A Breath of Snow and Ashes
by Diana Gabaldon
Summary
The year is 1772, and on the eve of the American Revolution, the long fuse of rebellion has already been lit....
With chaos brewing, the governor of North Caroline calls upon Jamie Fraser to unite the backcountry and safeguard the colony for King and Crown. But from his wife, Claire, Jamie knows that three years hence the shot heard round the world will be fired, and the result will be independence — with those loyal to the King either dead or in exile. And there is also the matter of a tiny clipping from The Wilmington Gazette, dated 1776, which reports Jamie’s death, along with his kin. For once, he hopes, his time-traveling family may be wrong about the future.
Excerpt
Chapter One
An Interrupted Conversation
The dog sensed them first. Dark as it was, Ian Murray felt rather than saw Rollo’s head lift suddenly near his thigh, ears pricking. He put a hand on the dog’s neck, and felt the hair there ridged with warning.
So attuned as they were to each other, he did not even think consciously, “Men,” but put his other hand to his knife and lay still, breathing. Listening.
The forest was quiet. It was hours ’til dawn and the air was still as that in a church, with a mist like incense rising slowly up from the ground. He had lain down to rest on the fallen trunk of a giant tulip tree, preferring the tickle of wood-lice to seeping damp. He kept his hand on the dog, waiting.
Rollo was growling, a low, constant rumble that Ian could barely hear but felt easily, the vibration of it traveling up his arm, arousing all the nerves of his body. He hadn’t been asleep–he rarely slept at night anymore–but had been quiet, looking up into the vault of the sky, engrossed in his usual argument with God. Quietness had vanished with Rollo’s movement. He sat up slowly, swinging his legs over the side of the half-rotted log, heart beating fast now.
Rollo’s warning hadn’t changed, but the great head swiveled, following something unseen. It was a moonless night; Ian could see the faint silhouettes of trees and the moving shadows of the night, but nothing more.
Then he heard them. Sounds of passage. A good distance away, but coming nearer by the moment. He stood and stepped softly into the pool of black under a balsam fir. A click of the tongue, and Rollo left off his growling and followed, silent as the wolf who had been his father.
Ian’s resting-place overlooked a game trail. The men who followed it were not hunting. White men. Now that was odd, and more than odd. He couldn’t see them, but didn’t need to; the noise they made was unmistakable. Indians traveling were not silent, and many of the Highlanders he lived among could move like ghosts in the wood–but he had no doubt whatever. Metal, that was it. He was hearing the jingle of harness, the clink of buttons and buckles–and gun barrels.
A lot of them. So close, he began to smell them. He leaned forward a little, eyes closed, the better to snuff up what clue he could.They carried pelts; now he picked up the dried-blood cold-fur smell that had probably waked Rollo–but not trappers, surely; too many. Trappers moved in ones and twos.Poor men, and dirty. Not trappers, and not hunters. Game was easy to come by at this season, but they smelled of hunger. And the sweat of bad drink.
Excerpted from A Breath of Snow and Ashes by Diana Gabaldon Copyright © 2005 by Diana Gabaldon . Excerpted by permission of Dell, a division of Random House, Inc.
Reviews
“Riveting. Gabaldon has a true storyteller’s voice”—The Globe and Mail
“Triumphant. . . . Her use of historical detail and truly adult love story confirm Gabaldon as a superior writer”—Publishers Weekly
“Diana Gabaldon is a born storyteller. . . . The pages practically turn themselves”—Arizona Republic
Author's Biography
Diana Gabaldon is the author of five previous Outlander novels — Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager, Drums of Autumn, and The Fiery Cross — as well as Lord John and the Private Matter and one work of nonfiction, The Outlandish Companion. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona.