Kindling (Flame of Evil) - Softcover
A ravening horde of barbarians from the East, the Mosul Empire, in unholy alliance with the Teutons and the Mameluke warlords and led by the brutal theocracy of the Zhaithan, has subjugated the Land of the Franks and the Hispanic Peninsula. Setting their sights on the New World, they have already conquered the Republic of Greater Carolina and the Virginia Freestate. Only the Kingdom of Albany still stands, aided by the Norse Alliance of Britain and Scandinavia.
Four youngsters from very different backgrounds are brought together to form The Four -- a supernatural entity that becomes the last-ditch hope of the Free World.
Four youngsters from very different backgrounds are brought together to form The Four -- a supernatural entity that becomes the last-ditch hope of the Free World.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
ONE
ARGO
Argo Weaver stood in the doorway of the bedroom and pointed the pistol at his stepfather. The two-shot horse pistol, with its long twin barrels and two hammers, was heavy, but his hand was steady and his aim did not falter. Argo Weaver's stepfather snored softly. To say that his mother slept next to the man was an exaggeration. She slept in the same bed, as she had done since Argo's father had been confirmed killed, but she was turned away from the man, as far from him as was physically possible to be and still remain under the same covers. When Argo fired, she would wake screaming. She would be terrified. She might even be spattered by her loveless husband's blood. The effect on his mother, as Argo could picture all too clearly, would be devastating. He had imagined the scene he was now acting out a hundred times since the man called Herman Kretch had come to their house. He would cock both of the pistol's hammers. He would slowly squeeze the first of the triggers, and, in the flash and report, payback would be exacted for all the cruelties large and small that Kretch had inflicted on Argo, his mother, and his sisters. Over and above the personal, to murder Kretch while he slept would also serve as a just punishment for the crime of being a collaborator.
With his left hand, Argo eased back the first of the hammers. The double click-click was loud in the night, and the tone of his stepfather's breathing changed for a moment. He shifted position slightly, but did not wake. Argo waited for a few moments, just to make sure, and then slowly cocked the second hammer. The pistol had been made by George and James Bolton of Jamestown. That information was engraved on the left-hand barrel, and it was dated according to the old Mother Goddess calendar, the use of which had been forbidden since the Mosul occupation and the coming of the men from the Ministry of Virtue. According to his stepfather, it was a type of small-bore, double-barreled pistol known as a "cuckold's special." Although, as far as Argo knew, Kretch had never used the gun since he came to their house, he liked ostentatiously to clean it, sipping 'shine and acting the big man. As he ran a strip of oiled rag down one of the barrels and tightened the dual spring mechanisms with a small screwdriver, he had explained to Argo why the weapon had been given such a name. "You shoot her, and then you shoot him, and then, if you feel like it, you reload and shoot yourself." But Herman Kretch was not the kind to shoot himself. He held his miserable life in far too high regard.
With the pistol cocked, Argo again took aim, but his finger did not immediately go to a trigger. This was the point beyond which his imagination was increasingly less clear. After the shot, he knew he would run, but what of his mother and two sisters? Herman Kretch was their sole support. The large, raw-boned man with the pot belly, red face, and muttonchop side-whiskers might be a bully, a braggart, and an occasional drunkard, but, for the three women Argo would have to leave behind, life would become close to impossible without him. The Mosul, the Ministry men, and the collaborators who ran things in the occupied territories showed no kindness to the widows and orphans of their defeated enemies and had scant tolerance for those who did. Herman Kretch might be a swine as far as Argo was concerned, but he was not a liar. He had made it very clear when he had proposed marriage to Argo's mother that it was not to be a union of love or even affection. He wanted a strong woman to cook and clean for him, to fetch and carry, and to warm his bed. That she was good-looking only made it an added plus, and that she came to him with three children presented no real problem. Argo, Mathilde, and Gwennie were of an age to be useful, and it made them a source of unpaid labor in these dark times when the conquered worked from morning to night and, even so, barely survived. They were three pairs of extra hands to be exploited in the fields, to help with the livestock, and clean up in the workshop where Herman Kretch repaired boots, shoes, and other leather goods for the Army of Occupation. Argo's stepfather not only kissed the boots of the Mosul, but he mended and shined them, too, along with their saddles and harnesses. He was equally pragmatic and open about his collaboration. "Hassan IX and his Mosul will take it all in the end. Carolina has gone, and the Virginia Freestate, too. Albany can't hold for long on its own. We may not like it, but Hassan is the future, and we better buckle down and get used to it."
