Читать книгу The Sons of Adam - Harry Bingham - Страница 42

Headache.

A crashing, pounding tyrant of a headache that swallowed all other sensation, all other feeling. For a long time, Tom lay with his eyes closed, aware of nothing but the monster raging in his head. But slowly, inevitably, life came back. Life and, with it, awareness.

Awareness of being alive. Awareness of pain mixed with numbness all the way up and down his left leg. Awareness of finding himself safe when everything in logic said he should have been dead.

He squeezed his eyes open. Above him there was a plank ceiling, sturdily and neatly constructed. Candlelight flickered on the boards. French mud poked between the cracks. The ceiling was a pleasure to look at. Tom let his mind wander among the only objects in his little universe: his headache, the pain in his leg, the planks overhead.

But life and understanding continued to return, bringing horror in their wake.

There was light coming from somewhere: a candle. Tom rolled over to look at it. It was stuck to the top of a British helmet, beaten crazily out of shape. Tom stared. The helmet was his, but why was it so badly misshapen … ? He felt his leg: it was badly wounded. The pain grew stronger.

He remembered more.

He remembered Stimson being blown away and Shorty Hardwick bloodily scythed to the ground. Stimson’s body had been between him and the shooting. Quite likely, Stimson’s death had been what allowed Tom to survive the onslaught almost unscathed. Poor bloody Stimson …

He closed his eyes again, possibly slept some more. When he woke up, his headache was still bad, but his mind was clearer. Clear enough to understand that the plank ceiling above his head was too neatly built to have been made by British hands. Clear enough to understand he was a prisoner of the Germans. Clear enough to remember that it was his twin, his brother, Alan Montague, who had wanted all this, who had sent him out to die, who had wanted him dead.

The friendship that had been the best thing in his life had turned to ash.