Sword of Caledor by William King Read Free Book Online Page A

mosquito that had landed on the back of his hand. It exploded in a small burst of blood and flesh, leaving a faint blotch on his tanned skin.
    ‘How do you do that?’ Leiber asked. It continued to rain, not quite the usual monsoonal downpour that could turn tracks into streams, but a light drizzle that collected on the leaves and overflowed in a million tiny random waterfalls.
    They had paused to eat and their lack of motion seemed to be drawing the insects to them. The few remaining humans lay sprawled against the trunk of a huge tree chewing on strips of dried beef. Teclis prepared his drugs, mingling the contents of two silver flasks in an alembic he had produced from inside his pack.
    ‘Do what?’ Tyrion replied. He looked beyond Leiber into the shadow avenues made by the great trees. He was becoming uneasy and he was not sure why, although he knew enough to trust his instincts in this matter. They had kept him alive in many places where other elves had died.
    ‘You always hit the buzzing little bastards. Does not matter how bad the light is, whenever one of them bites you, you kill it.’
    ‘So?’
    ‘You always kill them. Always. I have never seen you miss. I have never seen you even come close to missing or look like you are making any effort. Sometimes I never even notice the bloodsuckers until the bites swell and when I do try and hit them, the little swine are too fast for me. But they are never too fast for you.’
    ‘That is because I am an elf and you are a human.’ Even as he said it, Tyrion realised he was making a mistake. It was the sort of failure of diplomacy he would not normally have let happen. His only excuse was that he was tired and his mind had been on other things.
    ‘And you think elves are better than humans?’ There was an edge to Leiber’s words that Tyrion could not miss. There had been a lot of deaths and a lot of fear lately and they still had not found what they were looking for. Such situations had a way of becoming slowly explosive. He knew this from bitter experience with his own kind. It seemed things were no different with humans. He tried to defuse the situation with a joke.
    ‘Apparently we are when it comes to swatting mosquitoes.’
    Leiber made a rueful grimace and took a pipe from out of the pouch on his waistband and then a flint. He walked over to Teclis’s magically created fire and lit the tobacco that he had stuffed into the bowl of the pipe with a wooden spill. He continued to look into the distance for a long moment, puffing away and then letting the smoke billow out in two streams from his nostrils. Once he had done that he turned to look Tyrion in the eye and said, ‘That is not what I meant and you know it.’
    Tyrion felt his own temper rise in a way it would not normally have done. It was the heat and the humidity, he told himself, but there were other things involved as well. He was not used to being talked to this way by humans.
    Did this man seriously think that there was any comparison between an elf and a human? Both races had a head and two arms and two legs. In some ways they looked quite similar. But elves lived longer, knew more, did not fall sick, and were not prey to the numerous superstitions that humans were. They were faster, more agile, more intelligent, more beautiful; superior in every possible way.
    Leiber was less than a third of Tyrion’s age but already he was starting to look decrepit. His skin was lined. Some of his teeth were missing. The way he squinted told Tyrion that his eyesight was not what it had once been. He looked like an elf might look after half a millennium had passed, and only if the elf were very unlucky.
    Of course Tyrion thought he was better – he was just too polite to rub it in. Leiber seemed to be questioning his right to think that way which was, to say the least, impertinent of him.
    For a moment Tyrion saw the relationship between all of his people and all of the humans reflected in the way that he thought