Knight, Heir, Prince (Of Crowns and Glory—Book 3) by Morgan Rice

Author:Morgan Rice [Morgan Rice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Unknown
Published: 2016-10-17T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOUR

Lucious swung his blade overhand, exulting in the way it glinted in the dawn light, in the instant before he cut down the old man who had dared to get in his way. Around him, more commoners fell at the hands of his men: the ones who dared to resist, and any stupid enough to simply be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

He smiled as the screams echoed around him. He liked it when the peasants tried to fight, because it just gave his men an excuse to show them how weak they really were compared to their betters. How many had he killed now in raids like this? He hadn’t bothered to keep count. Why should he save the least speck of attention for their kind?

Lucious looked around as peasants started to run, and gestured to a few of his men. They set off after them. Running was almost better than fighting, because there was a challenge to hunting them like the prey they were.

“Your horse, your highness?” one of the men asked, leading Lucious’s stallion.

Lucious shook his head. “My bow, I think.”

The man nodded and passed Lucious an elegant recurve bow of white ash, mixed with horn and set with silver. He nocked an arrow, drew back the string, and let it fly. Away in the distance, one of the running peasants went down.

There were no more to fight, but that didn’t mean they were done here. Not by a long way. Hiding peasants, he’d found, could be as amusing as running or fighting ones in their way. There were so many different ways to torture the ones who looked as though they had gold, and so many ways to execute the ones who might have rebel sympathies. The burning wheel, the gibbet, the noose… what would it be today?

Lucious gestured to a couple of his men to start kicking open doors. Occasionally, he liked to burn out those who hid, but houses were more valuable than peasants. A woman came running out, and Lucious caught her, throwing her casually in the direction of one of the slavers who had taken to following him around like gulls after a fishing vessel.

He stalked into the village’s temple. The priest was already on the ground, holding a broken nose, while Lucious’s men gathered gold and silver ornaments into a sack. A woman in the robes of a priestess stood to confront him. Lucious noted a flicker of blonde hair straying from under her cowl, a certain fine-featured resemblance that made him pause.

“You can’t do this,” the woman insisted. “We are a temple!”

Lucious grabbed her, pulling away the hood of her robes to look at her. She wasn’t the double of Stephania—no lower-born woman could manage that—but she was close enough to be worth keeping for a while. At least until he got bored.

“I have been sent by your king,” Lucious said. “Do not try to tell me what I cannot do!”

Too many people had tried that in his life.

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