Without even Kretch to protect them, his mother and sisters could all too easily become three more refugees in the woods and wild places, wandering aimlessly without papers until they starved or worse. Although the worst of the atrocities that had occurred in the direct wake of defeat had been mitigated, the woods were still full of deserters, fugitives, the displaced, and the migrant crazy, as well as the regular Mosul patrols (who fired first and rarely bothered to ask questions), the Indians, who moved like ghosts, and the ghosts themselves. Under Mosul rule, women on their own were vulnerable from every side. Without even the meager rights accorded to the males among subject peoples in the Empire of Hassan IX, carpetbaggers and scallywags could seize their homes and property. The young and comely might simply disappear to serve as an officer's concubine or in the bordellos, cribs, and joyhouses of Savannah and Newport. The old would find themselves driven out to die in the rain. Rape was still a popular pastime among the Mogul grunts, the Mamaluke troopers, and Teuton uhlans, although they were now restrained by their captains from the pillage and razing of all but the occasional village or small town. Worst of all, any woman could be fingered as a witch on the most flimsy pretext and hanged if they were lucky, or put to torture and then burned alive if they were not.
The entire chain of events that had led to Argo Weaver standing over his stepfather with a loaded gun and a murderous if wavering resolve had started when, earlier that day, the Ministry men and priests of the Zhaithan had burned Gaila Ford for heresy. The execution by fire of Gaila Ford was by no means the first witch-burning in the village of Thakenham. Even with a population of less than three hundred, the place had still apparently harbored a major complement of women who were deemed by the Zhaithan Ministry of Virtue to constitute a threat and abomination to the Twin Deities, Ignir and Aksura. The burning of Gaila Ford, however, had been invested with a certain significance. The villagers had talked of nothing else for the two weeks since she had been taken, denounced with full ritual by the Masked Informer, and arrested by the Ministry men backed by a squad of Mosul soldiers from the garrison at Bridgehampton. The collaborators expressed a general opinion that it was a miracle she had survived for so long. Those, like Argo, who had as little to do with the Mosul as they could, held their silence and contained their anger. Argo had known Gaila Ford well. How could he not? Her husband, Henry, and Argo's father, Jackvance Weaver, had gone to the war together. They had enlisted in the same company of the 9th Virginia Freestate Volunteers and had by all accounts died together in the final doomed attempt to hold the Mosul horde at Richmond. Ford had been what was called a handsome woman. She was too mature to be taken as brothel fodder to Savannah, but even Argo, at just fourteen, was well aware that she turned the heads of many men and set them to wondering what she did in her cottage of an evening, all alone, widowed and childless but still obviously in her prime. That alone might have been enough to get her denounced, but worse still, she made it clear to all, in deed if not in word, that she still considered herself a freewoman of the Americas and not a second-class subject of the Mosul Empire.
A number of men had proposed marriage to her just as Herman Kretch had made his overtures to Argo's mother. Without children to consider, she had dismissed these offers out of hand. Apparently she wanted nothing to do with the cowards, gimps, and snivelers who, for their own reasons, had avoided the call to serve. Argo suspected that she might have wed either Jed Pett or Struther Broad, the only two men to return to the village alive, but seemingly neither of the shattered survivors had asked her to take them. Gaila Ford had been well liked by most. She rarely complained, seemed capable of remaining cheerful in impossible situations, and had proved a tower of strength during the winter sickness a year and some earlier. Any one of these qualities would have brought her to the attention of the Ministry of Virtue, and the entire list was more than enough to bring her finally to the flame. Argo loathed to agree with the collaborators, but it really was a miracle she had remained alive and free, at least in her own mind, for as long as she had.
