Knight's Shadow Read Online Free

send him into a rage. I’m usually very good at making Knights want to kill me as quickly as possible. But he just laughed. ‘You see? That’s why you Greatcoats can never become Knights.’
    ‘Because we don’t kill children?’ I flicked my point at him again but he batted it away with his hand.
    ‘Because you think honour comes from actions – as if a horse who stamps his feet three times when you show him three apples is a scholar.’ He began attacking me with quick, vicious swings of his warsword, turning the momentum of each attack into the next as I slid and skipped back and forth to avoid the blows. As I stumbled backwards, I was praying to Saint Werta-who-walks-the-waves that I wouldn’t hit a rock or tree root and fall down. I long ago gave up hope of living to an old age but I still had aspirations of dying with slightly more dignity than a Knight’s warsword removing my head while I was stuck on the ground with my arse in the mud.
    ‘Honour is granted by the Gods and by a man’s Lord,’ the Knight said, continuing his attacks as well as his lecture, ‘not earned from learning some litany of children’s verses. What is sin for you is virtue for me,
Trattari
.’ His blade came down at an odd angle and I was forced to parry it with both rapiers. The force of his blow nearly knocked them from my hands. ‘Nothing will come from the noblest act of your short life,’ he said. ‘But the Gods’ blessings will come to me when I squeeze the life from that little bitch . . . that . . . bi—’
    He stopped talking then, perhaps because the point of my rapier had found the opening of his mouth beneath his mask. I kept pushing the blade until it found the back of his skull and stopped at the steel of his helm. The Knight sank to his knees, his body twitching: not yet dead, but well on his way.
    Kest sometimes makes fun of me for talking too much during a fight, but unlike some, I’ve had enough practice to keep my focus while I do it.
    I withdrew my blade and took a moment to catch my breath as my opponent fell back to the ground. Only a Tristian Knight would make the argument that to be honourable doesn’t require behaving honourably; that murdering a young girl is justified so long as your lawful Lord demands it. But there you have it. That’s the country of my birth and the place I’d spent most of my life trying to defend from itself. If that meant I had to kill a few Knights along the way, well, I thought, as I took in deep breaths and tried to slow my heart, I could live with that.
    ‘Brasti?’ I called out.
    There was no answer and I feared he might have been struck down. He’d been carrying his sword and that wasn’t his best weapon, even in close combat like this. I needed to get to him and Kest so we could find Aline. I’d taken too long with the Knight . . .
    Hells. We never should have stayed in the village. I know they were hoping I would get better rather than worse – so was I, but you don’t need to be a grand military strategist to know that when you’re fighting a force fifty times your size you don’t stay in one place too long.
    As I ran through the mist, filled with ever-growing anger and frustration, I tripped over a body on the ground. As I caught myself, I looked down and through the smoke I saw the still-bleeding corpse of a young girl in a bright blue dress, her arms crossed over her face as if she were still cowering from the blow that had already killed her.

Chapter Three
     
    The Dead Girl
     
    The harsh sound of my own ragged breath filled my ears as I stood over the girl’s body, trying to steel myself for what I was about to see. S
aint Zaghev-who-sings-for-tears, please, no, not now . . . Let it not be her
. I knelt down and prised the girl’s arms away from her face.
    As I forced the arm aside, I saw the child’s wide eyes, her mouth frozen in a distorted mixture of fear and agony from the blow of the blade that had cut so deeply into her skull, the blood