Storm Bride Read Online Free

like lightning bolts around her head, then stepped forward and touched her nose to his face.
    “Are you ready?” he asked.
    Lashkat chuffed. She seemed to smell the battle on him, in the lines of rouged and blackened grease drawn on his face, in the incense of sweat and blood that rose from his skin. Battle was an old friend to them. Keshlik would trust her to carry him alone into battle with a thousand foes, and she would drag his dead and broken body back to the yurts rather than flee without him. Only Juyut was a better companion in battle, though he spoiled it by being proud and wrathful and too quick with his tongue. The horse at least knew when to keep quiet.
    Keshlik climbed onto her back, and she loped forward with her head low without any nudge from him. A short ways to the south, in the shade of an outcropping of rock, waited the other three of Keshlik’s party. At the sound of his approach, they scrambled to their feet and grabbed the spears that rested beside them.
    Bhaalit, the eldest of the band, stepped forward. “Are we going?”
    Keshlik grunted. The three mounted their horses and fell in behind him.
    There was no path along the top of the ravine, but they did not require one. The plain was a sea of grass, yellow billows undulating like waves across the surface, with outcrops of sandy stone peeking above the surf like the fins of monsters. Green showed at the roots of the waves, where the wind bent the heads of the winter grass to show the upsurge of spring, and here and there an early flower made itself known as a stripe of purple or yellow. A gentler plain for the horses to tread Keshlik could hardly imagine.
    He couldn’t figure why the traders kept to the ravine. On a plain like that one, you could see your enemy approaching when he was still on the horizon, and you could give your horses rein to gallop at wind speed, to flank and circle back with all the martial skill that a well-trained mount should learn.
    The ravine, on the other hand, was an invitation to be ambushed. It saved them a few hours of walking, but why would that matter to these people? Their languid pace suggested they were in no hurry. The horses moseyed down the gentle incline that led to the entrance to the ravine. The rutted trail that the caravan followed grew clear in the broad plain below, and the last of the wagons’ dust drifted to the ground. Keshlik pointed forward, tapping his mare’s ribs with his boots. She broke into a run, tossing her mane and stretching her legs, and the other mounts followed. With a brief skip, their horses leapt the wagon ruts and turned to the left, following the trail into the entrance of the ravine. Dust stung Keshlik’s eyes. The stone rose above their heads, hiding the sun. Ahead he could see nothing but the dust following the wagons, but he heard the distant clattering wheels and shouting voices that echoed off the canyon walls. Keshlik slowed his mare to a trot, then a halt. Behind him, the other three drew up and stopped.
    “What now?” Bhaalit asked. “We wait?”
    “We wait,” Keshlik said. “Juyut has his company at the canyon exit. They’ll attack the head of the caravan and drive them toward us. We just make sure no one gets away.”
    Bhaalit nodded. He prodded his horse to the far side of the canyon floor and leaned forward to watch the approach. The other two, Rushyak and Danut, were young warriors, not even a hundred years old. They would fight like a whirlwind once the time to draw spears came, but they shared Juyut’s impulsiveness and fervor. Bhaalit was older than Keshlik, the only one so old who still carried a spear, who still remembered Khaat Ban.
    The dust fell and the sounds of the caravan receded. Crows cawed overhead. Rushyak and Danut began to fidget, but Bhaalit, with more than a century of practice with patience, was as still as stone. The sun rose higher in the sky and began to tickle the lip of the canyon.
    Quickly now. Keshlik could fight in the shade and