Back a Pale Horse

By Rachael Ilton

Back a Pale Horse: Five stories of conquest, war, famine and death.

♘Four workmates meet up for drinks and to discuss the upcoming Apocalypse.
♘A princess living in the ruins of civilisation has her position threatened by a beautiful rival.
♘Racing along a cold, demon-haunted road, a young man pursues his family’s murderer.
♘An accountant attempting to rekindle his marriage realises that he must make sacrifices if he is to have love.
♘When you are a woman fashioned from fired clay and sorcery, how can you rewrite your assigned destiny?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rachael Ilton
• Release date: Aug 31, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301222421

Rachael Ilton

Hi there, and thanks for visiting my page. I'm a New Zealander, so if you've read any of my stories and are wondering about weird spelling/punctuation you've noticed along the way, that's a partial answer. I grew up on a small island and have lived on two larger islands since then. Islands feature strongly in a lot of my dreams, and subsequently make their way into a number of my stories.I have been writing as a hobby for far longer than I want to admit to. Although I mainly write fantasy or supernatural fiction, there's been the occasionally foray into sci-fi or (gasp!) general fiction.

Book preview

Back a Pale Horse

♘

Five stories of Conquest, War, Famine and Death

Rachael Ilton

Smashwords edition

Copyright 2013

Smashwords License Statement

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Thanks to friends and family for taking the time to go over these stories and tighten sentences, ask questions and, in one case, literally lend a hand (and a chess set). Cheers, guys.

♘

Contents

Back a Pale Horse

Birthright

The Brittle Vow

Food is Love

Bonds

♘

Back a Pale Horse

It’s a nice place this time. Famine got to choose the venue. More so than the rest of us, he’s always had a nose for decent ethnic food, and it’s been a long time since I’ve had pineapple soup this good. Sated for now, I lean back in my creaking rattan chair and drop my spoon into the empty bowl.

Famine is sitting opposite me. He’s closest to the waiter, who’s just psychic enough to want to stay back from our table. Famine winks at me and leans back to collect our drinks before the waiter loses his nerve along with his grip on the tray. Four glasses, each sweating like the waiter, who collects our bowls and hurries away.

As if to balance the male-female ratio, two women have joined us. The bigger of the women is on my right. She’s got a Polynesian look to her today, with her tats concentrating themselves around her arms. Bigger, yes. But not fat. Not by a long shot. Bulked up with muscle like you don’t often see on the fillies. She carries it off well—but then if not her, who could? Frizzy hair sunbleached until the red shows through the black like the forerunner of a bloody morning, and when she leans sideways to collect her piña colada the dark cloud brushes against my jaw. The coconut oil she’s combed through it mingles deliciously with the otherwise too sharp spiciness of this place.

Famine murmurs something to her, and she throws her head back and roars with laughter.

Would I do it again? Fuck! In a second!

Would I fuck her? In a second. Were she that sort of girl. Which she’s not. Unfortunately. Spirit, but she’s alive.

Famine lifts an eyebrow at me. I sigh. I’m getting transparent. Then the lithe young woman sitting to my left, Branca—a name she’s kept for a couple of years now, which must be some sort of a record for her—Branca drinks deep from her gin and tonic and asks our muscular friend where her boss is off to next.

The piña colada cradled in that large, callused hand is decorated with three umbrellas. There is a revolting assortment of fruit sticking out the top. Piña coladas are the only girly thing I’ve ever seen my tattooed companion indulge in. She takes up a stick with a cherry on it and snaps her strong white teeth through cherry and stick both. She swallows.

I am mesmerised. It’s a strange mood I am in today that I can watch her swallow half a toothpick and wait to see if she will choke, yet know all the time that she will not. Cannot.

Her tattoos seem to leer at me. No—not seem. They do leer at me. She runs her tongue around her teeth and winks, knowing what I was watching for, knowing our work won’t throw us together like that. Not yet. Someday, yes, and for the second and last time, but not yet.

Back to the Middle East. Just to check on progression, she says to Branca, but her hazel eyes are on me. Then South America. God, haven’t been there in fucking aaaaages. You?

Branca, who has just left South America, smiles and flicks a lock of hair back from her face. It’s so black that from certain angles it looks as white as the whites of her eyes. She does inscrutable pretty well. Or she thinks she does, the poser. She’d do it even better if the rest of us hadn’t known her for as long as we have. And we all have bets on where Branca’s own boss is going to send her for The Next Big, as she likes to refer to her jobs. Branca likes capitals. But then she is very young.

"You’ll have a good time. Remind me to give you a list of the music festivals… Oh! I went to an amazing one in Chile yesterday. Ah-may-zing, she adds, spacing out the syllables to ensure there can be no mistake regarding her approval. It’s going to be the Next Big Thing, music-wise. Mark. My. Words."

With appropriately youthful vigour, Branca stabs one slender finger at the table, which is sticky, her upper lip tightening with excitement the way it only ever does when something she thinks is huge is on the verge of arriving. She always loses at poker, too. She loves her festivals, yes she does, and she loves to encourage others to join her. It’s only a shame her taste in music sucks.

I hope the Next Big Thing music-wise isn’t going to be yet another sodding boy band…

Branca swirls her G&T until a small whirlpool forms. She stares into its depths and for a moment I hear the rushing roar of a maelstrom. Under her gaze, furtive shadows dart. Wish I could join you there for it, she continues, but I’m gonna be here for a bit. I’ve got work just up north. Brand spanking new take on Communism—just when I thought I’d seen it all. Gonna stick around and watch it bloom like the most beautiful rose you ever saw.

Bugger. My bet was on a new religion coming out of Africa, ancient cradle of humanity and inhumanity.

To my right, tattoos contract with annoyance. She was expecting a powershift fallout from some bioengineered disease in Europe or North America. A technological product of hate rather than the lottery of nucleic acid. Maybe even a new form of coca-colonisation via mass media, she’d suggested to me not too long ago, keeping her options open. There is the faintest red gleam of madness in her eye.

Bad loser.

Famine smirks. With Iran, his guess was geographically closest. Drinks for the next ten years will be on me and the red lady. But beyond that small curl of the lip he’s not stupid enough to rub it in.

Branca, ignoring our byplay, is picking up pace, her black, almond-shaped eyes brightening again, all pretence at inscrutability gone in puppy-tail exuberance as she describes what she’s expecting to find up in the mountains, and how she’s going to be there when it begins trickling down into the lower lands. Like here.

Her flick of the hand encompasses the restaurant, brings within her sphere locals whose rich eyes and distinctively shaped mouths were carved into bas relief all through the ruins of Angkor a thousand years ago. Almost casually, she includes the foreigners like the fat German husband and wife team sweating over beers, and the thinner Canadian couple behind them sipping Mai Tais and complaining about the heat (and what the hell do they expect in Siem Reap in May?). Wandering through the crowd, linking both worlds, is a small, solemn boy selling cheap metal souvenirs of Buddha shaded by a canopy of snakes. As scenes go, it’s an appropriately modern mix of ancient serenity and kitch.

As mortals go, all are equal in the grand scheme of things. Branca smiles contentedly, but there is an edge of expectation in the white gleam of incisor I glimpse when