Free The Knight Marshal (The Silk & Steel Saga) by Karen Azinger

that slew him. The pommel was shaped like
an octagon with a pair of coiled dragons gracing the crossguard. Beneath the
guard, the maker’s mark was clear, an octagon surrounding the initials OS.”.
    “Orrin Surehammer,” Lothar’s
face paled. “The lost blade!”
    The marshal nodded. “Boric’s sword,
the first blue steel blade, but instead of sapphire blue, the sword was dark as
pitch, corrupted and cursed. With my own hands I pulled the sword from the
king’s chest. Even through my gauntlets, I felt the cold dread of it. That
sword radiates Darkness,” his voice dropped to a whisper, “and it called to
me…with a promise of power.”
    Lothar’s hand crept to his sword
hilt. “What did you do?”
    “I hurled it into the woods.” The
marshal shrugged as if trying to dislodge a great weight. “Later, after we’d
raised a cairn to the king, I went in search of it. I wrapped it in a blanket
and charged Baldwin to throw it in Eye Lake. Perhaps the lake’s depths can
chain the evil.” He hesitated to speak the rest, yet he needed to tell someone,
“At night, the blade haunts my dreams…and taunts me with the promise of
victory.”
    Lothar made the hand sign against
evil. “More sorcery. Better to send it to a watery grave.”
    “True enough.” He gave Lothar a
wary look. “But it tells us much about our foe. The Mordant pits our own
legends against us,”
    “A cursed sword sent to slay a
king, makes you wonder what else we’re fighting.”
    “Darkness, we’re fighting Darkness
itself.” The marshal pulled the king’s sword from the cold, hard ground.
“Heaven help us if we fail.”

7
    Blaine
     
    Blaine’s sword sliced the air with a vicious whisper.
Haunted by nightmares of the winged fiend, he slashed left and then right, a
whirl of steel, but his foe slipped away. Pivoting left, he loosed a head-high
cleave. Kath ducked beneath his swing and lunged forward. Anger flashed across
her face as she loosed a whirlwind of strikes. Blaine retreated, parrying her
assault, steel clanging against steel. He’d never seen the girl fight with such
venom. She lunged forward, the flat of her sword striking his chainmail with a
resounding ring.
    “What’s wrong with you?” She glared
up at him. “You’re sparring like a wounded bear.”
    “And you’re fighting like a demon
possessed.” Blaine snarled and stepped back, breathing plumes of mist into the
cold morning air. “Enough.” He rammed the training sword into the sheath as if
it would quench his anger. Taking up his blue steel sword, he shrugged the
harness across his shoulders and began to turn away.
    Kath grabbed his arm. “What
troubles you?
    Anger spiked through him. He turned
on her. “ What troubles me?” Rage rode his voice, yet the girl did not
flinch. Fists clenched, he glared at her, but he could not speak of the whores
in his bed or the winged monster pecking at his window, shame and fear and lust
all tied together in a terrible knot. Instead, his anger lashed in a different
direction. “That voice in the bloody cavern.”
    Kath nodded.
    “It said that the Octagon is
fallen. That the king is dead.”
    Her face paled but she did not look
away.
    “The voice lied, right? That was
just an evil lie?”
    Her voice choked to a whisper.
“No.”
    “ No!”
    “Duncan said it happened.”
    He reeled at the answer, unwilling
to believe the Octagon was defeated. “And you believe it?”
    Kath gave a grim nod. “I believe Duncan.” Her gaze slid away. “Other things he said have proved true.”
    His rage exploded. “Then why do we
sit here, doing nothing?”
    “What would you have us do?”
    “Take the horses and ride south!
Find the Octagon and add our swords to the maroon!”
    “In the dead of winter? Across the
steppes? How far do you think we’d get?” She glared at him. “And what of Danya
and Zith? They’ll not survive the ride…and I’ll not leave them.”
    “So you’ll sit here and rot?”
    Her head snapped back as