Black Halo Read Online Free PDF

three arrows. ‘I’m sure it will talk back eventually.’
    ‘Zamanthras is as fickle as the waters she wards,’ Lenk replied, his voice like rusty door hinges. He looked at his sword thoughtfully before sheathing it on his back. ‘Maybe she needs a sacrifice to turn her favour toward us.’
    ‘Don’t let me stop you from hurling yourself in,’ she replied without looking up.
    ‘At least I’m doing something.’
    ‘Attempting to eviscerate the ocean?’ She tapped the head of an arrow against her chin thoughtfully. ‘That’s something insane , maybe. You’re just going to open your stitches doing that.’ Her ears twitched, as though they could hear the sinewy threads stretching in his leg. ‘How is your wound, anyway?’
    He attempted to hide the wince of pain that shot up through his thigh at the mention of the wicked, sewn-up gash beneath his trousers. The agony of the injury itself was kept numb through occasional libations of what remained of their whisky, but every time he ran his fingers against the stitches, any time his companions inquired after his health, the visions would come flooding back.
    Teeth. Darkness. Six golden eyes flashing in the gloom. Laughter echoing off stone, growing quiet under shrieking carnage and icicles hissing through his head. They would fade eventually, but they were always waiting, ready to come back the moment he closed his eyes.
    ‘It’s fine,’ he muttered.
    Her ears twitched again, hearing the lie in his voice. He disregarded it, knowing she had only asked the question to deflect him. He drew in his breath through his teeth, tensing as he might for a battle. She heard this, too, and narrowed her eyes.
    ‘You should rest,’ she said.
    ‘I don’t want—’
    ‘In silence,’ she interrupted. ‘Talking doesn’t aid the healing process.’
    ‘What would a shict know of healing beyond chewing grass and drilling holes in skulls?’ he snapped, his ire giving his voice swiftness. ‘If you’re so damn smart—’
    Her upper lip curled backwards in a sneer, the sudden exposure of her unnervingly prominent canines cutting him short. He cringed at the sight of her teeth that were as much a testament to her savage heritage as the feathers in her hair and the buckskin leathers she wore.
    ‘What I mean is you could be doing something other than counting your precious little arrows,’ he offered, attempting to sound remorseful and failing, if the scowl she wore was any indication. ‘You could use them to catch us a fish or something.’ Movement out over the sea caught his eye and he gestured toward it. ‘Or one of those.’
    They had been following the vessel for the past day: many-legged insects that slid gracefully across the waters. Dredgespiders, he had heard them called – so named for the nets of wispy silk that trailed from their upraised, bulbous abdomens. Such a net would undoubtedly brim with shrimp and whatever hapless fish wound up under the arachnid’s surface-bound path, and the promise of such a bounty was more than enough to make mouths water at the sight of the grey-carapaced things.
    They always drifted lazily out of reach, multiple eyes occasionally glancing over to the vessel and glistening with mocking smugness unbefitting a bug.
    ‘Not a chance,’ Kataria muttered, having seen that perverse pride in their eyes and having discounted the idea.
    ‘Well, pray for something else, then,’ he growled. ‘Pray to whatever savage little god sends your kind food.’
    She turned a glower on him, her eyes seeming to glow with a malevolent green. ‘ Riffid is a goddess that helps shicts who help themselves. The day She lifts a finger to help a whiny, weeping little round-ear is the day I renounce Her.’ She snorted derisively and turned back to her missiles. ‘And these are my last three arrows. I’m saving them for something special.’
    ‘What use could they possibly be?’
    ‘This one’ – she fingered her first arrow – ‘is for if I ever