Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) Read Online Free PDF Page A

raced
ahead, terror blanching his face.
    The roaring shimmer gained fast.
The closer it came, the more the snake appeared to be made of individual
shimmering columns. And the columns continued to roll over the hill behind
them. What kind of monster was this?
    Gehart’s horse collapsed, bugling
and bleeding from gaping wounds on its haunches. Gehart somersaulted, shook his
head as he tried to rise. The shimmers overtook him. He screamed once, then no
more.
    “Mother’s mercy!” cried Daelryn,
peering back.
    Degany unsheathed his sword,
slashed at the shimmers reaching out for him. Bright blood sprayed in an arc
from the end of the blade. A bellow of pain followed and some of the shimmers dropped
back. But there were so many; the shimmers filled the valley now, trampling the
dwarven corpses without care. His horse whinnied and rolled, legs cut to pieces,
and tossed him into a snowdrift. His brothers shouted for him, wheeled back
toward the shimmers to aid him. He kicked free of the snow, found his sword
still secure in his fist. The shimmers charged, all around him now, sunlight
through multi-faceted crystal, and inside he distinguished shapes, shapes dark
and monstrous. They loomed over him, taller than his brothers by far. They
leapt back from the reach of his sword.
    “Be gone, whatever you are!” he
shouted, spinning and slashing. Bright blood, almost orange in color, splashed
the snow.
    His brothers screamed. Surrounded
by shimmering, dancing columns, Daelryn was lifted off his mount, thrashed
around like a child’s doll and broken in half. Dastyr slashed at the shimmers
with a short sword and dirk, then his head was rolling and his body slipped
groundward.
    Degany cried out in anguish and
tried to get to them. He ignored the searing pain that caught him between the
shoulder blades, but the sudden wetness leaking across his belly took the
strength out of him. He collapsed in the snow, holding his belly closed and
tasting blood.
    Where was Wolf? Ah, Goddess, let
him get away . More screams echoed down the road. Run, Wolf .
    The shimmers surged passed at last,
leaving him to silence and sorrow. His brothers. They bled out in the snow,
only feet away, and he bled out with them. Truva was going to have a fit. She’d
be grateful now, that he had made excuses to leave Drys behind.
    Footsteps approached, so soft that
they barely crunched across the snow. Degany dared to look, but his vision was
going all funny. Through a dim, hazy tunnel he made out a pair of eyes as gray
as the winter sky, and just as cold.
     
    ~~~~

3
     
    980
A.E. celebrated the twentieth year of the reign of King Rhorek, the Black
Falcon of Aralorr. Because of his leniency toward his enemies at the close of
the Last War between the Brother Realms, and for his generous contributions
given to the rebuilding of the kingdoms, he was thereafter called Rhorek the Benevolent.
     
    —Chronicle of Kings
     
    K elyn found it difficult to
believe the messenger’s story, but the man had no reason to ride ninety miles
to lie. In dusty cloak and mud-spattered breaches, Lord Zeldanor’s nephew had
arrived in all haste. He sat at the king’s council table, exhausted and
desperate for the wine in his goblet.
    “All of them?” asked Rhorek. When
young Hiller returned a tiny nod, the king paced wildly below the pair of silver
thrones perched on the dais. “Then how do you know? How does anyone know?”
    “The dwarves found one of the party
alive, sire,” Hiller said. “My uncle’s squire. Wolf is what we called him. He
was Lord Whitewood’s youngest son. He told them what he knew before he died.”
    “Could nothing be done for him?”
Always more concerned about the people than the news. It was one of the reasons
Rhorek’s people loved him. Kelyn had tried to nurture the same regard in
himself, but, as War Commander, he had learned he couldn’t afford to.
    “His wounds were too grievous.”
    “I thought the killing was done
with!” Rhorek’s voice