Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) Read Online Free Page A

other’s language
was a painful, tedious business and caused all sorts of trouble. Best to do the
job yourself and get acquainted with strangers over something less crucial than
a king’s errand.
    More excuses still. Degany decided
his horse wasn’t as full of shit as he was.
    A horn bellowed ahead. Gehart, his
brother-by-marriage, and three men of the garrison had ridden ahead more than
an hour ago to find a suitable camp and possibly elk for their spits. The horn’s
echo sounded and resounded, deep in the gullies, high in the clefts. Degany
reined in and waited. Wolf and the rest of the party did the same. One blast
meant danger. Two, company. Three, campsite established.
    The clouds swallowed the echo. None
followed it.
    “Trouble,” Wolf said.
    Degany tugged his sword haft to
make sure the blade hadn’t frozen to the scabbard, then dug in his spurs. His
brothers thundered after him. The garrison slipped into double-time.
    The clearing, sheltered between wooded
slopes, had become a killing ground. Blood had melted the snow, and fresh snow
had fallen on top of the dark pools, reminding Degany of those sugary
confections that Truva was fond of. He dismounted, grunting and grateful when
the ache in his legs waned, and stepped carefully around the bodies. Dwarves,
forty or fifty of them, lay torn and broken and turning gray in the icy air.
Most still held khorzai in frozen fists, and many of the points on those
pick-axes were stained with blood. Or something like blood. Many of the pools,
too, were a brighter color than they ought to have been.
    “Are the clans at war?” Wolf asked.
He stood amid the slaughter, turning slowly.
    Degany’s brothers spread out,
hunting for valuables, or the lack of them, that might attest to why these
dwarves had been slain. The column of soldiers caught up, and Gehart motioned
them to stay out of the clearing.
    “These dwarves are of a single clan,”
Degany replied.
    “How can you tell?”
    “Same mark on their picks. Same
beading in their beards.” He should have brought Drys. It was Drys who needed
to know the dwarven culture, not this lowlander’s son.
    “Oh, yes, I see now,” Wolf said,
bending close to one of the bodies. He straightened again as if someone had
lashed him in the backside. “What was that?”
    The boy’s ears were sharp; Degany
heard nothing, but two of his brothers had come to attention at the same time. At
the edge of the clearing, a gray-green bough near the ground shivered contrary
to the wind.
    “Wolves, likely,” Degany said.
“Come to investigate the stink of blood. Relax, will you? They’ll take a body
before they attack able-bodied men.”
    “Do you think wolves killed them in
the first place? I mean, look!” The boy pointed, disgust twisting his mouth.
Neither his eyes nor his instincts failed him. Degany couldn’t deny that many
of the wounds looked like ragged teeth marks, but others were certainly dealt
by blades.
    “Diggs!” called Dastyr from across
the clearing. Degany hated that nickname, but he couldn’t remember a day he
hadn’t owned it. “What do you make of this?”
    Joining his younger brother, Degany
examined the snow. Deep drifts under the trees had been disturbed, pressed flat
in places, and that bright blood, curdled to ice, left a clear trail deep into
the forest.
    “See? Wolves,” said Wolf smugly.
“They dragged some of the bodies away already. They got a den up there, I bet.
Should we hunt ‘em down?”
    Degany ignored the assessment. So
did Dastyr and Gehart who gathered close. “Trail’s twice as broad as a dwarf,”
he observed softly. “Could be litters. But why drag the wounded into the forest
when Ristencort lies in the other direction?”
    “Outpost?” Gehart suggested.
    The dwarves stuck to their fortified
cities. Too traditional for their own good, they had no desire or ambition to
strike out and establish outposts farther afield. “I don’t know this mark.”
Degany nudged a khorzai with his