Read Online The Coldest War by Ian Tregillis - Free Book Online Page A

the story of winters and summers and floods and fires, these rings spoke of a long afternoon.
    â€œYou been here all day, mate. Why don’t you get along now?” The proprietor was a short, pale man with tattoos on the knuckles of his left hand.
    Marsh fixed him with an angry stare. Partially to make a point, and partially to focus on something while the room swayed. “Another,” he managed.
    The barman shrugged. “Your funeral, mate.” He refilled the shot glass. While drawing another pint, he said, “If I came ’ome that pissed, the missus would cut me bollocks off.”
    â€œLiv wouldn’t notice. Not today.” Marsh tossed back the shot. He squeezed his eyes shut, shook his head. Speaking past the fire in his throat, he added, “We have an agreement.”
    â€œYou’re a lucky man, then.”
    â€œLucky.” Marsh spat, wiped his hand across his mouth.
    â€œOy! I’ll have none o’ that in here!”
    A few of the closer patrons paused in their conversations and domino games to stare at the barman and his unruly patron. The black-and-white television in the corner shouted a shaving cream jingle into the silence.
    One by one, they shook their heads and returned to their own lives. The regulars recognized Marsh, though nobody knew his name. And vice versa. He knew what they saw when they bothered to notice him: a graying man with the craggy face of an unsuccessful boxer, with dirt under his nails and holes in his denim coveralls, well into the pudgy years of late middle age. A pathetic fellow even by the standards of a low-class establishment in a down-on-its-luck neighborhood like this.
    The barman shook his head at somebody behind Marsh, made a placating gesture. He pulled a towel from beneath the bar and cleaned the spot where Marsh had spat. In a more moderate tone, he said, “You’re havin’ a bad day, I respect that. But pull that again and you’ll be out on the street with that shot glass up your arse.”
    An odd thought flickered through Marsh’s head, tempered by anger and alcohol and memory. The barman was shorter than he; garroting him wouldn’t be hard. He knew from experience that taller men made for longer, more dangerous, less silent kills. But Marsh didn’t have a garrote. And he’d prefer to keep drinking.
    He shrugged off the threat. “I’ve been thrown out of better places. Got tossed from Sunday service once.”
    Marsh gulped at his beer, changed the subject. “It’s my daughter’s birthday.” John’s older sister would turn twenty-three a little bit before midnight.
    â€œThat’s something good. Why don’t you go home, then, and spend it with her?”
    â€œThe worms ate her long ago. She died in the war.”
    â€œOh.” The barman shook his head. “Sorry to hear it, mate.”
    Marsh ignored that. “Maybe it was rats. Could’ve been rats that ate her up. We never buried her proper. No body. Too much rubble. Just a casket. An empty casket.” He pulled on his pint. Foam from his lips spattered the bar as he said, “It was so small.”
    Quietly, the barman said, “Blitz?”
    Marsh grunted.
    The barman sighed in sympathy. “Bloody Jerries.”
    He drifted away, down the bar to deal with a few of the other regulars here at this early hour of the afternoon.
    Bubbles streamed up through the amber depths of Marsh’s glass, like tongues of smoke billowing up into a still evening sky. Williton had been reduced to a sea of smoking debris by the time he and Liv arrived. Worst of all, he remembered the smell: the sharp scent of cordite lay over the ruined village like a fog, mingling with the baby smells from Agnes’s blanket.
    From somewhere far away, he heard Liv saying, “What if she’s cold?” And from somewhere even farther away, he heard, “Leave ’im alone. He’s grieving.”
    Marsh shook