Rythe Falls by Craig R. Saunders Read Free Book Online

the turning of the world around the suns, the moons around the world, the people and their petty squabbles...for this. Not to flee, or die. To fight. To fight a last battle with the Elethyn as they are named in the light of the sun, and to send them into darkness forever.'
                  'How? How!?'
                  Sia nodded, rose from her seat in the dirt. She blinked and closed her eyes and when she opened them again, spread her arms wide.
                  Now, in the light of the Sun Destroyers, in that awful bloody glow that made the eye ache, Reih and Perr could both see the Sia had not come alone.
                  Beside her, hidden by some sly illusion, two golden-haired warriors stood, arms crossed on their shining breastplates. One, helmed, only his long beard showing. The other nodded, politely enough.
                  Behind them? Thousands upon thousands of huge, haired beasts. Fierce eyed and gentle, large and small, claws, teeth bared, or grinning in what could pass for smiles. More than thousands. Across the swamp, huge beasts of every shape, spreading as far as the eye could see.
                  'Rythe is not just home to the races of man, or the Elethyn's children,' said Sia.
                  'No, it is not,' said a grizzled rahken, stepping forward. Her voice was like the rumbling of rock-fall. 'The Rahken Nations will fight, too.'
     
    *
     

Chapter Seven
     
    Who would have thought there so many arselickers in the whole of Sturma?
                  It seemed there were legions of them, and Renir had bad luck enough to have met every single one. He hadn't entertained the notion that a Sturman was even capable of such fawning, and yet if his arse got any cleaner he'd be sliding out of bed every night on his shiny backside.
                  Little kids dream , he thought, of being King .
                  Kids were idiots. It was a miracle they grew to any age at all.
                  Disper Lohtrus cut Renir's words off before the would-be king could complain again. He did so quite effectively, by cinching the buckle about Renir's new breastplate too tight for him to breathe.
                  'Uh...' Renir managed.
                  'Too tight?' said Disper, frowning.
                  'Uh.'
                  The Sard swordsman shook his head and loosed the buckle a notch. With his gold hair and gold moustaches, Disper looked more foreign to Renir than a thousand Draymen. No wonder people whispered their distrust of the Sard along the halls of the Castle of Naeth. Common folk distrusted anything too shiny, and the Sard fair glowed under suns and stars both.
                  Renir knew well enough what common folk trusted and mistrusted. He was common folk. He'd grown up in a fishing village, damn it. He knew common, and it was him. So what, they said he had King's blood? So what he had his own wife's ghost in his head?
                  So what?
                  Disper was busying himself pulling on Renir's new pauldrons and didn't see the look on Renir's face. If he had, the swordsman might have been a little more gentle.
                  Probably not, though.
                  The Sard were not Renir's people. He didn't understand them, the Sturmen and women within and without the castle didn't understand the golden warriors, either. They were in awe, yes. But accepted? Not at all.
                  Nor did the men of the Order help themselves. So pretty in their shining steel, they could not help but seem aloof and alien. Sturma was a country of dirt and mud and cold. A country of soft colours and dull, unimaginative people. The only time people saw red was in autumn and battle. Gold? Gold was for coins, not for hair. People didn't understand, and Renir didn't, either, for all the