Where Serpents Strike (Children of the Falls Vol. 1) Read Online Free

the rise in the road to join the tall man. Clad in
black armor and fierce helms, the army carried flags bearing the
high king’s crest. Lia’s eyes went wide with fright.
    “Black vipers?” said Sprightly, astonished.
“Khile, what they doin’ ’ere?”
    The fat man shook his head. “Broods don’t
come this far north.”
    “They do now,” Khile said.
    For the last three years Lia had heard
rumors that one day the black vipers, soldiers of the new high
king, would invade this part of the country, but she had never
allowed herself to believe it would happen.
    Lia had a sudden urge to be home, safe
within the protective walls of Aberdour. Mentally she kicked
herself for having snuck off in the morning before doing her
schoolwork, for leaving the city without the protection of one of
her father’s bodyguards.
    The door to the cottage scraped open. Thomas
appeared, a middle-aged man with graying brown hair and oafish arms
defined from long days of axe wielding. He stepped outside while
his wife, Abigail, remained in the doorway.
    Lia sprang away from the peephole to run
outside and warn Thomas when two strong hands clamped onto her
shoulders and yanked her back. She tried to scream except one of
the hands replanted itself across her mouth.
    “Don’t make a sound!” said the man called
Khile. He had firm but gentle hands, like her father’s.
    “Why are broods coming after us for?” asked
Fatty, his voice quivering.
    “They’re not after us,” Khile answered.
    Sprightly got up. “Well I’m not hanging
around here.”
    “You step outside and you’re a dead man,”
Khile said.
    His companion froze.
    “What do you think they’re here to do, huh?”
Khile moved toward the barn boards to peek outside. “This is an
invasion.”
    Lia heard voices outside. She squirmed out
of Khile’s clutches and returned to the knothole. She saw Thomas
inviting the big armored soldier to the water well. Abigail wiped
remnants of the breakfast she was preparing on a mottled white
apron and then stood silently in the doorway holding the bulge at
her stomach. She looked as nervous as Lia felt.
    Thomas raised a bucket of water from the
well and offered a ladle to the soldier. The man drank, and said
something to Thomas. Lia’s ears perked as she heard mention of
Aberdour.
    Thomas pointed east in the direction of the
city.
    The tall man dropped the ladle, removed a
thick black dagger from his belt, and plunged it into Thomas’
stomach. Abigail screamed and rushed from the house, hurrying to
her dying husband’s prone body.
    “No!” The word rushed from Lia’s mouth so
fast it surprised her. By the time she realized that she had
screamed it loud enough for the soldiers to hear, she was halfway
out of the barn. She sprinted up the narrow path to the house as
fast as her little legs could move, tears on her cheeks, and hot
rage in her stomach.
    Abigail cried, cradling Thomas as the last
bits of life quivered out of him.
    Lia dropped to her knees next to Thomas,
calling his name. Her hands reached for him, shaking as they cupped
his paling face. He blinked, those beautiful sparkling blue pools,
and smiled for one brief moment before death took him.
    Lia heard a soldier stomping up next to
them, but she ignored him, unable to pull her eyes from Thomas.
Only when Abigail gasped did Lia glance up. The soldier yanked her
head back and drew a silver blade across her throat, cutting a deep
gash that spattered blood onto Lia’s clothes.
    A second soldier reached down to grab Lia,
but her quick feet were far too clever. She sprang away from the
man and sprinted toward the big knight, anger washing through her
blood. Her hands slipped from a small leather sleeve the knife her
father had given her for her tenth birthday. She had never used it
to slice anything other than a dead quail, a piece of rope, and
some fabric, but, still, she kept it sharp. It slipped into the
armored soldier’s thigh, right between the plates of his armor