The Damned 02 - The Swords Of Night and Day Read Free Page B

Skilgannon’s face. ‘I knew her. She came to me in the last days.’
*
    He stood on the hillside outside his home, and watched as the rider galloped back towards the city. A great heaviness settled on his heart. Slowly he strolled up the hillside, moving out onto the cliff path above the bay. Skilgannon had grown to love this place during the last eight years. A stone seat had been set on a jutting ledge of rock. He did not know who had set it here, but something in his heart had warmed to the man who had. The ledge was perilously overbalanced, and looked as if it might drop at any moment, falling the hundreds of feet to the rocky beach below. Yet someone had decided to set a seat here, as if to hurl a challenge at the gods. Kill me if you will, but I will choose to sit here, in this place, and defy your power.
    Skilgannon walked out onto the ledge and stretched himself out on the seat. The air was warm, the sunshine bright. Far out on the Jian Sea he saw the fishing boats, and the gulls swooping and soaring round them. Pain flared in his neck and he winced. The fingertips of his right hand grew numb. He stretched his neck, then looked down at his hand. The fingers were trembling. Making a fist, he tried to quell the tremor. Slowly the pain in his neck dulled, merging with the other aches in his tired body. His lower back troubled hint at nights; the old scar on his hip would grind if he rode a horse for more than an hour. His left knee had never recovered from the arrow wound.
    Angry now, he pulled the parchment from his belt and opened it once more. ‘Bakila has refused our offer,’ he read, ‘though he has accepted the gifts and tributes.’
    Gifts and tributes.
    For years Skilgannon had tried to tell them that Bakila could not be bought off for ever. The Zharn king had a hunger that would not be satisfied by tributes. He also had an army that needed to be fed with plunder. The young Angostin king had not understood this. He did now.
    Now that it was too late.
    ‘ Ho, general!’ came the call. Skilgannon swung on his seat. The pain flared in his neck once more. The young captain, Vakasul, came striding up the cliff path. He halted just before the ledge, and stood there, grinning and shaking his head. ‘That will fall, you know,’ he said.
    Skilgannon smiled affectionately at the dark-eyed young warrior. ‘Come sit with me - and dare it to fall,’ he answered.

    ‘ I think not.’
    ‘ You know the Zharn are coming?’
    ‘ Of course.’
    ‘ And you will ride with me to fight them?’
    ‘ You know that I will. We will scatter them, general.’
    Skilgannon rose and walked back to where the officer waited. Vakasul was in battle dress, black breastplate and helm of hardened leather, thigh-length riding boots, reinforced at the knee with bronze. His long dark hair had been braided in the Angostin fashion, lengths of silver wire placed within the braids to offer added protection to the head. ‘You will fight a massive enemy army,’ said Skilgannon, ‘and yet you will not walk onto a stone ledge.’
    ‘ The ledge is not under my control,’ said Vakasul. ‘On the battlefield my sword and my bow will protect me.’
    Skilgannon looked into the young man’s eyes. Both men knew that nothing could possibly protect them in the coming battle.
    Bakila would have twenty thousand foot soldiers, and eight thousand horsemen. The Angostin force would number around four thousand trained infantry and two thousand cavalry. Eight years before, Skilgannon had led a coalition army against Bakila, and turned back his horde on the southern border of Angostin. Forces from Kydor and Chiatze and the Varnii nomads had fought a ferocious battle. More than thirty thousand Zharn had perished, and some twelve thousand of the allies. Bakila had managed to withdraw his surviving forces during the night. Skilgannon had urged the Angostin king to allow him to pursue them. The request had been denied. The king had been horrified by the losses