Company of Bones (1) by Brennan Morton

Author:Brennan Morton [Morton, Brennan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Paladin Press Publishing
Published: 2023-08-02T22:00:00+00:00

Seventeen

Soup and Sadness

Len’Neth, year 511

After the mercenaries were out of view and the shield of his towering anger was spent, Dreadfalls found himself cold, and hungry enough that his gurgling stomach could be heard by all those who passed, trying not to stare. He gave the arrogant men and their horses another quarter bell to ride off deeper into the human hive bustling with industry before walking in the opposite direction he thought they would be, though in a circular, enclosed town he quickly found his options limited. He huffed and wandered slowly, confused, and frightened by all the noise and strange smells. Dreadfalls finally stopped in the deep shadows of a moldy, three-story tenement watching the citizens of Glanfield go about their day while they watched him warily from the sides of their faces. Weaponless, and with nothing to barter with, Dreadfalls felt more vulnerable among the humans than he had been fighting the ‘shadow with teeth’ in the middle of a great forest fire.

Worst of all, though, Dreadfalls was exhausted to the point where his body ached, and his every thought felt like a swarm of bees behind his eyes that he fought to keep open. He had never felt anything quite like it. Even fighting his mother with all his worth for whole afternoons in the clearing, he had not felt so exhausted. He had not broken a sweat and yet his body felt as if he had sprinted all the way to Glanfield without sleep. He leaned against the tall, narrow building and tried to keep from nodding off less he wake up completely naked with his hair or worse stolen as well.

Dreadfalls recalled the incident with the mercenaries in his head. One moment Dreadfalls had been running for his life from the guard and the next he was a bound and gagged passenger inside his own raging body. His limbs moved without him, and before he had realized he had run into an unmovable object, he watched himself pitch a grown horse clear across a road. It had been like watching from the eyes of a bestial version of himself reacting to a dangerous situation. The pain had receded and there was no fear, just an utter sense of euphoria that scared him most of all.

The Slaughter. Dreadfalls shivered and felt his knees turn to water.

He had touched the Slaughter, and though he fought it at first with all his considerable will, it had taken him in the blink of an eye. He understood his mother’s hesitation to explain it further in the clearing and why the orcs gave in to such a destructive and malevolent force. Dreadfalls had always imagined it to be unpleasant and terrible, but the truth was far worse. It had been pleasurable. For that one moment when he had been overtaken, it had felt like standing in a warm summer rain, sleeping close to the hearth, and beating his mother with a practice sword all at once. It was

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