Sabriel (The Abhorsen Trilogy) 精彩片段：
chapter xxvi
Everything moved rapidly after the tea was drunk. Almost too rapidly for the exhausted Sabriel and Touchstone. Judging from the noises outside, soldiers were rushing about in all directions, while they ate their belated lunch. Then, before they could even begin to digest, Horyse was back, telling them to get moving.
It was somewhat like being a bit player in the school play, Sabriel thought, as she stumbled out of the communication trench and onto the parade ground. There was an awful lot happening around her, but she didn’t really feel part of it. She felt Touchstone lightly brush her arm, and smiled at him reassuringly—it had to be even worse for him.
Within minutes, they were hustled across the parade ground, towards a waiting line of trucks, an open staff car and two strange steelplated contraptions. Lozenge-shaped, with gun turrets on either side, and caterpillar tracks.
Tanks, Sabriel realized. A relatively recent invention. Like the trucks, they were roaring, engines belching blue-grey smoke. No problem now, Sabriel thought, but the engines would stop when the wind blew in from the Old Kingdom. Or when Kerrigor came . . .
Horyse led them to the staff car, opened the back door and gestured for them to get in.
“Are you coming with us?” Sabriel asked, hesitantly, as she settled back in the heavily padded leather seats, fighting a wave of tiredness that threatened immediate sleep.
“Yes,” replied Horyse, slowly. He seemed surprised at his own answer, and suddenly far away.
“Yes, I am.”
“You have the Sight,” said Touchstone, looking up from where he was adjusting his scabbard before sitting down. “What did you see?”
“The usual thing,” replied Horyse. He got in the front seat, and nodded to the driver—a thin-faced veteran of the Scouts, whose Charter mark was almost invisible on his weather-beaten forehead.
“What do you mean?” asked Sabriel, but her question was lost as the driver pressed the starter switch, and the car coughed and spluttered into life, a tenor accompaniment to the bass cacophony of the trucks and tanks.
Touchstone jumped at the sudden noise and vibration, then smiled sheepishly at Sabriel, who’d lightly rested her fingers on his arm, as if calming a child.
“What did he mean ‘the usual thing’?” asked Sabriel.
Touchstone looked at her, sadness and exhaustion vying for first place in his gaze. He took her hand in his own and traced a line across her palm—a definite, ending sort of line.