Blood of the King Read online

  Blood of the King

  Khirro's Journey Book 1

  Bruce Blake

  First Original Edition, 2012

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the ebook store and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.

  Copyright 2012, Bruce Blake & Best Bitts Productions

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form of by any electronic or mechanical means, including information and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review,

  This is a work of fiction, names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN 978-0-9868811-8-3

  [email protected]

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  Published by Bruce Blake & Best Bitts Productions

  Copyright 2012 Bruce Blake & Best Bitts Productions

  ***

  Dedication

  So often we hear that a novel is not the work of just one person that it has become a cliche, but cliches are what they are because of the unavoidable truth they hold. This book is dedicated to all the people who worked hard to help bring it together: Ella for her editing and encouragement; Travis for another eye-catching cover; everyone who read it and gave me feedback prior to its release; Lynne for always being a critic and a fan; and especially to my wonderful wife just for being.

  Special thanks to Rob Antonishen for creating the map of Khirro's world. Check him out at http://www.cartocopia.com/

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty Five

  Chapter Twenty Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Also by the Author

  About the Author

  Blood of the King Cast of Characters (in order of appearance or mention)

  Khirro – A farmer conscripted into the King's army

  Braymon – King of Erechania

  Emeline – Khirro's love

  Jowyn – a soldier of the King's army and friend to Khirro

  The Shaman/Bale – King Braymon's healer, a magician.

  Gendred – an Erechanian soldier, one of the elite Shadowmen

  Rudric – a general in the King's army and member of the Kingsblade

  The Necromancer/Darestat – an outlaw magician, the only one able to raise the dead

  Ghaul – an Erechanian soldier who joins Khirro on his journey

  Elyea – a whore who joins Khirro's journey

  Therrador Montmarr – advisor to King Braymon

  Graymon – Therrador's son

  Suath – a one-eyed mercenary

  Maes – a midget and brother of Athryn who joins Khirro's Journey

  Alicando – a troubadour

  Athryn – a magician, brother of Maes, who joins Khirro's Journey

  Aryann – a whore and friend of Elyea's

  Leigha – a whore and friend of Elyea's

  Despina – a whore and friend of Elyea's

  Imlip – door-keeper of the cult of magic

  Shyn – a border guard who joins Khirro's journey

  Monos – the first Necromancer

  Shyctem – the first king

  Lord Emon Turesti – High Chancellor of Erechania

  Sir Alton Sienhin – commander of the king's army

  Hu Dondon – Lord Chamberlain of Erechania

  Hahn Perdaro – Voice of the People of Erechania

  Sir Matte Eliden – a senior soldier in the king's army and friend of Therrador

  The Archon/Sheyndust – magician and leader of the Kanosee

  High Confessor Aurna – high priest of the Order of the Four Gods

  Seerna – Therrador's late wife

  Chapter One

  Khirro blinked.

  Wispy smoke floated across an otherwise unspoiled sky, marring it, capturing his attention, bringing him to focus. He realized there was nothing but sky and the smudge of gray—no smells, no sounds, nothing.

  Smells returned first, all of them familiar—dirt and stone and dust, the scents of his life that had always been there.

  The farm, then. I’m on the farm.

  That didn’t feel right, didn’t explain the streak of smoke. Memories were faint, distant, as though seen through the wrong end of an eyeglass. It couldn’t be the farm, he’d left home months before...but for where?

  Sound crept back into Khirro’s world. A man’s voice floated to him on the summer air, then more voices—not shouts of reverie but cries of anger and pain. Like a dam bursting, the clash of metal on metal added to the din.

  The sounds jarred Khirro and memories flooded back like the tide filling a hole in the sand. Consciousness slammed down on him, brutal and unflinching. On his left, a sheer stone wall rose thirty feet or more; his right arm dangled over untold nothing. He moved his head to see and pain flooded his body, filling every joint and crevice, leaving no portion free from its touch. Something wet on his forehead and face, the taste of blood on his swollen tongue. The feel of it all filled in the last holes in his recollection: the invasion, the fight on the wall, the king and his men coming to his rescue. He’d tried to fight alongside the elite knights, but he was only a farmer forced to dress up in armor and wear a sword.

  There’d be no harvest this year, not for him.

