The Sword of Bheleu Read Online Free PDF Page A

comparative calm. When he had managed it, he told himself that he would really have to get rid of the sword as soon as he possibly could.
    Well, that was part of the personal business he wanted to attend to here in Skelleth; he intended either to deliver the loot he had brought from Dûsarra to the Forgotten King or dispose of it someplace where it wouldn’t endanger anyone in the future.
    With that in mind, he urged Koros forward toward the town’s southwestern gate.
    There was no guard; had the townspeople realized they were besieged, there almost certainly would have been, he told himself. Therefore, they apparently hadn’t noticed. That was good; it meant that no act of war had yet taken place as far as the humans were concerned.
    It struck him as curious that the only gate the Baron saw fit to guard was the one leading north. True, the other four all faced nominally friendly territory, and there was no real threat in any direction—except perhaps from his own people. Duty at the North Gate was a convenient punishment for guardsmen who had displeased the Baron; Saram had told him that, months ago. The other gates were less suitable, since they were more sheltered from the cold winds and more likely to have traffic disrupting the boredom.
    Whatever the reasoning behind it, he was glad that the Baron did guard only the north. It meant he could enter the town unseen.
    The gate before him was actually merely a gap in the wall where the road wound its way through the rubble of long-fallen towers; there was no trace left of the actual gate that had once been there. Koros had no trouble in making his way through it. The road through the West Gate was partially blocked by debris, but this one was not; it was kept clear for the caravans that provided Skelleth’s only real contact with civilization.
    Inside the wall, Garth found himself surrounded by ruins. The town had once been a fair-sized city, in the days when it was humanity’s main bulwark against the overmen in the final years of the Racial Wars three centuries earlier, but when the fighting stopped, so did the flow of supplies and men from the south. Skelleth had withered, shrinking inward, until now it was mostly abandoned. The remaining village was clustered about the market square and the Baron’s mansion, surrounded by acres of crumbling, empty buildings.
    His goal was the King’s Inn, the tavern where the Forgotten King lived. It stood on a narrow, filthy alley behind the Baron’s mansion, right near the center of town, so there was no way he could hope to reach it undetected. That being the case, he saw little point in trying; skulking about through the ruins would just slow him down, and he wanted to get to Kyrith’s encampment before she had time to do anything else stupid.
    Therefore he rode straight onward, ignoring the astonished pedestrians and householders who stared as he passed.
    It was quite likely that word would reach the Baron, which was unfortunate; Garth was still, after all, under sentence of exile, forbidden to enter Skelleth without the Baron’s express permission. He might have to kill a few guardsmen in order to convince the humans that he would come and go as he pleased, with or without their permission.
    It might be fun to kill a few guardsmen; he would use the sword, of course, and hack at them until...
    He caught himself and glanced down at the glowing ruby before Frima had time to say anything.
    It would not be fun to kill anyone. Humans had just as much right to live as he himself did. If he were forced into a confrontation with the Baron’s soldiers, he would just have to hope that he could bluff them out of attacking, as he had done once before. He would not kill anyone if he could help it.
    He didn’t want to harm anyone, he told himself.
    He had to repeat it over and over as he rode through the streets, watching the townspeople scatter at his approach. He had to resist the temptation