Swords & Dark Magic Read Free

floodplain. A weathered wooden bridge sagged across the narrow span, and beyond it squatted a score of buildings, gray as the dust hovering above the dirt tracks wending between them.
    A short distance upriver, on the same side as the hamlet, was a large, unnatural hill, on which stood a gray-stoned keep. The edifice looked abandoned, lifeless, no banners flying, the garden terraces ringing the hillsides overgrown with weeds, the few windows in the square towers gaping black as caves.
    The riders rode battered, beaten-down horses. The beasts’ heads drooped with exhaustion, their chests speckled and streaked with dried lather. The two men and three women did not look any better. Armor in tatters, blood-splashed, and all roughly bandaged here and there to mark a battle somewhere behind them. Each wore a silver brooch clasping their charcoal-gray cloaks over their hearts, a ram’s head in profile.
    They sat in a row, saying nothing, for some time.
    And then the eldest among them, a broad-shouldered, pale-skinned woman with a flat face seamed in scars, nudged her mount down onto the stony descent. The others fell in behind their captain.

    The boy came running to find Graves, chattering about strangers coming down from the border pass. Five, on horses, with sunlight glinting on chain and maybe weapons. The one in the lead had long black hair and pale skin. A foreigner for sure.
    Graves finished his tankard of ale and pushed himself to his feet. He dropped two brass buttons on the counter and Swillman’s crabby hand scooped them up before Graves had time to turn away. From the far end of the bar, Slim cackled, but that was a random thing with her, and she probably didn’t mean anything by it. Though maybe she did. Who could know the mind of a hundred-year-old whore?
    The boy, whom Graves had come to call Snotty, for his weeping nose and the smudges of dirt that collected there, led the way outside, scampering like a pup. To High Street’s end, where Graves lived and where he carved the slabs he and the boy brought down from the old quarry every now and then.
    Snotty went into the tiny one-stall stable and set about hitching up the mule to the cart. Graves tugged open the door to his shed, reminding himself to cut back the grass growing along the rain gutter. He stepped inside and, though his eyes had yet to adjust, he reached with overlong familiarity to the rack of long-handled shovels and picks just to the left of the door. He selected his best shovel and then the next best one for the boy, and finally his heavy pick.
    Stepping outside, he glared up at the bright sun for a moment before walking to where Snotty was readying the cart. The three digging tools thumped onto the bed in a cloud of dust. “Five you say?”
    “Five!”
    “Bring us two casks of water.”
    “I will.”
    Graves went out back behind the shed. He eyed the heap of slabs, dragged out five—each one dressed into rough rectangular shapes, sides smoothed down, one arm’s-length long and an elbow-down wide—and he squatted before them, squinting at the bare facings. “Best wait on that,” he muttered, and then straightened when he heard the boy bringing the cart around.
    “Watch your fingers this time,” Graves warned.
    “I will.”
    Graves moved the pick and shovels to the head of the cart bed to make room for the slabs. Working carefully, they loaded each stone onto the warped but solid planks. Then Graves went around to the mule’s harness and cinched the straps tighter to ease the upward pull on the animal’s chest.
    “Five,” said the boy.
    “Heavy load.”
    “Heavy load. What you gonna carve on ’em?”
    “We’ll see.”
    Graves set out and Snotty led the mule and the creaking cart after him, making sure the wooden wheels fell evenly into the ruts on the road, the ruts that led to the cemetery.
    When they arrived, they saw Flowers wandering the grassy humps of the burial ground, collecting blossoms, her fair hair dancing in the wind.