The Year of Our War Read Online Free PDF

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    He wriggled from the armored faring and jumped down. Wordlessly he passed me the reins and stood aside as I scrambled into the high-backed saddle.
    He was a slim young man, brown hair knotted at his neck, and he was tall so the stirrups were set at the right height. I waved my feet about until I found them. I plucked the lance from his grasp and held it over my shoulder.
    “What should I do, Comet?” he begged.
    “Advise you run like buggery.” I jerked the mare’s reins left, gave her a hefty kick in the ribs. The smell of Insect blood was strong in the air but she obeyed.
    Dunlin pulled his horse round, slashing at brown carapaces and compound eyes. His soldiers were vanishing. They were in a tight group, facing outward, but they were too few. Insects bit at his horse’s legs. She stumbled over them and fell. Jaws half a meter long, jagged and razor sharp, stripped the skin from her ribs immediately, the guts falling out. Dunlin rolled from the saddle, on top of a mashed Insect. Although only the head and thorax was left, it clung to him with two remaining arms, wet with yellow paste.
    The time it took to reach him was agony for me. I had been flying so long I still wanted to yaw left, pitch right; and here I was on horseback, stuck with just two dimensions; a gallop is far too slow. Standing in the stirrups I let the horse run over Insects at the edge of the fray. They clung to her straps and I poked them with the lance. I’m no lancer, so I used the chromed weapon as a spear, jabbing at Insect thoraxes, rupturing abdomens, tearing their wings. I soon dropped it and drew my ice ax, which has a long haft and a strong serrated point. I hewed a path, swinging the ax and grunting with effort. The movement was familiar; it was like cutting ice steps in a glacier climb. Insect after Insect fell, headless and coiling.
    Dunlin recognized me and moved nearer but there were too many Insects in the way. The fyrd gained strength from seeing me struggle toward them and they fought harder still.
    “Get out!” I screamed, waving at the Wall. “Move!” Their way was blocked by the horde.
    I could see Dunlin pressed between bulbous brown bodies. A mandible was in his leg, slicing to the bone. I saw him put his weight on that leg and the chitin tore out. He raised his visor, blinded by brightness, and stabbed ferociously at an Insect clutching his wing.
    His sword skittered over its hard thorax plates. The Insect grasped it, losing a claw, put two other claws over the flat of the blade, and twitched it from his grasp. It snapped at his face. Antennae brushed the back of his neck. Insects behind and in front of him brought him down, kneeling, spidery arms pulling. Little cuts sank in, sawing, wherever the Insects could find a gap. Mandibles snipped. Not a man or horse was left standing; the Insects chewed live flesh.
    Dunlin turned on his front, visor down, and covered the back of his neck with plated arms. The Insects stripped his wings and then left him. Some ran toward the Wall, and I hoped Tawny had readied his fyrd. Some picked over the carcasses, their heads inside horses’ barrel-ribs.
    By the King, a single Insect crouched on complex leg-joints. A blow had cracked its carapace across, pushed the shell into a dent from which cream-yellow liquid oozed, running down between black spines. Its snapped antennae hung down like bent wires—still, it sensed me. It opened its jaws and I saw mouthparts whirling like fingers inside. I kicked it, and it struck at my foot. Its jaws gashed my boot open from toe to shin. The crack across its thorax opened wider, and beneath I saw a pale wrinkled membrane, damp with the liquid that was crusting at the edges of the wound. I smashed the ice ax down into its back with so much force that it disappeared to halfway up its hilt. Then I shook it free, my hand dripping. “Next!” I shouted. “Who’s next?”
    Dunlin. The King. Heroically I thought of leaning from the saddle and lifting