Gods of Shadow and Flame by M H Johnson

Author:M H Johnson [Johnson, M H]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-04-14T23:00:00+00:00

33

A deathly howl tore through the night. The burly men flinched and cursed, peering out into the darkness. Malek's heightened senses took it all in, the limited moonlight near clear as day to his eyes. He caught the sound of children whimpering, roughly thrown into the vessel before the three men turned about, drawing free cutlasses sheathed on their hips. Hands too nervous to untie the mooring lines, two began hacking them.

“Hurry it the hell up! We are already late, and the captain is in a foul mood,” hissed one, peering out into the darkness.

“Moorle, I told you we should have left sooner!” Cried one of the panicked men sawing frantically at the mooring lines. “That damned Delver was questioning my man at the market, looking for one of the girls we caught. And now I hear his wolves howling!” The man cursed with fright.

“You’re a damn fool, Velin,” said the largest of the three, gazing at his cohort with contempt.

Malek could smell their sweat mixing with the odor of the brackish water as he closed, silent as death.

The slaver turned to whisper a scathing retort before his sudden cry was cut off with a horrid, wet shriek that died off to a sigh and a thump, Malek's terrible blade cleaving effortlessly through the man named Velin.

Howling with furious delight, Malek felt the man's life-force roar and surge through his body, even as the remaining pair of men stumbled back in speechless horror, bodies splattered with their former partner's blood, Velin's body already shriveling into a desiccated corpse by Malek's feet.

His gaze was as cold as death, even as his body trembled with furious energy. He smiled cruelly as he slowly raised his massive blade, allowing his foes to glimpse the horror of their own demise, fruitlessly holding their blades up to parry, one more slaver's desperate face exploding in a spray of blood and bone before a single cry for quarter could be uttered, mangled cutlass flying off into the water even as Malek's howled with dark glory, drinking in his fallen enemy's power as he stepped past the shriveling corpse.

Screams from the third man, whose name Malek neither knew nor cared to. "Please! Take the children, I don't care. Please, just don't kill me!" The man blubbered in futile horror. Malek gave not a single tell, his face devoid of inflection such that the man held out the faintest flicker of hope, grimacing in panic as he turned to flee, his awareness leaving in a hot bloody flash as Malek's dread blade blasted through the man's body with such terrible force that the plank was splattered in gore, quickly boiling to ash at Malek's feet.

"Bloody Hells! By gods, Moorle, cut the lines and let's be off! What's the holdup?" Instantly Malek looked up, catching sight of a blustering figure upon the ship wearing exotic hat, silken sash, and fine cotton jacket, no doubt the master of their little operation. The man paled and swallowed upon catching sight of the Delver approaching the plank.

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