Storm Breakers Read Online Free PDF Page A

position. He had a neutral look on his face.
    “Or at least, not enemies.”

Chapter Four
    J.B. floated in a strange pale fog shot through with bright red flashes of pain.
    When they hit, the first thing he was aware of was the endless struggle to breathe. And cold. And jostling.
    And the smell of...horses?
    His eyes tried to open, but couldn’t. Dark night! he thought. I can’t breathe, and now I can’t see?
    He set his jaw. At least that didn’t hurt. Any extra. He willed his eyes to open.
    The lids broke free like scabs. Instantly tiny cold needles stung through the blur in his vision.
    Snow!
    It came back to him then, in a sick, cold flood, what had happened. Did the slavers catch us? he wondered frantically. Did we lose? Where are my friends? Are they all still fit to fight? Or triple-screwed-up like me?
    He became aware of the odd rhythm with which his whole body was bouncing, and the intricate muffled drumbeat pattern running through it like a bass-line through a melody. He wasn’t the artistic type, and was even less musical, but those were the only words he found that would do the job, so he used them.
    His vision sharpened and cleared as he blinked away the snowflakes falling. He saw the tail of a horse between the familiar scuffed toes of his boots—he was lying on his back, it turned out. Rolling his eyes left and right, then craning his head back on the sling he seemed to be lying on, he realized two more horses were tight behind to either side, both with riders, both looking like shadows in a white swirl in the dark.
    The slavers hadn’t had any horses. They didn’t seem the type. He caught a vague memory bubbling to the surface of his foggy brain—sense impressions of a bugle calling, and the slavers falling back in panic.
    So, he reckoned, these people beat the slavers. Did they rescue us—or capture us?
    It was all too much. Though they moved at a brisk walk, like a trot but smoother, seemingly to combine speed with gentleness, the fact was that every little impact sent a fresh stab of pain like a knife blade through his chest. As did every attempt to breathe.
    Consciousness started to fade. That was probably best, he knew. But he still fought to hold on to it as long as he could. He never was a man who knew when to quit. Nor a boy—that was the only way he’d survived in a brutal land where the weak got no breaks except for their bones: he just plain hung on and didn’t quit—
    But the blackness won again.
    * * *
    J UST WHEN M ILDRED thought she couldn’t stagger another step, they saw a yellow glow through trees made ghostly by snow loading down their boughs and falling lightly now. The pain in her legs from trudging through deep snow and sheer fatigue was so all-encompassing and yet so sharp it sometimes overwhelmed her grief and fear for J.B.
    “We’re almost there,” Lucas said. He was a young man with a clean-shaven face who seemed to be in charge of the ten-man sec crew that was escorting Ryan and his party through the woods in the wake of the horses carrying J.B.’s improvised travois. Between the darkness and the fur lining of his parka that completely rimmed his features, that was as much as Mildred could tell. He seemed uncommonly cheerful for a sec man, although that might have been elation at seeing off the slavers so readily.
    She huddled under the weight of two packs, hers and J.B.’s. His weapons were being toted by others—Krysty had his shotgun, Jak his Uzi. Ryan had looked a question at her when she hoisted the second pack but said nothing.
    My legs are strong and my back is sturdy, she thought. It’s the least I can do at this point.
    “It’s right up ahead,” sang out another young sec man.
    They came to a wide road that led through the tall conifers. Immediately they turned right. You’d have to have a better direction-sense than Mildred did to have any clue which actual way that was. She guessed even Jak might find it a challenge. At least a bit—even though