Bloodlust Read Free Page A

its body the hilt, its tail curling up the blade. A fine looking blade. Hopefully, it was tempered to perfection as well.
    "Go on then. Hammer out the dent." Redforth shoved a worn hammer, the shaft held together by a cloth, into her hand.
    Ding. Ding. Ding!
    She bashed the hammer against the dented shield on the bench. The flames of the nearby fire threatened her, spitting out sparks every few seconds. Sweat beaded down her face.
    But Redforth did not leave. He watched her work, reminding her of the vulture's careful gaze. Damned bird.
    She'd had the chance to glance at the note last night, but the marking had meant nothing to her. A code. Without the key, she had no hope of breaking it, considering she recognized none of the marking. It wasn't common speak or trollian. Nor goliathic, or any of the other dialects spoken in all of Highlanthia.
    "Too hard." Redforth shook his head. "You're creating more dents."
    To spite him, she slammed the hammer even harder onto the shield. It snapped in half.
    Redforth chortled. "'Tis known to happen." He glanced at the fire. "Needa more Fire Stones. I be back."
    Ivy waited until he was out of sight to grab the longsword. A perfectly symmetrically shield with a huge spike in the middle caught her eye, looking almost formidable enough to belong to a barbarian. After wasting a few seconds to secure it onto her back, she fled the smithery and didn't stop running, despite the heavy weight of the shield, until she had nearly left the kingdom.
    A group of relatively small barbarian children played with each other, using branches as swords. They hadn't noticed Ivy and fought as fierce as true barbarian warriors. Despite their youth, they fought with skill and grace. They must have been attentive learns during their training. Good. With all the unrest their world faced, they needed every barbarian, young and old, to be at the ready.
    One of the girls stabbed a boy hard enough to knock him to the ground. He's weak. Ivy shook her head, unimpressed.
    To her shock, none of the children laughed or belittled him. All of them, spearheaded by the girl, helped him to his feet, and the fight resumed.
    The act of compassion, in the midst of violence, gave Ivy pause. Her people weren't completely brutal — were they?
    Compassion. Love. They're all weak. No strength could ever come from such emotions.
    And yet the idea that the barbarian race was more than just brutal killers with their formidable Bloodlust made her care for her people all the more, as baffling as that seemed.
    The children fought on, but Ivy could linger no longer. Not wishing to get caught, she continued on, racing away, soon bypassing the Forest of Gildersnatch entirely. She stood at the base of the shortest mountain in the Mountains of Flyerdales. A dragon lazily circled the crest of the next mount over. Usually nocturnal creatures, it was a rare sight. Indeed, the great winged race was nearing extinction.
    As were the barbarians.
    Her chest tightened. That her interrogation with the goliatha had been cut so short, that it hadn't even been a true battle fueled her body with enough pent-up energy she needed a release. She practiced a few stances with her newly acquired longsword, but even so, she longed to have a foe, a challenger, one worthy of an opponent like herself. If she did not have a real battle, and soon, her rage would build too much for her to contain.
    Relatively speaking, the barbarian race was a new one, having only existed for a hundred years. A combination of elves and humans. Humans still thrived in the world, but the elven numbers had dwindled to only a hundred or so. The chances of the barbarian race starting anew were slim, especially since elves hid away in an attempt to preserve the last of their bloodline.
    Barbarians looked like humans, although far more muscular and normally taller. Like elves, they were beautiful. Who knew? Perhaps they also had longevity, but barbarians, as a whole, did not live until old age.