(eng) Karen Azinger - Silk & Steel 04 by The Poison Priestess

Author:The Poison Priestess [Priestess, The Poison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

36

Jordan

Goaded by nightmares, Jordan set a hard pace. Her companions stayed close, three monks and six swordsmen, their allegiance hidden beneath leather armor and cloaks of butternut brown. They thundered down out of the mountains, galloping through the forests of Wyeth.

The trees wept leaves, autumn quickly turning to winter. Time choked her like a noose. Jordan urged her horse to a gallop, praying they were not too late.

Riding from dawn till dusk, they raced across the leagues, making good use of their spare mounts, but when they reached Lanverness, they slowed to a crawl. War ravaged the Rose kingdom, long lines of refugees clogging the roads. Jordan rode among them, hungry for news, but the names of villages burned and hamlets forsaken meant little to her. Told from the perspective of peasants, war was nothing but a chaotic hell. Jordan wished them Godspeed but had little else to offer. Anxious to make better time, Thaddeus led them off road, wending their way through fallow fields and empty pastures.

They kept to the back ways, slipping through the countryside like shadows. Twice they eluded marauders in red, taking refuge in the woods, but everywhere they saw the scars of war. Homesteads deserted, bloated corpses rotting in the fields. Peasants stumbled along muddy lanes, pushing carts of meager possessions. Whole villages lay ravaged, some burned to cinders, smoking ruins haunting the countryside. For the first time, Jordan saw the true wages of war, yet she knew this first payment was merely a token if Darkness prevailed. She gripped her sword hilt, praying for a way to thwart the Darkness.

They smelled it before they saw it, the reek of rot fouling the air. Thad wanted to turn away but Jordan insisted. They rode across the battlefield, red and green cloaks churned to mud, a putrid stench rising with the morning mist. Jordan slowed her horse to a walk, picking a path among the dead. Corpses littered the field, gory and rotting, her gaze drawn to those in emerald green. Her heart pounding, she studied every face, mud-streaked and pale, frozen in death. A knight with an emerald cloak and black hair sprawled facedown in the mud. Jordan slid from the saddle and knelt to roll him over, praying it was not him. Mud sucked at the body, leaving a bloody puddle. Jordan held her breath, her heart thundering…but it was not him, not Stewart. Relief washed through her. She closed the stranger’s eyes, whispering a prayer to Valin.

“Whom do you search for?” Rafe pulled his horse to a stop, staring down at her, but she did not answer. Jordan gathered the reins of her horse and kept walking, her gaze fixed on the slain.

Thaddeus approached, his black stallion skirting a corpse. “Only a skirmish. More red cloaks than green, looks as if the queen’s men waged a good fight.”

A pair of crows cawed, fighting over a severed hand. She kicked at the crows, sending the pair flapping into a steel-gray sky. “Only a skirmish yet over a hundred died.

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