ZĂ© Burnay
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Untitled New Book - text preview
🕑 Added 2022-05-25 19:48:21 +0000 UTCH folks, here's a tiny preview of my next book, an illustrated novella.
Untitled
I
They set out from Muur towards the open prairies to the east and within half a day’s journey they crossed the last of the derelict farms that bordered the old town. Scattered throughout the black bones of houses and barns. They passed the ruins of a temple spotted with the marks of cannon fire, eerily peaceful and bathed in golden light. The ridges of the roofless walls covered with weeds. Out on the field walked a lone hunter, silhouetted against the glare.
They waved their hats to him but he didn’t wave back.
II
At the helm of their enterprise was Holcomb. He rode with a newfound vigor or at least one he hadn’t felt in a long time and would not feel again. His hawklike eyes constantly surveying the horizon ahead. Not a friendly man and a mean drunk by all accounts but out there in his true element he commanded the respect of a great general, his great skill in bush-lore honed in by a lifetime on the wilderness against all odds and all conditions.
Behind him rode Pancrates. Of him the other men in the company knew next to nothing. A purported alchemist, barely more than a child. All that they knew was it was him and Holcomb that set the whole thing in motion, under the auspices of the Voivod.
He wore a jacket too large for his thin frame and a gun tucked in his belt that he probably didn’t know how to use and from time to time he would make stops to collect plants or to mark down notes on a small book he kept in his breast pocket. And although he carried himself with a certain hint of arrogance typical of a precocious youth he was a great conversationalist and it didn’t take long for the others to warm up to him.
They dove single file into the huge expanse. The ground beneath their horse’s hooves steadily morphed from dry grass to hard earth until finally they were engulfed fully by the creosote sea.