  He spat weakly to clear his mouth; bloody saliva ran down his cheek into his ear. Ragged breath caug
ht in his throat as he remembered the warrior breaching the wall, a huge man dressed in closed helm and black chain mail splashed red—paint or blood, Khirro couldn’t tell. The man easily bested him, forced him back until he stumbled over a fallen knight. He recalled the fellow’s pained groan as his foot struck his ribs, then he was tumbling end over end down the stairs, desperate to keep from going over the edge to the courtyard seventy feet below.

  So that’s where he was—lying on the first landing, precariously close to death, as King Braymon and his guard defended the fortress from a Kanosee army.

  King Braymon.

  Everything hurt: back, arms and legs, hips. His head pounded. Warm blood oozed down his forehead from above his hairline. His throat worked futilely; it was a struggle to draw breath. Instead of his lungs expanding in his chest, panic grew in their place. He’d survived a bombardment of fireballs and the first Kanosee breach of the fortress wall; how ironic it would be to die falling down the stairs.

  When he could breathe again, he gasped air past the bloody taste on his tongue like a man breaking the surface of a lake after a long dive. He took inventory of his body, wiggling his fingers and toes, flexing his muscles. They hurt, every one of them, but they all worked.

  What do I do now?

  The thought was fuzzy, as though spoken by someone with a mouthful of cotton. Another thought came fast on the heels of the first: The king needs me. Even warriors as fierce as King Braymon of Erechania and his guard couldn’t defeat so many. He wanted to get up and rush to his king’s side, to stand against the enemy, but more than the pains in his body kept him from it.

  He thought of Emeline, and of his unborn child. His heart contracted.

  Idiot! All you had to do was push over a couple of ladders. What kind of soldier are you?

  He was no soldier, that was the answer. Spade and hoe were his tools, horse and plow, not sword and dirk and catapult. But he had a duty, and he’d made a promise to Jowyn before the hellfire claimed his life. Khirro scrambled away from the edge; his head smacked the stone landing sending a fresh jolt of pain through his temples.

  I don’t want to end up like Jowyn.

  Fighting sounds tumbled over the edge of the walk thirty feet above, carried to Khirro on a hot summer breeze that petered out long before it reached him. The thought of King Braymon and his guards fighting for their lives filled him with guilt. He heard the king’s voice call for aid. Someone answered, far away and small, and Khirro felt relief. The clangs and clatters intensified and the king called out again, but this time his cry cut short. Khirro gasped and held his breath, waiting for a sign of what had happened.

  He should be at the king’s side, repelling invaders. He was no one’s equal with a weapon, but another sword was a sword nonetheless. Pain flared as he tensed his muscles and his body tilted dangerously in the direction of the painful death awaiting at the bottom of the wall. He scrambled a few inches away from the edge, sweat beading on his brow, leather breast piece scraping on stone stair. A couple of deep breaths pained his ribs but slowed his racing heart. Part of him wondered if he could just stay there, wait for the battle to end. His sword arm would be of such little use to the king, anyway, perhaps more of a hindrance. Live to fight another day, as the saying went. His father, a lifetime farmer who never hefted a sword, would said that was a coward’s saying. His father still considered himself the best judge of such things, but ever since the accident that cost him his arm, everything Khirro did made him a coward, or useless, or no good.

  He wouldn’t prove his father right.

  Khirro stared up the wall at the sky, its promise of summer seeming so far away now. He gathered his strength, drew a few short, sharp breaths. The muscles in his shoulders and back bunched painfully. He stopped and released them, allowing his body to go limp again as a figure appeared at the edge of the wall above.

  The angle and distance made it difficult to see the man until he leaned forward and peered directly down at Khirro. The black breastplate splashed with red made him unmistakably the same man who nearly killed him. Khirro stared up, mimicking a corpse, as anger filled his chest, partially directed at the invader for his actions, partly at himself for playing the coward his father accused him of being.

  The man disappeared from sight, but only long enough for Khirro to release his held breath and half-draw another. When he returned, the Kanosee warrior held a limp form in his arms. Sunlight glinted on steel plate as, impossibly, he hefted the armored body above his head, presenting it to the heavens as if an offering to the Gods.

  Something caught the man’s attention and he looked away for a second then hurriedly, ungracefully, heaved the body over the edge.

  Time slowed as the limp body twisted through the air toward Khirro. He saw the blood caked on lobstered gauntlets, dents and scuffs on silver plate.,an enameled pattern scrolling across the top of the breastplate. The armor seemed familiar but his pounding head gave no help in recognizing it as the limp form tumbled toward him.

  At the last moment, instinct overpowered shock, fear and pain, and Khirro rolled to the right, teetering dangerously on the landing’s edge. The body hit the stone floor beside him.

