The Ghosts of Broken Blades Read Online Free

mind.
    Roubris looked up and saw it, gleaming like a ruby among the black and gray flesh of the thing.
    He pointed. “There!”
    Karatha gave him an urgent look. He saw that now she, too, bore wounds from the thing’s mouths. Barely keeping to her saddle, hugging her horse’s neck to keep low, she rode toward where Roubris lay.
    “There!” He shouted again. The monster’s screams made him unsure if she heard him.
    She must have, however, for she struck upward with her blade at the glaring red eye. She stabbed again and again. No blood. No effect at all.
    Another of the beast’s mouths bit her arm in a flash of red. With a scream of pain, she dropped her sword.
    “Don’t panic,” Serth told Roubris, the sword throbbing at his side. “Get that sword. The eyes are difficult to hurt. A lot of flesh surrounds them. She needs to keep trying.”
    At some point—Roubris wasn’t sure when—Karatha had managed to get her shield strapped to her left arm. She used it to batter away the beast’s many maws attempting to bite her. She could no longer afford to pay Roubris any attention.
    He started to pull the weapon Serth inhabited from where he had tucked it. “No,” the spirit in the sword told him. “This sword is old. Broken and unwieldy. She needs to use her blade. It’s sturdy. Get it!”
    On the ground, Roubris swallowed and exhaled the breath from his lungs. He rolled toward where the sword lay. He grasped it and called to Karatha. “Keep trying!” Roubris struggled to his feet, but only managed his knees. So he knelt. Roubris held the weapon as high as he could reach.
    “Serth looks like an ordinary sword, but he’s clearly more. Much more.”
    Karatha heard his shout. Her arm soaked in blood, she stretched down and grasped her sword once again. She cried out incoherently, her pain and exhaustion clear. Using the shield to protect herself, she straightened in the saddle and lunged at the glaring red eye.
    A burst of red light and black ichor exploded from the creature. The mouths of the hideous thing all screamed in a cacophonous unison. It rose fifty feet or more above them, shuddering. Wings twisting, it wormed its way through the air, as if to escape. The wound, however, was too grievous. The beast collapsed in upon itself and crashed to the ground well into the distance.
    Karatha and Roubris watched in silence.
    “Excellent,” Serth whispered in Roubris’s mind.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    Karatha’s spells repaired most of the wounds the two of them suffered. A hot meal of quail eggs, cured ham, and fried bread cooked over a pleasant fire helped too.
    “How did you know about the eye?” Karatha asked Roubris while they ate. “How did you know that attacking the red eye would slay it? I didn’t even know what that thing was.”
    “Neither did I,” Roubris replied. “The spirit in the sword told me.”
    “How did you know about that?” Roubris asked aloud, looking at the sword, which lay next to him near the fire.
    He heard Serth’s voice in his mind. “I’d encountered a creature like that before.”
    Roubris relayed that to Karatha and then asked, “What was it?”
    “I don’t know, exactly. I am not an expert on such things.”
    “You seem like one to me.”
    “Well, regardless. It’s dead now, and you’re safe.”
    “It was demonic in nature,” Karatha said knowledgably. “A thing of fiendish blood. Such horrors dwell to the north, in the Worldwound.”
    Roubris nodded and munched on another piece of bread. He stared at the sword, but said nothing further.
    ∗ ∗ ∗
    The road offered little for two more days. Serth’s directions were not difficult to follow. The occasional traveler passed them by, but the folk of northern Ustalav were unfriendly and wary. Roubris could hardly blame them. The landscape turned decidedly darker and more lifeless as they proceeded.
    “We near the Worldwound,” Karatha said in hushed tones.
    Roubris didn’t know much about the place. Only what he’d