Nights of Villjamur Read Online Free PDF Page B

Anything . . . Do you know who's attacking us?' He then slid a strip of bark between Fyir's teeth.
    Fyir shook his head, wincing as Brynd tied some of his own torn-up cloak around the wound, and he screamed again, spat out the bark, moaning, 'Ambushed . . .'
    'Sabotaged,' Brynd muttered. 'No one was supposed to know we were here. There, that should hold it. You'll live, so that'll at least stop the gheels getting you. How badly does your head hurt?'
    Fyir closed his eyes, squeezed out more tears, whispered, 'Cultists?'
    Brynd shook his head. 'I doubt it was cultists. Since when do they use something as simple as arrows and axes? Have you seen anyone else?'
    'What about . . . orbs?'
    'Yes? What indeed?' Brynd reached into his top pocket, pulled out a small silver box. Inside it there were several coloured powders in tiny compartments. He pinched a bit of the blue, and placed it under Fyir's nose. Within seconds the man's eyes rolled back and he passed out. Brynd stood up, placing the box back in his pocket. He was vaguely surprised at the severity of these wounds. The Night Guard were artificially enhanced, albeit slightly, and they were meant to recover quickly, suffer wounds hardly at all.
    As he moved away, he gathered up a sword lying on the ground, a sharp Jamur sabre. Pieces of butchered flesh littered the shore like after a cull of seals, and the skies around the fjord were black with smoke.
    Another arrow skimmed past, and Brynd dived to grab a ragged piece of ship's timber on the rocks nearby. Using it as a shield, he advanced towards the archers firing from the darkness of the trees. Shafts drove into the wood or clipped the stones around his feet, as he ran into the relative safety of the forest. Casting the timber aside, he headed further along the shore to hunt down the archers and whatever it was that had launched the fire upon his ships.
    On reflection, it might be foolish to attempt to eliminate personally an enemy that had obviously planned this attack in such detail.
    But who? Why? All he was doing here was handling the collection of fuel. The Emperor had insisted on sending men he could trust, men for whom his paranoia was at a minimum. The Night Guard.
    One of the enemy could be seen crouching at the forest's edge, peering out across the fjord. Like a hunter, Brynd stalked wide so as to keep outside of his target's range of vision, drew the dagger from inside his boot. The crackle of the burning ships was enough to enable some stealth in his approach, and when Brynd was just twenty yards from his target, he flung the blade through the air.
    It lodged in the archer's face and he fell silently to the ground. A second tribesman ran to his side. Brynd was on him, immediately scraping his sabre across the man's throat.
    This tribe wasn't from Jokull, or any other of the Empire's islands. The clothing wasn't local for a start, and there was no adornment save the bone charm hung around the remains of the man's neck. Brynd withdrew his dagger from the first victim, cleaned it off, placed it back in his boot.
    Gheels crouched in the half-light, awaiting their moment. He decided to go back and wait near Fyir, killing only those who approached him. Revenge could wait until later.
    *
    Night-time, and in these moments Brynd's mind became ultra-rational. Things became lists, strategies, probabilities. He knelt next to Fyir, a man in a resting state, now calm and peaceful. Whilst he'd been away, blood beetles had begun feasting on Fyir's damaged leg, shredding the cloth Brynd had used to staunch the bleeding, and reducing his truncated leg by at least a hand span. In the process, the fist-sized insects had secreted a resin that stopped the bleeding and induced healing, so maybe they weren't completely a bad thing. Brynd had to scrape the creatures off with a sabre, then split them down the centre of their shells to kill them.
    The skies cleared, and the world became unbearably cold. He couldn't yet light a fire because it