Kingsteel (The Dragonkin Trilogy Book 3) by Michael Meyerhofer Read Free Book Online

had cleared, and the sun shone through the haze.
    Jalist stopped to catch his breath. Ignoring the aching in his legs, he glanced southeast. Sure enough, the creatures, though built more for murder than pursuit, still followed him. Surging over a hill less than a half mile away, the broad glistening column resembled hundreds of footmen in full armor, their weapons perpetually drawn. Jalist forced himself to move.
    For the better part of a week, thunderheads had raged over Stillhammer, unleashing deluge after deluge on the ravaged land. There was something unnatural about the storms, though Jalist had no notion whether they were evidence of the gods mourning the abject destruction of the Dwarrish homeland or just some byproduct of whatever foul magic had unleashed the Jolym.
    He had no time to consider this. For the unliving warriors—voiceless and wrought entirely of metal—had also proved to be eerily skilled trackers. Jalist had thought first to lose them by circling around the mountain, counting on the rain to wash away his tracks. But the Jolym had not been fooled. Once, trusting that he was safe, he’d lain down to risk a few much-needed hours of sleep.
    His instincts awakened him in the middle of the night to find a Jol hovering over him, blades welded to its fists. Like the one he’d fought days before, it had a sardonic grin carved into its face, as though it were wearing a dancer’s mask wrought of iron. Jalist had already learned that the things were hollow—no mind to reason with, no flesh to injure. But he’d also discovered that they could be killed, if that was the word for it, by stabbing them through their dark, empty eyes.
    Jalist had managed to do so to the one that had awakened him, but before it fell in a wrenching crash of metal, the Jol’s hands—a hook and a hatchet—had cut him in three places. Jalist had managed to clean and bandage the wounds before the rest of the host appeared.
    Since then, the Jolym had chased him over hills and plain, through villages that were home now to nothing but rotting corpses. Jalist did his best to avoid both looking at and smelling the remains of his kin. Still, from time to time, he wept.
    “I should try to get to Tarator again.” Jalist touched his weapons. Though he preferred axes and maces, which allowed him to make best use of his strength, such weapons were useless against Jolym.
    Maybe that’s why the Housecarls never stood a chance.
    He’d armed himself with a brace of stilettos, a spear, and a shortsword he’d found in an abandoned house. The shortsword, probably a dead man’s family heirloom, looked as though it had been forged for a woman. While Dwarrish blades were usually wide and heavy, this one was light and thin, practically a rapier, and it had already saved his life once.
    Based on the destruction he’d seen, Jalist was certain now that the halls of Tarator had not been spared. Still, he longed to see the Dwarrish capital for himself, to see if any others had survived. Dwarrish tradition would not have permitted King Fedwyr to flee the enemy, so Jalist had no doubt that the old monarch lay among the fallen. Still, a few of the king’s Housecarls might have been elsewhere when Stillhammer was invaded. Perhaps they’d even fled Tarator altogether, driven not to save their own skins but to protect someone else.
    “Leander…”
    The thought of the prince quickened Jalist’s blood, bringing fresh tears to his eyes. He had yet to encounter even a single Dwarrish survivor. But the way to Tarator had been blocked by countless Jolym, hinting that they had already been there. Surely, his former lover could not have survived such a thorough slaughter.
    Jalist took a drink from his canteen, examined his wounds, and turned southeast again. The Jolym were gaining. Using his spear as a walking stick, he pressed on.
    By sundown, both the Stillhammer Mountains and the Red Steppes were miles behind him. The Simurgh Plains stretched before him,