Age of Iron by Angus Watson

Author:Angus Watson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3, pdf
Tags: Fantasy, History
ISBN: 9781405528528
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2014-09-08T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

“This is it, boss,” said Savage Banba, riding next to Weylin on a fresh horse. The one she’d ridden to Bladonfort could no longer walk. Banba looked fine though. Very fine, despite her long ride and sleepless night. He was impressed. He’d also enjoyed their visit to the grain store that morning and it seemed that she had too.

He put his romantic musings aside as Kanawan appeared in the valley below them. It looked peaceful and innocent. He smiled.

He rode on, then called a halt when he saw a woman walking up the hill towards them, unhurriedly, hips swinging. Her blue dress stretched to compress her ample bust, clung to her eye-catching pelvis, then stopped coquettishly just above her knee. Leather sandal twine criss-crossed her shins, as if inviting Weylin to climb her legs with his lips and teeth, lifting that light skirt … He shook his head. Play could come later.

“You must be Zadar’s men?” she said, flicking her dark hair and looking up coolly at the mounted troops.

“We are. You have Flynn?”

“I’m Ula, Queen of Kanawan. And you are?”

“Weylin Nancarrow, Warrior in Maidun’s Fifty, representative of Zadar. Do you have Flynn? I will not ask again.”

“Fifty? I heard that Lowa Flynn had made it more like forty?”

“It’s always fifty. If someone leaves or dies, they immediately move someone up from the—”

Weylin heard a snigger behind him.

Makka! He needed to look tougher. He put a hand on his sword pommel. “But that’s nothing to do with you. Do you have Flynn?”

“Perhaps I do. Perhaps I don’t. What is the reward?”

Oh Bel. Weylin had no idea what the reward was, or even if there was one. There probably wasn’t. A curse on Dionysia for dying. She’d have known how to handle this. He was no good at lying, not to strangers anyway.

“You will be in Zadar’s favour, which is the greatest reward there is. Please just hand her over.” He heard a stifled guffaw from Ogre and realised that he needed to be a good deal more uncompromising and hard-faced. “Or we’ll ride into your village and kill people until you do.”

Ula regarded him fearlessly. Weylin felt uncomfortable. “All right,” she said eventually. “I’ll give you Flynn. And her companions. But only three of you can ride down into the village to collect them. The rest wait here.”

“We need food. We’ll all ride down.” Weylin was taking charge.

“I will not have my village full of soldiers that you cannot control, so no, you will not all ride down. But we will give you enough food for your return to Maidun. You can send three people. Two to guard the prisoners, one to carry the food.”

Weylin looked back at his troop. They were grinning as if enjoying his indecision. They were enjoying his indecision, he realised, all together. They must have all been talking about him behind his back, and were now united in mockery. Bel knew it had happened enough times in the past for him to recognise it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.