Table Of ContentThe Wheelwright’s
Apprentice
By
James Burnett
ʀ
A Bright Pen Book
Text Copyright © James Burnett 2013
Cover design by Audra Martin ©
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ʀ
About the Author
Educated at Gordonstoun school in Scotland, James chose a career in
casinos, and has spent almost forty years working in the casino which is now
part of the Atlantis complex in The Bahamas. He started by writing casino
stories, and is now working on three other SF/Fantasy books. Married with two
teenage daughters, he plays squash, cycles, and reads a lot.
ʀ
Dedication
I want to take this opportunity to remember certain family members, who
were writers, but for various reasons had rather limited success. The first was my
Australian grandmother, Werna Mary Brown, later Gordon-Brown.
Unsurprisingly she preferred to be known as ‘Queenie’. A journalist, she wrote a
novel which the publishers in Melbourne advised her to take to London as they
felt it was quite good, and would do better there. Taking their advice, she
embarked on a liner to London called the Pericles, which promptly sank. She
survived, but the book didn’t. In those days – it was 1908 or 9 - one manuscript
was it.
My father, Robert Burnett, went one better. He wrote a biography of Gauguin,
which was published in 1939. It was quite well received, and was translated into
French and German. The overseas royalties, for some inexplicable reason, never
materialized. After the war, he tried to do thftee bio on another artist, but
someone else published one on the same man while his manuscript was in
progress. This, on top of his very stressful wartime experiences as a polyglot
interrogator, knocked the stuffing out of him.
My mother, also Werna Mary, (she chose Mary!) wrote anonymous stories for
the magazine The Tatler while my dad was struggling, but never told him. I
believe he thought her to simply be thrifty with the housekeeping budget.
Her cousin, and my godfather, John Marriner wrote stories for yachting
magazines, which he collected into book form, and followed with other travel
books about yachting. Even though he wrote for a relatively limited market, he
was the most successful. Of course he was the only one who didn’t need the
money.
All these family members showed me that it was possible to write a book, and
I thank them for showing me the way.
Contents
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57
58 Epilogue
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1
The arrow hit the wall behind him with a solid thunk, and quivered slightly.
It had come through one of the many cracks and holes in the outhouse. If he
hadn’t been bending down to pull up his pants, the arrow would have caught him
right in the chest. After a short moment, which seemed to him very drawn out,
reality punched him in the gut. His mind swirled and pitched, then settled. If
someone was shooting arrows around, something was obviously very wrong.
He quickly looked through another of the cracks, and saw several mounted
men. They were raiding the village, his village, where he had spent all of his
fifteen years, and they were killing everyone. He saw old Don the baker run at
one with a scythe, only to be stopped well short of his target by a well placed
arrow in the throat. He was not the only one. He looked out of other holes and he
saw a couple of other corpses, one obviously his mother. He couldn’t see her
face but he knew her clothes well enough to recognize her. He knew she was
dead as her head was laying a couple of fegh heset away, connected to her body
by a pool of blood.
He could see over a dozen raiders, and knew that there had to be more. They
were a fearsome bunch. They carried swords, spears and bows. He saw one
trample old mother blacksmith’s henhouse, and another lazily ride up behind big
Dem, the innkeeper’s son, and simply behead him with an easy stroke as he
passed. Their collection of horned helms seemed unnecessary, if they were only
to instill fear. Their actions were more than enough.
The world flipped upside down, and he collapsed back on the seat. He had
never known the emotions that were converging on him all at once. He felt fear,
sorrow, terror, despair and a burning need to be somewhere else, any somewhere
else, and he didn’t even know if he had the willpower left to stand. He sat there
for what for him felt like forever but in reality was only a few seconds. “What
do I do?” His mind wailed inside his head. “What can I do?” A more logical
part of his brain supplied. At last, instinct kicked in, and he realized, “I have to
move, and I have to move fast.” He looked out through a crack and thought, “Is
there anywhere close that I can go to and be safe?” He simply had to get as far
away as he could as quickly as possible.
The sounds of the raiders now started to impinge. There were the horses with
