Blood Of Kings: The Shadow Mage Read Online Free Page B

supper.” He smiled reassuringly. “We have some unfinished business to attend to.” His smile turned into a wicked grin. Aliss blushed and returned a shy smile. It was enough to send renewed fire washing over him. “Go back inside out of the cold and bar the door until my return.” He kissed her hard before turning away and walking the short distance from his cottage and workshop at the edge of town to the village square.
    “Tomas!” a man called to him as he approached the gathered group. He could hear the hoarse sobs of a woman drifting on the night breeze. Dark shapes congregated around the well at the centre of town, elongated shadows made from orange torchlight stretching out from each of them.
    “Daved,” Tomas greeted the man, as he approached the group. The moment the blacksmith arrived he became the focal point of the gathering. Men spoke in hurried tones, talking over one another to give him the news. He stood a head taller than the tallest man there. His broad chest and powerful arms giving a hint to the power contained in his wide frame. Dark brown hair tumbled down to his shoulders, a beard of the same colour covered his face.
    “My baby! My baby!” a woman wailed in the background. “Who will save my baby?”
    “A bad business,” Daved said, offering his hand to the big blacksmith.
    “I’m told wolves snatched the child from its bed,” Tomas said.
    “Aye,” Daved answered. “Morten here has spoken of a large pack taking several of his sheep in the last few days. They must have come from the Great Wood.”
    “We’ll see,” Tomas answered, unable to keep the doubt from his words.
     
    A group of twelve men filed from the village, with a round yellow moon and the torches they bore to light their way. They were armed with an array of weapons, from axes normally used to fell trees, to clubs and hoes. And the crossbow Tomas slung over his shoulder. Morten led the way. He would take them to where he had caught a glimpse of the pack, two days previously, at the edge of his land, where it bordered the Great Wood.
    When they arrived they found more evidence of the wolves’ presence. Half-eaten remains of sheep lay scattered about, barely visible in the silver glow of the moon. In the background the Great Wood loomed, a wall of darkness bordering the valley. A wolf howled, sending a shiver down Tomas’s spine.
    “Curse their flea-bitten hides. They have feasted royally on my livestock,” Morten grumbled.
    “So it would seem,” Tomas agreed, as he toe-pocked a woolly carcass. “So why risk coming into the village to take a child?”
    “Because they are savage beasts who do not think like men,” Morten spat. “They should all be hunted down and skinned. We must rid the valley of their scourge once and for all.”
    “All beasts understand fear, and all are wary of man,” the big blacksmith said.
    A second wolf answered the call of the first followed by many more until the dark forest seemed to ring with the sound of their cries. The men shuffled nervously.
    “They are close. Now is our chance to rid the valley of their curse,” Morten said.
    “Do we enter the forest in the dark? The Great Wood is not such a good place to become lost in at night. The stories…” one of the villagers began.
    “Pah! Stories? Are you afraid of tall tales told by your grandma, while you bounced on her knee? I have lived on the forest’s edge all my life. There are no spirits and sprites of the forest, only beasts who kill sheep, and snatch babes from their beds,” Morten raged.
    “Enough!” Tomas interjected. “Let’s get this done and return to our homes.”
    They marched, in single file, into the gloom of the Great Wood, all eyeing their dark surroundings nervously, each of them with a feeling of being watched. The wolves were not happy with the beasts who walked on two legs encroaching on their territory. They put up a display of defiance, and a show of strength, unsettling the men at first. But