Read Path of the Crushed Heart: Book Four of the Serpent Catch Series for Free Online Page A

naked, wrapped in his blanket, scowling at the intrusion.
    Phylomon came close and gazed down at them, neither approving nor condemning.
    “The attack failed,” he said. “The Blade Kin sounded an alarm, so we lost the element of surprise. However, before their caravan had a chance to retreat, we caught some prisoners—a Dragon Captain and two Smilodon Lancers. I plan to question them tonight.”
    “Good,” Darrissea said. At least something positive had come of the morning.
    “For now,” The Starfarer asked Darrissea, “I’d like you to come with Fava and me. I have something to show you.”
    ***

Chapter 6: Secrets Revealed
    Darrissea peered in Phylomon’s eyes, wondered if he asked for her to come with him only because he was jealous.
    “Now?” she asked.
    “Yes,” Phylomon said. “It’s urgent.”
    Darrissea went to the mammoth, took a running leap, and grabbed onto the hair on its left haunch, then scurried up to the top of the hump on its back and clung to Fava’s waist.
    Phylomon kicked the mammoth’s ears, and it headed north, through the camp.
    Allon was with her odd friends, and all of them were watching Darrissea leave, all six strangers. Darrissea shouted, “Quit staring at me, you mutants, or I’ll take my knife and abort your mutant asses!”
    Yet the strangers watched her still.
    Phylomon, Fava, and Darrissea rode north at a trot for two hours, to a small frozen lake, and the mammoth waded through a tangle of scrub until Phylomon reached some rocks—four monoliths standing a dozen feet tall.
    A fifth flat slab covered the others, forming a small enclosure. They dismounted.
    “What is this place?” Darrissea asked.
    “Upon this slab,” Phylomon said, “eight hundred years ago, we built a pyre for Theron Major. His bones are buried here beneath our feet. I thought we should come and pay homage.”
    Theron Major, the first human Starfarer to begin teaching the Pwi, was a man of peace; he was also the first human to be gunned down by the Slave Lords.
    Darrissea felt privileged to be here, but was still curious as to why Phylomon was being so demanding—and so secretive.
    Darrissea wondered if Theron would ever have guessed that in Smilodon Bay alone, his deeds would be so well remembered that a dozen men would be named for him.
    “Did you know him?” Fava asked.
    “Very well,” Phylomon said. “I was young when Theron ran his school in South Bay. We had heard rumors that the Starfarers were taking slaves. We came on an expedition from South Bay, flying in hovercrafts. At Bashevgo we found many Pwi who had been taken as slaves to work as farmers, miners, and laborers. Theron tried to talk our people into setting them free. We thought we’d succeeded, but here the slavers ambushed us and murdered Theron.”
    “Is this the same path you took to Bashevgo back then?” Fava asked.
    “Yes, roughly,” Phylomon whispered. He stepped outside the small structure and looked up. A red drone shone in the sky, palely visible even in daylight, a spear of white. Phylomon muttered, “The world is only so large. I sometimes seem doomed to travel the same paths, over and over, as if retracing my steps.”
    “What do you mean?” Darrissea asked.
    Phylomon said, “That summer, I traveled these same plains with Theron, and afterward I learned to hunt slavers in the darkness. Three hundred and sixty years ago, I came here leading Terrazin Dragontamer to our first battle on the north rim of the Mammoth Run Plateau. Now I’m circling round to Bashevgo again. It feels like some great cosmic chase, a spiral, an endless battle between enons.”
    “Enons?” Darrissea asked.
    “An old term,” Phylomon said. “A concept borrowed from our friends the Eridani.” He nodded up into the sky at the red drone. “Enons are opposing combatants that can never win, never dominate. You would think that the Eridani, with their communal minds, would have reached some consensus on issues such as justice and