The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three
Read The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three Online
Authors: Craig R. Saunders,Craig Saunders
© Craig Saunders 2015
All rights pertaining to this
work belong to Craig Saunders and Craig R. Saunders Publications. Any
resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
The Queen of
Thieves
The Line of
Kings Trilogy:
Book Three
by
Craig
R. Saunders
Table of
Contents
Part III.
The Song of Swords (1)
Part VI.
The Enemy Before the Gates
Glossary
Bonus Novel Sample: Rythe Awakes
Dedication
For Sim, my very own witch.
Rena
cradled her baby in her arms. The child was a year old. He was a grasping,
crawling, babe, his first words gurgled two months ago. He had since fallen
silent, as though those first few words had tired the child out.
Rena
named the child Tarn, after the boy's father; the last of the line of Sturman
kings.
The
child would never know his father.
Rena's
mother, Mia, bustled by the fire in the middle of their shared hut.
Mia
stopped and wiped her hands on a cloth, cleaning off the bright yellow pollen
of a carmillion blossom she used in a potion.
'Someone's
coming,' said Mia, putting down the stained cloth and stirring the mixture over
the peat fire in the circular hearth.
'Who?'
asked Rena.
'I
don't know...strange...'
Rena
heard the footsteps crunching through the snow to the door of the hut. She
half-rose to answer the late night call.
'No,
tend the child,' said Mia. 'I'll go.'
Mia
opened the door before the visitors could knock. A flurry of snow blew in
through the front door.
'Who
is it?' Rena called from beside the fire, but before Mia could utter a word, a
sword ran her through, bursting from her back with a spray of blood.
She
had no breath to cry out.
Rena
screamed, laid the babe down.
She
did not panic. She was a witch. A young witch, still, but a witch, nonetheless.
The
closest thing to her with which she could protect herself and her babe was the
cauldron. It was a big, heavy thing. She took up the cauldron from the fire,
burning hot on her unprotected hands but she did not notice the pain or the
weight. For a moment she was blind to emotion and feeling. Blind to everything
but the sudden threat to her child.
With
a great cry she ran to her mother as a warrior clad in some dark material
pulled his sword free of her mother's chest. Mia toppled to the floor, dead
before she hit the dirt.
As
the warrior, the assassin, drew his sword back to strike again, Rena flung the
burning mixture into his face. Her cried out, his skin steaming, and fell back.
With
all her strength Rena swung the cauldron, her own hands burning, and caved in
the man's skull.
Only
then did she look up.
Five
more men in dark garb stood before the door to the hut, weapons drawn, faces
masked.
'Kill
her,' said one, 'and kill the child.'
'No!'
she shouted. 'No!'
The
first man advanced, faceless behind his mask but with cold alien eyes. He did
not make it any further. With a soft sound breaking the night, an arrow thudded
into the killer's neck. The missile travelled in and through, the steel arrowhead
protruding. The assassin - surely no man - fell to the ground. Breath gurgled
for a second then the assassin was silent.
There
was a space of no more than a moment when nobody moved. The moment broke and
everything seemed to happen at once.
Another
of the assassins turned to the new threat, and was taken with an arrow through
his eye. In the time it took for Rena to take up a dead man's sword in her
burned right hand, another two fell quickly. One remained, and he made the
fatal error of looking for the bowman and forgetting the witch behind him.
With
a grunt Rena swung the heavy blade up over her head and down into the last
killer's skull.
The
blade stuck fast and was torn from her grasp when the assassin fell. She stood
defenceless, facing the night, blind in the dark and the snow, looking into the
blackness for the archer.
'Easy
now,' said a man from the forest. She heard his footsteps through the high snow
before she saw him.
A
long man, holding a curved horn bow. On his back a quiver with two arrows. At
his hip he wore a short sword and a dagger.
He
bowed before her, then knelt, taking one knee in the blood-stained snow.
'I'm
sorry,' he said. 'I was too late.'
Rena,
too, fell to her knees and began sobbing.
She
sobbed for a time, then stood and wiped her eyes. The man still knelt, head
bowed, his hair crusted with snowfall and the grime of the road.
Turning,
she saw her mother's form, and her babe crying beside the fire, swaddled in a
blanket.
'I'm
sorry, my lady, but you must come with me. There is no more time for mourning.'
'My
mother...'
