The Dread Hammer Read Online Free Page B

reached them again. Ketty stiffened. After a moment she spoke without opening her eyes. “Is there anything in the Wild Wood that can cause you harm?”
    “Don’t worry on it. We’re nowhere near the dark heart.”
    Ketty opened her eyes, raising her hand to shade them from the brilliance of the sky. “Then there is something you fear?”
    “The Hauntén live in the dark heart of the forest, but I don’t go there.” For as long as he could remember he’d felt a dread of the Hauntén and their fastness deep in the Wild Wood. But he did not tell this to Ketty. “My holding is hidden, and safe. No one even knows it exists, and I’ll kill anyone who learns it.”
    Ketty sat up. “So you really would have killed my father, if I’d let you?”
    “It would have been better. Less risk.”
    “You speak as if you’ve killed men before.”
    Smoke laughed. “Did you truly wonder? Of course I’ve killed men before. It’s nothing and I don’t care about it.” He walked down to the water’s edge where he knelt, gazing at the shapes of fishes swimming at the bottom of a deep, calm pool.
    I don’t care about it .
    Without warning, a sick heat stirred in his belly. He grimaced, and then he heard himself speaking in a soft voice that hardly seemed his own, “I don’t like to kill women or their children.”
    The words were hardly out when the feeling passed. Why had he spoken at all? “Don’t think on it,” he told himself in a whisper. He stood up again and in a firmer voice he said, “Come, Ketty. The days have grown shorter, and we still have some long way to go.”
    He turned, and was surprised to find Ketty already on her feet, her sack slung over her shoulder, and her staff raised against him as fear and fury waged in her eyes. “You’ve murdered children?”
    He was taken by surprise and his own temper flashed. “They weren’t your people! And anyway, it was a war. The Trenchant commanded it.”
    She was aghast. “The Trenchant? You’re a Koráyos warrior? From the Puzzle Lands?”
    “Ketty, will there never be an end to your questions? You try my patience!”
    “Answer me, Smoke! Are you a Koráyos warrior?”
    “I was, but no longer. Now can we go?”
    “No.” Ketty took a step back. “I don’t want to go any farther with a bloody-handed servant of the Bidden.”
    Smoke’s hands squeezed into fists. A flush heated his neck and cheeks. Ketty must have sensed his perilous mood. She gasped, stumbling away as if expecting him to come after her with his sword. He wondered if he should.
    Then again, the wolves were hunting.
    “Go on!” he told her. “Go on your way. I’m young yet. I’ll find another woman.” He turned his back on her and walked on, so used to walking now that in the tumult of his thoughts he forgot there was another way.
    Leaving the sun-warmed rock, he slipped into the shadows of the forest. That was when Ketty called after him in a tentative voice, “Smoke?”
    He ignored her.
    She called him again. “Smoke!”
    He berated himself. You ’ re being a fool! He knew he should go back and kill her. It wasn’t likely that she could evade the wolves and find her way out of the forest, but it wasn’t impossible either. And if she escaped? If she spoke of him? If word of his presence got back to the Puzzle Lands? He couldn’t risk it!
    So turn around and kill her!
    He only walked faster until she cried out after him, “Smoke, wait! ”
    Her command stopped him short. It wasn’t something he willed. His lip curled in frustration. He told himself to walk on, walk on, but he stood rooted in place. Curse the prayers of women! He was bidden by them, especially when it was one woman alone and in need.
    Ketty’s boots rustled thoughtlessly in the leaf litter as she bounded after him. “Smoke.”
    To his surprise she caught his hand again. She looked up at him with a glint of tears in her dark eyes. But he shook his head. “You’re too difficult, Ketty.”
    “I know I am, but