The wood of her pyre had been piled at the north end of the village square, in front of where the church of the Mother Goddess had once stood, and where the Mosul now had their fire tower. The priests of Zhaithan were great believers in lessons taught by example, and the entire village would be assembled in the square, by force if necessary, to witness the prolonged and agonizing death. The only exceptions would be the children and teenagers under fifteen. This was not because the priests or the Ministry men sought to preserve any childhood innocence. They had simply learned by experience in their two centuries of conquest that children were too unpredictable and could be a potential for disruption of the solemnity of the ritual putting-to-death. The younger teenagers were excluded for similar if slightly different reasons. The priests also knew that the boys and girls already passing through the confused rage of puberty were one of the deepest repositories of resentment against the occupation, and if any futile protest was to occur, it would be the young who triggered it. Too full of life fully to grasp the true and absolute reality of death, they were less easily deterred by the muskets and bayonets of the soldiers.
Not that the young of the village could really be prevented from watching the burning of Gaila Ford. It was just that they would not be standing with the adults. Instead, they would be peering through gaps in the shuttered upper-floor windows of the houses around the square. They would be squatting precariously on the thatch or tile of the higher roofs or wedged between trunk and bough of the taller trees. Argo was among the latter. He had hidden himself, along with Will Steed and Jason Halfacre, in the big oak at the other end of the village street from where the flame would be lit. The three of them were in place well before the villagers began to gather and the collaborators checked the parish rolls and the lists of residents to see that none were deliberately staying away. The checking was hardly needed, however, since the morbid attraction of the brutal spectacle was more than enough to overcome any principled and dangerous boycott of the execution. Even those whom Gaila Ford had nursed through the two great bouts of winter sickness would stare transfixed as she died.
Argo's stepfather had specifically forbidden him to go anywhere near the square or the burning. "The rules are the rules, boy, and, while I personally think it might be an education to you to see the Ford woman get what's coming to her, the rules come first." Accordingly, Argo had been dispatched with a shovel and a rake to clear the dead leaves that were clogging the ditch at the north end of the top field. In a charade of obedience, Argo had headed for the top field with the designated implements, but only remained by the neglected ditch long enough to hide the tools in the long grass before heading for the village to where he had arranged to meet Will and Jason. He took the long way round so he would not accidentally meet his father along the shorter route. He considered going to watch the burning as an act of open rebellion, but he was still doing all he could not to be caught. Under normal circumstances, Herman Kretch would not have given a damn whether Argo watched the execution or not, but ever since Gaila Ford had been denounced, his behavior had been tense and strange. He had seemed more angry and impatient than usual, and Argo had wondered about this. Herman Kretch was not one to be unduly upset by anything like a witch-burning that did not affect him directly, and Argo could only suppose it was nothing more than coincidence. Then, just two days earlier, he had overheard two women gossiping as they waited on the interminable line for their weekly flour ration. A story was apparently circulating that his stepfather had been the Masked Informer who had denounced Gaila Ford, and he had done it because she had rebuffed his advances when he had gone to Ford's cottage one 'shine-drunk night, looking for an alternative bed partner to Argo's mother. Argo hated his stepfather but still found this hard to believe. And how could these women know? The identity of the Masked Informer, with hidden face and in the shapeless robe that dragged along the ground and disguised physical build and even gender, was supposed to be known only to the priests. Argo tried to listen longer, but the women had seen him and lowered their voices.
