Honored Enemy Read Online Free PDF

Kingdom outpost at dawn.
    Why now? A day march would have been easy, but now darkness
    was closing in. Outside his tent the wind was stirring, the frozen canvas cracking and rattling, and he could hear the heavy snow falling from branches in the woods surrounding the camp.
    21

    The Game, always it was the Great Game , he realized with a detached fatalism. He knew with certainty he was being sent on a futile mission so that shame might be attached to one of his clan cousins. His House, the Kodeko, was not significant enough to warrant attention on its own, but it was related to those who were in the Kanazawai Clan. He put down the orders and sat back in his small canvas chair, wishing not for the first time that it had some sort of back support. Even more, he wished the frozen ground was covered in the soft lounging cushions that provided such comfort in his home. He ran his hand over his face, shaking his head. He was growing too suspicious. This was not necessarily part of another Minwanabi ploy to embarrass a political enemy back home; it could simply be a well-intentioned, badly-planned attack. Either way, his duty was clear.
    Asayaga called for Sugama, his newly-appointed second-in-command.
    ‘Order the men to form. Full marching gear, five days’ rations.
    Make sure they have on those new furs and footwraps. We march before sunset.’
    ‘Where, Captain?’
    He handed over the map and Sugama studied it intently.
    Asayaga said nothing. Sugama, without a doubt, didn’t know a damned thing about what he was looking at on the parchment, but nevertheless he was staring at it determinedly, acting as if he were a scholar thinking profound thoughts.
    ‘Kingdom outpost. We were to take it today but the commander, in his brilliance, decided he needed more men first, and thus we are volunteered.’
    ‘It is an honour then that our commander selected us.’
    Asayaga snorted.
    ‘Yes, an honour. In the Kingdom’s tongue our destination is called
    “Brendan’s Stockade”.’
    Asayaga stumbled over the last two words, dropping the ‘s’.
    ‘Then it shall be a name of glory for the Empire.’
    ‘But of course,’ Asayaga said, features frozen in a mask that revealed nothing. ‘Another act of glory in a glorious war.’
    22

    two
    Discovery
    Icy rain lashed down.
    Carefully, silently, Dennis Hartraft slipped through the column of weary troops. In the early morning down-pours, his men crouched motionless, many with arrows nocked to their bows. In their dirty grey cloaks they were one with the forest. Even so, he could sense their tension; something was wrong. Their eyes followed him as he darted from tree to tree, staying low. During the night the snow had changing to a mix of sleet and icy rain. It had made the night march a misery, but some inner sense had compelled Dennis to push on, a decision that Gregory and Tinuva had fully endorsed. Swinging east of Mad Wayne’s Fort, which had fallen to the Tsurani the previous spring, they followed a path little more than a game trail back to Brendan’s Stockade, approaching from the north-east.
    They were less than a quarter of a mile from Brendan’s when Alwin Barry, leading the advance squad, ordered a halt. A keen anticipation of downing pints of hot buttered mead and cold ale in a cosy tavern at the fort, instantly gave way to a grim foreboding.
    Raised in these woods, Hartraft knew them intuitively. More than once that intuition had kept him alive, where sound logic would have got him killed.
    Jurgen had taught him long ago truly to listen to the rhythm of the ancient woods, to be completely still, so quiet that eventually you became one with the forest and could sense the beating of its heart. That sense told him to be ready for the worst.
    23

    Jurgen . . . He pushed the thought away as he passed the head of the column and cautiously followed the tracks of the advance squad.
    Looking over his shoulder he saw Gregory stealthily moving opposite him on the trail to his