Read Iron and Blood for Free Online Page B

carefully, her ears rigid and upright.
    â€œHey!” Tyvian yelled. “Hey! Help me up!”
    Hool vanished from sight, darting down an alley at the speed of a galloping horse. Tyvian was left pinned and alone in the cold and dark. “Hool? HOOOL! Dammit, gnoll! I’m stuck!”
    A minute or two later saw the weight of Black Eye suddenly lifted from Tyvian’s body. The smuggler looked up to see Hool standing over him. “Hool!” He coughed, “It’s about bloody time! What are you doing here anyway—­you were supposed to be in the Blocks.”
    Hool ignored the question and skipped straight to criticism. “You are very stupid, Tyvian Reldamar. You are lucky other humans are also stupid, or you would be dead.”
    Tyvian crawled painfully to his feet. “Yes, Hool, thank you for the valuable critique.”
    â€œHendrieux got away again—­ another magic door. You said those things were expensive, but he has three of them now.”
    Tyvian tried blowing his nose, but all that came out was blood. He reasoned that, at the very least, the shirt he was wearing couldn’t get any more ruined. “He hasn’t got three, just one—­a door that magically connects to other doors. It’s called an anygate.”
    â€œWhere is it?”
    â€œI’m not sure yet,” Tyvian said, but the ring pinched him for it, and hard. Fortunately, the rest of him was in enough pain that the effect was largely masked. “Where’s Jaevis?”
    Hool pointed toward a different alley. “He snuck away when I hit the big man with his hammer. I can track him . He doesn’t use filthy cheater magic.”
    â€œNot now, Hool, thank you,” Tyvian said, limping over to the piles of bodies now littered around the street. “Speaking of the big man, what did happen to Gallo, anyway?”
    â€œHe should be dead but he isn’t. I don’t know why,” Hool observed, cocking her head and listening. “He is close, but he’s leaving.”
    Tyvian nodded. The man had to be life-­warded beyond any life ward Tyvian had ever heard of—­nobody survived a thunder-­orb to the face and walked away, particularly not when they were knocked through a building immediately afterward. He made a note to avoid frontal confrontations with Gallo for the foreseeable future.
    Tyvian found the second Artificer lying underneath one of the Dellorans killed by the initial thunder-­orb. “Here—­is this one alive?”
    Hool nodded. “He is bleeding, but he will probably live if nothing catches and eats him before he gets home.”
    Tyvian sighed, which made his bruised ribs complain. “Ugh . . . well, that’s something. Here, pick him up and bring him to my flat.”
    Hool’s ears flattened against her head. “Why?”
    Tyvian shrugged; the gesture made his dislocated shoulder scream, but he kept his desire to wince to himself. He doubted Hool was sympathetic to physical pain. “I want to make sure he isn’t caught and eaten, of course. Now hurry, or all this will have been for nothing.”
    Hool hoisted the unconscious Kalsaari onto her back while Tyvian snatched up the hurlant where Jaevis had dropped it, then they both headed for home. Altogether, Tyvian decided it had been a rather productive evening.
    He tried not to think about how much of it had relied on pure, dumb luck.

 
    CHAPTER 4
    CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR
    M yreon did not sleep, yet she was too tired to do much of anything else. She lay on the plush mattress with the downy quilts bunched around her and stared at the ceiling.
    Artus was almost certainly dead by now. The thought of it made her want to cry, but no tears came. The poor young fool—­came this far, followed Reldamar every step of the way, only to be cast out and murdered in some Freegate alley for no discernible reason.
    He had been a good person,