Rise of the Dragons Read Online Free PDF

known
him as long as she could remember. He loved her dearly, she knew, and he looked
out for her; more importantly to her, he always took time for her, showing her
the techniques of sparring and weaponry when others would not. He had even let
her train with the men on more than one occasion, and she had relished each and
every one. He was the toughest of them all, yet he also had the kindest
heart—for those he liked. But for those he didn’t, Kyra feared for them.
    Anvin had little tolerance for lies,
though; he was the sort of man who always had to get to the absolute truth of
everything, however gray it was. He had a meticulous eye, and as he stepped
forward and examined the boar closely, Kyra watched him stop and examine its
two arrow wounds. He had an eye for detail, and if anyone would recognize the
truth, it would be him.
    Anvin examined the two wounds,
inspecting the small arrowheads still lodged inside, the fragments of wood
where her brothers had broken off her arrows. They had snapped it close to the
tip, so no one would see what had really felled it. But Anvin was not just
anyone.
    Kyra watched Anvin study the wounds, saw
his eyes narrow, and she knew he had summed up the truth in a glance. He
reached down, removed his glove, reached into the eye, and extracted one of the
arrowheads. He held it up, bloody, then slowly turned to her brothers with a
skeptical look.
    “A spear point, was it?” he asked,
disapproving.
    A tense silence fell over the group as
Brandon and Braxton looked nervous for the first time. They shifted in place.
    Anvin turned to Kyra.
    “Or an arrowhead?” he added, and Kyra
could see the wheels turning in his head, see him coming to his own
conclusions.
    Anvin walked over to Kyra, drew an arrow
from her quiver, and held it up beside the arrowhead. It was a perfect match,
for all to see. He gave Kyra a proud, meaningful look, and Kyra felt all eyes
turn to her.
    “Your shot, was it?” he asked her. It
was more a statement than a question.
    She nodded back.
    “It was,” she replied flatly, loving Anvin
for giving her recognition, and finally feeling vindicated.
    “And the shot that felled it,” he
concluded. It was an observation, not a question, his voice hard, final, as he
studied the boar.
    “I see no other wounds besides these two,”
he added, running his hand along it—then stopping at the ear. He examined it,
then turned and looked at Brandon and Braxton disdainfully. “Unless you call
this grazing of a spearhead here a wound.”
    He held up the boar’s ear, and Brandon
and Braxton reddened while the group of warriors laughed.
    Another of her father’s famed warriors
stepped forward—Vidar, close friend to Anvin, a thin, short man in his thirties
with a gaunt face and a scar across his nose. With his small frame, he did not
look the part, but Kyra knew better: Vidar was as hard as stone, famed for his
hand-to-hand combat. He was one of the hardest men Kyra had ever met, known to
wrestle down two men twice his size. Too many men, because of his diminutive
size, had made the mistake of provoking him—only to learn their lesson the hard
way. He, too, had taken Kyra under his wing, always protective of her.
    “Looks like they missed,” Vidar
concluded, “and the girl saved them. Who taught you two to throw?”
    Brandon and Braxton looked increasingly
nervous, clearly caught in a lie, and neither said a word.
    “It’s a grievous thing to lie about a
kill,” Anvin said darkly, turning to her brothers. “Out with it now. Your
father would want you to tell the truth.”
    Brandon and Braxton stood there,
shifting, clearly uncomfortable, looking at each other as if debating what to
say. For the first time she could remember, Kyra saw them tongue-tied.
    Just as they were about to open their
mouths, suddenly a foreign voice cut through the crowd.
    “Doesn’t matter who killed it,” came the
voice. “It’s ours now.”
    Kyra turned with all the others,
startled at the