Read Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) for Free Online Page B

noise.
    With tiny trembling fingers Brynlee Falls
reached out and took her father’s lifeless hand with a sense of
dawning horror. “Papa? Papa!” She shook him, wanting him to wake
up, wanting to gaze upon his beautiful tawny eyes one last
time.
    A contingent of Aberdourian soldiers in full
regalia sprinted toward them down the main road. Captain Khalous
Marloch ordered Brynlee and Scarlett out of the street. He shouted
for Brayden too, but her brother was lost in his sorrow, crying in
a manner that Brynlee had never seen from him before. It chilled
her skin and frightened her.
    “Secure the city!” a guard shouted.
    Hundreds of soldiers ran to their defensive
positions on the battlements, swords carried prudently at their
sides. The great portcullis of the southern wall descended.
    Brynlee pulled her sister in close to her,
not noticing the blood on her fingers until her hands soiled the
flowered patterning of Scarlett’s ivory dress. It was their
father’s blood, and Brynlee shivered at the sight of it. She wiped
her hands on the folds of her skirt and then swiveled Scarlett to
face her. The girl looked more confused than afraid, her big brown
eyes peeking out from behind a few loose strands of rich brown
hair.
    “It’s going to be all right,” Brynlee said,
though more to calm herself than her sister.
    A single horse galloped up the path toward
the city carrying a man in ragged brown clothes. He stopped at the
gate and held up his hand, begging the soldiers to let him in.
Straddling the horse with him was a young girl in gray slacks and a
long forest green tunic who Brynlee recognized.
    “Lia!” she said, springing toward the
entrance. “Someone raise the gate!”
    Her tiny voice was lost in the rising din of
the city. Soldiers trampled past her to ready the defensive
weapons, massive wood and iron contraptions of varying sizes
capable of launching rocks, flaming drums of oil, and massive
spears. Citizens rushed arrows to the walls to aid the archers at
the crenels while others hoisted pots of hot oil on pulleys.
    Brynlee reached her hand through the bars of
the portcullis, calling out for Lia. “Raise the gate!”
    “My lady!” a soldier shouted as he came to
pull Brynlee away. “We must seal the entrance. You can’t—”
    “But it’s Lia!” she yelled.
    When the soldier noticed the young princess
on the other side of the gate, his eyes widened. “My lady! What are
you doing out there?” His gaze tipped to the men above. “Raise the
gate! Now!”
    The massive portcullis lifted to allow the
horsed stranger and the young princess of Aberdour to enter.
Soldiers then rushed to seal the entrance behind a pair of massive
double doors, which they reinforced with two thick iron bars.
    Brynlee ran to her sister and threw her arms
around her waist.
    “The Black King’s vipers,” Lia said,
breathless, “on the northern hills. They–they killed them. Thomas
and Abigail. They’re dead!”
    Khalous strode up to her, unfastening his
long blue cape from the metal shoulders of his armor. He left it on
the ground in a heap. “Where are the vipers?”
    The rough and ragged looking man who had
ridden in with Lia, said, “A band of them are making their way
through the forest path. Sir Komor Raven is leading the pack.”
    “The Raven?” Khalous said.
    Brynlee wondered if that was fear she saw in
his slate gray eyes.
    After a brief pause for consideration,
Khalous issued a slew of orders to the men of the King’s Shield:
“Get the king to the castle, and find the queen! Gather their
children and take the eastern tunnels out of the city.”
    The secret tunnels, escape routes for the
king. Brynlee had been fascinated when she’d read about them in her
schoolbooks, but now, faced with the prospect of actually using
them, she was far less enthused.
    “The tunnels?” said Pick. “You intend to
abandon Aberdour?”
    “The protection of the city is not our job,”
Khalous said. “The protection of the king