Free Dawn of Wonder (The Wakening Book 1) by Jonathan Renshaw

What did he care? There was no return from this. Finding
a trough of water, he rinsed himself. It would go poorly if his father were to
find out.
    But matters were not about to improve. As he
rounded the last building, Emroy appeared from the other side, walking in the
same direction, away from the manor house.
    “What are you doing here?” Aedan asked in a frail
voice, tensing, trying to hide the catch in his throat.
    “I live this way, remember.”
    “But everyone else is still inside.”
    “I have no interest in taking any more orders.
It’s well enough for you commoners to be bossed around, but I won’t stand for
that treatment any longer.” He swung his cane at the long grass. “The lieutenant
said he wanted good visibility before anyone left. This is good enough for me.
I told him so and walked out. Say, that was quite a show you put on. Fancy
raising a whole town to fight off non-existent bandits, or did you tell them it
was a dragon?”
    Aedan put his head down and walked.
    Emroy’s laugh oozed smugness. “It was really
interesting to see you crumple in the mud like that. You should have heard the
people talking about it, especially about how you wet yourself. We expected
more. Well they did. I always knew.”
    Aedan had no fight in him. He kept silent.
    They had covered about half a mile when they heard
the first screams.

 

     
    Nulty hung back from the others. After being shoved and shooed
from the farm, it was no surprise that he wanted to keep to himself.
    The road cut a gentle curve through the deep hillside
grass. It was so quiet, so peaceful. But Nulty huffed and pulled his whiskers
and finally began to speak his thoughts to the dappled mare.
    “There was more at work there than the fear of a
beating, Pebble. Something is damaged in that boy, and something is unsettled
in me. Am I embarrassed? No, that’s not it. Perhaps angry with Dresbourn? That’s
not it either. No, it was something else. It’s something about the lieutenant, that
look he gave Aedan at the end. It was such a strange look. What do you think,
Pebble? Am I imagining monsters?”
    He reached a bend in the road. Beyond this point he
would be unable to see the farm gate which had already grown tiny with
distance. He stopped, hesitated, and then appeared to make his mind up,
dismounting and settling down on a rock while Lanor and his men walked their tired
horses round the bend and out of sight.
     
    The two boys spun around and stared at the manor house.
The screams rose. Morning had not yet broken through and the air was still hung
with frail mist so that only hints of movement could be seen. They ran back
along the path until the shapes became clearer. There appeared to be far more
people than they had left behind at the house, as if the townsmen had returned.
But the people were not fighting a fire or securing animals; they looked as
though they were struggling with each other while a growing number fell to the
ground. And suddenly Aedan realised what he was looking at.
    “No!” he whispered.
    Emroy let out a wordless whimper and dropped,
trembling into the grass. “Get down, Aedan! They’ll see you and come after us
too.”
    Aedan’s thoughts were a jumbled confusion of fears
and disbelief. It was actually happening. Earlier, when thinking about the
possibility of slavers and what he could do about it, it had been easy to clear
his head and arrange his thoughts. As he stared, he felt tricked by his senses.
This was either not quite real or it was too real.
    “Aedan! Get down, you idiot!”
    Emroy’s voice was close and unmistakably real.
Aedan’s fuzzy thoughts, still sluggish from the earlier emotional battering,
were beginning to clear.
    He dropped. The grass, thick and long, hid him
completely, but he knew he had been too slow. A glance confirmed this. Someone
was running towards them.
    There were hundreds of places to hide on the farm
– tall pastures, hidden gullies, tangles of bush, dense forest,