Patricia Briggs Read Online Free

Patricia Briggs
Book: Patricia Briggs Read Online Free
Author: The Hob's Bargain
Tags: Fiction, General, Fantasy fiction, Fantasy, Magic
Pages:
Go to
to track when we were children. I glanced at Kith, but, as usual since his return last fall, it was impossible to tell what he was thinking.
    Talon looked a little disturbed at my change of subject. He spoke slowly. “Caulem must have been coming for help, but they’d posted someone on the main trail to your da’s. His horse ran into Albrin’s yard covered from ribs to croup in blood. Kith rang the alarm bell and we all headed out. We left some men at your ma’s, and the rest of us followed the horse’s trail.”
    I licked my lips nervously, wishing my thoughts weren’t so clear. Father had just bought that horse from Albrin, but the track it had followed should have taken it past my parents’ house before it ran to Albrin’s yard. My parents had an alarm bell in the yard, too. Ma should have been out ringing the bell before the horse made it as far as Albrin’s—if she’d been alive to ring it.
    The raiders hadn’t taken grain sacks from the barn because they already had enough grain, stolen from my parents.
    â€œMa?” I said softly, as if my quietness would change the answer I knew they would give me.
    Talon looked around for help, but no one else took up the story. “They started at Widow Mavrenen’s,” he said as softly as I had, the way he spoke to fidgeting young horses. “Killed her and that old dog of hers. Took everything that wasn’t nailed down. They hit your folks’ place next. Mistress Ani was there and your ma. We figure they must have put up quite a fight from the looks of things.”
    He swallowed and looked uncomfortable. “Poul, he was with us, too. We left him and his da there to take care of things, but we were afraid, from the direction the raiders were taking, that they might decide to hit you up here before they left off.”
    I nodded dully. Ma, Ani, and her unborn child were dead, too.
    â€œThere’s no one farther out than us,” I said, telling them nothing they didn’t already know. My voice was slurring, but I didn’t care enough to correct it. “The old place up on the hill has been vacant since old man Lovik died of lung fever last winter. They didn’t take much more from our place—just the pony, really. And Gram’s silver mirror.” I hadn’t looked for it, but it must be gone, too.
    â€œHow is it that you escaped?” asked Kith suspiciously.
    His harsh tones pulled my attention to him. I’d grown up with Kith, fished with him when we were children, danced—and flirted—with him before he’d been called to war. When he’d come back to us, he’d come back with a loss that was more than his arm….
    â€œTime for you to go home, can’t fight with one arm. Too bad, really, you’d become quite a soldier…”
    I swallowed, forcing Lord Moresh’s voice away, knowing that they were all watching me. I’d never had visions like this before, as if all I had to do was think of something and the sight grabbed it for me.
    â€œIt was stupid,” I said, finally. I knew another time I’d have been angry and hurt at his suspicion. “I was starting down the stairs to the cellar to get some salt pork for…for Daryn’s lunch when I heard them outside. So I hid down in the cellar with a rug over the trapdoor. I waited until it was quiet before I came out.”
    I walked past them then, to the wagon. I think Albrin asked me something, but I couldn’t focus on it. I lifted up the quilt—it wasn’t one of Ma’s, she never used flowers in her patterns.
    I stared at the bodies lying in the wagon. Death had marked them so they didn’t look like the people I had loved. Someone had closed their eyes, but I tucked the horse blanket over Daryn’s head anyway, climbing on the wheel to get close enough to do it. Then I covered them back over with the flowered quilt.
    â€œI think I have some
Go to

Readers choose