The tree that the three boys had selected was a tall and venerable oak on which village lovers had, in happier times, made it a practice to carve their linked initials. It was at the opposite end of the square from where the execution would take place, and it afforded them a better view than that of many of the adults on the ground. Argo, Will, and Jason had arranged to be in position early, well before the majority of the villagers had arrived, so they would not be spotted clambering into the high branches. They had lain and stared through the late summer foliage as the square rapidly filled with drab and ragged people who seemed to carry their air of defeat around with them like a collective shroud. As the crowd entered the square, the men went to the right and the women to the left. He saw his mother and stepfather dividing and going their separate ways. The onlookers were strictly divided by sex, and even couples had to separate until the burning was over. This segregation was enforced at all Zhaithan gatherings and assemblies. Argo had never understood why this had to happen, and no one older had ever been able to give him a reason, but many things ordered by the Mosul conquerors had no discernable reason except maybe to degrade and humiliate those under their rule. The women in the square far outnumbered the men, but that was the way of it in the wake of the terrible slaughter that had come with the Mosul invaders. The Mosul also tended to take their time where subject peoples were concerned, and, by Argo's estimate, the crowd had been kept standing in silence for at least a half hour before Gaila Ford was finally brought out from the two-storey building on the northwest corner of the square that, in the old days, had been the constable's station and the village lock-up but was now draped wit...
Mick Farren was born in Cheltenham, England on a wet night at the end of World War II and he has been complaining about it ever since. His fiction received attention in the late punk seventies with The DNA Cowboys cult trilogy. Through the 1980s and 1990s, he tempered cyberpunk with his own post-Burroughs, post-Lovecraft strangeness, while, at the same time functioning as a columnist, critic, recording artist, teaching a science fiction and horror course at UCLA, publishing a number of non-fiction works on popular culture, including a best selling biography of Elvis Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, and the bizarre-fashion history The Black Leather, and also providing Rock & Roll lyrics for bands like Metallica, Motorhead, Brother Wayne Kramer, and others. With Kramer, he created the off-Broadway musical The Last Words Of Dutch Schultz, and he has scripted a number of TV documentaries. He emerged into the 21st century with the critically acclaimed and suitably unorthodox vampire saga The Renquist Quartet, and the forthcoming alternate world epic Flame Of Evil.
Farren currently lives in Los Angeles. His most recent non-fiction is the autobiographic Give The Anarchist A Cigarette (Jonathan Cape, UK), his most recent novel is Underland (Tor Books US), and his current CDs are People Call You Crazy: The Mick Farren Story (Sanctuary UK) and The Deviants Dr Crow (Navarre US).
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Farren currently lives in Los Angeles. His most recent non-fiction is the autobiographic Give The Anarchist A Cigarette (Jonathan Cape, UK), his most recent novel is Underland (Tor Books US), and his current CDs are People Call You Crazy: The Mick Farren Story (Sanctuary UK) and The Deviants Dr Crow (Navarre US).
ONE
ARGO
Argo Weaver stood in the doorway of the bedroom and pointed the pistol at his stepfather. The two-shot horse pistol, with its long twin barrels and two hammers, was heavy, but his hand was steady and his aim did not falter. Argo Weaver's stepfather snored softly. To say that his mother slept next to the man was an exaggeration. She slept in the same bed, as she had done since Argo's father had been confirmed killed, but she was turned away from the man, as far from him as was physically possible to be and still remain under the same covers. When Argo fired, she would wake screaming. She would be terrified. She might even be spattered by her loveless husband's blood. The effect on his mother, as Argo could picture all too clearly, would be devastating. He had imagined the scene he was now acting out a hundred times since the man called Herman Kretch had come to their house. He would cock both of the pistol's hammers. He would slowly squeeze the first of the triggers, and, in the flash and report, payback would be exacted for all the cruelties large and small that Kretch had inflicted on Argo, his mother, and his sisters. Over and above the personal, to murder Kretch while he slept would also serve as a just punishment for the crime of being a collaborator.
