Archiwum
- Index
- Roberts Nora Miłość na deser 01 Miłość na deser
- Hilari Bell Goblin Wood 01 The Goblin Wood v2
- Giovanni Guareschi [Don Camillo 01] The Little World of Don Camillo (pdf)
- Anthony, Piers Tarot 01 God of Tarot
- Christine Young [Highland 01] Highland Honor (pdf)
- 398. Gerard Cindy Dzikie serca 01 Ni srebro ni złoto
- Carter Ally Dziewczyny z Akademii Gallagera 01 Powiedziałabym ci, że cię kocham ale
- Ciara Lake [Xihirian Shifters 01] Xihirah [Siren Classic] (pdf)
- Sandemo Margit Saga o Królestwie Światła 01 Wielkie Wrota
- Waverly Shannon Antalogia Noworoczna 01 Wesołych Świąt, Aniołku
- zanotowane.pl
- doc.pisz.pl
- pdf.pisz.pl
- docucrime.xlx.pl
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late companion's body and she stumbled, going to her knees. She stared at the
dead face of her companion, limned in moonlight.
"Shit! There's someone back here. She got Torys!"
"Yes, I did," whispered Talons in the mon's ear. The mon started, drawing
steel. Talons took her eyes first, letting her cries escape to draw her
companions. Then she slashed her throat, nearly taking her head off.
One came forward, sword drawn, the second stayed back to strike a light and
set a torch flaring. Talons faded back still more, waiting in the shadows of a
corner building.
"Children didn't do this," the third one muttered, kneeling beside her two
dead companions. "Neither did that cripple Blackbird."
"This is like that one got the others in the Market Square... They've got a
pro helping."
Yes, they do. Talons sheathed her claws, drawing a pair of blades. The first
caught the torchbearer dead center, a clean kill. She keeled over, the torch
guttering out.
The fourth turned to run, but Talons' matchless night vision let her put her
next blade in the woman's back. The woman staggered against the wall and
Talons was on her, taking her eyes and then her throat.
"Now there's just Sorrow," the assassin muttered as she turned back toward
the house. A resounding crash shattered the night, coming from the direction
of the front door. In any other part of Armaten that noise would have brought
armed people crowding from their houses in response to their neighbor's
danger; but in the poor quarter, no one emerged, if the denizens reacted at
all, it was to cower down and hope whatever it was did not turn in their
direction.
Talons threw caution to the winds, thinking only of the children and the
debts she owed them for their aid, which had placed them in this danger.
Moonlight limned the giant form in the shattered doorway. Talons recognized it
from drawings and the descriptions of others: nearly nine feet tall, bending
to enter through the twisted remnants of the door frame, stood a broad, long
muzzled, blue-green skinned stone troll.
"Hadjys Nine Hells! How do I fight that thing?"
"They regenerate," said a small voice beside her. "Gotta give'em a wound
kills faster than they can mend."
Talons, repressing a startled movement before it took form in her muscles,
looked down: two of the children stood there, accompanied by a third that she
sensed was not a child despite its diminutive size. Mysten, one of Blackbird's
"add-ons," war-orphans never officially adopted and Tomlyn, the one of her
twins, extended a long rope of braided spell cords to Talons.
"Thought this might help," the third small person said, doffing an over-large
slouch hat to expose his red hair and enormous pointed ears. "Pieface at your
service, military attaché and advisor," he said seriously. "I'm an observer,
not a participant. Now you'd best take that cord and get in there before they
all get killed."
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"Badree Nym!"
"Yup! Now get movin'."
* * * *
Blackbird did not know what the enemy might throw at the house, but from hard
learned experience during the war, especially the incident that crippled her,
the old campaigner preferred to assume that whatever it might be would be
equal to the best they could block it with, Talons included. Therefore a
little over compensation might be called for.
Most of the children she sent to the root cellar with Paunys, knowing any she
kept with her would probably die: Paunys had not yet regained her full
strength, but had been a noted swordsmon in her day. Blackbird prayed that
Paunys would be able to deal with anything that got past those in the front
room.
In point of fact, she grimly counted everyone in the front room with her as
already dead: her crippling and the war had evolved a hard philosophy in the
woman, that of assuming you were dead and then trying to take the enemy with
you.
She stood before the front door, wearing a shield bound like a breastplate
around her chest and useless right arm, holding the sword that matched it at
the ready, both taken from the gift hoard of Dynanna. Blackbird would never be
as good with her left hand as she had been with her right, but she had worked
hard for many years to compensate.
Zarim, displaying an unusual stubbornness, stood behind her with a large
spiked club, insisting he had trained with one as a child before being
captured and sold into slavery. Blackbird loved him intensely as did Paunys.
Although they had purchased him as a mere love slave, the quick witted, glib
black man from Jedrua had found a deeper place in their hearts deep enough
that they risked losing him by setting him free. He had promptly moved into a
separate bedroom and made the two women court him formally, after the Sharani
fashion: the result had been Birdie.
Blackbird tried not to think about all of that, but could not quite suppress
it. "It's a good day to die."
Lizard, who had taken up another of the paired swords and shields, held a
position near the long table in front of their tattered couch. Before his
sister's death in the war, she had trained him a little; just the basic moves,
not enough to call himself a swordsmon, but for years afterward he had
practiced those small movements in secret; and while one part of his mind said
it would not be enough, another part prayed it would be for Birdie's sake
and the child he had claimed as his own.
The first impact on the door startled everyone, but Blackbird gave them a nod
that said, "Stand easy, wait." They watched the door splinter and crack,
giving on its hinges and the thick oaken bar Blackbird had nailed into place,
as something huge beyond their imagining rammed it again and again.
Then it came through.
Blackbird intercepted it first. "Stone Troll!" she shouted, identifying what
they had never seen before. She opened a long gash in its arm before it
backhanded her across the room. Blackbird struck the corner farthest from the
couch hard, her head impacting with a sickening thud and she slid down,
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settling into a sitting position, unmoving.
Zarim, after twenty years in Shaurone, remembered very little of his mother
tongue, having been barely in his teens when he was captured and sold by
slavers; yet seeing his beloved Blackbird fall, triggered deep memories: he
gave a long ululating warcry of his tribe and charged in. He got in three
blows with his spiked club, two to the troll's face and another opening a long
gash in its arm before it hurled him to lie unmoving at Blackbird's feet.
Jysy and Arruth, in the rafters, dropped a long corded rope made of spell
cord around its neck as they leaped down. Gravity and momentum in their favor,
they yanked the beast off its feet. Quickly they secured the rope to a spike
driven into the floor. The troll thrashed about, but its neck was too thickly
muscled to be in any danger of strangulation from the cord. All that it seemed
to do was enrage the creature. Jysy gave Arruth a nod and they charged in with
their short blades out. But they only got in a couple of cuts before a lashing
kick sent they tumbling into a knot, falling together, motionless into the
east corner of the room.
Then Lizard came in, his sister's meager teachings serving him. He batted the
troll's arms aside, driving his blade into its guts. But he was in too close,
too fast and the beast caught him in the chest, flinging him back, across the
long table. Darkness claimed him as he struck the table to lie across it as
still as death.
Talons entered the fray last. The troll was too large, almost as broad as it
was tall, for her to reach its eyes or throat in her usual fighting style. She
had heard many tales of encounters with the stone trolls from the veterans of
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