Free Servant: The Dark God Book 1 by John D. Brown

the edge of the fields. They attacked just before dawn, setting the homes ablaze, running many good men through with their curved swords, and stealing anything of value, including fifteen young girls. The next year the village built the wall.
    The wall had been made by digging a wide ditch and throwing up an embankment of earth about three times the height of a tall man. Timber spikes had been planted into that steep slope and at the bottom of the ditch. Grass and tall thistle now hid many of the spikes, but any host charging up that hill would find the spikes’ power to impale undiminished. And if the host reached the top, they’d face a timber palisade and tower. The timbers had been new when Talen was a boy. Pale yellow lichen now clung to much of the wood, but it was sturdy nevertheless.
    He expected they’d be happy to give him a bow and set him up on the wall with Roddick. But there were no raiders, no sign of any struggle whatsoever. So why had they closed the gates?
    The cross bar that held the gates closed scraped. Then the gates swung open.
    Out walked a dozen Mokaddian men holding their scythes, sickles, and forks like weapons. About half had shaved their heads and dyed their scalps with henna, witnessing they’d performed their harvest worship.
    Talen glanced over his shoulder, fearing the Bone Faces had decided to attack, but there were no Bone Faces, only the river glistening in the sun and the fields of grain beyond, rolling with the breeze. When he turned back, one of the beef-heads on the wall was stringing his bow.
    “It’s one of Hogan’s half-breeds,” said Farmer Tilth. He held his hayfork before him as if Talen were the Dark One himself. “What are you doing here, boy?” asked Tilth.
    “I’ve come to trade with Mol,” said Talen.
    “He’s spying!” Roddick called from above.
    Spying?
    “Cast your weapons from you,” Roddick commanded. “Then lie down in the dirt.”
    What a bum brain! “Who would want to spy on you?” Talen yelled up at Roddick. “And I don’t have any weapons. Unless you think I might kill someone with these chicken baskets.”
    “Give yourself up,” said Tilth.
    Long Lark, the cooper’s son, stood next to Tilth. He tied a cattle noose at the end of one rope.
    Talen looked at the men. There were the Early brothers, the one-eyed tanner and his two sons, and the young hayward who had killed a wurm not two weeks ago and received the intricate tattoo around the wrist of his right hand that signified he was no longer a boy, but a man of the Shoka clan.
    These people knew him.
    The men began to fan out.
    “I’m honored,” said Talen, “but isn’t this a bit much for a runt like me?”
    “He’s going to run,” Roddick called.
    “I’m not running,” said Talen.
    “Come on, son,” Tilth said.
    They approached him like one might a boar caught in a trap: careful and bent on injury. Talen spotted the lazy-eyed Sabin among them, relishing every moment of this. That boy had never liked Talen.
    A flash of orange caught Talen’s eye, and he spotted a tall, bald man with an enormous black beard standing in the gateway. He was an official, wrapped in the blue and orange sash of the Mokaddian Fir-Noy Clan.
    Fear shot through him, and Talen took a step back.
    The Fir-Noy had provoked a number of fights these last years. They’d killed a number of Koramites to boot. That was not to say the Koramites hadn’t defended themselves. But everyone knew that Koramite and Fir-Noy didn’t mix. Lords, Fir-Noy didn’t mix with half of the Mokaddian clans, especially not the Shoka of Stag Home. But there stood that Fir-Noy official, acting like he owned the place, and here the Shoka village men had their tools pointed at him as if he were a rabid bat.
    “I’m here for chickens,” he protested.
    It was then that Long Lark broke from the pack and set himself to throw his noose.
    Talen hesitated for a fraction of a second.
    Long Lark adjusted his grip.
    By the farting lord of