“Frog-legs … and a lot of beer.”

Happy New Year! Good wishes in abundance toward everyone, all the time, everywhere. <g>

And here is a small New Year’s treat:

EXCERPT FROM BOOK TEN (UNTITLED), Copyright © 2024 Diana Gabaldon

[NB to readers unfamiliar with copyright notices; your material is copyrighted by you the moment you put it into a concrete form (i.e., words on page or screen), and unless you’re quoting from an already-published book (in which case, it has a fixed copyright; the year of publication), the copyright notice bears the current year. Some people in the past have leapt to the conclusion that the year date in the copyright notice is the year of publication, and then get very bent when they see the year change when I post a new excerpt and go around Chicken-Littling about “OMG the book’s been DELAYED!!”. I assure y’all, it hasn’t.]

[YES, THERE ARE SPOILERS IN HERE!! If you wish to proceed anyway, scroll down to read…]
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They reached Savannah mid-morning, having ridden through swales of greening rice paddies and patches of sprouting farmland, dotted with men and women working, now and then with the assistance of a mule. The horses were eager, sensing the imminence of food, and Jamie felt much the same. There was urgent work to be done, of course, but they’d finished what food they had the day before yesterday.

“What d’you want to eat first?” William asked. The boy was almost standing in his stirrups with anticipation. “Shrimp and grits? Redfish fried in cornmeal?”

“Frog-legs,” Jamie said, smiling. “And fried oysters. Though I wouldna mind a good thick Brunswick stew to go along. And beer. A lot of beer.”

Conversation devolved into a desultory argument over the merits of alligator as an ingredient of stew, but the boom of a nearby cannon both interrupted the talk and made the horses curvet and dance.

“[steh – Gaelic]!” Jamie said, jerking his horse’s head right round until it was almost in his lap. “Settle, ye gomerel. Surely ye’ve heard guns before?”

“Possibly not cannon,” William observed, having brought Trajan—who had heard cannon before—to a proper sense of his duty with little difficulty. “That’s the noon gun, though,” he said, leaning forward to speak into the horse’s pricked ears. “It won’t happen again. Until tonight, at least,” he added, straightening in the saddle. “Commander Archibald decided to use a single gun at sunset, rather than have drummers marching through the streets to sound the evening retreat; perhaps they may still be doing it.”

William spoke casually, but Jamie saw the lad’s shoulders tighten under his coat.

“D’ye ken whether Archibald is still here?” he asked, keeping his voice as neutral as he could. The day was warm, but a sudden chill raised the hairs on his neck, with the memory of a lovely girl dead by her own hand in the middle of the night, in a dark room reeking of her blood and spilt beer—because of Commander Archibald.

William shot him a quick glance.

“No,” he said. “But I hope he is.”

The lad’s color was high, and his hands clenched on the reins. Jamie leaned over and took hold of Trajan’s bridle, drawing them both to a momentary halt.

“I ken what ye mean,” he said evenly, “and I’ll help ye do it. But we canna risk drawing that kind o’ notice until we’ve done what we came to do. We were too late for Frances’s sister; we willna be too late for Lord John.”

William gave him back a level look, but he saw the lad’s pulse, hammering at the side of his throat.

“We will not,” William said, and drawing up his reins, nudged Trajan into motion.

[end section]

[Many thanks to my younger grandson, León (he has an accent mark over the “o”, but Facebook doesn’t do such things), for the use of the art for his first album cover—and to my son, Sam Sykes, León’s uncle, who took the photo as a symbol of New Year cheer.]

Visit my Book Ten webpage for more excerpts from—and information about—this new book.

This excerpt (“Daily Lines”) was also released on my official Facebook page on January 4, 2024.

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