Kane - Flaming Arrow: The Hooded Man Trilogy: The Afterblight Chronicles, Books 5, 8, 10

THE AFTERBLIGHT CHRONICLES

FLAMING

ARROW

PAUL KANE

ABADDONBOOKS.COM

An Abaddon Books Publication

www.abaddonbooks.com

abaddon@rebellion.co.uk

First published 2015 by Abaddon Books, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.

Editor-in Chief: Jonathan Oliver

Commissioning Editor: David Moore

Cover Art: Sam Gretton

Design: Simon Parr & Sam Gretton

Marketing and PR: Lydia Gittins

Publishing Manager: Ben Smith

Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley

Chief Technical Officer: Chris Kingsley

The Afterblight Chronicles created by Simon Spurrier & Andy Boot

Copyright 2015 Rebellion.

All rights reserved.

The Afterblight Chronicles, Abaddon Books and Abaddon Books logo are trademarks owned or used exclusively by Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited. The trademarks have been registered or protection sought in all member states of the European Union and other countries around the world. All right reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84997-855-2

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

The Afterblight Chronicles Series

The Culled

Simon Spurrier

Kill Or Cure

Rebecca Levene

Dawn Over Doomsday

Jasper Bark

Death Got No Mercy

Al Ewing

Blood Ocean

Weston Ochse

Arrowhead

Broken Arrow

Arrowland

Paul Kane

Schools Out

Operation Motherland

Childrens Crusade

Scott K. Andrews

Journal of the Plague Year

Malcolm Cross, CB Harvey and Adrian Tchaikovsky

OMNIBUS EDITIONS

America

Schools Out Forever

Hooded Man

For all the fans of the Hooded Man novels; I can never thank you enough.

Look back over the past with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too.

Meditations, Marcus Aurelius

PROLOGUE

ONCE, A LONG time ago, this was a world. A living, breathing world.

Now its just a shell, a shadow of what it once was. Not that Mouse could remember the time before; he was far too young. This was the only world hed ever known, the one hed grown up in. Alone, more or less, since he was very little. He had vague recollections of a family, parents maybeor at the very least people who had looked after him... to begin with. But they werent around for very long. He couldnt remember exactly why: one minute they were there, the next they were gone. Anything could have happened to them really; as much as it was a dead world, it was also a dangerous one.

It hadnt always been that way. Somehow, Mouse knew that. Perhaps the people whod been around during the first few years of his life had told him so. There had been peace... of a kind. Some sort of order, at any rate. It was all he did know, as he hadnt come across anyone who could tell him more. Not that hed ask. It wasnt wiseyou only fell for that once. Trust was a hard thing to come by in this day and age, so it was best just to not get involved.

Hed been scavenging all this time, and had become incredibly good at it. Hunger was a pretty good motivator, even when you were very smallnot that he was much bigger nowand fear kept you safe. Mostly. It was a combination that had worked well enough up to this point. It had also seen him travel a lot, moving on if a place had already been picked overor hed found all he could. Flitting from one burnt-out town to another, just as he was doing today. Sometimes you got lucky, like when hed found that untouched basement with the tinned goods in. Tins were his best friends, they survived anything.

More often than not, there were days like this, when he found nothing. Mouse took one last look over his shoulder, at the scarred remains of the structures hed been searching. The latest city hed entered, which looked pretty much like all the others hed ever come across. Except it wasnt like all the rest, he felt. And there was a sadness he couldnt explain as his eyes took in the rubble that filled the streets, the caved-in walls of buildings, bricks sticking out like broken teeth.

He shrugged, hitching up his backpack and leaving. It was time to head off somewhere else, somewhere that held more promise than this.

Time to hit the road again.

MOUSE HADNT BEEN walking for very long down that road when he came across a curious sight in the distance.

He was used to seeing blackened stretches of land; there was little else sometimes, between the towns and cities. What remained of that living, breathing world he had never seen. But the landscape here was slightly different. It was uneven, rising and falling around him. As Mouse drew closer, he saw that it was littered with short, squat columns, fixed into the ground. He crouched and peered at one of them, running a finger over the surface, then wiping off the ash that covered it. Beneath were rings, lots of them: larger on the outside, then progressively smaller the closer to the centre they came.

There were lots of the strange objects here, all of differing sizes and shapes.

It used to be how you could tell the age, came a voice from behind him.

Mouse jumped, whipping out the piece of jagged metal he used as a weapon. How anyone had crept up on him was a mystery; Mouse was the quiet one, the sneakerthough someone was obviously much better. But the speaker wasnt as close as hed sounded. He sat on one of the odd columns, his cloak hanging down over the sides. He was leaning on something long and twisted, two hands clutching it for support. His white hair and beard rippled in the breeze passing through this place, and his skin was as wrinkled as old leather. Mouse had never seen anyone as old as him, in fact. The man looked older than time itself.

Mouse was simultaneously terrified and intrigued, fixed to the spot. But standing here out in the open like this, gawping, was a good way to get yourself killed. Perhaps it was a trap, and any moment now hed be attacked from other angles, his backpack snatched from him as he was kicked and stomped into the ground.

He made a concerted effort to move forward, placing one foot in front of the other. You... You stay where you are, warned Mouse, looking about him all the while as he covered the distance between them, expecting at any moment to have to defend himself.

But the attack never came.

The man laughed softly. You have nothing to fear from me, I assure you. His voice was rough, but kindly. His breathing was laboured, though, as if it was an effort for him to speak at all. I am quite alone.

Still cautious, Mouse took another few steps. Out of habit, he looked the man over for anything that he might be able to steal. Wasnt the usual way he did things, he preferred not to get his hands dirty, but when the opportunity presented itself he would grab it with both hands. The man shifted his position, took one of his owns hands off the twisted thing in front of him, and held it up.

At first Mouse thought he was commanding him to halt, then realised he was showing that he had nothing of worth about his person. Just his clothes, by the looks of things; no belts or pouches, certainly no food or drink. Mouses eyes flicked sideways again to the oddly-shaped thing the man was still gripping with his other hand.