Free The Dread Hammer by Linda Nagata

live here at Fort Veshitan with her children? This outpost is haunted with protective spells that no one today even knows how to make. That’s why we house your southern women here. No where safer.”
    Nedgalvin silently cursed himself for thinking of the Koráyos as ordinary foes. But he still saw one chance remaining to him. Taking his hand away from his sword’s hilt, he straightened his shoulders and said, “I’ve come to see Takis.”
    Helvero nodded as if he’d expected this. “You’ve missed her. She departed for the north not five hours ago.”
    And still Helvero made no move against him. What was he playing at? Nedgalvin sensed an undercurrent, but he couldn’t guess its nature. He was only sure that with Takis gone, this night would not end well for him. The Koráyos didn’t take prisoners and they didn’t sell back hostages as any civilized people would do. So it would be only a matter of moments before Helvero ordered the archers to fire.
    Nedgalvin decided he would not die alone. Helvero, at least, would go with him.
    He set his feet in careful balance. He’d practiced the trick of throwing his sword ever since he’d heard the first tales of Dismay. That same trick would serve him now.
    Moving with speed and precision he seized the hilt of his sword and swept it from its scabbard. Then he stepped forward to fling it—but as he did a searing pain shot through his palm and without conscious thought he let go of the hilt.
    The blade clattered to the yard’s stone floor. Nedgalvin’s mouth opened in astonishment when he saw the hilt glowing cherry red in the night, as if it had just come from the forge. His palm was blistered.
    Helvero said, “I heard how a trick like that was used on Smoke.”
    With his uninjured hand Nedgalvin grabbed for his long knife, but as the blade cleared the sheath it too became red hot and he was forced to drop it beside the sword. He reached for his bow.
    Helvero picked that moment to come after him with the staff. Nedgalvin dodged his first thrust, but the second caught him high on the shoulder, unbalancing him long enough for Helvero to connect a short, hard swing to the side of his head.

    He woke later in a lightless room, and threw up.
    ~
    N efión lies beyond the border of the Puzzle Lands and beyond the reach of the Lutawan king. It’s the only large settlement within the Wild Wood. The king tried to take it once, after his soldiers were pushed out of the Puzzle Lands. But the Hauntén don’t want an empire on their doorstep. As the king’s army marched north toward the forest road they walked straight into a storm fiercer than any they had met before. Such a deluge of rain fell that men and horses were washed away, the road disappeared, and the shape of the land was changed. The Lutawan king has focused his animosities on us, since then.

    Nefión
    Seök had served eleven years as a Koráyos soldier, before resigning to marry his second cousin. In the two years since, he’d worked for her father as a teamster, driving a merchant wagon on a regular circuit from Braided River in the southeast corner of the Puzzle Lands, over the mountains of the East Tangle to Nefión, north on the forest road to Binthy sheep country, and south again to Samerhen.
    He smelled rain coming as he drove his wagon east to Nefión. Ignoring the lowing protests of his oxen, he forced them on past dusk. The rains began as he crossed the last bridge. The sparse night watch waved him on into the city. His sister’s household was asleep when he rolled into the yard, but the barking dogs put an end to that, waking the hired boy first, who slept in the stable, and then rousing Yelena and her husband.
    Yelena bubbled over with joy to see him. “Seök! Praise Koráy, the Dread Hammer, and the Trenchant! I smelled the rain coming and feared you would be trapped in a mire.”
    “That was my fear too,” Seök confessed. “Better to come late at night than not at all.”
    Together they stabled