First and foremost, I'm going to admit my love of some of Mark's earlier work! I remember reading
Toady,
his first book, way back when, absolutely loving it and recommending it to anyone regardless of whether they enjoyed horror novels. Since then I've dipped in
and out of his books whenever I've realised that he's released something
new. Imagine my pleasure when I found out he was writing a new trilogy
for one of my favorite publishers, the last of which was published by Titan on October 14th. To
celebrate you lucky folks get to read a sneaky excerpt from the final
book, The Wraiths Of War, and if you like it there's a chance to win a
copy of
The Wolves Of London (book #1 in the trilogy) down at the bottom! My review of The Wolves of London will be up on Thursday as part of my R.I.P. reading
and make sure to check out the rest of the tour!
If you're not a horror/dark fantasy fan then maybe skip over the gory bits below!
The Wraiths Of War (Obsidian Heart #3)
As
if Fate were mocking me, the Germans chose that very moment to start
firing. I made myself as flat as possible, closing my eyes as my cheek
smacked into the mud. At first I assumed the shots were nothing but
routine - now and again in the dead of night, those on sentry duty,
whether on our side or theirs, let off a volley just to prove they were
doing their duty, and to let the enemy know they were still around and
alert - but when bullets started splatting into the mud somewhere to my
left, I realised I must have been spotted. Perilous though it was to
move, I knew it was more perilous still to just lie there, because
sooner or later I would be hit.
Trying
to still the frantic terror of my thoughts, I lifted my head a fraction
and looked around, searching for a place to hide or something I could
use as cover. Perhaps ten yards ahead of me I spotted what looked like a
shell crater - a black depression in the ground rimmed by a ridge of
earth where the mud had been forced upwards by the impact. I waited for
the initial burst of gunfire to subside, knowing there would be a slight
pause between one volley and the next, and then, my ears throbbing, I
scrambled up into a semi-crouch, ran forward and dived into the shell
crater.
Although
I didn't have much choice, I was all too aware that throwing myself
into an unknown hole in No Man's Land was a move born of utter
desperation. Full of future technology I might have been, byt I knew
that if I landed on the jagged remains of a shell and slashed my belly
open, then no amount of nanites could repair me. I knew too that if the
hole were more than, say six feet deep and full of thick, muddy water
then the likelihood was I would be sucked under and drown.
Luckily,
though, the hole turned out to be only four or five feet deep added to
which I had a soft landing. Not so luckily, the soft landing was a dead
and rotting German soldier. How long he had been there I had no idea,
but he stank to high Heaven and was crawling with maggots. He was lying
on his back, his head - what was left of it - partially submerged in a
pool of black water.
I
landed across his midriff, part of which promptly broke with a gristly
snap. Worse than that though, was the feel of his flesh through his
uniform. Decomposition had caused slippage, which meant that the violent
pressure of my body resulted in the flesh, which had become soft like
old bananas, sliding away from the bone beneath. In my revulsion, I
unthinkingly put my left hand on his chest to lever myself up and away
from him - whereupon his rib cage cracked like a lattice of dry sticks
and my hand plunged into a cold, stinking pulp of rotting internal
organs.
I
clapped my free hand, which was caked in mud but not guts, over the
bottom half of my face to stop myself from screaming. Not that it was
likely the enemy would have heard me. Above my head, loud enough to make
the bones of my skull ach, the Germans were still blazing away.
Ordinarily I would have covered my ringing ears and kept my head down
until it was all over, but in the circumstances the gunfire seemed oddly
divorced from me. Gagging, I withdrew my hand from the dead German's
innards with a slurping plop, then plunged it into the pool of muddy
water between his booted feet.
The
next few minutes were spent heaving and shuddering with reaction. I
couldn't tell whether the appalling stench that seemed to have wrapped
itself round my head like a warm, damp towel, was coming from the dead
German or my own hand. Certainly the thought of using that gut-smeared
hand to eat, or even scratch myself, in the immediate future made me gaf
anew. As did the sight of the fat white maggots wriggling with glee
over the dead man's body, some of which I had to brush off my own
clothes, such was their eagerness to make friends.
About The Author
Mark Morris became a full-time
writer in 1988 on the Enterprise Allowance Scheme, and a year later saw
the release of his first novel, Toady. He has since published a further
sixteen novels, among which are Stitch, The Immaculate, The Secret of
Anatomy, Fiddleback, The Deluge and four books in the popular Doctor Who
range.
Website | Twitter
Giveaway
If you live in the UK, Ireland and Europe you can have a chance to win a copy of The Wolves Of London, the first book in the trilogy, simply by leaving a Twitter handle or email address in the coments!
