Hell's Foundations Quiver Read Online Free PDF

slanting across the battlements and parapets, painting them with a deeper, more lustrous gold, and the kingdom’s banners flew bravely above them.
    Gorath Bay’s temperature seldom fell below freezing, yet it could be bitterly cold in winter, especially for anyone out on its waters. The bay’s cold snaps, with their raw, biting chill, might last for five-days, despite its southern location. That was what had caused so much sickness among Gwylym Manthyr’s half-starved, half-naked crews when they were confined in the prison hulks.
    Oh, yes , Thirsk thought. The bay can be cruel, especially when human spite sees a chance to make it worse.
    His jaw tightened as he remembered that winter, remembered his shame and the way the Inquisition had countermanded his orders to provide his prisoners— his prisoners—with food and healers. That wind-polished sheet of pitiless winter water danced before his eyes again, and he felt the helplessness he’d felt then. Oh, how he’d hated Gorath Bay throughout that cold, bitter winter.
    But not today. He squared his shoulders and drew a deep breath, forcing himself to step back from the familiar rage, and looked out at the capital of his kingdom.
    Although it was the middle of winter, the breeze whipping across the bay today was little worse than chilly, cold but not cutting, and the darkening sky was cloudless for the first time in several days. People in the city were enjoying the last minutes of that sunlight, he thought, possibly doing a little shopping as they hurried home. And the painters were probably out along the Gorath River with their easels, catching that golden light across the river that flowed through the heart of the city as the sun gilded the Cathedral’s scepters. He wondered how many of those people had heard the news? If they hadn’t heard yet, they would soon enough, even if Duke Salthar and Bishop Executor Wylsynn attempted to conceal it. That would be not only futile but particularly stupid, in Thirsk’s opinion, yet he’d seen ample examples of Wylsynn Lainyr’s doing equally stupid things. Salthar was probably smart enough to argue against it, but in this case Thirsk could count on his own service superior, Duke Thorast, to support any effort to hide the truth for as long as he possibly could.
    Although not, of course, for all the same reasons as Lainyr.
    â€œDo we know how it happened, My Lord?” Stywyrt Baiket, Chihiro ’s CO and Thirsk’s flag captain, asked quietly. “I mean, they had over two hundred thousand men and Eastshare had less than twenty thousand!”
    â€œThe dispatches are less than detailed,” the earl replied, never looking away from the harbor’s soothing panorama. “Messages tend to be that way when people have to send them by wyvern, and the semaphore line was cut early in the Charisian attack. One thing they do make clear, however, is that the real threat didn’t come out of Fort Tairys. It wasn’t Eastshare; they got an entirely separate force down through eastern Cliff Peak past the Desnairian cavalry at Cheyvair. One big enough to block—and hold—the high road through the Kyplyngyr Forest.” He shrugged heavily. “According to the message I’ve seen”—he didn’t mention that he wasn’t supposed to have seen it … and wouldn’t have, if not for Bishop Staiphan Maik—“Ahlverez did his damnedest to fight his way through them. His attacks obviously hurt the Charisians badly, but they pretty much gutted our part of the army in the process, so Harless finally agreed to pull the majority of his own infantry back from Ohadlyn’s Gap for a second attempt to clear the high road. That’s when Eastshare attacked out of Fort Tairys, and with one hell of a lot more than twenty thousand men.”
    He gazed out over the harbor for another moment, then turned on his heel to face his