With his left hand, Argo eased back the first of the hammers. The double click-click was loud in the night, and the tone of his stepfather's breathing changed for a moment. He shifted position slightly, but did not wake. Argo waited for a few moments, just to make sure, and then slowly cocked the second hammer. The pistol had been made by George and James Bolton of Jamestown. That information was engraved on the left-hand barrel, and it was dated according to the old Mother Goddess calendar, the use of which had been forbidden since the Mosul occupation and the coming of the men from the Ministry of Virtue. According to his stepfather, it was a type of small-bore, double-barreled pistol known as a "cuckold's special." Although, as far as Argo knew, Kretch had never used the gun since he came to their house, he liked ostentatiously to clean it, sipping 'shine and acting the big man. As he ran a strip of oiled rag down one of the barrels and tightened the dual spring mechanisms with a small screwdriver, he had explained to Argo why the weapon had been given such a name. "You shoot her, and then you shoot him, and then, if you feel like it, you reload and shoot yourself." But Herman Kretch was not the kind to shoot himself. He held his miserable life in far too high regard.
With the pistol cocked, Argo again took aim, but his finger did not immediately go to a trigger. This was the point beyond which his imagination was increasingly less clear. After the shot, he knew he would run, but what of his mother and two sisters? Herman Kretch was their sole support. The large, raw-boned man with the pot belly, red face, and muttonchop side-whiskers might be a bully, a braggart, and an occasional drunkard, but, for the three women Argo would have to leave behind, life would become close to impossible without him. The Mosul, the Ministry men, and the collaborators who ran things in the occupied territories showed no kindness to the widows and orphans of their defeated enemies and had scant tolerance for those who did. Herman Kretch might be a swine as far as Argo was concerned, but he was not a liar. He had made it very clear when he had proposed marriage to Argo's mother that it was not to be a union of love or even affection. He wanted a strong woman to cook and clean for him, to fetch and carry, and to warm his bed. That she was good-looking only made it an added plus, and that she came to him with three children presented no real problem. Argo, Mathilde, and Gwennie were of an age to be useful, and it made them a source of unpaid labor in these dark times when the conquered worked from morning to night and, even so, barely survived. They were three pairs of extra hands to be exploited in the fields, to help with the livestock, and clean up in the workshop where Herman Kretch repaired boots, shoes, and other leather goods for the Army of Occupation. Argo's stepfather not only kissed the boots of the Mosul, but he mended and shined them, too, along with their saddles and harnesses. He was equally pragmatic and open about his collaboration. "Hassan IX and his Mosul will take it all in the end. Carolina has gone, and the Virginia Freestate, too. Albany can't hold for long on its own. We may not like it, but Hassan is the future, and we better buckle down and get used to it."
Without even Kretch to protect them, his mother and sisters could all too easily become three more refugees in the woods and wild places, wandering aimlessly without papers until they starved or worse. Although the worst of the atrocities that had occurred in the direct wake of defeat had been mitigated, the woods were still full of deserters, fugitives, the displaced, and the migrant crazy, as well as the regular Mosul patrols (who fired first and rarely bothered to ask questions), the Indians, who moved like ghosts, and the ghosts themselves. Under Mosul rule, women on their own were vulnerable from every side. Without even the meager rights accorded to the males among subject peoples in the Empire of Hassan IX, carpetbaggers and scallywags could seize their homes and property. The young and comely might simply disappear to serve as an officer's concubine or in the bordellos, cribs, and joyhouses of Savannah and Newport. The old would find themselves driven out to die in the rain. Rape was still a popular pastime among the Mogul grunts, the Mamaluke troopers, and Teuton uhlans, although they were now restrained by their captains from the pillage and razing of all but the occasional village or small town. Worst of all, any woman could be fingered as a witch on the most flimsy pretext and hanged if they were lucky, or put to torture and then burned alive if they were not.
