A Knight of the Sacred Blade Read Online Free PDF Page B

ring, but no wedding band. He had the red nose of a drinker. 
    One of her insights, one of her strange premonitions, filled her mind.
    She heard herself speak, as if someone else was talking. “Of course not. A man who threw away a football career because he got drunk, knocked up his girlfriend, and had to marry her…who would consider him deadwood?”
    The classroom went dead silent. 
    Mr. Paulsen’s face turned scarlet. For a brief moment Ally thought he would punch her. She must have hit the mark.
    He raised a shaking hand and pointed at the door. “Principal’s office. Now, now, now!” 
    Ally got up. “Sure.” She walked into the hall, feeling Mr. Paulsen’s furious glare burn into her back. 
    Maybe she had made a little too much trouble.

Chapter 3 - The Desert of Scorpions

    Year of the Councils 971

    The sun burned hotter than the pyre of Antarese.
    Arran took one step, and another, and another. Dust puffed around his boots. Drops of sweat trickled down his forehead and evaporated before they touched his eyebrows. He felt his skin burning, and peeling back from his face, but did not care. 
    Wind-sculpted crags, jagged boulders, and sand stretched away as far as he could see. Arran stumbled, went to one knee, and got up again. A small lizard watched him for a while, and then scampered away. Arran coughed and kept walking. His eyes wandered over the rocks. He had heard rock dragons lived in the desert. Poisonous snakes crawled and writhed through the wastes. And there were the Scorpions, the secretive bands of nomads that gave the desert its name. 
    When would something kill him?
    Arran managed a weak laugh. If the Scorpions, snakes, and rock dragons failed, the sun would succeed. He only had enough water for another two days, and food for one meal. His throat already felt parched. He lifted his waterskin and drank. Some water fell from his lips and dribbled against the sand.
    He didn’t care. 
    Arran trudged on until nightfall. Exhaustion pulled at his limbs, and his vision blurred. He staggered into the shadow of a large boulder, curled up, and fell asleep.

    ###

    The next day he saw a black speck circling in the blue sky.
    Arran shielded his eyes with a trembling hand. He watched as another speck joined it. Together they vanished away to the west. His sunburned face twisted into a painful frown. The specks didn’t look like the buzzards that had followed him for the last day. 
    Suppose the two winged demons followed had followed him? He had hurt them, true, but winged demons could regenerate even serious wounds in a few days. 
    Arran let out a croaking laugh. Let the wretched demon princes follow him! Let them take his sand-blasted corpse back to Marugon. Or let the jackals and the buzzards pick at his bones. It didn’t matter. 
    He scrubbed grit from his eyes and kept going.

    ###

    His throat burned.
    Arran threw aside his empty waterskin and trudged on. Jagged bluffs rose all around him, broken stones crunching under his boots. The cliffs and the stones baked with the intense heat. He would have sweated, but he had not had anything to drink for the last six hours. His skin felt like a sheath of flame, and pain flared up and down his legs. A trio of buzzards circled overhead, sometimes landing to watch him with their beady eyes.
    Soon he would die. The thought brought dull relief to his fevered mind. 
    His legs gave out, and he fell against a boulder with a thump. Its shadow covered him, and he sighed in relief. At least he was out of the sun. 
    He sat in the boulder’s shadow and looked over the landscape. A low gully stretched away into the distance, and more boulders and wind-sculpted cliffs loomed overhead. A buzzard landed and waddled towards Arran. He growled, drew a gun, and shot it. 
    “Wait until I’m dead,” said Arran, shoving the gun back into its holster. 
    His vision blurred and his pulse pounded in his ears, like the sound of the war drums as Marugon’s soldiers