Mordraud, Book One Read Free Page A

Aelians had hurled themselves randomly at the emerging Khartiar world. Too late, and too few of them. The Endless Night hadn’t much weakened those fragile bastards, while his people had been literally exterminated by the darkness, and the few survivors never fully recovered from what had happened.
    The day the sun had died beyond the horizon.
    The ancient fathers did nothing to prevent the Khartiars from taking possession of their abandoned cities, their ministries and their squares. And so, the onerous task of embarking on a hapless recapture was left to their descendents. The elders watched the fall of the Empire with the drained desire and blind eyes of those who had seen things too painful to describe or narrate. All failed, Aris mulled. The attempts to claim back Cambria. Their pride downtrodden and buried in those boggy forests. That night hadn’t been talked about for centuries. Almost all the details had been entirely forgotten. Cambiryon alone still insisted on wheedling an answer out of the elders, Aris reminded himself with an amused smirk. That arrogant noble blood.
    ‘We tried it many years ago... But the Khartiars are like rats...’ reflected Aris, as he slackened the tension on the string. He was just a grandson of that wretched generation of Aelians, and he held no memory of what his people had suffered when the Khartiars had laid the final stone on any intentions they might have for retaliation. Yet the hatred had survived the centuries.
    Undisturbed . And swelled out of all proportion.
    He shouldn ’t tire himself without reason. He wanted to go home that night with his eyes steeped in blood and his ears ringing with death throes.
    “ Aris, look, down there... Two more,” Memion whispered to him.
    “ Two together?! Where?”
    “ Behind that oak.”
    Aris l icked the feathers of his arrow, gauged its weight, then loaded it again on the strand of horsehair.
    “ One’s yours... The other’s mine.”
    ***
    Varno was staring at the back of the young man not far from him. He must have been about his age. He didn’t remember him, he hadn’t seen him on the field and the man hadn’t been near him when the cavalry charged their ranks. His face was contorted in pain and rage, white as a handful of snow. Blood mingled with earth was flowing from the mangled stump that had once been his right arm.
    For a moment – just one – he ’d truly believed in him. On foot against a horseman. Armed with merely a blunt dagger. One of the few soldiers left in his regiment.
    He ’d been wrong.
    His cries faded away only when a spear tip punctured his forehead. Yet silence did not return. The earth itself seemed to groan with hundreds of mouths gaping towards the skies.
    Varno could recall little of the battle. He and his comrades had been put in the front ranks, as always. The place awarded by right to mercenaries – there was no use protesting. The clash between the two fronts had been sudden and brutal, an overwhelming tidal wave. He’d seen that cursed horseman head for him, stare at him from behind the helmet visor, take aim and strike him full on like a target in a joust. He’d felt the rocks scrape his back, and the skies took the place of the ground, until a tree brought his flight to a halt. The lance had gone in above his shoulder-strap, shattering his collar-bone. The blow hadn’t killed him.
    He ’d been lucky.
    The rider left the lance where it was after unsuccessfully tugging at it a couple of times. It was embedded deep in the tree trunk, leaving him hanging there, like a rag put out to dry. Varno hadn’t even pulled out his sword. And to think he’d paid good money for it, he considered in weary irony.
    He should have heeded his father, when he’d told him he’d be better off tilling the fields and finding himself a good woman to settle down with, and have children, a roof over their heads and food to eat. Wise words. But his village was small, and the towns too expensive and too far away.