Lord of the Inferno - Chapter Seven

This week’s episode features a chapter from Lord of the Inferno, Volume Two of War of the Fathers. War of the Fathers is available as a free ebook if you sign up for the Dan Decker Newsletter. Here is an excerpt from the show:

Neare and Erro’s path to the home had been blocked when a group of Hunwei marched through, herding people before them as if they’d been cattle. At that point, if it would have only been Neare, he would have ditched Thon and made a break for it. Instead, he and Erro had abruptly turned and gone the other way, dragging Thon behind them without regard to his condition. More than once Neare looked back over his shoulder, expecting that the Hunwei would be chasing after them, but he’d been surprised to see nothing of the sort.

Neare had lost count of the homes and streets they’d passed while they’d dragged the man away as fast as they could. At one point, he’d checked on Thon and decided that they were rescuing a corpse. Thon’s head hung, bouncing around whenever they dragged him over a rough stone, or one of them lost a grip on his hand.

Pulling to a stop, Neare had been about to prevail on Erro that Thon was dead when the man had moved, coughing and muttering something that Neare had been unable to hear.

Biting off a curse, Neare saw that they were alone and headed towards the closest structure, which turned out to be another home. It was made of red brick. A wooden bench on the porch had been smashed. Neare envisioned a Hunwei falling on it and figured that he wasn’t too far wrong. The door had been busted off the hinges and flung across the room.

He relaxed even further when he saw the disarray of the sitting and dining  rooms. The Hunwei weren’t going to walk past this house and think they needed to check it out again. Chairs were overturned, windows had been broken, and a bookshelf had been pulled to the floor. A fire burned on the hearth of the dining room, but it was low and hadn’t been tended to in some time.

A table not far from the fire had miraculously survived through all the rest of the damage. Neare considered placing Thon there until he looked down at the bleeding man and realized that even if he and Erro could lift him, his weight might break the table legs.

“Quick,” Neare said once they’d pulled Thon off to the side and out of view of the doorway. “Scour the house for anything we can use as a bandage.” Erro opened his mouth, but Neare stopped him with a growl. “Just go. Anything will do.”