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

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barns and lofts. Aedan tried to think. If this had been one of the war games
they had played so often, he would already have made half-a-dozen plans and
selected the best. But here he crouched, shivering like a cornered rabbit.
    Then he remembered the man approaching them. The
distance would be closing. He turned to look and in so doing jabbed his neck
with the crossbow. The crossbow! He still had it.
    He tore it off his back, shoved his foot in the
stirrup and began to pull the string back to the catch. He felt as if his arms
would be wrenched from their sockets though he could only pull it half way. He
heard the sound of footfall. Time was up – he would have to bluff. Slipping a
bolt into the groove he stood and pointed the bow at the man. Only thirty feet separated
them, but Aedan hoped the darkness of the morning would hide the fact that the
bow was not bent.
    The man stopped and shouted in a language Aedan
had never heard, then took a step forward. He was tall, rangy and sunburned,
and his features were exaggerated by a thick, oily beard platted into something
resembling black seaweed. His strong hands were not empty. One held loops of cord
and the other gripped a light club.
    None of Dresbourn’s haughty looks had ever made Aedan
feel as he did under this man’s glare. The lack of respect for the two boys’
humanity was absolute, the capacity for cruelty limitless. Aedan shuddered. He
almost dropped the crossbow and fled, but then he realised that his bluff was
working. After a few more foreign words, the man turned and ran back to the
manor house, shouting at the top of his voice.
    “He’ll be back,” Emroy wailed.
    Aedan’s mind was starting to orientate itself in
this strange reality. He was beginning to feel the touch of details that so
often formed the building blocks of his strategies. Position, enemy intention,
misdirection, surprise, reinforcements … He had been taught such details and
used them in threats that were imagined and games that were real. Could he not
put together a plan for a real threat? With a shuddering effort he hauled
himself from the water of his internal floundering, and stood.
    He looked at Emroy – quaking, whimpering. Instinct
told him to abandon someone so clearly unfit for anything, but that was
thinking like a rabbit again. With only one, there would be no chance of
coordinating anything.
    “Follow me,” Aedan said. He slung the crossbow over
his shoulder, turned off the path and pushed through the long grass. It was so
heavy with dew that he was drenched after a few yards. He turned to check that
Emroy was following. The older boy’s face was slack with terror, but he was
moving. They climbed a small ridge and skidded down the far side, directly
above a cattle pen. Aedan looked back. The tell-tale path of disturbed dew was
as obvious as a paved road. He remembered something he had once used in a war
game played with Thomas and some of the other boys.
    “Run to the back of the tool shed. Wait for me
there,” Aedan called as he scrambled down the bank towards the pen.
    “Where are you going?” Emroy asked, clearly
unwilling to be left alone.
    “I need to set a false trail. Go!”
    Emroy hurried away through the grass, leaving a
clear trail behind him.
    Once Aedan had the gate open, one or two flicks of
the whip sent the cows on their way and scattered them through the pasture.
There were enough trails now to confuse anyone. Aedan sprinted after several of
the cows that were heading towards Emroy. They took fright and sped from him at
loping gallops, carving a spiderweb of dewy tracks in the grass. There would be
no immediate suspicion cast on Emroy’s trail now.
    Aedan could no longer see over the ridge, but he
was sure the slavers would be approaching it at speed. He ran as fast as the
heavy waist-high grass and waterlogged trousers would allow. When he reached
the buildings, he spotted Emroy crouching against a woodpile between two logs,
each with a