Hair of Gold: Just Right (Urban Fairytales Book 6) by Erik Schubach Read Free Book Online

below. I patrolled with my bears, much to their complaints, but I was my own woman, not a little girl to be coddled by my brothers when they put themselves at risk on every full moon. They knew that arguing with me was pointless so they resigned themselves to the fact that us Inanov's were the protectors of Chernivtsi.
    I smiled to myself over the fact that they knew who ran our household.
    Through fear and elation of battle and the strength I had gained sparring with my huge kin, I excelled against the wolves. My bears brought down most but they always let one or two through to me, and I readily dispatched them with my silvered blade. The townsfolk had started to calling me the Wolf Hunter of Chernivtsi. The deaths by Wolf Moon had ceased as we held the line month after month.
    I had started noting that while I had been growing up and grew older, my brothers hadn't seemed to age at all. I almost looked to be their age on my twenty-first birthday... when everything changed.

Chapter 6 – Raids
    I ducked to the right as a sweeping strike of a battleaxe whooshed past. I could hear the massive blade splitting the air just inches from my ear, some of my golden hair drifting to the ground, just punctuating the lethality and razor sharpness of the blade. I felt the air pressure from the speed of the vicious strike on my cheek.
    I roared out a challenge which my brothers would be proud of as I spun back on a heel, intercepting a sword strike from behind. The man had not been prepared for the strength of my strike as his blade swung wide leaving his torso exposed. I growled and thrust my blade in a sweeping upward arc, opening his belly and chest in a long diagonal slice. I huffed. That is what the fool gets for underestimating me, thinking me a meek woman.
    I was spinning away, ducking as I anticipated the raider with the battleaxe to use the opportunity to strike from behind as his comrade fell. The blade of his great axe catching the billowing shoulder of my cloak and slicing cleanly through it, missing my flesh by a hair's breadth.
    He was nearly twice my size, but I fight bigger every day at the breakfast table for the last of the biscuits. I brought my blade smoothly up, cocked behind my ear, parallel with the ground as I sighted down it at my opponent who was hesitating now. They hadn't once given any consideration to the fact that I may be a trained swordswoman.
    A bellowing roar of a Kodiak, Vladimir, shook the ground as I took in the battle around me. I pointed with my other hand and barked out orders, “Pavel, right flank, incoming.” Then more stridently as the biggest bear shredded a net that two men had tried to sling over him, “Andrei, stop playing around, Vlad needs your assistance with the pikemen.”
    With a deafening roar which would have chilled me to my bones if it were not my brother's, Andrei dispatched the two raiders trying to net him, with one mighty disemboweling swipe of his dinner platter sized claw. He huffed and roared again as he charged at the pikemen.
    There were five more men coming in from the right to join the two that Little Bear had just engaged. I didn't have time to play around anymore, they had sent more men than ever this time. I raised the tip of my blade slightly, distracting my opponent and keeping his eye on my blade as I thrust my other hand forward, whipping the throwing knife I kept on my left hip at him.
    Most people think that it is easy to kill with a throwing knife, but in reality, it is quite difficult, if you hit any bone then the blade is easily deflected or stopped, so you need a soft target or your throw is nothing but a distraction. I don't have the strength it would take with my throws to get the blade between his ribs, and his axe blade was obscuring his belly, so I took the only other soft target that my blade could penetrate easily.
    He dropped his axe to the cobblestones of the village square. Fell to his knees, and grasped uselessly at the knife embedded into the