Swords & Dark Magic Read Online Free PDF

wouldn’t be that suicidal,” Wither said.
    Flapp belched. “Maybe not. That Slim was one eager whore, though.”
    They rounded the last turn and came within sight of the gate. The portcullis was gone, as expected, all that iron, and the arched passageway yawned black as a cave mouth. Flapp followed Skint in. The drop chutes and murder holes were all plugged with muddy, guano-streaked martin nests, and they could hear the birds moving restlessly as they rode past.
    The passage opened out to a yard overgrown with brambles. A stone-lined well marked the center, all its fittings removed. To the right was a low building running the length of one high wall. “Stables,” Flapp said. “But we’ll have to use the last of our fodder.”
    Skint pointed to a stone trough close to the stables. “Wither, check that, make sure it’s not cracked. Huggs, collect up the water gourds and rig up a rope—let’s see what we can scoop from the well. Flapp and Dullbreath, you’re with me. Let’s check out the main house.”
    That building was built to withstand its own siege. No windows on the lower floors, a narrow aperture preceding the doorway, arrow slits on the two squat towers flanking the inner facing. The slanted roof, they saw, was slate-tiled and holed through here and there.
    “I’d wager the towers are solid and probably cleaner than anywhere else,” said Flapp.
    They dismounted. Walked toward the entrance.

    The slow drumbeat of horse hoofs on the cobbles had awakened them, and now, in scores of chambers in the keep, figures stirred. Long, gnarled limbs unfolded, slitted eyes glittered as heads lifted, jaws stretching open to reveal rows of thin, vertical fangs. Twin hearts that had thumped in agonizingly slow syncopation for months now thudded faster, rushing blood and heat through tall, rope-muscled bodies. Talons clicked at the ends of unfurling hands.
    The slaughterers of the garrison five hundred years ago, demons from the cursed plain beyond the mountains, awoke once more. A night of swift blood awaited them. A few soft-skinned travelers, such as haplessly sought shelter in this place every now and then. Food to share out, a mouthful of pulped meat—if that—and there would be fierce struggle over even such modest morsels. They’d eat everything but the bones and they’d split the bones and suck out the marrow and then leave the rubbish outside the gate before dawn arrived.
    The imp commanding the demons ate its way out from its woven cocoon of human hair and scrambled, claws skittering, on all fours down the south tower’s spiral staircase. Nostrils flaring at the sweet scent of horse and human meat, it clacked its teeth in hungry anticipation. Shin-high, the creature wore a tiny hauberk of scaled armor, a belted sword at its hip not longer than a bear’s canine and nearly as dull. Its head was bare, victim to vanity, permitting its bright stiff shock of white hair to stand fully upright. Its eyes, a lurid yellow, flared with excitement.
    Its fiends were awake, but the time for summoning must wait. The imp needed to see the victims with its own eyes, needed to feast on their growing fear. Needed them, indeed, trapped and then devoured by that terrifying realization. A silent command unveiled dark sorcery, swallowing the gatehouse in a swirling miasma of foul vapors, vitriolic and deadly. No, there would be no escape. There never was.
    Soon, so very soon, the slaughter would begin. First the humans, and then the horses.

    Dullbreath halted in the center of the broad, high-vaulted, pillar-lined hallway just inside the keep’s narrow entrance. He sniffed the air. “Ghosts,” he muttered. “This place was overrun, Captain. Plenty died in here.”
    Skint glanced back at the man, studied him for a moment, and then turned her attention once more to the far wall with its row of gaping doorways.
    Flapp scanned the mosaic floor and frowned at the black, crumbly streaks all over it. He looked up to peer at the