Excerpt from
Shadows & Dominions by Steve
Downes
Available to read FREE
on Wattpad
*
Alvar picked up a small stone and threw it at the feet of
his prisoner, Fabian broke from his stare.
Alvar pointed down the slope of the ridge where they both stood. Fabian took a few steps and looked over the
edge. The natural trench was filled with
the dead bodies of human soldiers. There
were Quat corpses there too, mutilated, torn beyond any conceivable
recognition. As the two boys descended
into the plain beyond the ridge they passed close to the trench.
“That was my first post,
those men are the unit I was sent to join.”
Fabian had aced the
autopsy and blood/gore tests in the Academy, he felt no distaste, even so his
mind was racing.
“What happened to
them?” he asked.
“Quat attack,” said
Alvar bluntly, “They came over during the night, we’d withdrawn after a heavy
bombardment,” Alvar paused and then added sarcastically, “we turned our backs
on them and ran for cover, do you think you could have shot all of us!”
Fabian didn’t make an
answer. His eyes were fixed on a small crater
at the northern edge of the trench were a water tank had ruptured and filled a
bomb-hole in, there was the corpse of a private, his body sunk a few inches
below the shallow brown water. His face,
almost prefect in preservation, had been skinned from his skull by an explosion
and floated free of his head on the surface of the pool.
“Come on,” ordered
Alvar, “we’ll be in HQ in a few minutes with a quick march.”
*
