Free Swords of Waar by Nathan Long Page A

give up? I didn’t even know if I could. Some of those hand holds probably wouldn’t work in reverse. And even if I could, I hadn’t come all this way to say, “Never mind. I guess I’ll go back to Ormolu and forget Lhan existed.” It was up or nothing.
    I crouched in close to the wall and tensed my muscles, ready to spring. Time to—
    The warship came around the corner of the mesa only about twenty yards over my head. I nearly slipped outta my perch as I held myself back from jumping. Goddamn it! I’d been ready! Now I’d have to psych myself up all over again.
    I waited for fucking ever until it floated past and slid around the other side of the mesa, then got ready again. Foot set? Check. Hands loose? Check. Target sighted? Check. Brain off? Check. Then go!
    I kicked up as hard as I could, letting the weight of my sword and flapping cloak pull me out away from the wall as I shot up past the bulge—and kept going. Stupid idiot! I’d been so wound up that I’d kicked way too hard. I whooshed past my target hold like Superman headed for the sky, getting further away from the wall with every second.
    I flailed at the jagged wall like I was trying to swat a mosquito, and snagged a knuckle of rock with my left pinky. The one-finger grip failed a second later, but I’d managed to pull myself closer to the wall and grabbed again. This time I caught a proper hold and clamped hard as the rest of me slammed into the wall all at once, knees, elbows, stomach, shoulders and face. I knocked my head so hard I didn’t know where my arms and legs were, and for a sickening second I felt myself sliding down the rough wall without being able to tell my hands what to do.
    Then everything snapped back and I grabbed on with all I had and just lay there, panting and bleeding and listening to my heart go BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
    Finally, after the warship had circled past one more time, I thought I could move again, and started up the lumpy wall with all my limbs as weak as lite beer. Five minutes later I was at the top, and pulling myself through a gap in a thick stone castle wall that looked like it had been knocked down a thousand years ago.
    For a while I stayed where I was, which was the ruins of some kind of little hallway that had run through the base of the castle wall. There was another gap in the inner wall that seemed to lead to a big open space, but I wasn’t going through it until I could catch my breath and stand up without my legs going all wobbly.
    That took another five minutes, then I stood and looked through the other gap. The top of the mesa was bigger than I expected, roughly two football fields laid side by side, but otherwise what I saw didn’t surprise me—a broken-down, high-walled compound, half town, half fort, with rubble and caved-in buildings everywhere, and a roofless castle in the middle, sticking sheered-off towers up into the night sky.
    Set up among the ruins were multi-colored tents, and some of the more-or-less standing outbuildings looked like they’d been turned into bars and shops, with signs and tables outside, and there were others places that looked like they might be hostels, or maybe whore houses.
    It was all deserted, though. All the campfires and torches were out, and there was nobody walking around the courtyard or in any of the tents that I could see. Were the pirates hiding? I didn’t see any lights in any of the buildings, but they had to be here somewhere, or why was the warship here? I looked up and saw the big bastard floating by on the far side of the mesa. Yup, still there, and high enough up that it could look down into the compound and see anything that was going on. If I was gonna go looking for Lhan, I’d have to be sneaky, and the best way to do that was stay right where I was, inside the outer wall.
    I started down the little hall to the left, peeking through the gaps as I passed them and hiding behind the standing sections when the warship had an angle on me. Halfway