The entire chain of events that had led to Argo Weaver standing over his stepfather with a loaded gun and a murderous if wavering resolve had started when, earlier that day, the Ministry men and priests of the Zhaithan had burned Gaila Ford for heresy. The execution by fire of Gaila Ford was by no means the first witch-burning in the village of Thakenham. Even with a population of less than three hundred, the place had still apparently harbored a major complement of women who were deemed by the Zhaithan Ministry of Virtue to constitute a threat and abomination to the Twin Deities, Ignir and Aksura. The burning of Gaila Ford, however, had been invested with a certain significance. The villagers had talked of nothing else for the two weeks since she had been taken, denounced with full ritual by the Masked Informer, and arrested by the Ministry men backed by a squad of Mosul soldiers from the garrison at Bridgehampton. The collaborators expressed a general opinion that it was a miracle she had survived for so long. Those, like Argo, who had as little to do with the Mosul as they could, held their silence and contained their anger. Argo had known Gaila Ford well. How could he not? Her husband, Henry, and Argo's father, Jackvance Weaver, had gone to the war together. They had enlisted in the same company of the 9th Virginia Freestate Volunteers and had by all accounts died together in the final doomed attempt to hold the Mosul horde at Richmond. Ford had been what was called a handsome woman. She was too mature to be taken as brothel fodder to Savannah, but even Argo, at just fourteen, was well aware that she turned the heads of many men and set them to wondering what she did in her cottage of an evening, all alone, widowed and childless but still obviously in her prime. That alone might have been enough to get her denounced, but worse still, she made it clear to all, in deed if not in word, that she still considered herself a freewoman of the Americas and not a second-class subject of the Mosul Empire.
A number of men had proposed marriage to her just as Herman Kretch had made his overtures to Argo's mother. Without children to consider, she had dismissed these offers out of hand. Apparently she wanted nothing to do with the cowards, gimps, and snivelers who, for their own reasons, had avoided the call to serve. Argo suspected that she might have wed either Jed Pett or Struther Broad, the only two men to return to the village alive, but seemingly neither of the shattered survivors had asked her to take them. Gaila Ford had been well liked by most. She rarely complained, seemed capable of remaining cheerful in impossible situations, and had proved a tower of strength during the winter sickness a year and some earlier. Any one of these qualities would have brought her to the attention of the Ministry of Virtue, and the entire list was more than enough to bring her finally to the flame. Argo loathed to agree with the collaborators, but it really was a miracle she had remained alive and free, at least in her own mind, for as long as she had.
The wood of her pyre had been piled at the north end of the village square, in front of where the church of the Mother Goddess had once stood, and where the Mosul now had their fire tower. The priests of Zhaithan were great believers in lessons taught by example, and the entire village would be assembled in the square, by force if necessary, to witness the prolonged and agonizing death. The only exceptions would be the children and teenagers under fifteen. This was not because the priests or the Ministry men sought to preserve any childhood innocence. They had simply learned by experience in their two centuries of conquest that children were too unpredictable and could be a potential for disruption of the solemnity of the ritual putting-to-death. The younger teenagers were excluded for similar if slightly different reasons. The priests also knew that the boys and girls already passing through the confused rage of puberty were one of the deepest repositories of resentment against the occupation, and if any futile protest was to occur, it would be the young who triggered it. Too full of life fully to grasp the true and absolute reality of death, they were less easily deterred by the muskets and bayonets of the soldiers.
Not that the young of the village could really be prevented from watching the burning of Gaila Ford. It was just that they would not be standing with the adults. Instead, they would be peering through gaps in the shuttered upper-floor windows of the houses around the square. They would be squatting precariously on the thatch or tile of the higher roofs or wedged between trunk and bough of the taller trees. Argo was among the latter. He had hidden himself, along with Will Steed and Jason Halfacre, in the big oak at the other end of the village street from where the flame would be lit. The three of them were in place well before the villagers began to gather and the collaborators checked the parish rolls and the lists of residents to see that none were deliberately staying away. The checking was hardly needed, however, since the morbid attraction of the brutal spectacle was more than enough to overcome any principled and dangerous boycott of the execution. Even those whom Gaila Ford had nursed through the two great bouts of winter sickness would stare transfixed as she died.
