Dead of Knight (The Gryphonpike Chronicles Book 4) Read Online Free PDF

roof. The two clerics, plump Odyll and gaunt Titor, were crouched over a broken form in front of the statue of Thunla. Cher clung, screaming, to her aunt Emili, who looked as though she, too, would prefer to be screaming instead of trying to hold the young girl back.
    The broken shape was Enil. I guessed the hrafen had dropped him onto the unicorn statue, since the body and base now carried a fresh, wide smear of blood. Accusing words rang in my mind once again and a new wave of tears and despair washed over me in an unwelcome rush.
    “No, no, no, no, no,” crooned Alew over and over as he ran past me.
    I stumbled forward, and it was then that Azyrin saw me staggering under Drake’s weight.
    “Killer, what happened?” he asked, rushing forward with Makha as they took Drake from my shoulder.
    I gave him a look, knowing that in his fear and concern he’d forgotten I would never answer.
    “My brother,” Alew cried as the two priests rose and rushed to help Azyrin take Drake into the temple.
    “Your brother is dead. This man lives.” Titor’s voice was soft but his tone held a cold reality. “We must get inside.”
    Fade’s growl brought my attention back to the village square. The skeletal army and its horde of hellhounds arrived inside that same deadly silence that had cloaked them the night before. They slunk through the shadows with the slow finality of an advancing tidal wave, in no rush to crush the last bits of life inside.
    The undead seemed to know as well as I that all was lost here and that it wasn’t we who fought on the winning side this night.
    I shook out my arm muscles and nocked an arrow, checking my quiver. I had a good supply, the metal tips still glowing faintly with Azyrin’s spell. I vowed in my mind that I would empty my quiver before I fell.
    Here, with the light from the temple, I could see my adversaries clearly. Their armor was old and chipped, held together with rotting straps. Dull red light, like old blood, burned where their eye sockets would have been. The Saliidruin people had looked more like elves than man, but those features were gone now except for their height, the flesh long rotted from the pale bones that gleamed beneath the dirt-stained pewter color of their armor. Bits of embroidered baldrics and cloaks hung improbably from their armor, the eternal flame of Saliidruin picked out in threads that had lost all color millennia gone. Each face held a maniacal grin carved into the bones forever by lack of lips, flesh, or form.
    Broken teeth clicked and gnashed, leaf-shaped swords beat on horned shields, and the hellhounds growled as the horde advanced enough to encase me within their bubble of silence. I held my shot, waiting. Beside me, Jes the blacksmith stepped up, not too close, wielding a heavy double-sided hammer. On her other side, Makha emerged from the temple with Azyrin at her side, both of them with their swords drawn. Azyrin murmured in his native tongue, his free hand gripping his talisman and the sky above crackled with heat lightning as he summoned the power of his storm god.
    I glanced his way and wished I could ask if Drake would live. Not that it mattered. I saw the final acceptance of our fates on my companions stubborn faces. We lined up to die in battle, as all adventurers knew they might. Above us, Rahiel and Bill took the sky, the pixie-goblin holding two slender rods. I could not read her expression from this distance, but I imagined that same determination and resignation resided there.
    For Drake
. I sent the first arrow crushing through one dull red eye, reducing the horde by one skeleton. My arrows would do little good against their bodies, but as with most undead, destroy the head and the animating power goes with it.
    Lighting smashed down from the sky as Azyrin yelled for the grace of his god. The air crackled with electricity, and my hair seemed to tug on my scalp as it pulled from the static. The bolts tore into the ranks of the skeletons, frying