Read Arts of Dark and Light: Book 01 - A Throne of Bones for Free Online

and howling and whining of their wolves, and the occasional shouting of the men behind him made it surprisingly hard to keep track of the number. The fact that the goblins were not arrayed in tidy, disciplined lines, but in loose mobs in constant movement rendered it more of an exercise in estimation than an actual count.
    It was considerable comfort to be up on the hill and on the left flank, above and well away from that teeming mass of inhumanity. He glanced back toward the center, behind the reserves, and saw the legionary standard. He couldn’t see his father, but he knew Corvus was down there somewhere. He did recognize Saturnius, though, stout and portly in his armor, waving his arms as he shouted at someone. He grinned, glad that he wasn’t the object of the legate’s ire.
    The goblins had arrayed themselves much as his father had predicted they would, although there seemed to be rather more wolves lined up on the flank facing the Marcus and the Second Knights than on the other side of the battlefield.
    “How many wolves, Tribune?” Julianus demanded.
    “I make seven hundred, perhaps seven hundred twenty, Decurion.”
    “Lucius and me both count eight hundred. Remember, it’s better to err on the side of too many than too few. Still, that’s not bad.”
    Not bad that only three hundred knights held the right flank against eight hundred enemy wolfriders? It wasn’t exactly a state he would be inclined to describe as good, either. But he held his tongue. The decurion was not a man known to appreciate wit at the best of times, and this did not seem to be a wise moment to try his temper.
    As if in response to the wolves snarling below them, Marcus’s stomach growled. He had done his best to choke down some bread and cheese when they’d been awakened before sunrise and ordered to take their position on the northernmost hill, but he’d had little appetite.
    It wasn’t that this morning would be the first time he’d ever seen combat. On his journey to the elven royal city of Elebrion with the Church embassy last year, he’d been attacked by an ulfin, a grotesque wolflike creature, although he hadn’t even managed to draw his sword and had only survived the attack thanks to the alertness of his dwarven servant, Lodi. Since the campaign began, he’d ridden on more patrols than he could count and had gotten into five skirmishes. He’d even killed his first goblin three weeks ago—two of them, in fact, when the patrol he was leading encountered a small band of raiders. But today marked his first actual battle.
    He had known that war wasn’t likely to be as glorious as the chronicles recorded, but as his father had predicted, his senses were reeling in shock from the impact of the experience. The sights, the sounds, the scale of it all…it was simply too much for his senses to take in at once. His heart was pounding, his palms were moist, and his mouth was dry. He hadn’t been this frightened since the night he’d found himself soaring through the night sky over the towers of Elebrion, dangling like a giant mouse caught up in the talons of Caitlys Shadowsong’s warhawk.
    And today’s fighting hadn’t even begun.
    The sound of thundering hoofbeats suddenly stopping nearby jarred him from his thoughts. “Pissed yourself yet, cousin?”
    Marcus looked up. Gaius Valerius Fortex, the tribune commanding the Second Knights and his elder by three years, towered over him from the back of his big black warhorse, Incitatus. His cousin’s pale green eyes glittered with amusement. “I imagine that right about now you’re wishing you’d taken that bishopric Magnus offered you!”
    I was holding out for an archbishop’s hat, Marcus tried to reply, but the words stuck in his throat.
    “I’ll take it, if the tribune’s got no use for it,” Julianus said, making Fortex and some of the nearby riders laugh.
    “How pretty you would look in a red cassock and mitre, Julianus! And with that bull’s voice of yours,