Days Of Light And Shadow Read Free Page A

grateful for that. It was one thing she had learned to appreciate in him. His decisiveness.
     
    “Eilin!” He gave the command and instantly the patrol’s healer grabbed the trader by the arm and started leading him away to her horse and the saddlebags where she kept the salves and bandages. The man followed meekly enough. Still in shock, he didn’t seem to have the will to resist. Between the blood loss and the shock he barely looked to have the will to walk beside her.
     
    The rest of them, the entire patrol stood over the headless, very nearly limbless body, staring at it, thoughts that should never be spoken aloud running through all their heads. Terrible thoughts.
     
    It was a creature of dread, or it had been before they’d finally cut it down. But even dead it would give those of faint heart night terrors. Those of stauncher heart would still be given pause.
     
    Human once, or troll, or even elf, it wasn’t completely certain what it had been, or indeed if it had been any of them, for it was nothing like the man that had once worn its skin. Its leathery, wrinkled, mould covered skin. Its hair was gone, save for a few long threads hanging around its ears. And its teeth, they weren’t right. The gums had somehow receded until what remained of its teeth seemed to stick out too far like pegs. And they were broken, full of chips as if it had been chewing on rocks. Beneath that wrinkled hide its flesh too had withered away until all that remained was a body of loose sagging skin and bone and ropey knots of muscle. It was a walking corpse. A creature with black blood that didn’t spurt when it was cut, but rather oozed from the freshly cut stumps? That was a corpse.
     
    It was unnatural. Some foul creation of alchemy and the wizard’s art that should never have drawn breath let alone been set loose to attack someone. If it actually drew breath. And Dura wasn’t sure that it had. Not when half a dozen arrows had plunged deep into its lungs, many of the arrows causing what should have been mortal wounds. 
     
    Rangers trained for years in the use of the longbow. The long recurved bow was a powerful weapon, deadly at great distances. More so than all other bows. And for that reason the rangers practiced the complicated art of using it from horseback where few others could. Most riders used shortbows and crossbows instead. Many of the arrows had buried themselves up to a foot in the flesh of the creature. Yet the creature hadn’t seemed to notice. That was wrong.
     
    Even the horses knew it was wrong. They snorted nervously in the cool air as they took in its scent, clouds of steam billowing from their nostrils. Horses were smarter than people commonly held. But rangers knew their wisdom. They knew that their lives might well depend on the quick wits of their animals. So to see them nervously snorting and looking to want to get as far away from the thing as they could was not a good sight.
     
    The wolves looked no happier as they paced around in circles, scenting the air and occasionally howling quietly. None of them approached the corpse. In fact none of them had even attacked it she realised. Was that because they had recognised the thing as a man and their training had kept them from it? Or because they had known that it wasn’t?
     
    But the rangers needed to know what it was. They had a duty. They had to protect the people from the dangers that lurked in the great forests. Dangerous beasts, brigands and even monsters. This thing she thought, was the very definition of the latter. Or maybe all three. So they needed to know what it was, where it had come from, and how to kill it if there were any more of them. Even if none of them wanted to go near it.
     
    “What is it?” Dura asked the captain even though she didn’t like to ask in truth. In part because she was new to the troop and the question made that painfully obvious. But mostly because she knew the answer, she just didn’t want to say it. Maybe