Nightrise

counted to three, and slammed his fist into the brickwork. He yelled out loud. It hurt! He looked down and saw blood on his knuckles. Well, surely that had to prove something. He swore quietly to himself and licked the wound.
    Was it possible that he had been knocked unconscious on the way out of the prison? Could it be that Colton Banes or Max Koring had captured him again and brought him here as a punishment? No. That didn't work either. Because "here" was too different. The bullet wound had gone. And what about all these dead bodies, lying there in their strange clothes? Some sort of war had been taking place. And he had just woken up on the losing side.
    There was no simple explanation. Jamie realized that he had to accept the situation as it was and try to make the best of it. After all, his entire life had been completely insane, from the day he'd been abandoned in a cardboard box and left on the edge of Lake Tahoe to the time he'd found himself being chased across state lines for two crimes he hadn't committed. He was a freak. A mind reader. He'd learned to live with all of that — so why not this? Somehow, in some impossible way, he had been transported to another place…maybe even another planet. And it seemed that he was on his own, the only living person for perhaps miles around. He could stay here, cowering in the corner, or he could move on.
    There was no choice, really. It was time to go.
    He wiped his mouth on his arm, then stood up and began to make his way down the hill. The farther he went, the more bodies littered his path until he found himself stepping over them, doing his best to avoid treading on them while at the same time trying not to examine them too closely. The wounds were too horrible.
    The battlefield stretched on, all the way down to the bottom of the hill and beyond. Jamie saw more broken swords and shields. He came upon a young, fair-haired man pinned to a tree by a spear that had gone straight through him. The man was holding some sort of flag — a blue five-pointed star in a circle, set against a white background. Jamie began to understand. This was like one of those battles that he had seen at the movies. All these dead men could have been warriors. But who had they been fighting? Their enemies, whoever they were, had been utterly ruthless. It was possible that they had taken prisoners but they had left nobody alive on the field.
    Jamie looked farther down the hill. The field stretched on toward the horizon, which formed an almost invisible line between the darkening sky and the grass. Even though he had moved away from the fortress, the smell of burning was getting stronger and he realized that the clouds were actually smoke, that something huge — a town or a city — had burned a short while ago and that although the fire might now be out, it had left a pall that had smothered the sky. If so, this battle was probably one of many. And the carnage might stretch on for miles.
    He came to a muddy lane that gave him a choice of two directions, although neither of them had much to offer. The, countryside was flat but with hills rising up straight ahead. Jamie was tempted to ignore the lane and continue across open country. He might be safer away from the beaten track. After all, there was a victorious army somewhere in the area and he didn't want to go blundering into it until he knew which side he was meant to be on.
    There was a movement. Jamie started, about to run away, then relaxed. A single figure was walking down the lane toward him, an old man supporting himself on a stick. He looked like a monk, dressed in a brown robe with a hood folded back over his shoulders. He was still a long way away, but as he drew closer, Jamie saw that he was at least sixty years old, almost bald, with sagging skin and weeping, bloodshot eyes. The old man could barely walk. All his weight was concentrated on the stick that he placed carefully in front of him before he took each step.
    Jamie felt a huge sense of relief. He was no longer alone! The man raised a hand and waved at him. It seemed that he was friendly. Now perhaps Jamie might learn where he was and what had happened here…assuming that the man spoke his language. Jamie waited as he made his way along the lane. It took him a very long time before he finally arrived.
    The man stopped and spoke.
    "Rag dagger a marrad hag!"
    That was what the words sounded like. Jamie heard them quite distinctly and they should have made no sense at