Brimstone Angels by Erin M. Evans Read Free Book Online

jumped from their carts under a hail of arrows. Tam leaped out of the cart as well and unwound the spiked chain he wore around his narrow waist.
    “Shar and hrast.” The priest spat. He shoved a dagger into Brin’s hand. “Under the cart. Stay low and hamstring them as they pass.” His chain lashed out, suddenly alive with holy fire, and caught an orc that sprang onto the road by the throat.
    Brin’s ears were buzzing loud enough to drown out the screaming. He looked down at the blade in his hand—rougher than the one in his pack, smaller than the short sword he had in the cart bed. What had the priest said?
    What had Constancia said?
Loyal Fury, you fight like an
actor.
You’ll faint the first time someone draws a sword on you, Torm help me—
    Brin gripped the blade, despite the fact he
did
feel light-headed and sick—he
knew
how to use a bloody dagger!
    He looked up in time to duck a notched axe blade. It sliced past his head and slammed into the side of the wagon.
    Instinct made him turn the dagger into the orc’s partly bare chest. It sliced through his pectoral and immediately caught on a rib. The orc screamed, a sound more of rage than pain, as he struggled against the stuck axe head.
    Brin bolted.
    The loose dirt of the forest floor made him slip, and his legs seemed suddenly too long and clumsy, but he ran as fast as he could as the clashing sounds of battle built behind him. There was no room in his head for thoughts of what Constancia would think, what the priest would think, what Torm—the god of duty himself—would think. All Brin knew was that he needed to get as far as possible from the orc with the axe.
    Another fearsome roar rattled the air and a creature—half man and half dragon it seemed—barreled up the road. The refugees turned to contend with this new front. But the huge, wicked-looking sword the dragon-man carried avoided the humans and cut into one orc after another. He roared, and the crackle of lightning spread out from his mouth, leaping from orc to orc.
    After him, on feet as quick as a deer’s, a devil dressed in well-fitted scale armor used a glaive to stab one orc and then vaulted over his body to kick a second.
    Brin’s foot caught a wagon rut as he sprinted past. He sprawled forward, skinning his nose on the ground. He turned over, at the thud of feet. Axe-wielding orcs, three of them now, were chasing him down.
    He hadn’t even made it across the road.
    The orc in the lead slowed, just enough to pull his axe back over one shoulder.
    Torm forgive me, Brin thought. He wished he could apologize to Constancia.
    Crack
!
    With a gust of flames and shadows, something, some creature stood between Brin and the orcs, a horned thing in purple robes with a twitching tail. It raised both hands, gave a soft gasp of effort, and where the robes had fallen down its arms—its human arms—Brin saw veins suffused with black. Horrible clouds of something caustic and dark billowed out toward the orcs. Their screams drowned out the sounds of the fight beyond.
    The thing turned on Brin. He glimpsed a face like a girl’s, but with strange eyes and horns. A devil.
    “Oh, Loyal Torm,” he managed, before she grabbed him firmly by the arm, and he was yanked … 
away
. The world dropped out from under him, and it felt as if he were being dragged through a bonfire.
    He blinked, and suddenly, he was coughing at the sharp taste of brimstone and looking up at the fir tree that had been a solid twenty feet to his right when she’d first grabbed his arm.
    The devil wasn’t looking at him. She was watching the orcs. One lay on the ground, half out of the thicket and dead or at least stunned into stillness, but the other two were trying to figure out where the devil and Brin had gone.
    She didn’t give them much time to wonder. She tensed again, as something seemed to pulse through her. She spoke a soft word, and a smattering of missiles—a hail of burning sulfur—rained down on the orcs. They