Argo's stepfather had specifically forbidden him to go anywhere near the square or the burning. "The rules are the rules, boy, and, while I personally think it might be an education to you to see the Ford woman get what's coming to her, the rules come first." Accordingly, Argo had been dispatched with a shovel and a rake to clear the dead leaves that were clogging the ditch at the north end of the top field. In a charade of obedience, Argo had headed for the top field with the designated implements, but only remained by the neglected ditch long enough to hide the tools in the long grass before heading for the village to where he had arranged to meet Will and Jason. He took the long way round so he would not accidentally meet his father along the shorter route. He considered going to watch the burning as an act of open rebellion, but he was still doing all he could not to be caught. Under normal circumstances, Herman Kretch would not have given a damn whether Argo watched the execution or not, but ever since Gaila Ford had been denounced, his behavior had been tense and strange. He had seemed more angry and impatient than usual, and Argo had wondered about this. Herman Kretch was not one to be unduly upset by anything like a witch-burning that did not affect him directly, and Argo could only suppose it was nothing more than coincidence. Then, just two days earlier, he had overheard two women gossiping as they waited on the interminable line for their weekly flour ration. A story was apparently circulating that his stepfather had been the Masked Informer who had denounced Gaila Ford, and he had done it because she had rebuffed his advances when he had gone to Ford's cottage one 'shine-drunk night, looking for an alternative bed partner to Argo's mother. Argo hated his stepfather but still found this hard to believe. And how could these women know? The identity of the Masked Informer, with hidden face and in the shapeless robe that dragged along the ground and disguised physical build and even gender, was supposed to be known only to the priests. Argo tried to listen longer, but the women had seen him and lowered their voices.
The tree that the three boys had selected was a tall and venerable oak on which village lovers had, in happier times, made it a practice to carve their linked initials. It was at the opposite end of the square from where the execution would take place, and it afforded them a better view than that of many of the adults on the ground. Argo, Will, and Jason had arranged to be in position early, well before the majority of the villagers had arrived, so they would not be spotted clambering into the high branches. They had lain and stared through the late summer foliage as the square rapidly filled with drab and ragged people who seemed to carry their air of defeat around with them like a collective shroud. As the crowd entered the square, the men went to the right and the women to the left. He saw his mother and stepfather dividing and going their separate ways. The onlookers were strictly divided by sex, and even couples had to separate until the burning was over. This segregation was enforced at all Zhaithan gatherings and assemblies. Argo had never understood why this had to happen, and no one older had ever been able to give him a reason, but many things ordered by the Mosul conquerors had no discernable reason except maybe to degrade and humiliate those under their rule. The women in the square far outnumbered the men, but that was the way of it in the wake of the terrible slaughter that had come with the Mosul invaders. The Mosul also tended to take their time where subject peoples were concerned, and, by Argo's estimate, the crowd had been kept standing in silence for at least a half hour before Gaila Ford was finally brought out from the two-storey building on the northwest corner of the square that, in the old days, had been the constable's station and the village lock-up but was now draped wit...
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherTor Science Fiction
- Publication date2006
- ISBN 10 0765345803
- ISBN 13 9780765345806
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages416
- Rating
Buy New
Learn more about this copy
US$ 14.04
Shipping:
FREE
Within U.S.A.
Top Search Results from the AbeBooks Marketplace
Stock Image
Kindling
Published by
Tor Science Fiction
(2006)
ISBN 10: 0765345803
ISBN 13: 9780765345806
New
Mass Market Paperback
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Mass Market Paperback. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # DADAX0765345803
Buy New
US$ 14.04
Convert currency
Stock Image
KINDLING (FLAME OF EVIL)
Published by
Tor Science Fiction
(2006)
ISBN 10: 0765345803
ISBN 13: 9780765345806
New
Softcover
Quantity: 1
Seller:
Rating
Book Description Condition: New. New. In shrink wrap. Looks like an interesting title! 0.43. Seller Inventory # Q-0765345803
Buy New
US$ 58.81
Convert currency