Rise Above

By AM Kirkby

A reclusive scholar, worn down by political demands of his new post as Archbishop, retires on his physician's orders to one of his country manors to convalesce. His illness, his disillusion with public life, and a new friend make a dangerous mixture...

• Language: English
• Publisher: AM Kirkby
• Release date: Oct 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301745340

AM Kirkby

A M Kirkby writes a wide range of fiction, including fantasy, SF and historical novels and short stories.

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Rise above

by A M Kirkby

Published by A M Kirkby at Smashwords

Text Copyright © 2012 A M Kirkby

All Rights Reserved

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and locations are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.

This file is licensed for private individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording, or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted to the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.

Also by A M Kirkby on Smashwords

Short stories

A Ghost Story of the Norfolk Broads

The Tin Heart

Sword of Sorcery

Sacrifices

Egerius

Wake the dragon

Novellas

Walsingham Way

Green Land

Doppelgänger

Novels

Etruscan Spring – forthcoming

Etruscan Blood - forthcoming

Children's books

Kasbah cat

Pagliaccio the opera cat

Rise above

a novella

by A M Kirkby

He let the trigger go. He heard the string thrum, felt the jolt of the crossbow cradled in his arms. His eyes almost shut, as if he were praying.

The air seemed to flex with the deep hum of the bowstring slowly vibrating back to stillness.

He kept his eyes shut a moment, and his lips moved silently.

Christ's wounds! someone was yelling. The moment of stillness was gone, as it always was once the bolt had been shot. The forest full of noise. People running towards the body, as they always did. Now came the business of gralloching the kill; the butchery began.

But they were still yelling, and there were others coming towards him, running, stumbling on the tussocks of grass, on the uneven ground. They were surrounding him; for a moment Tobias felt like a fox at the end of a chase, watching the hounds close in. He saw mouths opening and closing, and couldn't make any sense of what they were saying. Slow on the uptake, as ever.

... a terrible accident... one of them said, and he grabbed on to that thought and held it, as one of the russet-clad servants reached gently for the bow and took it from him. He felt another reach an arm across his back, gently gathering him up, turning him away from the body in the clearing, walking him away.

He wished he could feel that hushed stillness again, the moment before the trigger had suddenly jolted back under his finger. The still small voice that he had once heard. The peace of a good conscience.

May God forgive me.

***

They were all met in the great chamber, the men in black; their long robes dragging, pale faces above stiff white ruffs, below that black caps, like copies of a single pattern. One with a ginger goatee, and squinting dark eyes; another with a long, greying beard, and friendly moist eyes that seemed to slant down at the outside, as if his face were so tired it was gradually collapsing.

He couldn't count them, they clustered so thickly, but he tallied up his friends. Old Chamberlin, that was one, the greybeard; and Trefusis of Bath and Wells, and his brother Robert; who hadn't always been on his side, in theological disputation or in the governance of the Church, but who none the less would be a faithful friend now, he could depend on it. Bastwick of Christ Church, fat with good college living, his forehead damp as his handshake; dependable,