"No!" Torak whispered hoarsely. "You'll only hurt her and get us
both killed!"
The hunter wrenched the axe from his belt.
Torak thought swiftly. If the axe found its mark, the auroch would be
unstoppable. But if she was startled instead of wounded, maybe she would merely
make a mock charge, and flee with her calf. He had to get her out of range of
that axe, fast.
Taking a deep breath, he jumped up and down, waving his arms and yelling,
"Over here! Over here!"
It worked - in a way. The auroch gave a furious bellow and charged at Torak - and
the axe hit the mud where she'd stood a heartbeat before. As she splashed toward
Torak, he threw himself behind an oak tree.
No time to climb it-she was almost upon him. He heard her grunt as she heaved
herself up the bank-he felt her heat on the other side of the tree trunk. . . .
At the last moment she swerved, flicking up her tail and blundering off into the
Forest, her calf galloping after her.
The silence when she'd gone was deafening.
Sweat poured down Torak's face as he leaned against the oak.
The hunter stood with his head down, rocking from side to side.
"What were you doing?" panted Torak. "We could've been
killed!"
The hunter did not reply. Lurching across the stream, he retrieved his axes and
stuck them in his belt, then shambled back again. Torak still couldn't see his
face, but he took in the hunter's muscled limbs and jagged slate knife. If it
came to a fight, he'd lose. He was just a boy, not even thirteen summers old.
Suddenly the hunter stumbled against a beech tree and began to retch.
Torak forgot his alarm and ran to help him.
The hunter was on hands and knees, spewing up yellow slime. His back arched - he
gave a convulsive heave - and he spat out something slippery and dark, the size of
a child's fist. It looked . . . it looked like hair.
A gust of wind stirred the branches, and in a shaft of sunlight Torak saw him
clearly for the first time.
The sick man had yanked handfuls of hair from his scalp and beard, leaving
patches of raw, oozing flesh. His face was crusted with thick honey-colored
scabs like birch canker. Slime bubbled in his throat as he spat out the last of
the hair - then sat back on his heels, and began scratching a rash of blisters on
his forearm.
Torak edged backward, his hand moving to his clan-creature skin: the strip of
wolf fur sewn to his jerkin. What was this?
Renn would know. "Fevers," she'd once told him, "are most common
around Midsummer, because that's when the worms of sickness have longest to
work: creeping out of the swamps during the white nights when the sun never
sleeps." But if this was a fever, it was unlike any Torak had ever seen.
He wondered what he could do. All he had was some coltsfoot in his medicine
pouch. "Let me help you," he said shakily. "I have some . . . Ah
no, stop! You're hurting yourself!"
The man was still scratching, baring his teeth as people do when the itching is
so unbearable that they'd rather turn it into outright pain. All at once, he dug
in his fingernails and savaged the blisters, leaving a swathe of bloody flesh.
"Don't!" cried Torak.
With a snarl, the man sprang at him, pinning him down.
Torak stared up into a mass of crusted sores; into two dull eyes filmed with
pus. "Don't-hurt me!" he gasped. "My name-is Torak! I'm-Wolf
Clan, I-"
The man leaned closer. "It-is-coming," he hissed in a blast of putrid
breath.
Torak tried to swallow. "What-is?"
The cankered face twisted in terror. "Can't you see?" he whispered,
flecking Torak with yellow spit. "It is coming! It will take us all!"
A bold, mesmerizing novel about the woman known as "Typhoid Mary," the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever in the burgeoning metropolis of early twentieth century New York.
Z, the novel about the life of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald is at points charming and; like another reviewer, I kept thinking of the movie, "Midnight...
read more
Although heavy on the scientific details, which slowed down the story for me (OK, I admit, I was one of those liberal arts majors who skipped out on...
read more
Loved this book. Magical, quirky, enchanting I could go on. All books do not have to be literary fiction, sometimes it is just so comforting to read...
read more
British Parliament asks Amazon to clarify why it pays $9 million in income tax on $23 billion of UK sales.(May 20 2013) Amazon will be called back to give further evidence to members of the British Parliament "to clarify how its activities in the U.K. justify its low corporate...
Full Story
