Frostborn: The Master Thief Read Online Free

then the orcs charged him. 
    The first orc stabbed, and Ridmark jumped back, his staff in both hands. He thrust, and the warrior caught the blow on his shield, the surface trembling from the impact. The second warrior slashed, but extended himself too far on the strike, leaving himself exposed for a heartbeat.
    A heartbeat was all Ridmark needed. His staff caught the underside of the warrior’s wrist, and he heard the bones crack. The orc screamed and stumbled back, his sword falling from loose fingers, and fell into the path of the first orc. They slammed into each other, and Ridmark struck once, twice, three times, the precise blows of his heavy staff cracking skulls and crushing windpipes. 
    He stepped back, looking for more foes, and saw none. Calliande stared at him, blinking. 
    The entire fight had taken less than a minute.
    “They were looking for you,” she said.
    “Aye,” said Ridmark, frowning at the corpses. He would have expected the orcs to come for Calliande, to take her to Shadowbearer or to claim the empty soulstone. But why come for him?
    “You annoyed the orcs of Kothluusk, I take it?” said Calliande.
    “Perhaps,” said Ridmark. “It was years ago. I was looking for a ruined monastery that might have held records of the Frostborn. I fought some Kothluuskan bandits, killed a few. But the Kothluuskan orcs are always fighting each other, and that was three years ago. I don’t doubt that they would kill me if they had the chance, but to come all this way just to find me…no, there must be something else going on.” 
    He heard the clang of steel upon steel, and in the distance saw a faint flare of purple light through the trunks.
    The glow given off by Morigna’s spells. 
    “It seems we are about to find out,” said Calliande.
    Ridmark nodded and hurried forward, Calliande following him. He saw two more dead orcs, both slain by massive axe blows to the chest. The sounds of battle grew louder, and he heard the harsh war cries of Kothluuskan orcs. A gleam of something metallic caught his eye, and he saw a squat form armored in bronze-colored steel lying motionless below a tree, the gray skin of its face covered in crimson blood.
    A dead dwarf. 
    Ridmark wanted to investigate, but the sounds of fighting were ahead, and he kept running.
    He burst into a large clearing, and saw the melee. 
    A dozen dead orcs and four more dead dwarves lay scattered upon the ground, and thirty Kothluuskan warriors surged forward, screaming to Mhor. Four dwarves armored in bronze-colored dwarven steel stood back to back in the center of the clearing, wielding axes, maces, and heavy shields.
    Ridmark’s companions fought around them.
    Kharlacht wielded a massive dark elven greatsword and wore armor of blue dark elven steel, his green-skinned face grim and implacable behind his tusks, his black hair bound in a warrior’s topknot. Even as Ridmark watched, he swung the sword in a powerful blow, taking the head from a Mhorite warrior in a spray of blood. 
    Brother Caius and Gavin fought behind him. Caius wore a brown friar’s robe, a mace of dwarven steel in his right hand, a wooden cross bouncing against his chest. Like all dwarves, he had gray, granite-colored skin, his eyes like disks of blue crystal in his face, his beard and his remaining hair turning gray. Gavin stood at his side, shield raised and orcish sword drawn back. He was a boy of fifteen, with curly brown hair and brown eyes, and he looked much harder than the boy Ridmark had met outside the village of Aranaeus a few weeks past. 
    Which was not surprising, given some of the foes they had faced.
    Morigna, as ever, stood alone. 
    She was about twenty, lean and pale with black eyes and long black hair pulled back into a braid. She wore a leather jerkin and trousers and boots, a tattered cloak of brown and green strips hanging from her shoulders. In her left hand she carried a slender staff carved with sigils, and purple fire blazed around her right