The Warrior Returns - Anteros 04 Read Online Free PDF Page A

birth?
    I think not.
    Praying to Te-Date that my casting skills had failed me that day, I quickly buried my fears and let my dear ones chatter on as all young parents do, telling me of their hopes and plans for their offspring.
    When the dinner hour approached, Omerye excused herself to oversee the cook and table servants. Amalric poured us both big goblets of that delicious wine my family grew in our vineyards. We eased back in our seats and I filled him in on the general business details of my voyage.
    "You've done very well, Rali," he said when I was done. "But I sense you are not as pleased as you ought to be."
    I shook my head. "There was a small incident near the end of the voyage," I said, "that troubles me."
    His eyebrows arched and he asked me to pray continue.
    And so I did.
    "The pirates jumped us," I began, "just off Demon's Point. Not far from Antero Bay ..."
    on my previous voyage I'd pressed farther south than anyone had ever gone before. I'd gone beyond the realm of the Iofra, where the parched sands of the desert meet desolate pebbled beaches. Past the farthest point my father sailed in his youth. He'd been the first Orissan to visit the Ice Barbarians. I'd even crossed that mystical divide that seems to girdle the world, where strange starry constellations rule and tornadoes twist in the opposite direction.
    In that mission, I'd been concentrating on future trade rather than immediate profit So I'd charmed, cozened, or cowed many a fierce and hairy chieftain into the Antero merchant's fold. I'd established trading posts, watched over by small complements of our private security forces, all former guardsmen of the highest caliber.
    My efforts had paid off handsomely on the fourth trading mission, and as we approached Demon's Point, nearing the first of the southern ice fields, all the ships' holds were bursting with goods. There were two trading posts yet to visit, the most remote of the ones I'd established. The first was at Antero Bay, which I'd named after my family.
    As we set course around the rocky shoals that edge Demon's Point, I was in the odd position of hoping that business had not gone as well at those two missions as they had at the others.
    "If only we'd taken a fifth ship," I moaned to Captain Carale.
    Carale was a dark little man, with fierce mustaches and a morose temperament, who saw ill where others saw gold.
    "Aye, 'n' that'd be one more t' lose, me lady," he said. "The devil gods mus' be drunk in their hellish taverns t' let us get this far wit' our skins still whole on the bones."
    "Oh, pooh, Carale," I replied. "My brother spent a fool's fortune on sacrifices before the voyage began. And I've made every appeasement to every trumped-up local shaman at every thatch-and-wattle temple from Lycanth to Hells Shoals. The only bad days we've seen were a week's becalming off Shatter Island."
    "Mark me words, 'n' mark 'em well," Carale said, black brows crossing swords over his small sharp beak of a nose. "We're in fer a spell o' bad times, me lady. We'll be wishin' we'd a stayed home once the gods sober up."
    I laughed. "We've had more good luck than is good for us, is that what you're saying?"
    "Laugh all ye like, me lady," Carale said. "But the facts o' the matter are well known t' all th't's been fated to sail the salty seas. A bit o' a blow when the voyage begins spells sunny skies at the end."
    "With that logic," I said, "the richest trip you ever took must've started with the death of your mother."
    "Twas me sister, lady," Carale answered. "Right bitch she was, if n ye'll beg me pardon. I was glad t' see her in her grave. But she was close enough family - wise fer her untimely death t' see me through t' the best days o' me life."
    Despite his gloomy nature, Carale was one of my brother's best captains, and he was a sight to behold in a fight—a regular little whirlwind with a dagger and a sword for edges.
    I wanted to laugh again but feared it'd only draw more dark comments. So instead I