Farland, David - Runelords 06 - Worldbinder by Farland David

Author:Farland, David [Farland, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780765355843
Amazon: 0765355841
Publisher: Tor Fantasy
Published: 2007-01-01T23:00:00+00:00

Nightfall was many hours away when a wyrmling guard came crashing down the stairs three at a time.

“Humans are coming, warrior clan!” he roared. “The road is black with them!”

Vulgnash leapt to his feet. For two hours he had been sitting with nothing to do, listening only to the occasional talk of the small folk in their room, whispering in their strange tongue, as quiet as mice. He had strained his ears. He knew that he would not be able to understand the meanings of their words. He had no context to put them in, but often, he had found, when learning a new language, it was best to begin by familiarizing himself with the sounds. He had been silently cataloguing the vowels and consonants, occasionally trying them out on his tongue.

Now, with a battle coming, there were other matters to attend to.

He raced up to the tower. The sunlight was as bright as a blade there, slanting down from the east. There was no cloud cover.

To the south he could see the human war band, sunlight glancing off their bone armor, as yellow as teeth. The men ran in single file, bloody axes in their hands. In the distance, racing down the winding road, they looked like a huge serpent, snaking toward the horizon for almost a mile. They would reach the fortress in less than half an hour.

His captain raced up behind Vulgnash. “Master, shall we evacuate, head into the woods?”

There were trees all around. Leaves hung thick upon the oaks and alders. But they would not offer the protection that Vulgnash needed. His wyrmling troops could cope with the light much better than Vulgnash could.

“No, we’ll fight them here.”

The captain tried not to show fear, but he drew back. Vulgnash was condemning him to death.

“I’ll deepen the shadows around the fortress,” Vulgnash said, “and I will place the touch of death upon each of you, give you my blessing. And I have these—” he reached to a pouch at his throat, pulled it hard enough to snap the rawhide band that held it. The bag was heavy with harvester spikes.

“Take three to a man,” Vulgnash told him, placing the bag in the captain’s palm, “no more.”

The wyrmling commander smiled. He and his men would die, but it would be a glorious death, fighting gleefully in a haze of bloodlust, lost to all mortal care.

“Shall I have the men kill the captives,” the commander asked, “as a precaution?”

Normally, that is what Vulgnash would have done. He would have made sure that no matter what effort the humans spent, they would lose in the end.

But his master’s command was upon him, and Vulgnash always executed her commands to perfection.

“No, leave them,” he said in resignation. “If the warriors win through, I may have to come back and take them again.”

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.