The Usurper Read Online Free PDF

when the boy was taken?'
    'He's safe. The Merofynians are all dead. Couldn't have them running off and leading others back to -'
    'You're Byren Kingsheir. I mean King Byren!' the player said, then remembered his manners and made a passable bow, proving he must have performed for nobles.
    The other two would have followed suit but Byren stopped them. 'Here, none of that. Come down and eat. Then we have to leave.'
    Before long they had rearranged the family's belongings and were mounted up on the spare horses, with the scribe and butcher both looking as uncomfortable as Seela had the night before. The dogs barked, eager to get going. Tomorrow, Byren would send men down to the farm to wring the chickens' necks and walk the cows up to the camp. No sense in leaving anything for Merofynians to loot.
    For now, Byren saw his old nurse off with a stern warning to watch her back. She travelled on foot, disguised as a wise-woman selling simple remedies. Wise-women were welcomed in every village. They helped with anything from treating bad teeth to delivering babies. It was the perfect way to spread word of the loyalist camp, the Leogryf's Lair.
    Seela nodded to the three maimed men, who waited further up the path with Esfira and Tikhon. 'If those three are anything to go by, I'll have no trouble convincing others to join you.'
    'And all of them maimed. I'll lead an army of cripples!'
    'Take that attitude and you deserve to lose,' Seela told him, tapping his chest with her finger, as if he was ten, not twenty. 'After a bit of training, a man can do wonders with his left hand.'
    He laughed and kissed her forehead. 'I'll miss you, Seela. Take care.'
    'Don't worry about me. All they'll see is a weak old woman.'
    Byren had to be satisfied with that. He let her go and returned to the others, leading Tikhon's horse.
    'Will I see Vadik soon?' Tikhon asked.
    'Soon,' Byren said, hoping the big brother had not been brought low by his fever. And he plunged up the path, leading the horse with the others following.

    Fyn blinked gritty, tired eyes. He'd hardly slept, kept awake by the juddering of the ship's timbers as the Wyvern's Whelp tried to outrun the Utland raiders. At the crest of each wave she paused almost as if she'd keep rising. Then she slid down the other side, cutting deep into the upward slope of the next - spray leaping left and right - before clawing her way up the wave's rise.
    It was just as well he had his sea legs, for the ship ran before the wind with every concertina-sail fully extended. He looked up, seeing the mid-morning sun gleam through the canvas, the sail's thin wooden ribs illuminated from behind.
    They'd been prepared to do battle since last night. A brazier stood nearby, the coals hot, ready for the stack of tar-dipped arrows.
    Fire on a ship at sea? The thought horrified him. If the ship burned to the waterline, they'd drown out here, far from land.
    The quarter-master prodded him in the ribs as he passed by. 'Go help Jaku.'
    Jakulos sat at the spinning whetstone, sharpening the crews' weapons.
    Fyn went over to the big man, who greeted him with a grin. 'Thought so, Bantam can't abide seeing a man idle.'
    He spoke the Ostronite trading dialect with the accent of Merofynia, but Fyn knew he had no love for his homeland. He'd been press-ganged to serve the Merofynian navy. With the big man's shirt off, Fyn could see the many criss-crossing scars stretched across the meaty muscles of his back. The blemishes glistened in the sun, silver and slick with sweat. Here, in the lea of the fore-deck, it was surprisingly warm.
    Jakulos selected a sword from the pile waiting to be sharpened. The singing of the sword on the whetstone made it impossible to speak.
    As there didn't seem to be anything Fyn could do, he looked around. Everyone had a role, everyone knew their place, except him. Even the ten-year-old cabin boy knew more than him and, at nearly seventeen, that rankled.
    Back at Halcyon Abbey, he'd completed ten years'