Free A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter by Ron Miller Page A

at night. It is pleasant but disconcerting. He has never seen buildings so beautiful, nor windows with so many wonderful things in them, though he couldn’t tell what most of those things were, swimming behind glass panes like ghostly fish of gold and silver and porcelain.
    Again the street they are on ends when it runs into another. There seems, as usual, to be equal choices between which way to go. Bronwyn heads to the left. This way makes a long curve between the overhanging buildings. The silence and solitude is complete and concrete; around them rise, black and dumb, imposing masses of architecture that glare at them each time stray lantern light glints from one of the thousand windows. At the end of the curve, the street makes a sharp turn and, to Bronwyn’s horror, reveals not a hundred yards away the broad causeway to Palace Island. It is brilliantly lit and alive with traffic. She quickly about-faces, bumping into Thud’s broad chest.
    “Quick! Back around the corner!”
    She leans against the grimy building and pounds her fists together.
    “Damn, damn, damn! We’ve just gone around in a big circle! We’ve been wandering for an hour and we’re practically back where we started. How’re we going to get out of here? I don’t know my way; we can wander all night and still keep going around in circles. Damn!”
    Thud is surprised; the princess has made practically the same mistake he did! He is almost giddy with the egalitarianism of it.
    “Well, what now?” says Bronwyn, more to herself than her companion. “Let’s try going up this street. At least it heads away from the palace.”
    “What are you two doing?” comes a strange voice.
    Bronwyn jumps, turns and sees that it issued from a Guard who has approached unseen from the other arm of the intersection. The black-uniformed patrolman is crossing the broad street, lowering his rifle as he comes. His black cuirass shines dully, like a beetle’s carapace...or a cockroach’s, to be more truthfully specific. Bronwyn feels her huge companion stiffen and she lays a restraining hand on his arm.
    “Don’t,” she whispers. “It’s dark. Maybe we can bluff it out.”
    Thud grunts doubtfully.
    The Guard stops a few paces away.
    “What’re you two doing on the street?”
    “We’re lost; officer,” answers Bronwyn. “We can’t find our hotel.”
    “And which hotel would that be?” “
    The, uh, Excelsior,” answers Bronwyn, thinking too quickly and giving the name of the only hotel she has ever heard of, unfortunately the most exclusive one in the city. The Guard looks skeptically at the pair facing him: an ugly giant, probably an imbecile by his looks, dressed in a brown suit that is a crazy quilt of mismatched patches and carrying a suspiciously rattling bundle over his shoulder; and a lanky, effeminate kid in ill-fitting hand-me-downs. The Excelsior Hotel, by the warts of Musrum! They must think me an idiot , which, unbeknownst to him, the princess of course does.
    “I think you two’d better come along with me,” he says.
    “Well, officer, thanks very much, but I don’t think that you have to go to all that trouble. If you’d just point us the right way?”
    “The only way you’re going is to the district office.”
    “What for?”
    “Never you mind. Just do what I say, if you’d rather not be carried there.”
    Considering Thud’s vast mass, that is a ridiculous threat, but the anomaly is at the moment overlooks by all three.
    “We aren’t doing anything except walking, officer; why don’t you just let us go on our way?”
    “Just keep quiet and do what I tell you,” answers the Guard, raising the muzzle of his rifle.
    “Well, I don’t think so,” says Bronwyn.
    Thud drops his bag with a clattering crash. When the Guard swivels his gun toward the big man, Bronwyn pounces on the black-sleeved arm like a terrier, biting into the wrist as hard as she can. The Guard growls in surprised pain and strikes at her head with his free