Dai-San - 03 Read Online Free Page A

it violently backward, severing the jugular of an advancing warrior to his rear. He slammed headlong into two more, scattering them in a flutter of feathers. He swung right, then left, his bulging arms sticky and running with moisture.
    Before the mast he fought, as the decks were piled high with corpses and the footing became treacherously slippery. He was aware of a tall figure near him, hewing at the warriors, the man’s long blade just visible on the far periphery of his vision, shearing through a plumed head. He swung again into a mass of avian warriors then he was on his knees, coughing and shaking his head. Lights danced in front of his eyes. He tried to focus and could not. Just the hint of a blurred shadow, blossoming. He tasted blood and gore, still warm and moving as if alive. He spat, attempting to rise, slipping in the slick muck on the deck. His vision cleared. Severed head of a plumed warrior staring at him accusingly from the deck. Hit me, he thought dazedly. Who threw it?
    He blinked back the mingled sweat and blood running down his scalp. Looked up, stared into the twisted face of the first mate.
    Indeed there was no lower jaw. White scars, livid and pulsing, were raised from the otherwise sunburned flesh like the hideous distended veins of the dead. They ran from the twisted upper lip across the gouged bridge of the nose onto an island of scar tissue pooled under the right eye.
    The first mate laughed, a strange susurration, and slashed out with his boot. The plumed skull flew into Ronin’s chest. And in that moment Ronin knew, saw the swift flash of white as the light caught the sheen of the artificial left eye, and abruptly he was hurtled back in time to twin feluccas flying across a vast, uncharted sea of ice, locked together, one now to the howling, chill wind, as two powerful figures fought, one for control, the other for freedom, darkness and light, a vicious battle. Ronin had fought Freidal then, had felled the Security Saardin of the Freehold with a brutal blow to his face.
    He had thought Freidal dead, his sadistic torturings and murders of Ronin’s old friends avenged at last as the two ships parted with only the Saardin’s ever-present scribe left standing, immobile and mute, aboard the helmless vessel as he had cut it away.
    Ronin twisted away so that Freidal’s next kick only grazed his ribs instead of breaking them, as the Saardin had intended.
    He regained his feet and lifted his sword.
    ‘Come to me,’ hissed Freidal, his misshapen mouth giving his words a distorted, leaden quality. ‘Come and meet your death.’ He raised his own blade. But it was he who advanced on Ronin. Their swords clashed.
    ‘And where is Borros? He too I must seek out and destroy.’
    The blades swung away, sliced through the air.
    ‘Dead and buried long ago. Free at last of his terror and beyond your blade.’
    Freidal lunged, in and down, and Ronin turned, parrying.
    ‘Do you expect me to believe that? Traitor! You have spat upon the Law of the Freehold and there is only one penalty for such a transgression.’
    ‘After seeing this world, you still cling to the Law of the Freehold?’
    Swords flashing, the panting of hot breath, muscles locked and straining, eyes seeking an advantage.
    ‘This world only validates the Law; if you were not such a fool, you would understand that. All is chaos here. War, death, and the dying lying broken in streets of mud and filth. We of the Freehold are beyond all that. The Law is our mistress; it is what sets us apart from this scum. We set the Law above all else, thus are we to remain men. But this is something that I do not expect you to understand. You had already reverted to the animalisms of the Surface world while in the Freehold. You were never one of us.’ He lunged again. ‘You flaunted the Law; now you must die.’ With a grunt, he swung hard into Ronin’s side, twisting his blade in an attempt to evade Ronin’s block. But Ronin felt the excess pressure and