Mordraud, Book One Read Free

mother now. Even though he’s not actually buried here. Didn’t he deserve that?”
    “ Yes, it was a kind thought.”
    They stood in silence meditating on the statue. Eglade consoling a dark-haired boy. They looked very alike. His body hadn’t been found but Dunwich liked to picture him together with her. When the eldest brother had come back after many years, and he’d found himself standing before a charred clearing where their childhood home had once been, he gathered up his father’s remains and buried him even further away, with nothing to mark his grave among the scrub. He’d finally left his mother alone with her son.
    Gwern didn’t want to remember those years. Neither of them did.
    It had all started back then, when they were still children.
    “It’s been twenty years since Mordraud’s death,” uttered Gwern, with a sigh lacking in emotion.
    “ Yes, it has,” replied Dunwich, in a quiet voice.
     

I
    ...I knew I was born to this world to find something
    still concealed from man ’s eyes.
    I look at the sea while seated at the bow of my small boat,
    and it all seems so vast and, at the same time, so near.
    Does a Limit exist , beyond the horizon?
    Is there a Limit for men, one nobody has yet found?
    But how can the invisible be found?
    How can the end of an infinite road be reached?
     
    “Another one down.”
    The bow string vibrated in pleasing harmony with the last breath of the Khartiar at the foot of the tree. He’d seen him trudge in the forest, shabby and filthier than a beast, as he dragged himself through the twisted roots, stumbling when his cracked armour caught in the branches.
    Slow. Unaware. Hateful beyond bearing.
    “One Khartiar less,” Aris hissed in satisfaction as he notched yet another arrow. He had a full quiver, an almost new bottle of Aniria and, above all, a great desire to clean things up a bit.
    The hunt had just begun .
    “ There must have been a battle beyond the crest of the hill,” said Memion, who was waiting on a nearby branch, bow in hand. Aris had been faster, as he always was. But Memion wasn’t holding a grudge – there’d be other good chances. What really counted was to make sure the Khartiars didn’t find the village.
    “ We should send someone to check there are no survivors on the field,” replied Aris. Two fellow fighters leapt down from the trees at once and ran silently off into the forest. Not one foe was to make it home that night, he thought, savouring the idea.
    “ The Khartiars are like rats.”
    “ That’s right. They all need to be wiped out, otherwise they’ll start breeding again as soon as they can...” Memion replied, chuckling. An old Aelian saying. Once before they’d made the mistake of tolerating the Khartiar presence, and they were still paying the price. They’d have to pay forever: the Aelians’ history had been at its twilight for too long now.
    “ After an endless night, a sunless dawn...” Aris mumbled, sadly. Some rustling suddenly caught his attention. He raised his bow, pulled back the string, but Memion was swifter than him. An arrow sliced through the darkness, embedding itself in the forehead of a Khartiar in an even worse state than the previous one. He no longer had his breastplate, and a sword blade had left a broad bloody smile gaping between his bottom ribs. He was losing a hideous amount of blood. Almost an act of mercy, reflected Aris in annoyance.
    There should be no mercy for the Khartiars. None at all.
    “ Nice shot.”
    Memion thanked him with a nod. Aris was younger than him, but already very good with his bow. There was just one difference.
    It was the first time he ’d hunted the Khartiars.
    There ’d been no shortage of opportunities for taking up arms since the war had started. Like during a now remote past, when the Aelians had tried to seize back what had once been theirs. It was the early years after the Endless Night. Shaken and bewildered, and without a trace of group organisation, the