Nunslinger 8

by Stark Holborn

Genres: Westerns

Synopsis

The year is 1864. Sister Thomas Josephine is on her way from St Louis, Missouri, to Sacramento, California. During the course of her journey, however, she'll find that her faith requires her to take off her wimple and pick up a gun... A terrible accident and a life-changing deed find Sister Thomas Josephine the prisoner of the roughest characters she's yet encountered: a gang of bushwackers and deserters bent on mindless destruction - and getting ahold of the bounty on her head. But the more time she spends among them the more she comes to understand that they're just boys, cheated of a normal life by the terrible war that is tearing apart the United States. And they're bringing her ever closer to Indian Country... and Abraham C. Muir.

Release date: June 5, 2014

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 80

Sample

CHAPTER EIGHT

My arrow is fierce without any sin

 

 

That night I dreamed of Abe. I dreamed that we were travelling together once more – riding Pokeberry and Rattle through a forest. There was a fall chill in the air and we were moving quietly, so as not to disturb some unseen presence, something dormant, like a beast in hibernation.

From the corner of my eye I caught a flicker of movement. I steered my mount off the path and rode closer. It was a bird, with gentle gray feathers, trapped in a briar bush. I slipped off Pokeberry and reached in to pluck it out, only to recoil in horror: the bird had impaled itself on a thorn, the woody point driven deep into its eye. Black blood oozed, but still it fought.

I staggered away, grasping at my side for a knife, but slipped and fell into a pool. It was not deep, but the edges were slick with mud. I wiped the muck from my face, yet more ran into my eyes. I scrubbed at them, but it only grew thicker. I called for Abe and the mud filled my mouth, seeping over my lips and tongue. I spat it free but still it came, running down my throat until I began to suffocate in darkness.

I thrashed awake, only to find a hand clamped over my mouth. Ellen’s face hovered in shadow as she knelt over me. Her hair hung loose over the shoulders of her nightgown. Beyond her I saw the girls cowering together, and beyond that a glow of orange in the night.

The first shot broke the stillness before I could speak, and was followed by a second volley. I could hear hooves thundering along the muddy street outside.

‘Out of the house,’ Ellen commanded shakily, pushing coats and shawls into her daughters’ arms. ‘Stay quiet and let them take what they want.’

‘Mamma, no,’ cried Ginny, white as thin milk, ‘they’ve taken everything already!’

‘She is right,’ I said, hauling myself to my feet, nerves jolting with every gunshot from outside. ‘They are thieves and criminals, if we fought them–’

‘They might kill us,’ Ellen snapped. She looked at Ginny. ‘Let’s pray to God they have poor memories for faces.’

Ginny reached resolutely for the gun, but her mother snatched it away, shoving it deep into her own shawl.

‘Cover your head with a blanket, at least,’ she barked at me, ‘or do you want to be discovered?’

Outside the street was in chaos: cries and gunshots rang out from every direction, mingled with coarse laughter and bellowing. A pair of horses galloped past us, the riders, with long greasy hair and patched shirts, crowing and discharging their pistols into the air. Across the street an old man stumbled from his house with an agonized cry, his nightshirt soaked in blood.

The girls were sobbing and Lacey let out a scream, but Ellen pushed her away.

‘To the church,’ she called frantically. ‘We must get to the church.’

I tried to turn towards the wounded man, but Mary’s hand was like a vice around mine, dragging me away.

Ellen looked over her shoulder and cried in dismay. Behind us, her house was on fire, flames licking from a smashed window up towards the roof.

‘This is your doing!’ she turned to me, wild-eyed. ‘You taught them to fight and this is what come of it! Falk’s right, you’re a demon, nothin’ but death and misery–’

‘Mamma!’ screamed Mary beside me, ‘they got the preacher!’

At the top of the street, a man on a horse was pulling to a stop. Behind him, dragged along by a rope, was a figure in black, filthy and grazed. Blood matted the preacher’s hair: the glass in his spectacles was missing, though the mang. . .