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

some where they stood down to a jumble of bones, and coursing among the hellhounds, pushing the circle of enemies into disarray.
    Chanting rose from behind us, and the temple itself began to glow with white light, repelling the hellhounds that were trying to flank us along the granite walls. I recognized Odyll’s voice as it joined with Titor’s. Vines sprang up from the packed earth courtyard, tripping up the skeletal army as they stumbled forward, holding them in place for Azyrin’s lightning to ravage and Rahiel’s blue bolts to destroy.
    And pinning them for my arrows. I picked my targets carefully, aiming for one shot, one kill, hoping to take as many as I could with me. I spread my feet and set my stance, evening my breathing to the rhythm of my pulls. That one. Dead. Another. Dull eyes turning from red to empty as each of my arrows found its mark and crushed in skull after gruesomely smiling skull.
    For a few glorious minutes, we held off the horde.
    Then the hrafen returned, its body blotting out the sky above as it swept down toward Rahiel and Bill. It had a rider this time, a tall and spiked shape clinging to its foul feathered back.
    Cold, a deep bone chill I’d never felt before, sank over me, locking my arms in midpull of my bow. Every hair on my body seemed to stand on end and my knees buckled, only training combined with sheer will keeping me on my feet. A terrible pealing chant boomed in the air, and the floundering undead horde pulled back, regrouping in its semicircle around us.
    Hellhounds, cloaking swirling shadows, charged the two clerics behind me, leaping past me as though they knew that both Fade and I were held frozen. I screamed inwardly for my body to react, to move, but the lethargy had me and my bones might as well have turned to ice for all my body responded.
    Odyll screamed, a horrible ragged sound cut short with a slickly sickening gurgle.
    Death Knight. I knew it in my frigid bones. Death’s avatar itself rode the hulking hrafen. This chill was the touch of death. My fight was over.
    The spell shattered as the most pure note I had ever heard in my life rang against the Death Knight’s chant. As the freeze slid from my bones, I looked up to see Rahiel flying free of Bill’s back.
    The mini-unicorn was screaming. Or singing. I couldn’t begin to understand how he made such a beautiful and joyful note in the midst of death itself. One moment he was a little pink-and-gold unicorn, no bigger than a farm dog, the next, he expanded, turning flaming gold and white, growing and growing until I had to turn my head.
    Oh
, I thought, feeling like an idiot for not ever even speculating on what was obvious now.
Bill. Billarhian. Consort of the goddess Thunla
. One question answered, five hundred more now lurking.
    Bill, burning with golden power, engaged the hrafen, his horn tearing into the screeching fiend. The Death Knight leapt free of its back and dropped to the ground, the earth shaking as he landed just beyond the temple.
    I tore my eyes from the sky and brought my bow up. Only a handful of arrows left. Fade’s growls and the dying shrieks of hellhounds behind me told me that my mist-lynx was doing his best to avenge the clerics. Makha and Azyrin advanced even as the horde parted, allowing their lord and master to engage us.
    I had no way to cry a warning or explain to my friends why, even with the help from a goddess’s consort, we were all going to die. All I could do was try to go down fighting with them.
    The Death Knight stood ten feet tall. His armor was intact, and he had a howling demon’s visage on his vast shield, which stood nearly as tall as I and half again as wide. Blood-colored rags were all that was left of his cloak, hanging off his spiked armor like shredded flesh. His six-foot sword glowed with veins of red and his eyes burned with the same chill fire as the deathwyrm’s. The Knight moved with the floating grace of a dancer, despite the plate armor and his large