fangs and claws had torn at the window frames, green-eyed nightmares had peered in, but the heavy timber of the cabin had defeated them.
    Buckle was crying. Elizabeth was crying, tears streaming slick and glistening down her round cheeks. Buckle wanted to be brave for her, but he could not muster it. Their mother had snatched them from their beds with a pistol in her hand, and now they huddled in a corner wearing their nightclothes. The fire was low in the hearth, scarlet and orange embers, and the air felt cold.
    Buckle remembered watching his father, Alpheus, striding back and forth across the room. He looked very big. His hair was mussed. He gripped both a sword and a pistol, and had a belt strapped around his waist with two more pistols stuck into it. The sabertooths, clever creatures,