Return of the Crimson Guard by Ian C. Esslemont Read Free Book Online

weapons and armour. Stoop sat Kyle on the top ledge of a broad set of stairs that led down to a sunken patio, now a fetid pool of rotting leaves and branches. Clouds still enshrouded the Spur's top and would remain for some time yet, Kyle imagined. But the edge was off the storm. Thunder no longer burst overhead or rumbled out over the plains spread outbelow. High sheet lightning flickered and raced far above, leaping and flashing soundlessly.
It could not be. How could it? It was impossible. Nothing after this, he decided, could ever touch him again. Yet something had happened. He studied his wrapped hand. It was numb of any feeling but for a constant nagging ache. They must've put some kind of salve on it. His tulwar, he noted, had been sheathed by some considerate soul. Odd-handed, he drew it. The leather of the grip came away like dry bark in his hand. He brushed away the burnt material leaving the scorch-marked tang naked. The blade, however, remained clean and unmarred. The swirls and curls of Wind seemed to dance down its gleaming length. Turning it over, Kyle paused: the design now ran down both sides of the curved blade. He didn't remember Smoky engraving both sides.
He touched the cold blade to his forehead and invoked a prayer to Wind. He'd have to get it re-gripped. And he'd name it Tcharka. Gift of Wind. And he'd never forget what happened here this day.
‘Have a rest,’ Stoop advised. ‘It'll be a while yet.’
Kyle let his head fall back to the stone wall. Through slitted eyes he spotted Stalker crouched against a pillar next to two Guardsmen he didn't know; one extraordinarily hairy and ferociously scarred; the other an older man whose beard was braided and tied off in small tails. Both were nut brown, as burly as bears, and reminded Kyle of the men of the Stone Mountains to the far west of his lands. The scout watched him with his startling bright hazel eyes while murmuring aside to the men. Exhausted, Kyle drowsed in the fitful weak wind.

Near dawn came Kyle's turn in the basket. He and four others stepped in while the wicker, hemp and wood construction hung extended out over empty yawning space. Eight Guardsmen manned the iron arms of the winch. A gusting wind pulled and tossed Kyle's hair as he now carried his helmet under an arm.
     
‘How will they get down?’ he asked a man with him in the basket as the crew started edging the winch on its first revolution.
The Guardsman swung a lazy glance up to the men at the winch. A smile of cruellest humour touched his lips. ‘Poor bastards. Better them than us. They'll have to come down the ropes.’
The wind rose as the basket descended close to the naked cliffs. It batted at the frail construction and pulled at Kyle's Crimson Guard surcoat. Us, the Guardsman had said. Kyle knew now he was one of them yet could never be one with them. He was part of thebrotherhood but that same brotherhood had killed something like his God: one of his people's ancestors, progenitors, guides or protectors – perhaps even an avatar of the one great Father Wind himself. He knew now it would be easier for him to use the weapon at his side. To turn flat, unresponsive eyes upon death and killing. To do what must be done. He studied the men suspended with him over what could be their own deaths. Two watched the clouds above, perhaps searching for hints of the coming weather. Another peered down, curious perhaps as to where they might disembark. The last stared ahead at nothing. Their eyes, surrounded by a hatching of wrinkles, appeared flat and empty. These were the ones who could not be touched. Kyle felt drawn to them, sensed now that he shared something of the dead world they inhabited. He watched their sweaty, scarred, boiled-leather faces and felt his own hardening into that mask. He could stare at them now, at anyone dead or alive, and not see them.

CHAPTER II
     
    For generations the poles of the Quon Talian continent stood as the province of Unta in the east and the