Read Online Take My Heart...: Dark Ages - Fantasy (Dark Gods & Tainted Souls Book 3) by julius schenk - Free Book Online

about ten days with the three stops I’ve marked out.”
    Goldie could see on the map three red X marks along the way to Twin Plains, somewhere quite a way, out of the way. He didn’t want to know who he’d be killing there but had to. At least, he could ask it the right way and not anger the volatile king.
    “What manner of forces will we encounter at each? Number of men, weapons and defenses.”
    The king laughed out loud. “Defenses? Weapons?”
    “That first one is a camp of around twenty desert people who are squatting on my land, not paying taxes and worshipping some dirt god. The second is a temple to the divine child. It’s entirely filled with women. They might be tough, though, they are witches who practice evil arts. The local women go there to give birth and are given vile concoctions by the priestess there.”
    “Wise women then,” said Goldie, they had them back home, they brew things like nettle tea to ease childbirth, hardly the Dark Guild reborn.
    “Evil women, worshipping vile gods and powers they have no right to. If they want to help a woman in childbirth they can follow the prescribed book of lawful medicines that I have produced, at great personal expense I might add,” he shouted.
    “Might help if anyone could read,” whispered Farirkar.
    “The third, well you’ll find out. It’s easy. Anyway, that brings me to my next question and I must say you men are turning out to be a lot softer than I had thought so please answer this with care. How do you feel about rape?” he said as if asking how they felt about white wine.
    Goldie looked at Farirkar to answer. He knew the answer the king wanted and thought the women of the divine child should be running right now.
    “We’re the Red Bastards,” Farirkar said simply.
    “Good that’s what I wanted to hear, now off you go and I’ll be hot on your tails to clean up the mess and console the poor victims of yours awful acts.” The king walked out of the room with a spring in his step.
    Goldie looked at Farirkar again and opened his mouth to speak, but the big man put a finger across his lips. “Once, the Red Bastards and that name used to mean something. People said it with fear and awe if someone asked us to do a low act like that, be he king or duke we’d gut him.”
    “And now?” Goldie said.
    “We’ll do the killing. We’ll burn shit down, but I’m a warrior and not a rabid dog to be ordered around,” he said and walked out of the tent.
    Goldie had picked right in that man. The old king Bastard would have gladly accepted. Farirkar was a strange one. He’d gladly kill a woman but not violate her. Goldie was the same, in the north you’d as easily be fighting a woman as a man in the line and an enemy was an enemy but fucked if he was killing a group of women because they had different gods to the king, if he even had gods.
    “Nice new friends you’ve got,” a female voice said.
    Goldie spun around, sword draw and saw her. Her red hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and dagger loosely in hand. He ran in and hugged Josette picking her up off the ground. He put her back down and looked at those big green eyes.
    “Sorry about Dagosh” he said.
    He saw the sadness in those eyes.
    “He died well and will be avenged, but now you’re working for that dog?” she asked.
    “You know me, my employers never seem that happy with the result, he’ll be no different. It’s good you’re here I need your help, please tell me Grimm is alive,” he said.
    “Grimm is fine, if scarier and Minsetta as well, she wants us to try figure out what the king is up to,” she said.
    Goldie passed her the map which she quickly looked over.
    “I know what he wants us to do but not why, not really, he says he wants us to sully the Twin Plains name but these sights are all religious in nature, we could just as easily burn down farm houses, it’s got something to do with this Order of the Learned he’s involved with,” he said.
    “You know about