The Project Gutenberg EBook of Strange Alliance, by Bryce Walton

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Title: Strange Alliance

Author: Bryce Walton

Illustrator: Charles McNutt

Release Date: February 11, 2009 [EBook #28047]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration]

_Haunted by their dark heritage, a medieval fate awaited them...._

STRANGE
ALLIANCE

_BY BRYCE WALTON_

Doctor Spechaug stopped running, breathing deeply and easily where he
paused in the middle of the narrow winding road. He glanced at his
watch. Nine a.m. He was vaguely perplexed because he did not react more
emotionally to the blood staining his slender hands.

It was fresh blood, though just beginning to coagulate; it was dabbled
over his brown serge suit, splotching the neatly starched white cuffs of
his shirt. His wife always did them up so nicely with the peasant's love
for trivial detail.

He had always hated the silent ignorance of the peasants who surrounded
the little college where he taught psychology. He supposed that he had
begun to hate his wife, too, when he realized, after taking her from a
local barnyard and marrying her, that she could never be anything but a
sloe-eyed, shuffling peasant.

He walked on with brisk health down the narrow dirt road that led toward
Glen Oaks. Elm trees lined the road. The morning air was damp and cool.
Dew kept the yellow dust settled where spots of sunlight came through
leaves and speckled it. Birds darted freshly through thickly hung
branches.

He had given perennial lectures on hysterical episodes. Now he realized
that he was the victim of such an episode. He had lost a number of
minutes from his own memory. He remembered the yellow staring eyes of
the breakfast eggs gazing up at him from a sea of grease. He remembered
his wife screaming--after that only blankness.

He stopped on a small bridge crossing Calvert's Creek, wiped the blood
carefully from his hands with a green silk handkerchief. He dropped the
stained silk into the clear w