Shadow

Book 1: Scavenger Trilogy

by K.J. Parker

Genres: Action & Adventure; Epic Fantasy; Historical Fantasy

Synopsis

A man wakes in the wilderness, amid scattered corpses and inquisitive crows. He has no memory of who he is or how he came to be there. The only clues to his former existence lie in his apparent skill with a sword and the fragmented dreams that permeate his sleep.

Release date: May 7, 2013

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 576

Sample

Chapter One

He woke up out of a dream about faraway places, and saw smoke.

It was hanging in the air, like mist in a valley, and his first thought was that the chimney was blocked again. But there was rather too much of it for that, and he could hear burning, a soft cackle of inaudible conversation in the thatch above his head, the scampering of rats and squirrels in the hayloft.

Beside him, his wife grunted and turned over. He nudged her hard in the small of the back, and hopped out of bed.

‘Get up,’ he said. ‘The house is on fire.’

‘What?’ She opened her eyes and stared at him.

‘The house is on fire,’ he told her, annoyed at having to repeat himself in the middle of a crisis. ‘Come on, for God’s sake.’

She scrambled out and started poking about with her feet, trying to find her shoes. ‘No time for that now,’ he snapped, and unlatched the partition door. It opened six inches or so and stuck; someone lying against it on the other side. That wasn’t good.

It occurred to him to wonder where the light was coming from, a soft, rather beautiful orange glow, like an hour before sunset in autumn. The answer to that was through the gap where the partition didn’t quite meet the roof – it was coming through from the main room. Not good at all.

He took a step back from the door and kicked it, stamping sideways with the flat of his bare foot. The door moved a few more inches, suggesting that he was shifting a dead weight. He repeated the manoeuvre five time. . .