Read Online The Guardians by John Christopher - Free Book Online

mouths open, red tongues hanging from between white teeth. And the horsemen had swords: the scabbards rattled against their high brown leather boots.
    They did not look his way. The cavalcade rode on, disappearing behind high hedges, the sound of their passing gradually fading on the morning air. The king’s musketeers must have looked something like that, riding through the summer fields near Paris on their way to a brush with the cardinal’s men. It was more storybook than real; fascinating but scarcely believable.
    Not long afterward he saw the first house inside the County. It had outlying buildings, a small pond, and poultry pecked the ground nearby. A farmhouse. There would be food there, but he dared not approach. Smoke rose from a chimney and as he watched a figure came from one of the outbuildings, crossed the yard, and disappeared inside the house. Going to breakfast, perhaps. Rob felt in his pocket and brought out one of the tiny potatoes. Friction had rubbed it clean of earth. He bit into it. It tasted unpleasant insofar as it tasted of anything,but he managed to chew it and get it down. It quenched his thirst a little, too. He ate three or four more.
    The day wore on. During one of his rests he took off the jacket and rolled it up as a pillow for his head. He fell asleep and woke with the sun burning his face. It was high in the sky, almost at the zenith. He chewed more potatoes and went limping on his way. His feet were hurting him. A mile or so farther on he stopped at the edge of a field and took off his socks. His feet were blistered and some of the blisters had burst, exposing raw flesh.
    He realized he could not go on indefinitely like this, but did not know what else to do. Field had succeeded field, with little change. There were animals in some which he knew were cows. One obtained milk from cows, but how? And anyway the sight of them made him nervous. In other fields there were men and machines. He could not tell precisely what the machines were doing because he had given them as wide a berth as possible. They were silent, presumably powered by fuel cells. He had also kept clear of houses, not that there weremany. The emptiness of this land, which had been surprising and troubling, was becoming monotonous, mind wearying. Rob looked at his swollen feet. He wondered if it would be better to lie up in the shade. But would he be any better able to go on later in the day?
    And what was he hoping to achieve? He had come here spurred by hatred of the school, and by the discovery that his mother had been born and lived her early life in the County. He had had this idea of farmlands as places that produced food, but it was not turning out like that. All he had found—all it seemed he would find—were a few small raw potatoes.
    He might as well, he thought miserably, give himself up. He would have to do that eventually, or starve.
    Someone called in the distance and he looked up quickly. There was a man on horseback in the gap at the end of the field. The call had been to Rob from him. There was a way through to another field on the left, and a wood not far off. If he could only reach it . . . The horseman had started to comeforward. He decided he had no time to put on socks and shoes. He grabbed them and ran.
    The field into which he emerged was long but narrow—it was only twenty yards or so to a high hedge separating it from the next field which in turn was bordered by the wood. There was no gap, but Rob saw a place where it looked thin enough for him to squeeze through. He made it with thorns tearing at him and thought he was safe: the horseman would have to find a longer way around and by the time he did Rob would be in the wood. He could surely dodge a man on horseback there. His feet were hurting horribly but he disregarded that. Thirty yards to the wood, perhaps less. He heard another call and glanced over his shoulder. Horse and rider were in midair, clearing the hedge in a