Sliding Void Read Online Free PDF

of sword points and axe heads pointing in his direction.
    ‘Come on, lads. You can let me go. I’ll make it worth your while. Just see me back to my side of the border and there’ll be more silver in it for you than you’ll earn in a lifetime of humping for the baron.’
    ‘Careful, your highness,’ one of them laughed, breathing hard, ‘you hit me with that pole and you’re going to leave an oily scratch on my tunic.’
    ‘Do the smart thing,’ pleaded Calder.
    ‘You think that free you’re good for more than a farthing back home?’ sneered one of the men. ‘Only way your hide is worth anything is the blood price we’re going to get from the baron. We push you across the border, the only people who get rich are the soldiers serving in what used to be your army. Except it isn’t anymore, is it? Heard it belongs to your bitch now, except she ain’t even that, is she?’
    Calder waved the measuring stick menacingly, but it only made the shield-warriors laugh harder. ‘You don’t get to talk about Sibylla like that. She’s highborn compared to you pack rats.’
    ‘Are you really going to make us work for this?’ growled one of the shield-warriors, shifting the axe he was holding between his hands. ‘Baron wants you back for the fire, but nobody said anything about you needing to have your wedding tackle attached when we hand you over.’
    ‘Work for this?’ Calder glanced back to where Noak was lying prone in the snowdrift, his ribs being kicked by the same shield-warrior that had shouldered him down. ‘If it’s a blade or kindling that’s on offer, you braves better practice your sales pitch.’
    There was a low hissing noise behind Calder. What the hell’s that? One of the warriors made to move forward, but his colleague halted him. ‘Stomped, not sliced. He’s got to walk back on his own feet, as I’m fucked if I’m carrying him all the way to the castle.’
    The hissing was louder now and it suddenly occurred to Calder what else sounded like an ice snake homing in on a man’s heat. He hurled the oil-measuring pole forward like a javelin, glancing off the metal mask of the shield-warrior in front of him. The distraction only lasted a second, but it was long enough for him to turn and start running up the slope without one of them cutting out his hamstrings with their blades. Calder had put a little ground behind him when the oil well exploded. That was what Calder’s canny old retainer had been doing when the prince had snowballed him. Shutting off the valve to the well. But the driller’s slaves hadn’t known. They had still been walking the circle, slower and slower, building up pressure.  Pieces of machinery scythed out, cutting down half of the baron’s killers, the derrick replaced by a fountaining black gusher spewing oil over the virgin snow. Incredibly, the two blind slaves had escaped the explosion. They were still walking the circle, except their walk was now a sprint, the well’s wooden beam unattached from the pumping mechanism. Two of the shield-warriors were on their feet, distinctly unamused by the devastation wrought on their friends. Calder kept scrambling up the slope, but a crossbow bolt took him in the back of the left leg, a stream of intense pain as he collapsed down to the snow, screaming.
    ‘Baron’s going to be disappointed,’ cried one of the shield-warriors, pulling back the lever on his crossbow. ‘But we don’t need his blood money that much.’
    Not as disappointed as me.
    The giant’s friend yelled up the slope as he ploughed through the snow. ‘Reckon we’re going to have to tar and light you up here, boy, now that you’ve struck black gold.’
    Calder moaned, unable to crawl further. He stared up at the pale silver sky, pregnant with snow clouds. Far above, a pair of black dots were circling. Crows from the Halls of the Twice-born, sent to grab his soul in their claws, to carry a dying prince back to his ancestors? He clutched at his leg, trying