Blade Kin Read Online Free PDF Page A

heard a guttural cry, and his eyes sprang open. He ran to the door and looked down into the forest.
    The clouds above had dissipated, showing a pale blue, but the ocean was covered in fog, as was most of the forest. He heard the cry again, and the sound of branches cracking among the firs downhill. He grabbed his gun, loaded it, and stood at the door.
    A Neanderthal came running toward them uphill in the deep ferns, his legs pumping mightily, weighed down by a heavy pack and thick winter furs that flapped as he moved. He was gasping for breath, his head rolling as he struggled uphill, and in one hand he carried a longspear, wrapped with dull red cloth, feathers tied around it.
    He was an old man with silvering in his hair, fatigued, ready to drop. He shouted incoherently and fell in a bed of ferns.
    Tull watched where he lay, saw him struggle to rise, then drop, resting his head on his forearm and gasping.
    Tull’s breath quickened, for it was the man from his dream.
    Through the silver mist downhill, from between the black trees, he saw the pursuers, two men all in crimson, startling red body armor of leather, brilliant red capes—yet their faces were black, hidden behind iron masks. The men loped uphill in step, as if they were a single entity.
    “Blade Kin!” Tull whispered. Everything in him wanted to attack, yet Tull restrained himself, like a hunting dog awaiting its master’s orders before treeing a bear.
    The fallen Neanderthal rose up on his hands, looked back, gave a wordless cry, lunged toward the cabin.
    At first, Tull suspected that the Neanderthal had seen them and was calling for help, but then he realized that the old man was running blindly up a game trail, that his eyes did not focus on them, for the cabin was concealed between standing stones and had blackberry bushes trailing up the sides of it.
    The old man rushed past the cabin, sweat pouring from his forehead, terror in his face, blue eyes wide with fear, his long red hair in tight braids, wrapped with green cloth. He stumbled past, clipping the branches of a tree.
    Tattoos of ownership were on his left hand, and he clutched a long circular map case made of stained wood.
    He rushed to a fallen tree, turned and leveled his spear at the warriors.
    The armored Blade Kin charged uphill, seemingly unfatigued, fluid in their movements. In seconds they would have the fleeing slave.
    Tull stepped forward, still in shadows, pulled up his gun and fired.
    One Blade Kin was lifted from his feet, blood spraying from his face mask, and flew backward in the ferns.
    The other warrior hesitated only a moment before reaching into his belt for a long-barreled pistol.
    Tull didn’t have time to reload. He dropped his rifle, pulled his sword of Benbow glass and leapt downhill, gambling that he could attack before the slaver fired. Tull shouted, and the Blade Kin fumbled the pistol, misfiring as he yanked it from the holster.
    For one crazy moment Tull was leaping toward the man, his sword gleaming in the morning sunlight as it flashed, and the Blade Kin put his hands up to ward the blow, and then Tull chopped through the Blade Kin’s armor with a whack, cleaving the man in half, right down the middle.
    Tull saw movement downhill. The warrior he had shot was struggling to rise. The bullet had hit the man in the face, but his armor must have deflected the lead.
    With a cry, Tull leapt onto the struggling warrior and swung, taking off the man’s head.
    Tull stooped and grabbed the warrior’s pistol. He lunged downhill, and Fava shouted, “Where are you going?”
    “There’s one more!” Tull yelled over his shoulder.
    Fava cried out and ran to follow him, and Tull rushed down through deep fern beds.
    The Blade Kins’ trail was not hard to follow—they had knocked the morning dew from ferns, and while the wet ferns gleamed, these seemed dull and lifeless. Tull ran as fast as he could, given the limp in his right leg, and Fava was hard-pressed to keep up.
    When they