Theft of Swords (The Riyria Revelations #1-2)

“And hope it doesn’t dig us out? I’ve seen its claws; it won’t be hard.”


Hadrian ignored him and went on with his train of thought. “Then you could bring the other half of the sword, have Magnus forge it, and then I can kill it. See, it was a good thing you didn’t kill him after all.”

“You realize how stupid this is, right? That thing decimated this whole village and the castle last night, and you are going to take it on with an old farmer, two women, and a broken sword?”

Hadrian said nothing.

Royce sighed and sat down beside his friend, shaking his head. He reached into his robe and pulled his dagger out. He held it out in its sheath.

“Here,” he said, “take Alverstone.”

“Why?” Hadrian looked at him, puzzled.

“Well, I’m not saying Magnus is right, but, well, I’ve never found anything that this dagger can’t cut, and if Magnus is right, if the father of the gods did forge this, I would think it could come in handy even against an invincible beast.”

“So you’re leaving?”

“No.” Royce scowled and looked in the direction of the tower of Avempartha. “Apparently I have a job to finish.”

Hadrian smiled at his friend, took the dagger, and weighed it in his hand. “I’ll give it back to you tomorrow, then.”

“Right,” Royce replied.





“Did your partner leave?” Theron asked as Hadrian approached him, walking up the slope of the scorched hill that had once been the castle. The old farmer stood on the blackened hillside, holding the shattered sword and looking up at the sky.

“No—well, sort of. He’s headed back inside Avempartha to steal the other half of the sword just in case the Gilarabrywn tries to double-cross us. There is even a chance it might leave Thrace and Arista in the tower while it comes here, and if it does, Royce can get them out.”

Theron nodded thoughtfully.

“You two have been real good to me and my daughter. I still don’t know why, and don’t tell me it’s the money.” Theron sighed. “You know, I never gave her credit for much. I ignored her, pushed her away for so many years. She was only my daughter, not a son—an extra mouth to feed that would cost us money to marry off. How she ever found the two of you and got you to come all this way to help us is … well, I just don’t think I’ll ever understand that.”

“Hadrian,” Fanen called to him. “Come down here and see what we’ve got.”

Hadrian followed Fanen down the hill to the north edge of the burn line, where he found Tobis, Mauvin, and Magnus working on a huge contraption.

“This is my catapult,” Tobis declared, standing proudly next to a wagon on which a wooden machine sat. Tobis looked comical in his loud-colored court clothes, propped up on a crutch Magnus had fashioned for him, his broken leg strapped down between two stiff pieces of wood. “They dragged it out here when I was bumped from the roster. She’s exquisite, isn’t she? I named her Persephone after Novron’s wife. Only fitting, I thought, since I studied ancient imperial history to devise it. Not easy to do either. I had to learn the ancient languages just to read the books.”

“Did you just build this?”

“No, of course not, you silly man. I am a professor at Sheridan. That’s in Ghent, by the way. You know, the same place as the seat of the Nyphron Church? Well, being brilliant, I bribed some church officials, who let slip the true nature of the competition. It would not be a ridiculous bashing match between sawdust-filled heads, but a challenge to defeat a legendary creature. This was a puzzle I could solve, one that I knew did not require muscle and a lack of teeth, but rather a staggering intellect such as mine.”

Hadrian walked around the device. A massive center beam rose a good twelve feet, and the long thick arm was a foot or two longer than that. It had a sack bucket joined to a lower beam with torsion-producing cords. On either side of the wagon were two massive hand cranks connected to a series of gears.

“Well, I must say, I have seen catapults before and this doesn’t look much like them.”

“That’s because I modified it for fighting the Gilarabrywn.”

“Well, he tried,” Magnus added. “It wouldn’t have worked the way he had it set up, but it will now.”

“In fact, we fired a few rocks already,” Mauvin reported.

“I’ve had some experience with siege weapons before,” Hadrian said. “And I know they can be useful against something big, like a field of soldiers, or something that doesn’t move, like a wall, but they’re useless against a solitary moving enemy. They just aren’t that fast or accurate.”

“Yes, well, that’s why I devised this one to fire not only projectiles but nets as well,” Tobis said proudly. “I’m very clever that way, you see. The nets are designed to launch like large balls that open in mid-flight and snare the beast as it is flying, dropping it to the ground, where it will lie helpless while I reload and take my time crushing it.”

“And this works?” Hadrian asked, impressed.

“In theory,” Tobis replied.

Hadrian shrugged. “What the heck, it couldn’t hurt.”

“Just need to get it in position,” Mauvin said. “Care to help push?”

They all put their backs to the catapult, except, of course, for Tobis, who limped along spouting orders. They rolled it to the ditch that ringed the bottom of the motte and within range to fire on anything in the area near the old manor house.

“Might want to get something to hide it—rubble or burnt wood, maybe, so that it looks like a pile of trash,” Hadrian said. “Which shouldn’t be hard to do. Magnus, I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

“What kind?” he asked as Hadrian led him back up the hill toward the ruins of the manor house. The grass was gone, and they walked on a surface of ash and roots that made Hadrian think of warm snow.

“Remember that sword you made for Lord Rufus? I found it, still with him and his horse on the hill. I want you to fix it.”

“Fix it?” The dwarf looked offended. “It’s not my fault the sword didn’t work; I did a perfect replica. The records were likely at fault.”

“That’s fine, because I have the original, or part of it, at least. I need you to make an exact copy of what we have. Can you do it?”

“Of course I can, and I will, in return for your getting Royce to let me look at the Alverstone.”

“Are you crazy? He wants you dead. I saved your neck from him once already. Doesn’t that count?”

The dwarf stood firm, his arms crossed over the braids in his beard. “That’s my price.”

“I’ll talk to him, but I can’t guarantee it.”

The dwarf pursed his lips, which made his beard and mustache bristle. “Very well. Where are these swords?”