Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

and blew a shrill note, calling the hawk to his gauntleted hand. After hooding the hawk, he untied the knot securing a tiny ivory scroll case to the raptor’s leg, and brought it to Rathe.
    Rathe nodded thanks, but the man had already scurried away. With a regretful sigh, he drew the rolled bit of parchment from the case. It was from Commander Rhonaag, second in command of the Fists of Rydev Legion, of which the Ghosts of Ahnok were the most revered company.
    “What does it say?” Thushar asked, having joined Rathe’s side.
    Rathe read the message again, dismay furrowing his brow. A day sooner, and none of this would have happened!
    He crumpled the parchment in an angry fist, closed his eyes and rubbed the lids with bloody fingers. “We are called home.”
    “Good,” Thushar said. “That is best. For you … for all of us … that is best.”
    “As well, King Tazzim is dead.”
    Thushar cursed softly, and word of the king’s demise spread.

Chapter 4
    R athe paced the tiled floor of Commander Rhonaag’s stifling anteroom. Unlike the grasslands west of the Mountains of Arakas, the Kingdom of Cerrikoth was higher, drier, and hotter, nearly a desert in the summer months. But it was home, and Rathe held that dear. He had been away far too long.
    Not an hour after he had passed through the gates of Onareth, a runner had brought word that Rhonaag required his immediate attendance. He feared the meeting would end with him in chains, but he had made his decision to put an end to dishonorable conduct in that last village. If so, then so be it. A girl lived and Noor had died, but Rathe’s conscience was clear for the first time in many years.
    Three hours had passed since his arrival to his commander’s quarters, and still he had not been granted leave to enter. He took a seat on a dusty bench, rested his head against the rough brick wall, and closed his eyes. It felt good to sit on something other than a saddle.
    He had driven the Ghosts hard across the hilly grasslands of eastern Qairennor, through the mountains, into Cerrikoth, and finally to the city of Onareth. Their halts had measured in short hours. Remembering his men huddled around the nightly cookfires, studying him with narrowed eyes, Rathe had no doubt that they would have turned on him, if not so exhausted from the grueling pace. That, he supposed, and the troubling word of King Tazzim’s death, were the only two things that had kept him alive after killing Noor for a crime that, in the strictest sense, had been no crime at all.
    The journey had given Rathe plenty of time to think on his own heart, and he concluded that he was like a scarred pit dog. Where does such a dog go when freed, he had wondered, when the very fibers of its being have been seeded with brutality? Can there be any redemption for such a beast? More troubling was the idea that such a creature could never receive absolution, but instead would remain as it was … a hunter and a killer. The only difference was that he meant to choose his battles from now on. Of course, that was easier thought than done. He had never chosen any battle, rather the battles had chosen him. Like a strange curse, troubles sought him out.
    The door at the end of the anteroom opened and a young, ginger-haired legionnaire said, “Commander Rhonaag will see you.”
    Rathe stood, straightened his scaled tabard, and strode into the chambers. Just inside the doorway, he bowed his head and pressed a fist to his heart in salute. “I have come at your request, commander.”
    Rhonaag, squat and stern as a timeworn boulder with the dark coloring of a southern Cerrikothian, sat unspeaking behind a bloodwood desk. To one side of him, double-doors let out on a broad balcony overlooking the barrack’s training yards. Polished armor and assorted weaponry stood in every corner of the room. Campaign maps hung on each wall, marked in symbols representing victories and defeats. Save the fine desk heaped with piles of parchment, it