  The slam of armor against stone was nearly deafening, but not loud enough to mask the sickening pop of bones snapping within. The body bounced once and came to rest, some part of it pressed against Khirro’s back, threatening to push him over the precipice. He wriggled painfully away from the edge, pushing against the unmoving body behind him.

  The sounds of fighting renewed. Soldiers must have pushed past the burning catapult that had barricaded them, rushing to engage the enemy and save their king.

  Where were they five minutes ago?

  Khirro put the thought from his mind. He lived, after all; it was more than he could say for the man lying beside him.

  Khirro lay still for a minute, unsure what to do. If he stayed put, he’d forfeit his life to a Kanosee sword as surely as if he rejoined the fray. His eyes flickered from the wall walk above to the stairs. He saw no one. If there was a best time to move—to go somewhere, to do something—it was likely now, while the enemy was freshly engaged. He turned his head, looked at the man lying dead beside him.

  The man’s cheek pressed against the stone landing was curiously flat, crushed by the fall. His eyes were closed; blood ran across his closed eyelids from a gash on his clean-shaven scalp. A scrollwork of enameled ivy crawled out from the corner of his silver breastplate and across his epaulet. Khirro stopped breathing.

  King Braymon!

  It was the king dead beside him, the man who had rescued him from the red-splashed Kanosee soldier, leaping into the fight to save a lowly farmer-turned-soldier without regard for his own safety.

  The king. The man who ruled the kingdom.

  While Khirro had chosen to cower on the landing, struggling to find his courage as others fought for the kingdom, Braymon hadn’t hesitated a second.

  And now the king was dead, and there was no one to blame but Khirro.

  Guilt stirred his gut. What would this mean to the kingdom? To the war? His head swam. Did this mean he could return home, or would it mean more fighting? He thought of Emeline. It was easy to remember why he hadn’t risen after his fall down the stairs when he thought of her and of the child she carried. He only wanted to return to her, to go back to the farm and live out his life in peace and quiet. If Emeline would have him back.

  The clang of steel and the shouts and screams of men fell on him like violent rain. He didn’t know how long he lay there listening and thinking, mourning and celebrating, awash in guilt and remorse and relief when another sound caught his attention. He held his breath.

  A footstep on the stair?

  His eyes darted toward the stone steps, but he couldn’t see beyond the king’s leg twisted at an unbelievable angle. He dared not turn his head for fear a man clad in a red-splattered breast plate may be leering at him from the stair, waiting for an excuse to fall upon him and finish the
job. Thirty seconds crawled by, a minute. Khirro began to think he’d heard his own breath. For a while there was only the sound of fighting, then it came again. Not a footstep, but a groan, small and weak, but close. Khirro waited, listening, hoping. Dreading. Then another sound, a whisper.

  Haltingly, Khirro moved his gaze back to the face of his king, the man who saved him, the man who so many years ago, saved the entire kingdom.

  He looked into the open eyes of King Braymon.

  Chapter Two

  A helm clattered off the wall walk, bouncing end over end down the stairs. It hit Khirro’s foot, startling him and sending a jolt of pain up his leg. When he looked to see what hit him, he recognized the dead eyes of a member of the king’s guard staring back at him from within the helm. A pained grimace twisted the face, blood dripped from severed tendons and ragged veins. Khirro recoiled, pain flashing down his spine. He kicked at the head, the sound of his armor scraping stone impossibly loud in his ears. His toe contacted the helmet painfully, sending it spinning across the landing. It trailed off blood spatters as it rolled to the edge then disappeared over the brink. Khirro breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Help me.”

  Khirro flinched. The king’s plea came again, a breathy whisper barely audible above the sounds of battle. Chickens ran about after their heads were removed, but nothing could speak without life remaining within. Khirro shifted painfully onto his side.

  “My king,” he whispered.

  Braymon lay in a tangled heap, hips wrenched farther than possible, one arm pinned beneath him, the other twisted behind. Blood streamed from his shaven head onto his cheeks and into his eyes, a mask of red through which little flesh showed. He blinked clearing his vision, a slow, lethargic movement, then directed his gaze toward Khirro. A pained smile twitched his lips; it quickly turned to a grimace.

  “I thought you lost, lad.”

  The blood drained from Khirro’s cheeks.

  “No, your highness. I... I was knocked unconscious. I’ve only just woken to find you here beside me.” The lie tasted more bitter than the coppery tang of blood on his tongue.