Free The Undead Hordes of Kan-Gul by Jon F. Merz

indicators that they’d fought a savage duel here. But Vargul’s tracks simply vanished.
    This creature hadn’t killed him.
    Ran eyed the beast. It must have been close to eight feet long and perhaps five feet high at the shoulder. Ran wished he didn’t have to kill the creature. But he would if it left him no choice.
    “What does it want?” Jysal’s voice was a quiet whisper in the woods.
    Ran kept his eyes on the beast. “I don’t know. It’s not behaving like it wants to attack. But I’m not about to let it know I think that.”
    “Can you kill it?”
    Ran almost smirked. “Can I? I hope so. Must I? I hope I don’t have to.”
    The beast eyed Ran and then let out a single low-pitched growl. Ran’s eyes narrowed even more. The beast compacted its haunches and then edged around them, always pointed right at Ran. He saw its eyes flick over to Jysal only once before coming immediately back to rest on Ran. It knows I’m the threat , he thought. The fact he had a nearly three-foot-long razor-sharp blade in his hands had probably clued it in.
    Another growl bubbled up from the beast’s throat. Ran felt his heartbeat increase but willed it to slow back down. He couldn’t stave off the effects of his excitement completely, but he’d been taught to use his breathing to calm himself as much as possible prior to combat. That training helped him now. The danger of adrenaline was that it narrowed his awareness and tunneled his vision. By maintaining proper breathing, Ran could keep his wits about him and be ready for anything that tried to surprise him.
    When the beast launched itself, there was no warning. If Ran hadn’t kept his breathing going, he would have been caught off guard and hesitated a fraction of a second. In that time, the beast would have clamped its jaws around his neck and finished him with one awful attack aimed at tearing out Ran’s throat.
    Instead, as Ran exhaled smoothly, he stepped to the side and brought the single-edged curved blade up in a tight arc that slashed through the beast’s underside, slicing neatly through its belly and into its vital organs. Ran kept moving as he cut and the beast fell heavily to the ground, staining the earth dark with its blood and innards. It uttered one whimper and then lay still.
    Ran flicked the blood from his blade using the quick motion that he’d practiced so often it was ingrained and then returned his sword to its scabbard.
    Jysal rushed over. “Are you hurt?”
    Ran shook his head. “No.”
    Jysal looked at the beast and then back at Ran. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone make a cut like that. You were so precise and so effortless at the same time. Where did you learn to handle a sword like that?”
    “Just a lot of practice,” said Ran.
    But Jysal wasn’t convinced. “I’ve seen men who practice with swords before. And I’ve known warriors with a lifetime of experience who could never make such a precise cut like you just made.” She shook her head. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But don’t lie and feed me some line about practice. What you did there was far more than just practice.”
    Ran glanced overhead. The sun was starting its arc toward the horizon. “We should keep moving.” He pointed at the dead beast. “We’ll lose daylight sooner than we think, and I don’t want to imagine the woods filled with those things.”
    “That’s all we’d need,” said Jysal. “Is it likely there’ll be others in the forest?”
    “Probably,” said Ran with a sigh. He was concentrating on his breathing, willing his stomach to combat the effects of the adrenaline as well. “Come on.”
    He led them farther down the game trail, past the point where Vargul had disappeared. This was now new territory. He stopped every few feet to check his direction of travel, but the game trail seemed to be the only available route to take. Unlike other forests he’d been in, this one only had the one game trail and not a whole