By the Sword Read Online Free PDF Page B

chance, she thought bleakly. Not unless someone goes after her, makes a token try at rescuing her—
    Dierna’s sweet, heart-shaped face, and sensitive mouth and eyes rose up like a ghost to confront her. Dearest gods, the poor baby—
    That last unbidden thought did something unexpected to Kerowyn. She was overwhelmed with dizziness, and reached blindly for the support of the wall. As her hand touched the wall, it faded away, and she was afraid she was about to collapse, to faint like one of Dierna’s foolish cousins.
    But she didn’t collapse; she opened her eyes—but it wasn’t the hall she was seeing, it was the road. And, faint shapes in the moonlight, a band of men on horseback.
    For a moment she saw the girl, bound and gagged, and carried in front of one of the riders, a tall, thin man, in robes rather than armor. Her eyes were wide with shock and fear, her delicate face white and waxen, and she looked closer to eleven than to fourteen.
    Anger replaced fear, outrage drowned any other feelings. This was not right. The girl was hardly more than a child.
    Kero blinked.
    The vision—if that was what it was—faded, replaced by another. A plain, simple sword. Then her own hand, taking the sword-hilt as if it belonged to her.
    But I can‘t —
    Again, a flicker of Dierna’s frightened eyes. Blessed Trine. Only fourteen, and sheltered all her life. Like a little glass bird, and just as easy to break.
    The visions faded, leaving her staring out at the hall again. The anger retreated for a moment. I’m the only one left that could follow. If I try to get her back, her uncle won’t have an excuse to come after Lordan. She hugged her arms to her chest and shivered—then the anger returned, stronger this time. And dear gods — all alone with those bastards—I can’t just sit here, playing ninny like those cousins of hers. I can’t. It isn’t honor, it isn’t pride, it isn’t any of those things in ballads—it’s that I can’t sit here knowing what’s going to happen to her once they think they’re safe, and not try and do something to prevent it.
    Then something else occurred to her, and amid the anger and the fear, there rose a tiny flicker of hope.
    And maybe Grandmother will help me.
    Suddenly, following after the raiders didn’t seem quite so mad a decision.
    She turned on her heel and ran for the servants’ entrance, but this time instead of going down, she went up, emerging into a corridor that ran the length of the hall itself and led to the family quarters. Her own room was in the first corner tower, where the hallway made a right-angle bend. She snatched a tallow-dip and lit it at the lantern, then ran up the short flight of stairs to the round room above. It was cold by winter and hot by summer, and drafty at all seasons, but it was hers and hers alone—which meant it held things not even Lordan knew about.
    She lit her own lamp beside the door and blew out the tallow-dip. As the light rose, she went to the tall, curtained bed, and pulled the mattress off onto the floor. Instead of the usual network of rope-springs, Kero’s bed was one of the old style, a kind of box with a wooden bottom. Only the bottom of this bed held a secret. As she had discovered when she was a child, it could be raised on concealed hinges to reveal a second shallow compartment.
    It still held a few of her childhood treasures; the dreaming-pillow her Grandmother Kethry had sent, her favorite stuffed toy horse, the two wooden knights Lordan had never played with and never missed when she spirited them out of his nursery and into hers—
    But now it held, besides those things, her brother’s castoff clothing and armor; a set of light chain made for him when he first began training, long since forgotten in the armory. It no longer fit him; he was too broad in the shoulder. But it fit her perfectly. She shed the ruins of her