Hammer of Fate by G.N. Gudgion EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: G.N. Gudgion
- Language: English
- Genre: Action & Adventure Fantasy
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
1.1 ADELAIS
Adelais knew the winds by their smell, even when she could not feel their
touch on her cheek. From the east they arrived at the sisterhouse along a
slow-flowing stream that carried so much sewage that it was called the
Pissbourne. It curved around the capital’s walls, a stinking barrier between
the hilltop hamlet of Montbeauvoir and the crawling mass of Villebénie,
half a league to the south on the plain. Veer a little south of east, and there
might be hints of a richer corruption from the great gibbet dangling its thin
fruit outside the city walls at Moncrâne. The west wind was cleaner, though
laced with wood smoke from the sisterhouse and the cluster of houses
around it, but to Adelais the rare northerly breeze was the fairest, no matter
how strong or cold or wet, for it carried memories of home, fading but
bittersweet, the way incense clings to wool.
On a morning in the last quarter of the strawberry moon, the wind blew
from the foulest quarter of all, for the south wind reached Montbeauvoir
across the great, crenellated midden of Villebénie. It choked on a thousand
fires and festered in the city’s tanneries and slaughterhouses; it eddied in
fetid, piss-trickling alleyways and flowed over the encircling bone-grey
walls into the slums piled against them. The wind pushed soldiers,
merchants and wagons along the Great North Road at the foot of the hill,
and had no time to lose its smell even over half a league of summer-lush
fields. It broke like an invisible wave against Montbeauvoir’s slopes, and
when it reached Adelais, tending the sisterhouse’s vines, it still carried the
taint of packed humanity, living and dead, from scented lord to manurefooted stable boy. Today she didn’t mind the stink, for if the gods willed, it
was a breath that would blow her homewards, away from enforced
servitude in this fordæmdur sisterhouse, and back to Vriesland where she
belonged.
She’d tried before. Fool that she was, she simply stole a sisterhouse
cloak, and as much food as she could carry, and walked out. Within a
league, two priests had spotted the novice’s habit under the cloak and seized
her. Novices did not leave sisterhouses unaccompanied, not unless they
were on an errand. The beating that followed had put her in the infirmary,
face down, for six days. Adeifi Fabianne enjoyed administering
punishments, particularly on a novice’s bared backside; she had a range of
pliable willow switches for the purpose.
Adelais had learned one thing from that whipping, though. It had been
thrashed into her, one cutting stroke at a time. Did. She have. Any idea. How
a lone woman. Would be expected. To pay her way. On the road? Adelais
wondered if Adeifi Fabianne relished that thought, too, but it had rung true
enough for her to plan her escape differently this time. This time she’d be
dressed as a man. They’d seek a novice, and not see a peasant.
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