Free The Bones of the Earth (The Dark Age) by Scott Bury Page A

spawn—heroes like you, Javor.”
    “ I told you, I’m no warrior!”
    Photius smiled. “I have seen evidence to the contrary. Look at yourself—with no training and virtually no weapons, you just destroyed two monsters. A few days ago, you armed yourself with a knife and a farmer’s axe and set off fearlessly to rescue two girls from a gang of thugs. Those are warrior traits, as I see it.”
    But Javor didn’t feel like a warrior. He realized how tired he was, how his whole body ached and how hungry he felt. He lay back against a rock, tried to get comfortable and soon fell asleep.
     
     

Chapter 6 : pain
     
     
    Every step was agony. Pain shot up his left thigh every time he put his foot onto the stony ground. An ache snaked from his right hip, around the small of his back and up to his right shoulder. Javor realized it resulted from favouring his left foot. His boots were nearly worn out. His right boot was pinching his little toe where it poked out the side, and grit had worked in and scraped his sole.
    The bruises on his chest and side smarted with every little bump from the salvaged armour—none of which fit very well. The helmet had become too hot and uncomfortable a long time ago, and he had tied it to his pack. Now it bumped against his hip with every step.
    Photius talked all the way down the mountain and continued as they walked through the forests and meadows. “It seems as if the earth itself has determined to eradicate humanity. A century ago, Hell opened its gates, somewhere far to the East—perhaps even beyond Asia on the edge of the world. Out of those gates have issued hosts of evil: evil men and all sorts of monsters, and pestilences, diseases that men had never seen before,” he prattled on. “But that was not the first time that the earth has seen monsters or evil. No, evil has been with us forever. And the races of monsters are far older than the race of men. You can feel it, can’t you, the immense age of these fiends?”
    Javor realized that he had not heard much of what Photius had been saying all day. There had been stories about monsters and demons and gods. But his attention was claimed by his thigh, back, shoulder and bruises.
    Javor looked at the sky. Clear tomorrow. The farther they got from the monster’s cave, the more familiar and predictable the clouds and the weather looked, and the monster and dragon seemed less plausible. He had given up on looking over his shoulder for the dragon that attacked them on the mountainside because Photius did not seem concerned about it. The clouds made him think of sitting in the pasture again, and that made him think of his father … not now.
    To keep from thinking about his parents, he paid attention to Photius. “The dragons—which, of course, originated in the far East—their race goes especially far back, perhaps as far as the beginnings of the earth,” he was saying as he used his walking stick to push branches out of his path. “One of my colleagues, now, believes that the dragons embody the essence of the earth itself. Of course,” he laughed slightly, “I don’t hold with that, myself. How can they represent anything but the spirit of evil, when they wreak so much destruction wherever they go?”
    How much farther is it to home? Javor wondered.
     
    “ Of old, a race of immortals arose on the earth and they began a war to rid the earth of the monsters. Some they imprisoned deep under the earth, others they pushed into the depths of the Ocean Sea, and some they simply slew with swords and other weapons. These monster-killers travelled around the world, destroyed many monsters and earned many names for themselves: Zeus, Apollo, Gilgamesh, Herakles, Siegfried. There are many stories, and some of them are simply fabrications. But doubt not, dear boy, that all those stories have some essence of fact, or at least they once did.”
    Photius’ ceaseless voice began to irritate Javor. “I don’t know many of the old stories,”