Scimitar War Read Online Free PDF Page A

tools. To Dura’s relief, they shoved Quada back into his cage, mother naked and panting with rage, but alive.
    The next cage held a young woman named Silla. The cannibals repeated their search on her, then returned her to her cage. And so they went down the line. Knowing that it was not yet their turn to die, the captives remained passive, enduring the humiliation and hoping not to call attention to themselves, for this afternoon, someone would be chosen for the feast. The cannibals grew complacent, even seemed to be joking in their harsh language. They didn’t hold the captives as tightly now, and the nooses didn’t choke as they had when Quada fought back.
    Dura watched as they worked their way toward her cage, and formulated her plan.
    She offered her wrists easily, and didn’t struggle when the nooses were looped over her head. She rose from her permanent crouch in the small cage with unfeigned stiffness and a grimace as a muscle cramped in her back. Pitiless, her captors pulled her up and held her immobile.
    Dura was shorter, stockier and more thoroughly clothed than any of her fellow prisoners, and the woman with the knife hesitated. One of the noose-holding men barked some unintelligible words at her, and she snapped a reply. She approached and cut the sleeves of Dura’s shirt from wrist to collar, then from neck to hem. The loose-fitting shirt fell away with a tug, and the woman with the knife hissed in surprise.
    “They didn’t know you were a woman,” one of Dura’s fellow prisoners said.
    “Figured as much,” she muttered.
    Dura wore a thin linen undershirt, but even so, her feminine attributes were obvious. The man holding the noose urged the woman with the knife, and when Dura’s undershirt had been cut away, raucous laughter broke out among her captors. Dura shoved down the shame, replacing it with hot rage, but held her temper in check. She knew that her dwarven body—thicker and more muscular than most humans—must look peculiar to these savages. But peculiar or not, there was little fat on her, and she probably outweighed all but the stoutest of them.
    “Just keep laughin’,” she muttered under her breath.
    The woman cut Dura’s stout leather belt, slit her wool pants from waist to cuff, then her cotton underbritches. The woman pointed to the dwarf’s crotch, said something and laughed out loud, which elicited even more mirth from the four men. At the moment they were all laughing hardest, Dura struck.
    There was a simple trick to breaking the grip of someone holding your wrist, and Dura knew it. She turned her thumbs down and jerked free. At the same time, she snapped a kick between the legs of the woman with the knife. The woman folded, the obsidian blade falling from her nerveless fingers. Then Dura used the only advantages she had: her shorter stature and her weight. Even as the leather nooses came tight around her neck, she flexed hard to keep them from choking her, and dropped to the ground, pulling both noose wielders off balance.
    In a flash, she had the knife.
    The nooses tightened and a foot glanced off her temple, but the next foot she caught. Lunging up with the blade, she slashed the inside of the man’s thigh. Blood gushed from the severed artery, and he fell. The other man who had held her wrist was reaching for the club at his waist. She was loath to lose her only weapon, but as the man raised his club to strike, she had no choice. She threw the obsidian dagger hard, burying it to the hilt in his gut. He dropped the club and folded up around the injury. Now there were just the two men holding the nooses, and they were prevented by the length of the noose-poles from getting close to her. But they could, and did, tighten the nooses even more.
    The world faded to gray at the edges of Dura’s vision; she didn’t have much time. Shouts rang from the jungle, and she knew more cannibals were coming. She brought both hands down hard on one of the bamboo poles. It snapped, but