A Skillful Warrior (SoulNecklace Stories Book 2)

A Skillful Warrior (SoulNecklace Stories Book 2) Read Free Page B

Book: A Skillful Warrior (SoulNecklace Stories Book 2) Read Free
Author: R.L. Stedman
Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Magic, Young Adult, swords
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empty moor. It was like staring at an ocean of grass.
    To the south loomed mountains, rounded and sombre. Granite tors, with odd and sudden shapes, looked like castles in the evening mists. Black lakes reflected the sky like an eye and swamps appeared, sudden and dangerous underfoot. The land seemed bare, scrubbed clean of inhabitants. A wild place, this land of mountain and moor. It was good to be here in midsummer, when the weather was kind and the days long. Traveling this land in winter was only for the hardy, or the foolish.
    ‘It’s strange, Dana.’ Will rode beside me. His mount, ears pricked, seemed to enjoy the wind off the heath. ‘When we landed on that beach I thought, Great! Now I can stop traveling.’
    ‘And then I arrived. At the time you seemed pleased.’
    ‘I was.’ He grinned, a private little embrace in his eyes, and for a moment my fog of tiredness lifted.
    I said it in a rush. ‘Can I ask you something?’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘Does it worry you? Killing someone?’
    ‘It should,’ he said slowly. ‘Of course it should. Kill someone, you take away everything. All they are, all they will ever be. But ...’
    ‘But?’
    ‘Do you feel guilty about the coney we eat at night?’
    I shrugged. ‘One has to eat.’
    ‘That’s how an army thinks. They don’t worry about you as an individual. Soldiers won’t care about your family or your home. You are just an obstacle to overcome.’
    ‘So, should I feel like that, too?’
    He shook his head. ‘I’m not saying they’re right , Dana. But while you try to avoid killing them, they will be trying to kill you.’
    ‘Those men at the crossing, they were doing a job. And I murdered them.’
    ‘Is that what’s bothering you?’
    I shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ That, and the dreams of dying. And dragons. And the ache in my chest that never went away. And the sudden disappearance of my country, my family. That was a little disturbing too.
    ‘Dana, they would have killed you. You had to stop them.’
    ‘But not by killing them.’
    ‘A dead enemy is a safe enemy, Dana. Call it self-defence, if it makes it easier.’
    I smiled and rubbed my chest. Will put his hand on mine. ‘Hey. You’re acting as though you’re the one who’s guilty. Remember, it was them who attacked us. Dana, think of it this way — you saved our lives.’
    ‘You killed their commander, Will, not I.’
    ‘The Noyan? I could only get to that man because you gave me an opening. Without you there, I would not have had the chance.’
    We rode silently for a while. My horse stretched her neck, pulled at the bit. I slackened the reins to let her find a space of comfort.
    ‘You’ve improved since I’ve been away.’ Will’s tone was light. He was trying to change the subject.
    ‘I’ve improved ?’
    ‘Oh yes. Your fighting is better, too.’
    I grinned. ‘I’ve been practising.’ I told him of the Sergeant’s training, how I’d fought up to five guards at once, disarmed them all.
    ‘He should have let you kill them,’ Will muttered. ‘That way it wouldn’t be such a shock.’
    ‘I’m joking,’ he added.
    I caught his sideways look and wondered. ‘Will, who was the first man you killed?’
    He smiled grimly. ‘In Less Brittain, we’d left a tavern. We were strangers, equipped for a long journey. We must have had money. A group of men tried to rob us. It wasn’t much of a fight.’ For a second an older man, a hard man, peeped out of Will’s eyes.
    ‘Do you have nightmares?’
    ‘About the robbery?’ He snorted. ‘Not me. I bet the survivors do though.’
    Once I had dreamt of him and Jed being ambushed. They had been passing through a canyon and had been waylaid by bandits. That had also been a true dream, but in that dream I had not been terrified for myself, only for Will. ‘You remember those other bandits, those ones in the rocks? Would you say that was an easy fight?’
    He smiled, then, a softer, younger Will. My Will. ‘Then I thought there was no

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