Dragon Tree Read Online Free PDF

girl lay a few
feet away, her face paler than any living thing could be. Her skirt
was still bunched above the top of her thighs, her legs crudely
splayed where the knight had kicked them apart. The sword had
scratched a thin red ribbon from each ankle to her groin and where
the lines met, the point of the blade had caused bright streaks of
blood to run down into the cleft of her sex like a jagged streak of
lightning.
    Against the
whiteness of her skin it had been easy to miss seeing the silky
bush of yellow hair that grew there, making him reassess his
initial assumption that she was a child.
    Whether it was
his own monkish discomfort that prompted him to cover her, or the
thought that it was no way for a maid to lie, even in death, he
unstuck his boots from the muck beside the stream and dropped down
on one knee beside her. He was about to smooth the hem of her tunic
back down to her ankles when he heard a faint rattle in her throat.
He looked at her face again, and although her skin was as
translucent as old wax, he noticed what he had missed before: a
thin blue vein in her temple throbbed erratically, another
fluttered in the slender column of her neck.
    She was
alive.
    The metal tip
of an arrowhead was protruding from her shoulder. There was blood
staining her gown from neck to waist and she had lost enough to
soak the leaves beneath red. Already there was a small army of ants
gathering to feast on the fresh bounty.
    When his gaze
returned to her face, he was surprised again to see that her eyes
had flickered open. They seemed to roam without purpose or focus
for a long moment before fixing on the shadow that knelt beside
her. A startling shade of violet-blue, they widened in terror when
she saw the shadowy figure leaning over her.
    Tamberlane
remembered the sword poised over her cleft. The mercenary had been
on the verge of impaling her, of tearing into her sex to mutilate
her in a final act of contempt and he realized at once that she
feared he was that same brutish knight.
    “Easy, girl,
easy. The cur who did this to you is dead. The one who meant to
harm you is dead. You have nothing to fear from me.”
    “Dead?” she
gasped. Her eyes rolled once side to side, then came to a halt on
Tamberlane’s face again. “As am I?”
    Tamberlane had
seen enough mortal wounds to know that the likelihood of her
surviving out the day was slim. He had to lean forward to catch the
faintly whispered question, and it was just as well, for the act of
straightening allowed him a moment to decide whether it was kinder
to lie or tell the truth.
    She saved him
the need to decide by moving her hand and curling her cold fingers
around his wrist. “I beg you... end it. End it now.”
    Tamberlane
drew further back. On a field of battle, to find a comrade-in-arms
so gravely wounded, he would not have thought twice of obliging, of
ending the suffering quickly and cleanly. The fact that she was
begging him to show her an equal mercy should not have unsettled
him, and yet it did. Enough so that he stared, and continued to
stare as a clear, fat tear swelled at the corner of her eye and
trickled down her temple.
    Despite
scratches on her cheek and grime on her face, she had a sweet
countenance with softly sculpted features and a delicate
tenderness. He surprised himself by thinking of her as pretty.
Pretty... and undeserving of such a fate.
    “It is not
your time to die just yet.” He made the declaration without any
foundation whatsoever, and from whence the words or the falsely
offered hope came, he knew not. In any case, she was not fooled.
Her lashes, long and honey-gold, fluttered again and the grip on
his wrist tightened.
    “Please... it
would be a kindness.”
    The plea,
uttered with desperate futility stabbed his chest like the point of
a dagger and for reasons he could not explain, opened such a well
of anger and rage, it spilled through his body like acid.
    “You do not
have my leave to die,” he said gruffly. “So do not even