Tarah Woodblade Read Online Free Page B

in his eyes. She gave him her best glower and he turned and ran. She took a deep breath and looked back to Eddy.
    “Do you consider your knee payment enough?” she asked. “Or do I need to keep breaking you?”
    “I’ll kill you!” he shouted and tried to climb back to his feet.
    “I wouldn’t do that,” she warned. “You got some torn ligaments. You try to fight on that knee and you could do permanent damage.”
    He roared and stabbed his sword into the ground to help him push to his feet. He stood, heavily favoring his right leg, and pulled the sword back out of the ground. She shook her head. She was no longer afraid, but she was still unsure how to deal with him. She thought on it as he limped towards her.
    Her papa wouldn’t show mercy to a bandit. He’d say it’s best to kill the man. That way he could never be a threat to her or anyone else. Grampa Rolf would say leaving dead bodies behind was to be avoided. It would be better to knock him unconscious and take his sword; teach him a lesson.
    Eddy reared back and as he swung his sword at her again she made her decision.
    She swung one end of her staff up, knocking his attack to the side, and brought the other end around, connecting with the side of his knee again. This time the joint gave way completely. He screamed but refused to fall, she twirled her staff and connected with a blow to the back to his head that silenced him and dropped him to the ground.
    She stood over his unconscious form and frowned. Why had she seen her papa in this man? They were nothing alike.
    Tarah crouched beside him and removed his leather half-helm. She felt the wound behind his head and nodded. The helm had done its job as she had hoped and his skull was intact. She hadn’t killed him like her papa would have done, but with that knee, the man wouldn’t be accosting people in the woods again.
    She pulled the sword belt and sheath from Eddy’s waist and glanced at the sword still clutched in his hand. Now that she looked at it, she could tell that the sheath didn’t match the blade. Likely the blade had been stolen and Eddy had just found a sheath it fit in.
    Tarah pried the hilt from his fingers and her breath caught as a brief vision passed through her mind. There was an intense battle. Men were falling everywhere, some of them on fire, some even melting. Eddy was terrified. He saw the sword’s shining blade laying on the bloodied earth and picked it up as he ran . . .
    Tarah blinked the thoughts away and shivered. She didn’t usually see visions like that unless she was tracking. She looked over the blade closely, impressed by its workmanship. Too bad it was of no real use for her. Her papa had taught her a bit of bladework, but she wasn’t a swordsman. She slid the runed blade back into the man’s ugly sheath and belted it around her waist. She would take it back to town with her and see if there was a reward. Surely a runed blade like this was worth something to someone. Maybe people were looking for it.
    She took a deep breath and headed back to the bushes where she had struck the man who threw the knife. She winced as she peered over his unmoving body. The blade of his sword was wedged in his skull. She reached down and felt his neck but there was no pulse.
    Tarah shivered. This wasn’t the first man she’d killed, but she hadn’t killed many. Papa had told her that there would be times when killing was necessary. Grampa had taught her that if she was smart, she shouldn’t have to.
    “Grampa, your way didn’t work this time!” she grumbled aloud. She knew what he would have said. ‘Come on, Tarah, you know there are no guarantees. Even the best salesman in the known lands can’t dissuade a man determined to die’. They’d had that conversation the first time she’d been forced to kill a man.
    She looked down at the corpse and shook her head. She refused to feel guilty. It wasn’t her fault the man didn’t know how to block a staff blow. Still, she