A Time Of Dread (Of Blood and Bone #1)

Riv unstoppered the skin and poured the wine over Vald’s head.

Laughter rippled along the bench, as well as a warning cry or two. Someone was calling her name. Riv heard it as if through fog.

‘I’ll not be mocked and treated like a slave by anyone, least of all you, you fat pig,’ she snarled. ‘Want some wine? Pour it yourself.’

He leaped up, spluttering, and pushed Riv in the chest. Vald was as wide as he was tall, and strong as a bull, but Riv was ready for it, had sparred with him many times. She stepped to the left, slapped his hands away and kicked out at him. She must have connected with his stones, because he turned purple and dropped to his knees, hands clutched over his groin, gurgled curses foaming from his mouth. He tried to rise, but didn’t quite have the strength for it, instead staggering into Riv, his bulk sending her stumbling back. Her heel hit something and she began to fall, with a moment of perfect clarity knew that they were both headed for the fire-pit where a deer’s carcass was turning above the flames, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Then she was being yanked by the collar, dragged upwards, a great blast of air beating about her. The flames in the pit hissed and crackled, leaping high.

Riv found herself suspended in the air, Kol’s fist bunched in her cloak, feet dangling. Vald hung suspended from Kol’s other hand.

Now that is an impressive feat of strength, knowing Vald’s bulk.

‘We’ve enemies enough to fight, without starting on one another,’ Kol said, throwing them both to the ground. He looked from Riv to Vald, then shook his head.

‘You should eat something,’ he said to Riv. ‘Aphra, you’ve kept the fledglings waiting on us too long – they’re starving on their feet. And hunger frays tempers, you know. And you,’ he said, looking to Vald, who was grunting under the weight of his bulk as he struggled to one knee. ‘Perhaps you should consider exercising the humility and honour that befits a White-Wing.’

Vald wobbled to his feet.

‘And maybe try eating a little less.’

Laughter rippled around the room, Kol joining in at his own joke.

Riv avoided looking at her sister, knowing the stern glare she’d receive, and made her way to the food bench.

‘My thanks,’ Riv said to Kol as she sat at the table with a bowl of hot venison stew, fried onions and mushrooms bobbing in the fat-glistening gravy.

Kol drank from his wine cup, only to find it empty and Riv leaned close to fill it for him. He reached out to take the wine skin from her. As he did so, his hand closed around Riv’s, big and warm, heat pulsing from it. Riv’s instinct was to jerk her hand away, but she resisted, instead looked at him. The ghost of a smile twitched his lips, his eyes sparkling with mirth, and he winked at her, a flicker in the firelight.

‘You’re welcome,’ he said.

Then his hand was gone and he was taking the wine skin and pouring his cup full. Riv went back to her venison stew, not sure what exactly had just happened.

Riv murmured a command and dug her heels into her mount, moving from canter to gallop in the space of a few heartbeats as she leaned forwards, her spear gripped tight, shaft tucked between her arm and torso. Wind whipped her face and dragged tears from her eyes. She wanted to yell for the joy of it, the thundering hooves beating a shuddering time, echoed by the rhythm of her heart.

Her target seemed a long way away, everything around her slow, moving at quarter time. To one side of her, White-Wings were training in the shield wall, on the other side giants were shaking the ground in individual sparring. Closer, she glimpsed Jost, a blur attacking a training mannequin; even with his broken arm still bound he was fast and deadly.

And then, abruptly, her target was close, rushing towards her, the world around her lurching into speed and motion, and everything faded away, the world reduced to the tip of her spear and its target, one seemingly drawn unerringly to the other.

An explosion of straw and she was letting go the shaft, galloping on, leaning back and shifting the pressure on her reins. A spray of turf as her horse slowed and stopped.

Riv looked back to see her spear still juddering in the head of the straw target, felt the thrill of a blow perfectly struck, a grin splitting her face. She saw Jost raise his good arm to her, a salute; the two of them had become closer since their failed attempts at their warrior trial. It still hurt to see her other friends training as White-Wings, although she had a fierce pride in them as well, sword-brothers and sisters whom she had grown up with, trained beside for over three years. Except for Vald. She still felt a simmering resentment for him, though putting her boot in his stones had helped to dim that a little.

Riv patted her horse’s neck and praised him as she rode him to the paddocks adjoining the weapons-field. She dismounted and set about removing his tack and rubbing him down before she handed him over to the grooms.

Abruptly, she was stumbling into the fence, a pain shooting through her back, snatching her breath away and turning her legs to porridge. She hung onto the paddock rail, eyes screwed shut as the pain stabbed through her torso, radiating out from her shoulder blades, and then, as quickly as it had come, it was gone, only a dull ache remaining, the faintest echo of the pain.

‘You all right?’ one of the paddock grooms asked. She stood straight and rolled her shoulders.

‘Fine,’ she grunted, though she wasn’t: an ache in her back and, come to think of it, in most of her joints as well, a throbbing in her wrists and knees.

I must visit the healers about this. When I have some time.

She headed towards Jost and the training mannequins. Along the way a noise drew her attention, a square of warriors, fledglings from another hundred of White-Wings, training in the shield wall. She stopped and stared at them. There was some kind of disruption going on, voices raised, the shield wall splintering, a figure pushed and falling to the floor, another stepping forwards, standing over the fallen one.

It was Bleda on the floor, the young Sirak. He rose slowly, stumbling over the long wooden shield in his hand. The other lad standing over him was laughing. He pushed Bleda’s shield when he was halfway up, sending Bleda rolling to the ground again. He laughed harder and there was more laughter from the rest of the shield wall, about twenty of them. He stopped laughing when Bleda’s shield cracked into his ankles, though, sending him howling to the floor.

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