A Reign of Steel Read Free

storming the place.
    When
he finished, Godfrey dropped the pike, amazed at himself, not knowing what had
come over him. His fellow soldiers looked amazed too, as if not realizing he
had it in him.
    As
Godfrey wondered what to do next, his decision was made for him, as he detected
motion from the corner of his eye. He turned and saw a dozen more McClouds
charging him from the side, pouring into the other side of the parapets.
    Before
Godfrey could manage to put up a defense, the first soldier reached him,
wielding a huge war hammer, swinging for his head. Godfrey realized that the
blow would crush his skull.
    Godfrey
ducked out of harm’s way—one of the few things he knew how to do well—and the
hammer swung over his head. Godfrey then lowered his shoulder and charged the
soldier, driving him backwards, tackling him.
    Godfrey
drove him back, further and further, to where they grappled along the edge of
the parapet, fighting hand-to-hand, grabbing for each other’s throats. This man
was strong, but Godfrey was strong, too, one of the few gifts he had been
graced with in his life.
    The
two clambered, spinning each other back and forth, until suddenly, they both rolled
over the edge.
    The
two of them went plummeting through the air, clutching each other, falling a
good fifteen feet down to the ground below. Godfrey spun in the air, hoping
that he would land on top of this soldier, instead of the other way around. He
knew that the weight of this man, and all his armor, would crush him.
    Godfrey
spun at the last second, landing on the man, and the soldier groaned as Godfrey’s
weight crushed him, knocking him out.
    But
the fall took its toll on Godfrey, too, winding him; he hit his head, and as he
rolled off the man, every bone in his body aching, Godfrey lay there for one
second before the world spun, and he, lying beside his foe, blacked out beside
him. The last thing he saw as he looked up was an army of McClouds, streaming
into King’s Court and taking it for their own.
    *
    Elden
stood in the Legion training grounds, hands on his hips, Conven and O’Connor
beside him, the three of them watching over the new recruits Thorgrin had left
them with. Elden watched with an expert eye as the boys galloped back and forth
across the field, trying to leap over ditches and launch spears through hanging
targets. Some boys did not make the jump, collapsing with their horses into the
pits; others did, but missed the targets.
    Elden
shook his head, trying to remember how he was when he first started his Legion
training, and trying to take encouragement in the fact that in the last few
days these boys had already shown signs of improvement. Yet these boys were
still nowhere near the hardened warriors he needed them to be before he could
accept them as recruits. He set the bar very high, especially as he had a great
responsibility to make Thorgrin and all the others proud; Conven and O’Connor,
too, would allow nothing less.
    “Sire,
there is news.”
    Elden
looked over to see one of the recruits, Merek, the former thief, come running
up to him, wide-eyed. Interrupted from his thoughts, Elden was agitated.
    “Boy,
I told you to never interrupt—”
    “But
sire, you don’t understand! You must—”
    “No,
YOU don’t understand,” Elden countered. “When the recruits are training, you
don’t—”
    “LOOK!”
Merek shouted, grabbing him and pointing.
    Elden,
in a rage, was about to grab Merek and throw him, until he looked out at the
horizon, and he froze. He could not fathom the sight before him. There, on the
horizon, great clouds of black smoke rose into the air. All from the direction
of King’s Court.
    Elden
blinked, not understanding. Could King’s Court be on fire? How?
    Great
shouts arose on the horizon, the shouts of an army—along with the sound of a crashing
portcullis. Elden’s heart sank; the gates to King’s Court had been stormed. He
knew that could only mean one thing—a professional army had invaded.