DemonWars Saga Volume 1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

stone gates of St.-Mere-Abelle.
    Now he had his chance.

    So he believed.

CHAPTER 3

The Lingering Kiss

    Things quieted quickly in Dundalis. As the days after the patrol's return stretched out into an uneventful week, and then a second, thoughts of the slain goblin took second place to the very real threat of winter's onset. There was much to be done: the last harvesting, preparing the meat, patching holes in the cottages, and cleaning the chimneys. Every passing day, danger from the goblins seemed more and more remote; every passing day, fewer and fewer men and women went out of the town to walk a patrol.

    Elbryan and his friends, some as young as six or seven, saw their chance unfolding. For the adults, the specter of the goblins brought a sobering wariness and then a troublesome distraction. For the younger villagers, whose imaginations were far livelier and whose sense of adventure hadn't yet been tempered by any real loss, thoughts of goblin raids brought excitement, a call to arms, a time for heroes. Elbryan and his friends had offered to walk patrols since the first day of the hunting party's return. Each morning, they approached the village leaders, and each morning, they were politely refused and quickly put to some more mundane task. Even Elbryan, who would be entering the realm of adults that coming spring, had spent almost all the previous week with his head up a dirty chimney.

    But the young man held faith and passed his hopes down the line. The adults were tiring of their patrols, he knew, and were growing more and more confident that the goblin incident was a chance thing — a single, unfortunate meeting — and that those creatures which had been chased away would not return to the site of the battle, let alone try to track the humans back to their village, some thirty miles away.

    Now, with two calm weeks behind them and no further sightings except for a few wild rumors that were discounted by even the most cautious of Dundalis'
    folk, Elbryan recognized the lessening of resistance in his father's voice. He was not surprised that morning when Olwan, instead of shaking his head, bent low and sketched out in the dirt a rough map of the area, explaining to his son where he and his friends should be positioned.

    Elbryan was surprised, though, and pleasantly so, when Olwan then presented him with the family sword, a short, thick blade of two-foot length. It wasn't an impressive weapon — its blade showed many nicks and more than a little rust — but it was one of the few real swords in the village. "Make certain that every one of your group is well armed," Olwan said seriously. "And make sure that each knows the value, and the danger, of his or her weapon."

    Olwan knew what this meant to his son, and if he had smiled or let on in any way that the patrols were no longer really necessary, he would have stolen something from Elbryan, a measure of importance that the young man desperately needed to feel.

    "Do you think it is wise to let the children go out with weapons?" Shane McMichael asked Olwan, coming up to the large man soon after Elbryan had run off. "Or to let them go out at all?"

    Olwan snorted and shrugged his muscular shoulders. "We cannot spare the men and women," he replied, "and there is the other patrol in the vale, the most likely route for our enemies to take, should they come." Olwan gave another snort, a helpless sound that surprised McMichael, who had always known Olwan as the coolest and most confident head in all the village.

    "Besides," Olwan went on, "if the goblins or fomorians get close enough to Dundalis for my son and his friends to see, they will be as well off out in the woods as in the village."

    Shane McMichael did not argue the point, though the weight of it grew steadily on his shoulders. Since Honce-the-Bear had been at peace for many years
    — and goblins and evil giants receding from the thoughts of most people to become little more than fireside tales — Dundalis