The Iron Wars Read Online Free PDF

would be like in battle.
    “Hogging the wineskin as usual, I see,” a voice said, and Albrec turned from the fire.
    “Avila!”
    His friend had once been the most handsome Inceptine in Charibon. There was still a fineness to his features, but his face was gaunt and drawn now, even with a smile upon it. Something had been stripped from him, some flamboyance or facet of youth. He limped forward like an old man and half collapsed beside his friend, wrapped in a soldier’s greatcloak like Albrec, his feet swathed in bandages.
    “Well met, Albrec.” And then as the firelight fell on the little monk’s face: “Sweet God in heaven! What happened?”
    Albrec shrugged. “Frostbite. You were luckier than I, it seems. Only a few toes.”
    “My God!”
    “It’s not important. It’s not like we have a wife or a sweetheart. Avila, do you know where we are and whom we are with?”
    Avila was still staring at him. Albrec could not meet his eyes. He felt an overpowering urge to put his hand over his face, but mastered it and instead gave his friend the wineskin. “Here. You look as though you need it.”
    “I’m sorry, Albrec.” Avila took a long swig from the skin, crushing in its sides so that the wine squirted deep down his throat. He drank until the dark liquid brimmed out of his mouth, and then he squirted down more. Finally he wiped his lips.
    “Fimbrians. It would seem our saviours are Fimbrians. And they march to Ormann Dyke.”
    “Yes. But I’ve lost it, Avila. They took it, the document. Nothing else matters now.”
    Avila studied his hands where they were gripped about the wine-skin. The flesh on them had peeled in places, and there were sores on the backs of them.
    “Cold,” he muttered. “I had no idea. It’s like what we were told of leprosy.”
    “Avila!” Albrec hissed at him.
    “The document, I know. Well, it’s gone. But we are alive, Albrec, and we may yet remain unburned. Give thanks to God for that at least.”
    “And the truth will remain buried.”
    “I’d rather it were buried than me, to be frank.”
    Avila would not meet his friend’s glare. Something in him seemed cowed by what they had been through. Albrec felt like shaking him.
    “It’s all right,” the Inceptine said with a crooked smile. “I’m sure I’ll get over it, this desire to live.”
    There were soldiers around them at the fire, ignoring them as if they did not exist. Most were asleep, but in the next moment those that were awake scrambled to their feet and stood stiff as statues. Albrec and Avila looked up to see a man with a scarlet sash about his middle standing there in a simple soldier’s tunic. He had a moustache which arced around his mouth and glinted red-gold in the firelight.
    “At ease,” he said to his men, and they collapsed to the ground again. The newcomer then sat himself cross-legged at the fire beside the two monks.
    “Might I trouble you for a drink of the wine?” he asked.
    They gazed at him at a loss for words. Finally Avila bestirred himself and in his best frosty aristocratic tone said: “By all means, soldier. Perhaps then you will leave us alone. My friend and I have important matters to discuss.”
    The man drank deeply from the proffered wineskin and pinched the drops from his moustache. “How are you both feeling?”
    “We’ve been better,” Avila said, still haughty, every inch the Inceptine addressing a lowly man-at-arms. “Might I ask who you are?”
    “You might,” the man said, unruffled. “But then again I might not choose to tell you. As it happens, my name is Barbius, Barbius of Neyr.”
    “Then perchance, Barbius of Neyr, you will leave us, now that you’ve had your drink of wine.” Avila’s haughtiness was becoming brittle. He was beginning to sound shrill. The man only looked at him with one eyebrow raised.
    “Are you an officer?” Albrec asked, staring at the man’s scarlet sash.
    “You could say that.” Off in the darkness an invisible soldier uttered a