The Warlord's Domain by Peter Morwood Read Free Book Online Page A

still seated Grand Warlord to stab a handspan of steel into his erstwhile companion’s neck, so that the man collapsed with a clatter of armor and a spurting of blood to die on the steps at Etzel’s feet.
    Voord smiled, a minute quirk of his thin mouth which betrayed as much relief as anything else. He looked weary and a little sick, as any man might who had faced the imminence of his own death so early in the morning and seen it set aside. “Command them again,
Woydach
,” he suggested. “Maybe they didn’t hear you the first time?”
    The Grand Warlord said nothing, but as a horrid suspicion formed in his mind so tiny beads of icy sweat formed on his upper lip. “How long?” he asked, surprised by the calmness of his own voice.
    “Hault, it’s been four years in the Bodyguard for you, yes?”
    “Nearer five in the regiment, lord,” said the soldier. “And three of those in the Warlord’s personal guard.”
    “I have always believed in advance planning,
Woydach
,” said Voord quietly, “especially when I could never be sure that you might find my past usefulness an embarrassment and myself someone to be rid of in haste and without ceremony. Thus… Directly I gained a little power and influence, I prepared this… ah… insurance against unforeseen events.” He nudged the dead guard’s fallen shortsword with the toe of his boot. “It seems to me that neither my time nor my money was wasted.”
    “So you knew all this time that you were safe?” Etzel’s mouth curled into a sneer. “It explains your bravado rather better than the unlikely possibility of some real courage.”
    “Not that you’d believe me, or that I worry whether you do or not, but no—until Hault made his move I couldn’t be certain that I was not alone. Not that I need be concerned one way or another… not any more. Hault, come here.”
    The soldier took the few steps necessary to reach his true commander’s side and saluted Guards-fashion with a snap of the still-bloody shortsword across his chest that sent a nasty little spattering across the floor. “Sir?”
    “Show him. Now.”
    “Sir!” Hault saluted again, then brought the sword down from the salute and straight out into a thrust. It went into Voord’s flank in the soft place just under his ribcage, met nothing more resistant than internal organs and came out the other side as a repellent peak in the
hautheisart’s
tunic that tore just enough to let its point glitter briefly in the lamplight. Voord gasped and went more pallid even than his normal complexion; he gasped again as it was withdrawn, but not loudly enough to drown the sucking sound as entrails reluctantly released their grasp on steel.
    There was no blood, and only two small rips in a previously undamaged military tunic betrayed that anything untoward had happened. “Uncomfortable to feel,” said Voord, panting slightly, “and unsettling to watch, but having a tooth pulled is more painful.”
    “Father of Fires…” Etzel choked out the oath, then covered his mouth and gagged.
    “That One has nothing to do with it!” snapped Voord, suddenly and unreasonably savage. “Or with me!” And then, more controlled and so softly that he might have been speaking to himself: “The Old Ones give me more than stories to believe, and my sacrifices in Their name reward me with more than the stink of burnt beef or the babbled second-hand benedictions of some disinterested priest…”
    Woydach
Etzel looked up at the windows of his private chamber and beyond them to the low, cool sun of winter noon. He knew that he was soon to die, and though the certainty of that knowledge took away his fear of death as he had seen it leave so many at the foot of the scaffold steps, what remained and was enhanced by his familiarity with Voord was a terror of the manner of his dying. And because of that, because nothing he might say now could make his situation worse or better, there were the questions that he wanted to ask no