Rise of the Dragons by Morgan Rice Read Free Book Online

but more
woods, reaching as far as the eye could see. Yet he knew he was getting
close—after so many days of hiking, the tower could not be that far off.
    Merk continued down the slope of the
path, the wood growing thicker, until, at the bottom, he came to a huge, felled
tree blocking the path. He stopped and looked at it, admiring its size,
debating how to get around it.
    “I’d say that’s about far enough,” came
a sinister voice.
    Merk recognized the dark intention in
the voice immediately, something he had become expert in, and he did not even
need to turn to know what was coming next. He heard leaves crunching all around
him, and out of the wood there emerged faces to match the voice: cutthroats,
each more desperate looking than the next. They were the faces of men who
killed for no reason. The faces of common thieves and killers who preyed on the
weak with random, senseless violence. In Merk’s eyes, they were the lowest of
the low.
    Merk saw he was surrounded and knew he
had walked into a trap. He glanced around quickly without letting them know it,
his old instincts kicking in, and he counted eight of them. They all held
daggers, all dressed in rags, with dirty faces, hands, and fingernails, all
unshaven, all with a desperate look that showed they hadn’t eaten in too many
days. And that they were bored.
    Merk tensed as the lead thief got
closer, but not because he feared him; Merk could kill him—could kill them
all—without blinking an eye, if he chose. What made him tense was the
possibility of being forced into violence. He was determined to keep his vow,
whatever the cost.
    “And what do we have here?” one of them
asked, coming close, circling Merk.
    “Looks like a monk,” said another, his
voice mocking. “But those boots don’t match.”
    “Maybe he’s a monk who thinks he’s a
soldier,” one laughed.
    They all broke into laughter, and one of
them, an oaf of a man in his forties with a missing front tooth, leaned in with
his bad breath and poked Merk in the shoulder. The old Merk would have killed
any man who had come half as close.
    But the new Merk was determined to be a
better man, to rise above violence—even if it seemed to seek him out. He closed
his eyes and took a deep breath, forcing himself to remain calm.
    Do not resort to violence , he told
himself again and again.
    “What’s this monk doing?” one of them
asked. “Praying?”
    They all burst into laughter again.
    “Your god won’t save you now, boy!”
another exclaimed.
    Merk opened his eyes and stared back at
the cretin.
    “I do not wish to harm you,” he said
calmly.
    Laughter rose up, louder than before,
and Merk realized that staying calm, not reacting with violence, was the
hardest thing he had ever done.
    “Lucky for us, then!” one replied.
    They laughed again, then all fell silent
as their leader stepped forward and got in Merk’s face.
    “But perhaps,” he said, his voice
serious, so close that Merk could smell his bad breath, “we wish to harm you.”
    A man came up behind Merk, wrapped a
thick arm around his throat, and began squeezing. Merk gasped as he felt
himself being choked, the grip tight enough to put him in pain but not to cut
off all air. His immediate reflex was to reach back and kill the man. It would
be easy; he knew the perfect pressure point in the forearm to make him release
his grip. But he forced himself not to.
    Let them pass, he told himself. The road to humility must begin somewhere.
    Merk faced their leader.
    “Take of mine what you wish,” Merk said,
gasping. “Take it and be on your way.”
    “And what if we take it and stay right
here?” the leader replied.
    “No one’s asking you what we can and
can’t take, boy,” another said.
    One of them stepped up and ransacked
Merk’s waist, rummaging greedy hands through his few personal belongings left
in the world. Merk forced himself to stay calm as the hands rifled through everything
he owned. Finally, they extracted his