Legends of the Riftwar Read Online Free PDF Page A

dark things that lived to the north. Jurgen had also been his father’s closest friend. And when his father died on the first day of the Riftwar, when the Tsurani flooded into their lands, it was Jurgen who had saved his life the night their keep was taken.
    Dennis stared at the grave.
    Better I had died that night , he thought, and there was a flash of resentment for old Jurgen.
    Malena, his bride of barely six hours, died that night. His father had ordered him to take her through the secret passage out of the burning chaos of the estate’s central keep. He had fought his own desire to stay with his father and had taken Malena through the tunnel. Then outside the escape tunnel, just as freedom had been in reach, a crossbow bolt had stilled her heart forever. He had briefly glimpsed the assassin in the flickering light from the burning keep, and the image of the man as he turned and fled burned in Dennis’s memory. Jurgen had found him kneeling in the mud, clutching her lifeless body. He had fought to stay with her, until Jurgen knocked him out with the flat of his sword, then carried him down the river to safety.
    Fifteen men from the garrison, including Jurgen and Dennis, survived that night. Carlin, the next to last had died just a month earlier from a wasting of the lungs. Now, of those fifteen men, only Dennis was left.
    So now you’re dead old man. Died because of a damn stupid boy and a fat old priest. It would be like you to die for that, he thought, a sad smile creasing his features.
    The ‘Luck of the Hartrafts’, it was called. No glory, no money, no fame. Just a retainer of a family with a minor title and nothing else. And then, in the end, you get a spear in your back because of a clumsy boy.
    Yet, he knew that Jurgen, old smiling, laughing Jurgen, would not have wanted it any other way, that he had been more likely to die for the sake of a stupid squire than for any king. In fact, if it had been the mad king in far Rillanon, he most likely would have leaned on his sword and done nothing, figuring that such high and mighty types should take care of themselves.
    A breeze stirred, the wind moaning softly through the rustling tree branches. The snow was coming down hard now, hissing, forcing him to lower his head.
    Opening his hand, he let the clump of earth fall onto the grave. There was nothing left now of the past except a half-forgotten name and a sword strapped to his side. His father, Jurgen, Malena; all ofthem were in their graves, and the graves were all returning to the uncaring forest.
    â€˜Dennis?’
    He looked up. It was Gregory.
    â€˜Nothing behind us, but we’d better move.’
    Darkness was closing in. Tinuva was barely visible but a dozen paces away, waiting where the trail plunged back into the forest.
    He looked around the clearing for a final time. Eventually the forest would reclaim all of this. The wind gusted around him and he shivered from the cold.
    â€˜You still have the Marauders,’ Gregory whispered.
    Dennis nodded and looked down at the Tsurani bodies scattered about the clearing. All that they have taken from me , he thought. He glanced up the trail where the men waited and while none of them was from Valinar, he saw faces that had become as familiar to him as those from his home. The Marauders still lived, and he had a responsibility to them.
    He nodded. ‘And the war,’ he replied coldly, ‘I still have the war.’
    Without a backward glance Captain Dennis Hartraft turned from the grave and left the clearing, disappearing into the darkness.
    Gregory watched him and sadly shook his head, then followed him on to the path to Brendan’s Stockade.
    It was cold.
    Force Leader Asayaga threw a handful of charcoal on the warming brazier, pulled off his gloves and rubbed his hands over the fire.
    â€˜Damnable country,’ he sighed.
    He picked up the orders addressed to him and studied the attached map.
    Madness. The first heavy