Knight Eternal (A Novel of Epic Fantasy) (Harbinger of Doom Volume 3) Read Online Free Page A

to
no avail.
    “ What do we do?” yelled
one man.
    “ How do we bring it down?”
called out Baret.
    As he neared the very back
of the chapel, with little space left to run, Jude stopped and held
his ground.
    “ What do you want?” he
shouted. “Why do you plague us?” Jude’s eyes darted from the beast
to his wounded brother. Baret and Graham pulled Malcolm up and
dragged him from the room.
    “ To sate my thirst, I will
drink thy blood—the blood of kings,” said the fiend, its eyes wild;
foam dripped from its bony maw.
    “ To sate my hunger, I will
burn thy body and devour thy soul.”
    “ Can’t we give you some
mead and a chicken or two, perhaps a goat, and call our business
done?”
    “ No,” said the
messenger.
    “ Some fresh venison then?
Good gnomish ale to wash it down? We’ve a keg from ’58, brewed in
Portland Vale.”
    The messenger lunged forward.
    Jude stepped back and tripped over a chest
that sat beside the chapel’s lectern. The messenger’s claws raked
through the empty air where Jude had just stood. Jude landed on his
rump, the stout, ironbound oaken chest before him, and knew at once
what to do. He flung the lid open and sure and swift from within
pulled a strange glowing dagger of silver hue.
    The messenger recoiled and
sniffed the air. It locked its eyes on the glowing dagger and
growled. It flexed its claws and they began to change, to grow. In
moments, they passed six inches in length; darkened, black as
pitch; and sharpened to a razor’s edge.
    In one motion, Jude leaped to his feet and
flung the ensorcelled dagger with all his power. It struck the
messenger mid-chest, exploded through its sternum, and lodged
there. The creature emitted a devilish wail to whither the soul and
slay the spirit: a howl of such volume and pitch that near every
man in the room dropped to his knees. It clutched at the dagger
with both its taloned, skeletal hands, stumbled back a few steps,
and collapsed to one knee.
    “ Curse you, Eotrus,” spat
the beast. “And all thy line forevermore.”
    Its eyes rolled back in its head. It fell
backward, struck the marble floor, and exploded in a cloud of dust.
The glowing dagger remained, embedded in a heap of foul black
ash.
     

 
    II
    MAGES AND MONSTERS
     
    “ Don’t play by any rules,
just survive,
    That is all that
matters .”
    — Lord Angle
Theta
     
    Ornate figurines overran
the tabletop. They were cast in the likenesses of soldiers,
knights, elves, dwarves, wizards, lugron, and all manner of
monsters, various and sundry—all beautifully painted and mounted on
moveable hardwood bases inscribed with arcane symbols and numbers
that represented their attributes. Two compact carrying cases of
leather and hardwood, homes for the game tokens, sat open at the
end of the table. Their outsides scarred and battered from long
travels, the cases were heavily padded within to protect their
precious cargo.
    Two armed men sat on each
side of the table, while a fifth—a shiny mountain of steel and grit
called Angle Theta—observed from off to the side. Theta kept an eye
on the game’s progress while he skimmed through a dog-eared leather
rulesbook and studied several unused pieces.
    A tiny old man not much
more than three-feet tall, of bulbous nose and big ears, shook his
head and grinned. “A bad move, Magic Boy,” he said to the
fair-haired man that sat on the other side of the oaken table. “You
should’ve moved your stinking Knight Champion while you had the
chance. He’s in range of my Mage and his back is unprotected. He’s
worm food.”
    “ Excuse me, Ob,” said Par
Tanch, “but I saw your Mage and I have intentionally ignored him.
If you had been paying as much attention to the game as to your ale
you would know that your Mage is too wounded to throw a spell, so
he’s no threat. I’m afraid you’ll have to find another
move.”
    Ob narrowed his eyes; an
evil grin formed on his face. “You’ve forgotten, Magic Boy, my Mage
has the Dagger