Free The Misbegotten (An Assassin's Blade Book 1) by Justin DePaoli Page A

now. I just hope we live long enough to see what it is.”
    “Living isn’t in our future,” Anton said. “I would have taken the beheading if I could. I’ve heard of these slavers before. You won’t get out of here alive, Astul. No one does. Not even the Shepherd of the Black Rot.”
    I nodded, and not sarcastically. I had my faith, but sometimes that’s just a nice thing to have. It doesn’t really do anything.
    During the night, we continued on into the Dead Marshes, where the seaside mountains vanished, replaced by thick curtains of trees, some stretching so far into the air it looked as though they wanted to give a reach-around to the moon.
    By morning, the road we traveled turned from overgrown grass and weeds to a still swamp. The cart would stop every fifty feet it seemed, and our Glannondil escorts would get out, clean the caked-on mud from the wheels and swear at the gods when they stopped again minutes later.
    Small stretches of vomit-colored clay eventually lead us through the marshes, surrounded by submerged blades of grass, circular gatherings of lilies and more water than mud. The horizon suffered a mangled death as we drew closer, with a massacre of splintered and limbless charred trees smudging the blue from the sky. Vines and thorned creepers hung from them, some so big and knotted you’d swear they were eldritch serpents lying in wait. The whole land had a subtle green tint to it, whether from the bile of bogs or something more perverse.
    The marshes soon ended, and our royal caravan came to a stop, in front of a gate. Even if you were born in a piss-poor village and hadn’t ever ventured outside until now, you would have a word to describe this gate, and that word, undoubtedly, would be lame. It was nothing but a bunch of wooden stakes crookedly pounded into the ground, topped off with spikes for good measure.
    “Smell that?” I asked my brother.
    “I’d rather not,” he said, shielding his nostrils with a shoulder.
    “I’ll give you a guess as to what kind of shit it is you’re smelling. Here’s a hint: it ain’t coming from no cow.”
    Boy, was it rotten. Like a heap of city garbage warmed by the sun, drizzled with a few cupfuls of infected pus and garnished with chopped-up, liquefied necrotic flesh.
    A man clad in leather armor and with goat horns for shoulder spikes opened the gate. “Two? That’s it? Lost six this week and I get two to replace ’em?”
    His voice sounded as though he was digging into the pit of his stomach for the deepest tone he could muster.
    “All Lord Braddock could send,” answered the driver. “He needs his own slaves.”
    “I’ll fuckin’ not doubt he does,” the man said. “But you tell ’im if he keeps sendin’ me this horseshit, there ain’t gonna be a discount no more. I want five next time. Got it?”
    “Yeah, yeah. We’ll tell him. These two are brothers.”
    The slaver welcomed us with a toothless grin. “Brotherly love, eh?”
    He walked up to the cart and put a fist into my shirt, pulling me off and so graciously tossing my face into the stiff ground. Another hand slapped my shirt, and just like that, back on my feet.
    Anton and I found ourselves inside the walls, sitting against a building streaked with white stains that looked awfully similar to bird shit.
    “Sit,” the slaver said.
    Next to us were a few other unfortunate souls, staring with wide eyes at an outrageously large slaver who approached. Those slavers, I didn’t know where they came from, but I assumed they were crafted out of mountains. Goddamn giants. He asked each man and woman their names and their story. They all answered with a whimper, licking their lips and giving a nice, hard swallow at the end. Some were thieves, others rapists, and one had murdered a lord’s son.
    Finally, the big man’s eyes fell on me. “And you?”
    “Some call me the fat skinner on account of how I have a penchant for stabbing fat bellies like yours. Say, do you have a brother? I