Inquisitor Read Online Free PDF Page A

         There’s no reason to wail! – the mage snorted with disappointment – You should be happy! You brought up a future mage! Take it – the mage delved in the pocket of his jacket and threw some silver coins offhandedly on the table – The Empire thanks you! Gather the boy’s things. And hurry up! I’m not going to spend this night on the road.
    The mage came out to the yard and smiled. Silly peasants didn’t know that according to the king’s decree each family that brought up a future combat mage should get ten gold coins and the annulment of the tribute for five years or maybe even forever. Some silver and a promised rain would be enough for them…
    The wooden cart was running fast along a narrow road and soon Flatis could hardly see through the slanting rain the silhouettes of his parents standing on the village outskirt. The cart took a sudden turning to a wide track and finally Flatis’s native village melted away.
    Flatis was hugging a bundle of things collected in a hurry by his crying mother and his blank eyes were staring at nothing. He didn’t know where that arrogant mage was taking him, but his heart felt that he wouldn’t see his relatives for a very long time…
    The village kid didn’t know and actually he couldn’t know his future – and perhaps it was for the better – as his future wasn’t a happy one…
    The end of the first story
     
     
    ‘Inquisitor’, a series of stories
    Forest Metochion
    Sergeant Whisker yawned and shook his head to get rid of sleepiness. A narrow and rather dense forest lane made his heart sick. So did their assignment. To go into such a wilderness just to check never-ending gossips about some undead rising from the graves and about bloody ritual ceremonies assertedly held there! So many leagues away from the Border Wall...
    Nonsense! Local peasants whose minds rusted in that bog because of total boredom must have invented some rubbish that the capital was happy to believe in just to demonstrate their care about their people.
    Clerks working for the Royal Chancery must be crazy like a loon as they decided to assign an entire detachment of imperial cuirassiers to sort it out. A usual patrol would have been more than enough for that. So they did the other way around – they sent a detachment of soldiers reinforced with two combat mages let alone puritans accompanying them – a dirty word was about to escape lips to comment their presence. Five priests in one place – any sane person will go crazy in a day!
    They passed three wayside taverns on their way but didn’t have a chance to have a proper rest that imperial soldiers deserved! No way to peek under the skirts of maids who were thrilled with cuirassiers’ interest, no way to drink foamy rustic beer to your heart’s content, no way to sleep tight on fluffy shaken up rustic featherbeds! Moreover, they had to pay out of their own soldier pockets for everything – and, you know, they were never full of money! What’s this world coming to?!
    Thanks to the bloody white-cloaked who were looking around severely and annoying everybody with their advice and sermons on modesty and sin of gluttony. And you couldn’t send them away with a flea in their ear! They were members of the clergy after all. As for the order to provide the priests with total assistance, Whisker preferred not thinking about it. Remembering a particularly curvy girl from the latest tavern, Whisker spat in a fit of rage and angrily peered at the priests who were riding apart from others. Thanks God, soon they would reach the village they were looking for; it was within a stone throw so far. Just three leagues along the lane and they would come out to a rivulet. Forest Metochion was situated just across from it.
    The least trouble for sergeant Whisker was the mages riding at the head of the column. During the way they hadn’t uttered a dozen of words and, importantly, they hadn’t interfered into the cuirassiers’ interests. No