Read By the Sword for Free Online

skirts with a sigh of relief, and pulled on breeches, stockings, and sleeved leather tunic. She bound up her hair as best she could; debated cutting it off for a moment, then decided she was going to need it under the helm. The chain mail shirt came next; without a squire, getting into it was a matter of contortion and wriggling, and enough hip-waggling to make a trollop stare. It caught in her hair despite her best efforts; she jerked her head and the caught strands were torn out of her scalp with the weight of the mail.
    Finally she settled it into place, jingling noisily, with a final shake of her hips. It covered her from neck to knee, slit before and behind so the wearer could ride. Another leather jerkin went over it, to muffle the inevitable jangling of the rings. She pulled on her riding boots, then turned and headed for the door.
    But all she had in the way of weapons were her knives. I don’t know how to use a sword, she thought, hesitating with one hand on the door handle. But knives aren’t much use against a longer weapon. Maybe I’d better take one anyway.
    So instead of going back the way she’d come, she headed for her brother’s rooms and his small, private armory. Hopefully, the raiders wouldn’t have gotten that far.
    Lordan’s rooms were farther down the darkened hall, halfway between her tower and what had been her mother‘s solar. Kero had never had the leisure to play the lady over a bowerful of maids, nor had she really ever cared for fine sewing even if she’d had the leisure for it, so the solar had been closed up until such time as Lordan took a bride, or Rathgar remarried.
    And since the latter had never occurred, Lordan had used the solar as a place to keep his arms and armor so that he wouldn’t have to tend it down in the cold, uncomfortable, and gloomy armory. Doubtless their father would have had a fit if he’d known, but Kero hadn’t seen any reason to tell him. If Lordan wanted to polish his swords up in the sun-filled solar, why not? Sun had never harmed metal or boys so far as Kero had ever heard.
    She pushed the door open, and went in; the moon shown full through the solar windows, and the armor on its stand looked uncannily like Lordan for a moment. It gleamed a soft silver where the moonlight struck reflections from the polished metal and those reflections gave it a momentary illusion of movement.
    Lordan’s swords were hung from the racks where shuttles for the looms had been kept in Lenore’s day. Kero knew the one she wanted: one of Lordan’s earliest blades, a light shortsword, the closest thing to a knife and hence the one she could probably use the easiest if it came to that.
    Lady Agnira, grant it doesn’t....
    She buckled the belt over her tunic, hesitated a moment more, then resolutely helped herself to a little round helm with a nose-guard hanging on the wall beside it. It might not be much in the way of protection, but it was better than a bare head.
    Lordan’s rooms next door had a private stair to the stables outside; normally locked, but she and Lordan had made enough illicit moonlight expeditions that she’d long ago learned how to pick the clumsy old lock in the dark.
    The door was still locked, but her hands, though they shook a little, still remembered how to tease the lock with the thin blade of her knife. She forced herself to breathe slowly, told herself that this was nothing out of the ordinary, leaned against the door frame, and tried not to think about what she was doing.
    It worked; the lock clicked, and the door swung open, hinges creaking.
    The stairs gave out on the tack-room, and the shielded light normally kept burning there made her blink, eyes watering. But there were no sounds of restless horses beyond the door, and the tack-room itself was a shambles.
    As her eyes adjusted to the light and she picked her way over the saddles and other tack strewn over the floor, she saw