The Wasteland Soldier, Book 3, Drums Of War (TWS) Read Online Free PDF

her.” Quinn hesitated, knowing what victims of sickness looked like; their hair fell out, their bowels loosened, they were covered in blisters and gripped by fever.
    “But what was she doing up there? Everyone knows Mosscar is a plague city. She knew it but still went up there.”
    Her hand moved in a flash and the knife flew from her grip, slamming into a wooden post at the end of the garden.
    “It doesn’t make any sense. Why did she go there?”
    Jeremy stared at the knife embedded in the wood, vibrating angrily. He shook his head.
    “I don’t know.” His eyes became moist. “I knew something was troubling her but she wouldn’t tell me. She wouldn’t tell anyone.”
    He looked back at his father.
    “I should go.”
    Quinn watched him fondly as he trotted back to his family. She was determined to root out the truth; they all needed an answer. Pretan raised his hand to his son but Jeremy grabbed his wrist. The old hand trembled and hovered inches from Jeremy’s face. Quinn held her breath. Jeremy forced his father’s hand down and then shoved him back, releasing his grip at the same time. He went to his twin sisters, placed his arms around their shoulders and confidently guided them toward the building. Pretan bent his neck and looked at her; dead eyes in a dead face, a curious sneer on his coarse lips. Quinn was unflinching against his harsh gaze and he folded quickly. He mingled with the last of the stragglers, hastily making his way inside.
    Deacon Rush, all in black, closed the doors. Quinn knew Father Devon would be preparing to deliver His Words. She playfully wondered why he didn’t invoke some magic to alter the weather. The past few months had been more miserable than ever and surely she wasn’t the only one who’d noticed the tremors were becoming more frequent.
    There was silence through the village. Quinn smiled. The servants were supposed to work but many chose to idle and smoke and chat during the Reverence Morning period.
    She looked at the stone building, the mighty Holy House, and her skin pimpled as thousands upon thousands of years of history judged her, still clinging inexorably to the soil despite the toxic bile released by mankind through the centuries - the thrust of a blade, the blast of a cannon, the hiss of the Metal Spears during the final war of the Ancients. The rain fell and the clouds drifted and the Holy House defied all. Quinn could hear the muffled oration of Father Devon. It was impossible to discern the old man’s words from this distance but they had been imprinted upon her since childhood. He would no doubt open with the Statements of Damnation which he mixed with the Sins of Man before closing with the Legend of Patriarch Albury. He no longer vented about the Scourge of the Non-Believers. He had obviously grown tired of that one.
    “… and despite all his advancements Man succumbed to the temptation of the Demon; he turned himself inside out and showed himself as a diseased thing of foulness; cowardly and sick with greed and forever looking inward for adulation from others. And whilst Man looked inward the Demon seized the opportunity and the world of the Before was extinguished and our Lord judged Man vain and He punished Man. Yet in those times of horror and darkness the Lord relented and He fought the Demons we had invited upon His very soil. His Son bled for us. His Son died for our sins. The Lord opened His arms and His heart and His love flowed and He delivered us into the Age of Light and we bathed in His magnificent Light and offered our devotion, our loyalty and our very lives to Him; our Lord, our Maker.”
    Father Devon composed himself.
    “And once more will the day come that He will send His Son to us and He will come from the sea a mortal and walk among us. He will judge us and He will mend the world we have broken.”
    Quinn’s mouth drew tight. The Holy House had resisted every assault. What would it take to stamp the place from the surface of the