Shanakan (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 1) Read Free

some sort of test? “I’ve come a long way.”
    “I should care?”
    “You should care enough to go and fetch your officer.”
    “Well I could do,” the guard said, shifting his weight and taking a step forward, “but he gets a bit sharp if we waste his time, so be a good lad and run along home.”
    They were not taking him seriously. They thought he was no more than a boy from one of the villages out on the plain below. Serhan looked up at the walls. This was going to be difficult. These men were not bandits with blunt swords and no idea how to use them. Their confidence was born of experience, not bravado. He took a firm grip on his staff and walked towards the gate.
    Both guards drew their swords.
    “Stop,” the bigger one said.
    Serhan said nothing, did not slow.
    The smaller guard hung back, giving his colleague room to swing. The big one raised his weapon and released a sweeping forehand blow with the flat of the blade – not a killing blow, but designed to bruise, to discourage. Serhan stopped abruptly, taking half a step back and slightly unbalancing the man as he tried to compensate. The blade swung an inch short of his chest, and he followed the hand with one end of his staff, pushing him round and bringing the other end up sharply between the man’s legs.
    The guard gasped, but tried to swing the blade again, less convincingly. This time Serhan stepped inside the arc of the sword and tripped the man with the staff between his ankles. The guard went down with a crash, and Serhan delivered a sharp kick to the knee even as he pivoted away to face the other guard.
    The second man hadn’t wasted time when he saw what was going on, and was coming in fast. Serhan struck the man’s sword hand with his staff, knocking the blade high, at the same time stepping forward with as much force as he could manage, driving his shoulder into the guard’s chest.
    This gave him enough of an advantage, and a couple more blows disarmed the man and spun him round with the staff across his throat. He felt the guard’s hand move downwards and brought up a knee to block it.
    “Touch that dagger and I’ll break your neck,” he said.
    The guard stopped resisting.
    By this time the first guard was back on his feet, although it was obvious he was having trouble with his knee and was still bent over. He advanced towards Serhan, sword held with deadly intent.
    “Come much closer and your friend here is going to be in serious trouble.”
    The guard stopped and eyed him with considerable malevolence. He was weighing the sword, trying to decide what to do.
    “What do you want?” he asked.
    “Just fetch your officer.”
    For a moment he thought the man was going to attack anyway.
    “Just go and fetch the captain, eh, Colly?” the smaller guard said.
    Colly seemed to relax, slid his sword back into its sheath, and limped into the gate without a backward glance. Serhan plucked the smaller guard’s dagger from his belt and released him, pushing him away from where his sword lay.
    The guard sat down against the wall, easy now that the matter was out of his hands, and looked at Serhan.
    “You fight pretty well with that stick,” he said. “Where did you learn?”
    “Where I was taught.”
    “Never seen it. Can you teach it?”
    “Maybe.” Serhan smiled. “We’ll see what your officer says.” He lobbed the dagger back to the guard, who caught it deftly and put it back in its sheath. The tension was gone now. It was an officer problem.
    The limping guard came back out with three other men. One of these, the tall one, Serhan thought, was obviously the officer. He was somehow very much in charge, though it was hard to tell from the uniforms. Something in the way he stood, perhaps, or the way the guards stood around him. He was nearly a foot taller than Serhan, thin and rangy with close cropped sandy hair and green eyes.
    “You’ve been beating up my guards,” he said.
    Serhan nodded. “I have come to offer my services to