By the Sword by Mercedes Lackey Read Free Book Online

Verenna’s hooves, Kero heard tiny leaf-rustlings as nocturnal animals foraged for their dinners.
    Mother said that Grandmother had offered to build the Keep into something like the Tower, and Father refused, she remembered suddenly. Why? He wasn’t normally that stupid, to refuse help. Was it just that he didn’t want to be any further in Grandmother’s debt?
    That could have been. Every thumb’s length of property that Rathgar called his own was actually his only through Lenore, and had come as her dowry. And he had resented it, Kero was certain of that; Rathgar was not the kind of man who liked to be in debt to anyone. Stubborn, headstrong, determined to make his own way, to depend on no one and nothing but himself, and to allow nothing to interfere with his plans for his lands and children.
    But he loved Mother, she thought, letting Verenna pick her way through the thin underbrush. I know he loved Mother, and not just her lands. He used to bring her meals and feed her with his own hands when she was too weak to even move. He never said a cruel word to her, ever. He never once even looked at another woman while she was alive, and I don’t think he wanted to look at another one after she was gone.
    Verenna’s eyes were better in this light than Kero’s were; basically all she had to do right now was keep from falling off, and stay alert for stray bandits or wild animals. It was hard to believe that Rathgar was really dead.
    Oh, Father. She thought about all the happy times she’d spent in his presence; how he’d taught her to hunt, how proud he’d been of her scholarship. He could hardly write his own name, she thought, with a lump in her throat, yet he was so proud of me and Lordan and Mother. He used to boast about how learned we were to his friends. He used to tell them about how I could keep books better than Wendar, and how Lordan was writing the family history—and then he ’d drag Lordan’s chronicles out and have me read them out loud to everyone after dinner. And he used to tell us both how we were following in Grandfather Jadrek’s footsteps, and how respected Grandfather had been, and how we should be proud to live up to his example. She could see him even now, sitting on the side of Lenore’s bed, with Lordan at his right and herself at his left, and whatever book they happened to be reading on his lap. “Don’t be like me,” he’d say, solemnly. “Don’t pass up your chance to learn. Look at me—too ignorant to do anything but swing a sword—if it hadn’t been for your mother, I’d probably be living in a bar somewhere, throwing out drunks by night and mopping the floor by day. ” And with that, he’d look back over his shoulder, and he’d stretch out his hand and gently touch Lenore’s fingertips, and they’d both smile....
    What happened? she asked herself, around the tears that choked her throat. I know he changed after Mother died. Was it because I wasn’t able to be like her? He became so critical, that’s all I ever saw. There were times when I wondered if he hated me — and times when I wondered if he even knew I was alive. Maybe if I hadn’t been so completely opposite from Mother, maybe we could have gotten along better.
    Verenna stopped for a moment, ears pricked forward, and Kero hastily rubbed her eyes, then peered into the moon-dappled shadows beneath the trees ahead of them. She slipped her knife from its sheath as she heard a repetition of the sound that had alerted the horse in the first place. A rustling noise—as if something very large was threading its way through the brush.
    A crash that sent her heart into her throat—and then it stood in the moonlight on the path.
    A stag.
    Verenna shied, the stag saw them, and with a flip of its tail dove into the brush on the other side of the trail. Kero’s heart started again, and she urged Verenna