The Western Wizard Read Online Free Page A

in Pudar during the war. Soon, Colbey and Santagithi would arrive in Pudar along withits army. They would retrieve Mitrian’s son, now called Rache in the Renshai tradition of naming children for warriors slain in battle. Once Santagithi and his guard force returned to their town, Colbey’s training of the two boys would commence. And, in a few months or years, when Mitrian and Garn returned from restoring the king of Béarn to his throne, the Renshai would be united once again.
    United. An army of four, two of them babies. And all facing the enmity of nearly the entire world.
The odds against Colbey seemed enormous, yet he did not flinch from the responsibility. His loyalty to the Renshai never faltered, though his understanding of their purposes did.
Obviously, we can’t ever again become the wanton killers we once embodied as a tribe.
Colbey recalled stories of the gory border skirmishes between the eighteen Northern tribes, battles in which the Renshai had committed the worst sin any Northman could imagine. To destroy morale, the Renshai had sliced body parts from their enemies, thereby barring the dead from the rewards of Valhalla’s afterlife. Despite minor disputes over territory, the Northern tribes believed themselves a brotherhood, and the crimes of the Renshai had resulted in their banishment from the North.
    Colbey leaned against a withered oak, the bark gouging into the light fabric of his tunic. Though he moved with a casual ease that seemed to border on carelessness, every sense remained alert. A part of his mind assessed the location of every soldier and, seeing no threat, discarded the information. Movement inside the tent told Colbey that General Santagithi, too, was still awake.
    Colbey knew that the Renshai’s century without a homeland had been spent gleaning the most elite battle techniques from every culture in existence. Driven first by bitterness and blood lust and later by blood lust alone, the Renshai had blended philosophy and skill into the most successful combat system in existence. Rumors told how the least competent Renshai could fight three of any country’s best warriors and win, and Colbey had never found reason to doubt the veracity of the statement.
    Still, the Renshai’s single-minded devotion to war had goaded them to answer every problem with violence.Renshai rarely lived past their early thirties; the youthful exuberance and vigor of the tribe only fed the cycle. Colbey mulled the situation, forming no judgments. In his time, he had been as eager for combat as any other. A scene emerged from deeply rooted memory. He recalled when the Renshai had finally returned to the North after their hundred years of wandering. The tribal area which had once served as home to the Renshai had become a part of Thortire. So the Renshai spokesman had asked the high king in Nordmir for an icy, barren island that was then called Ti. The king’s reply remained vivid in Colbey’s memory, “Pick a champion from among your people. If he can best my champion, the island is yours. So long as you don’t threaten other tribes, you may live your days in peace.” A strange smile had touched the king’s features then, “But should my man win, your tribe must leave the Northlands and never return.”
    At twenty-nine, Colbey had already been the Renshai’s most accomplished sword master for fifteen years. Yet their spokesman had chosen a challenger from the ranks at random with a bored nonchalance that enraged the king. A young woman faced and defeated the king’s champion. Then, in an ugly gesture of defiance that had galled even Colbey, she had lopped the head from the king’s warrior, stealing from him the glory that came with death. The Renshai had won a homeland that never again bore any name but Devil’s Island. And twenty years later, when the massed armies of the North slaughtered the Renshai, they never truly broke the king’s promise. General/King Siderin of the Eastlands had steered the