The Storm's Own Son (Book 2) by Anthony Gillis Read Free Book Online

spear and split the wielder's shield apart with his axe. Then he kicked the man backwards as he spun around and brought his axe into another's shoulder. Larogwan took a glancing spear strike on his shield, stepped inside the wielder's reach and used the rim of his shield to force the other's aside. With the opening created, he brought his axe into the foe's neck.
    Three enemies jabbed at Epos with spears. One glanced off his sturdy, closed-faced helm. He replied by putting his own spear into his opponent's unprotected eye. As the foe dropped, he coolly glanced another spear off his shield, brought his own low, and ran it through the opponent's thigh. Then he made a measured step to one side, avoiding the spear of his remaining foe. The other had stepped too far with the strike, letting his shield shift away from the gap in armor under his outstretched spear arm. Epos ran his spear through the spot.
    The center of the enemy front line stood ragged and shattered.  Talaos and his five beasts tore into the wound, slaying as they widened it. Behind them and around them, here and there, other enemies still lived. Others came forward past their own ranks to surround the invaders. Firio and Imvan, like a pair of predatory falcons or ravens seeing prizes, descended on them.
    Now, up the ladder and over the battlement, came the rest of Talaos's men. Grim and terrible, they advanced on the wavering enemy. Talaos, even as he slew, looked back at his advancing men and laughed.  The enemies all round wavered, seeing their deaths upon them.
    And then eighty grim and merciless men charged, like the flanks and claws of a beast with Talaos and his Madmen as the jaws. With them, death arrived. They howled, roared and slaughtered. It was over swiftly, and then they had only corpses around them. The rain poured from the sky in sheets as lightning flashed overhead.
    Talaos laughed. Victory, he thought. But only the first. They had work to do.
    The front left tower of the keep was a graveyard of shattered wood and bones. The other three still had ballistae, and even in this wind, they could hit at such close range. The crews in the towers were working furiously to reposition their weapons to do exactly that, while archers took aim at targets close enough to have some chance of success.
    "Vulkas!" roared Talaos, voice echoing like thunder, "Take those doors out!"
    The doors at the bases of the towers were iron-bound and strong, built to withstand assault. Vulkas ran, massive as a hurtling boulder, to the one at the front right of the keep.
    He made a turning leap, war mattock swinging wide.
    "ONE!" Vulkas bellowed.
    The mattock smashed into the door and sent it flying backward. Soldiers on the other side were crushed in a spray of blood against the opposite wall. Beyond the doorway were stairs, up and down. The giant charged toward a second tower, that on the back right.
    A group of Talaos's men charged into the open door, and both up and down the stairs.
    "Larogwan, take charge of the men below! Halmir, lead the men up top!" shouted Talaos.
    They nodded and ran.
    Vulkas reached the second tower.
    "TWO!"
    The gigantic warrior turned low, mattock swinging around and upward like the mallet in a game of ball. It smashed the door inward from the bottom, flipping its jagged remnants backward to cut a soldier behind it in half at the waist.
    "Kyrax, up! Epos, down!" roared Talaos as he followed Vulkas to the final tower.
    As they went, another group of Talaos's men poured behind Kyrax and Epos through the shattered tower door.
    On top of the first tower, Halmir was leading a swift slaughter.
    "THREE!" roared the giant, as he reached the last tower.
    Vulkas whirled, mattock upward, then down again in an arc that cracked the door in half, with splinters flying inward. This time no one had been so unwise as to guard behind it.
    "Vulkas, clear the tower!" bellowed Talaos, "Firio! Imvan! With me!"
    As Vulkas crashed his way up the stairs, smashing foes