The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5

Read The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5 for Free Online Page A

Book: Read The Lore Anthology: Lore of the Underlings: Episodes 1 - 5 for Free Online
Authors: John Klobucher
beast’s wide belly to hide amidst her hooves from the marching Guard. There the girl held, huddled and hushed as they passed. Then suddenly the cow sensed something below and let out a bellow low and long. But Jixy was already gone.
    John Cap stood ready to meet the dismounted. He was not long alone. Something grasped his wrist and he glanced down to find a n almost ghostly gray hand and slender fingers wrapped around it. The tall young woman had joined him to stand at his side.
    “Let them come John,” she said calmly. “Do not resist.” The ever green of her beautiful eyes gazed deep into the handsome blue of his. His lips let slip the hint of a smile.
    It was strange about this tall damsel, this maiden, this youthful lady of the pale… how she somehow seemed to be untouched by the dark night’s teary fall. The few drops that caught her sun-dipped hair glistened like stars in a twilight all aglow with yesterday’s goodnight kiss.
    The peace of the storm’s eye passed. The vanguard of the footmen, the blue-clad coast keeper named Faal-syr, greeted John Cap with a short heavy harmlet to the throat and threw the tall traveler aside with surprising ease. Then he dropped the leaden club with a thud and strode ahead, for he sought not the man but the space he took. It was his in no time. “Child’s play,” he said to himself.
    Yet, despite the bright of a fresh torch following just behind, all the blue Guard found was the white weapon at his feet. He picked it up, heavy handed in his gutting glove, and studied it suspiciously. He turned it over and over again, seeking some sign of the hidden hand that made its fine wide blade and doubled edge, that fashioned the toothy sharp tip of it, or that cast it so strong down to a hilt the thick of an arm.
    The black Guard barked. “Faal-syr! Report!”
    “Sir!” answered Faal-syr smartly, crossing his arms in salute. “My sir!” The blue made a beeline for the black except for a stumble on a little something hard lurking in the grass. It was Jixy’s jagged pummel stone. He quickly collected the fist-shaped shard and delivered it double-time with his other find to the moody master Guard.
    “Our search did yield but these, sir my sir.”
    “A pale blade and a broken stone?”
    “Yes, sir my sir. But this sword… ‘tis a strange thing… unlike any I have known.”
    Syar-ull scoffed and took up the arm, weighing it in his hand. “Odd, the hold of it. And so light…” He waved the tusk-like weapon in air. “It seems to mind its motion…”
    A voice from afar caught their ears. “Yoo hoo! Will some friend kindly set me free from this mortal coil? It surely packs a pinch.”
    Faal-syr the Blue bowed his helmeted head. “The snared stranger, sir. Shall I send him hellbound?” He placed his free hand on the handle of the spikey halfpike hung at his side.
    Syar-ull answered in a mutter black and bitter, as if to no one but himself. “He has chosen the liar’s path. Let him suffer the liar’s fate.” Then he tore from the fingers of Faal-syr’s left fist the lost half pummeler of young Pyr Hurx and launched it into the sinister arms of the looming ironwood.
    As it flew he sang an old childling’s song:
     
    Come the fall
    When iron flies
    Quick Boy darts
    But Slow Boy dies
     
    The dark, deformed limbs of the great tree shook, unleashing a hail of ironfire upon the poor soul below. Morio struggled against his bonds to duck and dodge the rain of terror as hell’s cruel elements fell all around with the ring and clang of a devil’s dance. A squall of razor leaves sliced the skin of his ragged ruckscoat, in places slashing his underclothes too — and nearly more. Indeed, where one sleeve was shredded and torn right to his snowy white folking-wear, a weak streak of red bled through but then blurred in the waterlogged fibers of limberwood.
    The doomed man’s mouth moved yet the din was too loud. It looked as though he said, “Oh my!”
    The vell Arrowborne tried

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