03 - God King Read Online Free

slapped him hard, knocking him back onto his haunches. Instantly, the
boy was on his feet, his grief swamped by anger. He reached for a sword that
wasn’t there, and hurled himself at Azazel.
    “I’ll kill you!” he screamed.
    Azazel sidestepped his rush and pushed the boy to the ground. Before the boy
could rise, he planted a booted foot in his chest.
    “Anger is not your friend, boy,” said Azazel. “Learn to control it or I will
throw you from these cliffs. Listen to me, and listen well. You are the last of
your tribe. No other will take you in except as a slave, and the land will kill
you if you do not start using your head. We are going to travel into the north
and you will do exactly as I say or it will be the death of us both. I will
teach you what you need to survive, but if you ever disobey me, even once, I
will kill you. Do you understand me?”
    The boy nodded. His grief and anger were gone, replaced by smouldering
resentment.
    That was good. It was a beginning.
    He held his hand out to the boy, hauling him to his feet. An angry red weal
burned on his cheek where Azazel had struck him.
    “That is the first lesson I will teach you,” said Azazel. “It won’t be the
last, but it will be the least painful.”
    The boy regarded him coldly, rubbing his cheek and holding himself
straighter.
    “Look out there,” said Azazel, pointing out to the ocean. “What do you see?”
    “The raiders’ ships,” said the boy.
    “Yes, and they are going home to a land that hates you.”
    “Will they be back?”
    “I doubt it. Southerners don’t do well with this cold. Even the Udose don’t
get winters like we do up here.”
    The boy looked at him with a sneer curling his lip. “You say ‘we’ like you
are one of us.”
    “I am more part of this land than you will ever be,” Azazel promised him. He
turned from the diminishing ships, setting a brisk pace along the path over the
cliffs. This was the first day of their journey, and who knew how long it would
last.
    The boy trotted after him, throwing careful glances towards the smoke rising
from the ruin of his home.
    “Will we ever come back here?” he asked.
    “Oh yes,” promised Azazel. “One day we will. I promise. It will be many years
from now, but we will return and we will avenge all that has befallen us.”
    “Good,” said the boy, his jaw clenched and his blue eyes cold and dead.
    Azazel paused in his march as a thought occurred to him.
    “What is your name, boy?” he asked. “What do they call you?”
    The boy drew his shoulders back, and said, “I am called Morkar.”

 
 
——
Young Minds and Old Men
     
     
    Eoforth tried to keep his frustration in check, but it was hard in the face
of such thick-headedness. Teon wouldn’t listen; he had no interest in listening,
and stared defiantly at Eoforth, daring him to press on. Eoforth perched on the
edge of his desk, a finely made piece of furniture crafted by Holtwine himself,
and folded his arms across his chest.
    “I ask you again, Teon,” he said, pointing to the tally marks chalked on the
slate. “If you multiply the first number by the second, what do you end up
with?”
    Teon looked over at Gorseth, his best friend and companion in troublemaking.
He winked and said, “A sore head. It’s all nonsense anyway. Who needs numbers
when you can swing a sword as well as I can?”
    He flexed his arm and Gorseth laughed on cue. The rest of the class nervously
followed.
    “Enough!” said Eoforth, lifting the birch cane from beside his desk.
    “Go ahead,” said Teon, “I dare you. My father will kill you, old man or not.”
    For all his bluster, Teon was popular with the other boys. Powerfully built
for his age and blessed with handsome features and an easy manner beyond the
classroom. Close to his fifteenth birthday, he would soon ride out on his first
war hunt. His father was Orvin, one of Alfgeir’s captains of battle, and the boy
saw little need to spend his