His long beard was dyed with a blue stripe and his blond hair was tied in braids which snaked out from underneath a rusted helmet. “I’ll skin you alive, boy,” hissed the huge Glynti, the first to approach me. I had spent five years as a mercenary, stood in shieldwalls facing down charging mounts and wasn’t scared of a few men and women in animal skins, no matter how hard they fought. The Glynti are fierce but rely on numbers and savagery. My master and I were tired, we fought in silence. The other made a horrendous noise and shredded a small bush by my side. One exploded, killing its bearer and wounding the woman with him. They had roarers, long sticks that sent out shards of sharp metal in a cough of smoke and fire as weapons they are as ugly and as poor at killing as most Glynti. They knew my master was the real danger.įour went for her, two for me. The Glynti tribes kept to the old ways, and besides, if they hunted us they knew who we were. If our attackers had been men of Maniyadoc they would have come for me first, seeing a man in armour as more of a danger than a woman, but they were not. Six attacked, four men and two women of the Glynti, a hard and relentless people from the arid mountains far across the Taut Sea, where water was as valuable as bread and those who could not prove their worth were killed out of hand. The mercenaries came upon us in that moment when the world seemed unreal – poised between outgoing night and incoming day. Far over the horizon the Birthstorm swelled, towering pillows of dark cloud that heralded the giant storm which told us yearsbirth was truly here. The sun brushed the dew-soaked grass, and after days walking through the stink and dirt of the eastern sourlands the riotous excitement of yearsbirth made me drunk on the scent of early-morning blossom.
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