The following is an excerpt from “Eclipsed by Shadow”, an award-winning adventure through history — on horseback.
Meagan has escaped the Mongol hordes of Genghis Khan to save a city in the path of destruction … only to be captured:
THE STENCH WAS worse than the nomad camps, worse even than the squalid valleys of Rome. Meagan was pushed along a rutted, muddy street through man- and animal-made puddles, and into a courtyard surrounded by buildings of oversized hewn beams. She was dragged to a set of stocks mounted along one end of the courtyard. Heavy iron clasped over her head.
“I am trying to save you!” she protested, her face mashed into the beam. Metal burrs sliced small wounds into her neck. “Please listen or we are all going to die! Listen to me!”
“Oh ho, ‘tis ferly! Have someone say die?”
Meagan stopped pleading. She was almost sure she had heard English.
A man stepped up and squatted, peering into her face. A blast of noxious breath billowed over her. “So said verily, this Tatar be a she.” The words were thick, beyond the thickest brogue or British cockney she had ever heard. O’s were ah’s and ah’s were o’s—but it was English. “You be of England?” the man exhaled. “Answer.”
“Yes, sir, I—” Meagan’s feet were abruptly swept out from under her. The iron dug into her neck as she scrambled to stand. Shouts and arguing boiled around her.
“Belay!” bellowed the English-speaking man. He crouched near Meagan. “Unwittily said.”
“This is very ungrateful,” she mumbled to the beam. The metal felt imbedded in the back of her skull.
“They not like aliens, these.” The man leaned his breath closer. “It be not them what decides.” He smiled, showing colors of yellow, black and brown. “I was alien beforetimes, and English as you be. Now I be they maister. I be Marshal.” The man nodded to the others. “The Tatar wench be mine. We gluppen and speak.”
Men came forward and released the iron clasps. For the first time Meagan was able to face her captors. Like the nomads they were unwashed, but where the skin of a nomad was clear and smooth, the faces of these men were bearded and blemished. Their clothing was varied and colorful, but it fit less well than the nomads’ clothing and was less well kept. Like their city, these men looked better from a distance.
Excerpted from Eclipsed by Shadow, the award-winning first volume of “The Legend of the Great Horse” trilogy. (Hrdbk pg. 199)
Book II: The Golden Spark is available! Book III announcements coming soon…
Read the 1st Chapter online!
Copyright © 2008 John Royce