The Path of Flames (Chronicles of the Black Gate Book 1) Read Free Page A

both palms to arc up into the sky and lance down somewhere else on the battlefield.
    Asho lowered his blade. He was shaking so hard he could barely stand. He turned to regard the battle and saw the impossible. The forces of the Empire lay wrecked and ruined upon the slope that led up to the Agerastian position. A few knights had managed to reach the summit and engage the enemy in combat, but most had foundered long before, and either lay dead or were retreating down the slope, back to where the second wave of the Ascendant’s great army was waiting to charge.
    The wind stirred Asho’s white hair. His sword was a dead weight in his hand. Streaks of ebon fire erupted from the Agerastian line here and there to fall upon knots of resistance. How many of those strange men were there? A dozen? Screams drifted with the wind. Horror caused his skin to crawl. Sin Casters, emerging from the most dreadful legends to walk the earth once more.
    The Agerastian line was beginning to move down the hill. One of the soldiers ran at him, followed by three others. I’m a coward , thought Asho as he raised his sword, tip angled obliquely at the ground. At the last moment he stepped aside, and the man’s downward chop slid down the length of his blade and buried itself in the dirt. His momentum carried the soldier on, and as he ran by Asho pivoted and brought his own sword up and around and down to cut through the man’s neck. I stood still as my liege Lord died . He felt numb. The second soldier stabbed his blade straight at Asho’s chest, but Asho parried and stepped forward, spinning up the length of the man’s outstretched arm to crack his elbow into the back of the man’s head and send him staggering to his knees. But why should I have died for that monster? The third man dropped his sword as Asho’s blade sliced open his forearm and died when Asho ducked under the fourth man’s swing, allowing it to catch the third full in the throat.
    Shaya, I didn’t avenge you. Kyferin died without knowing my hate.
    The fourth man screamed a curse as he wrenched his blade free and spat at Asho. “Bythian scum! I’ll send you back to the Black Gate!”
    The numbness cracked and shattered. Asho blinked, seeing the man for the first time, and into the void of horror blossomed fury.
    He stepped in, gripping his sword’s hilt with both hands so that he could place all his strength behind his blows. The Agerastian was taller than he, of course, lean and whipcord strong, but Asho’s fury was cold and total and he attacked the man’s very blade, smashing it aside again and again, driving the bigger man before him, causing him to stumble back on his heels. Each time the soldier tried to raise his sword Asho smacked it aside, until finally the man dropped it and Asho speared his sword through the man’s throat.
    The man fell, gurgling and scrabbling at the wound. Asho stood over him, his rage sluicing away as quickly as it had come. Death was everywhere, given voice in hoarse screams and pleas for mercy. He thought of Shaya as he’d seen her last, her white hair plastered to her head, turning to smile brokenly at him before she rode through the castle gate and to Ennoia, to pass back once more into the depths of Bythos and a life of slavery. Asho shuddered and looked around him. He recognized one body after another. Ser Eckel. Ser Orban. Ser Merboth. Each as lethal and brutal a knight as could be found throughout Ennoia, and all cut down by a Sin Caster.
    Asho looked up. They’d lost the battle. It was unheard of; the Ascendant Empire had lost. Around him as far as he could see, the flower of the Empire’s chivalry lay wasted and ruined. The greatest knights of the age had been massacred.
    “Asho!” The cry was thin, almost inaudible over the chaos, but he turned and saw Ulein, squire to Ser Orban, weaving his way drunkenly around the fallen toward Asho. His left arm hung awkwardly by his side, the chainmail torn at his shoulder.