'The
ground is hard and she is dead,' said the bowman, but softly.
'You
know me?'
'Only
by name,' he said, 'A mutual friend sends me to bring you forth. We have need
of you. Need of your kind...need of the babe...'
'Who?'
she asked, as she pulled her mother's body in from the cold.
'Roskel
Farinder.'
The
thief, she thought. The thief her husband had told her of.
'The
thief?'
The
bowman laughed softly, despite the grim situation.
'No
longer, lady,' he said. 'People call him Steward, Lord Protector of Sturma,
now. There are some of us that know him as the Thief King.'
Rena
shook her head. 'King?'
'Since
your husband fell, Lady. The Thief King is a...nickname...nothing more.'
She
shook her head again. 'I must see to my mother,' she said shortly.
'There
is no time. There is danger at every turn.'
'Make
time,' she told him.
He
bowed his head once more. 'How can I help?'
'Watch
the night. This is my business,' she told him.
'As
you wish,' he said. He turned at the door as she called out to him.
'I
should know your name,' she said.
'Lady,
my name is Asram Fell, and I am your servant.'
Rena
nodded. 'Thank you, Asram Fell,' she said, then turned to her business, that of
a witch in mourning, as she closed the door he stood out into the falling snow
with no complaint.
*
The
bald man, Roskel Farinder, sat in a seedy tavern called The Badger nursing a
mug full of frothing ale. The tavern was in a dark corner of the docker's
quarter. A dangerous place for a man like Roskel, who was not much of a
fighter, but he was not concerned. Sometimes the right look could fend off the
wrong kind of attention, and Roskel Farinder had the look of the hawk about
him.
All
around the room drunken sailors and soldiers, maids and wives, old men and
young men eyed the Thief King in the corner table, sitting alone. Roskel's
shaved head shone in the firelight. He stroked his long moustache and turned
his eyes to his cup and his ears to the conversation around the tavern.
Two
older men - old, but with teeth still in their heads - were the most
interesting of the patrons. One old man was missing four fingers of one hand.
Roskel noted this from the corner of his eye, without seeming to turn his head
to stare.
No
one recognised Roskel with his new shaved scalp, for the last most people had
seen of him he had been a dandy, with fine barber cut hair and finer garb. He
was largely ignored, but where once the Thief King had been a soft man,
responsibility, incarceration, and killing had changed him to a man to match
his look.
No
longer a dandy. Not quite a warrior...not by a long shot...but dangerous
seeming enough to give people pause should they think to accost him along his
route back to the castle.
'I
saw the suns burning from behind the mountains, I tell you, and it was night.'
'Goat's
balls, Mange,' said the old man with the missing fingers.
Roskel
wiped the ale from his lips and pulled his cloak tighter against the long
winter that was surely coming.
The
same tale passed many lips this last autumn, of the suns burning bright, or a
great firelight over the mountains, when the silver moons should have ruled the
night sky.
'Goat's
balls, my arse,' said six-finger's friend with a laugh. Roskel would have loved
to have sat for longer. The accents within the tavern, the atmosphere, the ale
- he enjoyed all of it. Too long had he sat in the seat of power, growing lax.
But
he had not forgotten. Power meant he was responsible for these people. Meant he
was responsible for the safety of this country, his Sturma.
Roskel
had heard enough. He downed the last of his ale and left his mug on the table
and pushed himself up. He didn't need to look to see his protectors rise as he
did.
Winter
was coming hard, and it was bringing something else from the North, too. A fire
that burned in the night. Something else was coming right along with winter. Of
that he was sure. He was sure, too, that it would be down to him to deal with
whatever may come. He was Lord Protector of Sturma and Steward of the Crown of
Kings. He never forgot. It weighed heavily upon his shoulders every single day.
The
fey light north of the mountains stank of magic, and the only magic on Rythe
belonged to the enemies of Sturma.
The
Hierarchy, the dark-hearted bastards from across the ocean.
Some
days the burden of leadership weighed more heavily than others, and this was
such a day. Roskel thought hard as he walked to the castle with two bodyguards
behind him in the shadows. He felt the burden of all the souls he was
responsible for. His shoulders were sore as he walked, as though from a real
weight. Shoulders slumped, he walked to find his brother protectors and prepare
for...
What?
War?
He
nodded to himself.
'Yes,'
he said softly. 'Yes.'
And
he knew he was right.
*
