In Legend Born Read Online Free

disperse. He just hoped he could get past these raving Silerians fast enough to do it before all of them were set upon by—
    An agonizing shock of pain pierced his back, ripping a harsh grunt from his throat. He was pushing himself off the hard cobblestones before he even realized he had fallen. An arrow , he thought, drawing harsh breaths as additional waves of pain started washing over him. As he had been taught long ago, he had not let go of either sword, but his left arm was already growing numb. The Valdani, he knew, often coated their arrow tips with strange poisons. Some mixtures could kill a man if the dosage was strong enough; others merely put him to sleep for a few hours.
    More arrows flew into the fray, and then Valdani horsemen were clattering across the stones, sweeping their short, heavy swords through the crowd. Screams assaulted Tansen's ears as his left hand relaxed against his will, letting his sword fall to the ground. Someone ran straight into him, jarring the arrow which stuck out of his back; the pain made his vision go black. Dizzy from the poison seeping into his blood, he whirled toward the clatter of hooves, but his remaining sword encountered nothing. Light flashed before his eyes and figures danced in and out of focus. He held off attacking, unable to distinguish between Outlookers and Silerians. The rasp of his own breath and the desperate thumping of his heart grew so loud that, in the end, he never even heard the rider who rode up and seized his long, single braid to drag him along the hard stones while he clumsily tried to keep away from the horse's prancing feet.
    The last thing he was aware of was someone prying the sword out of his useless right hand before he lost consciousness.
     

     
    Everything hurt.
    Someone was dipping a red hot poker into the wound in his back, over and over again. Someone else was kneading his muscles with steel claws. And someone was driving a herd of horses through his head.  The Fires of Dar scalded his eyes when he tried to open them. With a muttered curse, he gave up the effort.
    "He's awake!"
    Tansen felt a sharp blade at his throat. It seemed reasonable to assume he was not among friends.
    "If you make even one move," someone warned him, "I'll slit your throat like a sacrificial goat."
    "I've never understood that." His voice sounded raspy and weak. He wondered how long he'd been unconscious. "What makes your priests think that slaughtering a goat, of all things, will —"
    "Shut up, barbarian!"
    He swallowed, trying to ease the dryness in his throat, and felt the bite of the blade against his skin. "I suppose a drink of water is out of the question."
    The sharp slap across his face indicated that it was indeed out of the question.
    "Tell Commander Koroll that the prisoner is awake and ready for questioning," the now-familiar voice ordered.
    Tansen's stomach twisted with secret fear. He had often seen the results of Valdani "questioning." His mother had died from it. He made a silent vow to Dar, and to all of the other gods under whose protection he had sojourned these past nine years: If I must die in this place, then I will take as many of them with me as I can. He was deadly even without his swords. However, with his hands and feet manacled, even he was at a distinct disadvantage. He had just recognized the heavy weights around his wrists and ankles: the iron finery of a prisoner.
    All right, maybe he should have hidden his swords; he had little to fear from Society assassins if the Valdani killed him before the next sunrise, after all. But how was he to have known the Outlookers had become so vigilant? There was a time you could have smuggled a whole cartload of weapons past the Outlookers and bought them off with an easy bribe if they caught you. There was also a time, he realized as the Outlooker's hot breath brushed his face, that no citizen of Cavasar would have attacked an Outlooker in broad daylight.
    Things had indeed changed.
    Eyes still