The Fell Sword by Miles Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

of men fighting.
    Derkensun’s eyes met the Scholae trooper’s and he fleetingly considered hacking the other man down. Just to be sure. He had no doubt he could take him.
    But the bridegroom’s eyes were steady and without duplicity. ‘I don’t know either,’ he said. ‘But I’m for the Emperor and I know that something’s wrong. Whatever you do, I’ll back you.’ He drew himself up. ‘Unless you’re a rebel. If you are, then let’s get this over with.’
    Derkensun grinned.
    ‘Follow me,’ he said.
    It took them two long minutes to find the fighting.
    By then, almost everyone was dead.
    The Porphyrogenetrix, Irene, was curled in a corner, her long robes sodden with blood. She’d taken a blow at some point and two of her women stood over her with sharp scissors in hand, facing a dozen assailants.
    The Mayor was dead. So was the Chamberlain. And so was the Scholae’s quarter guard.
    The princess’s last defenders – besides the two women – were an unlikely pair. A monk and a bishop, one with a staff, the other with his crozier. Derkensun took them in instantly, as well as their assailants – who looked to him like palace Ordinaries with weapons.
    They had more facial scars than real palace Ordinaries, though, who were selected for good looks among other qualities.
    ‘For the Emperor!’ he shouted, in Archaic, and began to kill.
    His axe swept back and he cut down on a shocked assassin, shearing about a third of the man’s head from the rest with an economy of effort and turning the blade in the air to cut through the shoulder of a second man as he turned. The man screamed as his right arm fell to the floor.
    The Morean bishop pointed his crozier’s tip and roared, ‘In the name of God the Father!’ and white light flashed. The monk brought his staff down on a swordsman’s outstretched arms, breaking both of them.
    In the far doorway, a tall man in mail raised a long sword. ‘Take them, brothers!’ he called. ‘Kill the princess and the day is ours!’
    Even as he spoke a hidden crossbowman put a bolt into the bishop’s groin, and he went down screaming. The monk fell back a step and swung his staff two-handed. A swordsman tried to slip past him, and a grey-haired woman in silk plunged her long-bladed scissors into the assassin’s unprotected back.
    Derkensun cut twice, forward and back, and men fell back before him.
    ‘Now the Guardsman,’ said the mailed man, at the other side of the room. He raised his sword. ‘And the women. Kill them all.’
    The bridegroom threw his spear. He did so with an odd, hopping cast, not at all the way men learned to throw spears in the City Watch or the military. His spear was a short, broad-headed weapon almost like a boar-spear, and it went through the mailed man’s armour like a hot knife through warm butter, dropping him. There was a flare of hermetical energy from the lead assassin and he got to one knee as the spear suddenly fell away from his body.
    Derkensun killed another man and half-turned, having reached the monk. His axe turned a complicated pair of butterflies between his hands as he wove it in the complex pattern that the Guard learned to keep their wrists strong.
    The assassins paused and the Bridegroom bellowed, ‘On me, Scholae!’
    Every man in the room could hear the pounding feet of the oncoming Guard.
    The assassins broke and ran. Derkensun got one as he turned, and a crossbow bolt took off the lower half of his right ear as he made his cut. The monk parried two sword thrusts and made a mighty swing, but his assailant turned his staff on his side sword, pinked the monk’s hand with a dagger in his off hand, and jumped back. He was as thin as a wraith and wore black, and Derkensun never saw his face – the man got through the gateway to the main audience chamber and ran in among the columns.
    Bridegroom tackled another one, took a dagger in the side for it, and broke the man’s arm in a wrestling lock. The desperate attacker stabbed