Free Rise of the Serpent (Serpent's War Book 2) by Jason Halstead Page A

to burn off the water that made the ground soggy.
    He spied a hut taking shape in the mists and turned his head back to call out to the others. “Up ahead,” he announced. “Looks like we found them.”
    Corian sat up higher in his saddle and searched ahead. He grunted and settled back into it, satisfied with what he saw. Namitus urged his horse ahead to ensure he kept the lead ahead of the hot-tempered elf and swallowed to quiet the butterflies in his stomach.
    The last time he’d been among a large number of splisskin, he’d been bound and hanging over a pit of spikes. They’d beaten him to the brink of death and healed him enough to keep him alive long enough to torture him again. They flayed him with whips and cut him with their knives. They peeled his skin in strips and bled him until he didn’t think he could bleed again.
    Through it all, he knew he only had to hold on a little longer. His friends would come for him. Alto and Patrina, the two people he cared enough about to reconsider everything he’d learned in life. They were more than friends: they were his family. His absent mother and his estranged grandmother were nothing to him. Strangers. Corian, his uncle who often acted like an undisciplined child, was even worse.
    Alto and Patrina wouldn’t come for him this time. If something went wrong, it was out of their hands. They’d saved him last time, with Garrick, Modrim, Kar, Karthor, and Carson’s help. Then they’d gone on to defeat Myskakroth, the dragon in the guise of a splisskin that was leading that chapter of the Order of the Dragon.
    He took a deep breath and let it out, trying to settle his nerves. Amra shifted on the horse behind him and adjusted her grip on his sides. “Is something wrong? You’ve been fidgeting all morning and now you tensed up.”
    Namitus glanced back at her and offered a thin smile. “Just preparing myself,” he said. “I’m not quite sure how to get information out of them without things getting dangerous, fast.”
    “I can take care of myself,” she reminded him. “I’ve been getting better every night, haven’t I?”
    He chuckled. “Better, yes, but those are play fights, not real battle.”
    She frowned. “How much worse can it be?”
    “I hope you never find out.”
    She harrumphed and settled back onto the horse while it rode on. The hooves of the horses squelched and splashed through the puddles another minute before splisskin began to emerge from the huts and move to intercept them. Several of them had a brace of thin javelins on their backs and slender curved swords at their sides.
    “Hail!” Namitus cried and held up a hand to greet them. “My name is Namran and I’ve come a long ways looking for you.”
    The splisskin lowered their guard enough to glance at one another. Namitus counted eight of them, six armed for war. Of his own group, he knew he could count on himself and Gor in a fight. Corian, perhaps, if he kept his wits about him and used his bow. Allisandra was skilled enough to keep herself from being killed straight away, but in a battle with more than a single opponent he worried for her safety. Amra…Amra was on her way to learning how to fight, and even that was a step above the skill of Jillystria.
    A brief exchange in their hissing language passed before one of them stepped forward. He bore no weapons but looked like he might be the largest one in the village. He stood almost as tall as the head of Namitus’s horse.
    “What do you seek, soft-skin?” he asked in a hissing voice that sounded like it was dragged across hot sand.
    “I’m—well, what I am isn’t important. You might find it silly. I’m seeking genuine splisskin artifacts. Clothing, armor, tools, weapons, and the like.”
    The splisskin stared at him for a long moment. “Why do you wish to buy our things?”
    Namitus sighed. “Don’t laugh, okay?”
    “I don’t…laugh.”
    Namitus grinned. “Great! Okay, I represent an acting troupe. A circus of sorts.