Read Online The Swords of Corium by B. V. Larson - Free Book Online

Viscount’s ashen face grow fuller of terror by the second. Therian thrust once with Seeker, suddenly, even as the man opened his mouth to croak last words.
    Gruum stood and Therian stood with him. A feral cast had overtaken the Hyborean. Gruum knew the look well.
    “Do you think he might have been about to rescind his generous offer?” Gruum asked.
    Therian grinned at him. The light of a fresh soul shone from his eyes. “Of course. What cowardly dog like him could do other than change his mind when he heard the words consigning his soul to pain everlasting?”
    The starboard side of the vessel now canted ten feet higher than the port side.
    “Now, before we go down!” Therian shouted. “Drop the prongs!”
    Heavy ramps were levered out over the sides of the ship. The end of each ramp was hinged to the lower decks of the ark. At the other end was a great, black spike of iron. Lifted by ropes, the ramps were dropped, spike first, into the decks of the galleys clustered below. In all, seven ramps were successfully dropped into place. Doors yawned opened on the ark’s sides, revealing portals full of reavers. Dressed in the black battle-armor of Hyborea, the cadets rushed forward. Eager for the fight, they streamed out to assail the ships that had so determinedly worried at the ark’s sides.
    Therian and Gruum rushed down a plank in the midsection. They were met with stiff resistance on a war galley of carven spruce. The cadets, while almost impossible to kill in their armor, could be tossed overboard where they sank like stones. On each galley, the cadets were outnumbered fifty to six. They took a grim toll, but were eventually overwhelmed.
    In the case of Therian and Gruum’s ship, however, things went differently. Therian was a feral thing, a wolf among sheep. He leapt from deck to deck, his feet barely touching the planks. He chanted as he sprang and ran, thrusting with Seeker and Succor together. Deadly and efficient, the enemy soon quailed and sought to run, but there was no escape. Every soul was taken, save those that wisely jumped overboard and drowned themselves.
    When the first galley was theirs, Therian ordered sailors to come down from the sinking ark and man the oars. He ran to the great, iron spike that connected the galley to the ark. He ripped the foot-deep spike loose from the planks with a great, ear-splitting screech. He tossed it overboard with a single hand then roared for the men to wheel the galley and head to the next vessel, which was less than a hundred feet distant.
    The work went too slowly for Therian’s taste. Half-mad with bloodlust, he thrust a blade into a sailor who fouled his oar with his neighbor repeatedly. When the second galley saw him coming, they paddled madly to free themselves from their locked ram, but were unable to do so in time.
    Therian jumped twice as far as Gruum had ever seen a man jump before. He sprang from one deck to the next like a man possessed of an ape’s agility. They swept the second galley, and opened the hatches on the first and sent it to the bottom. Then Therian ordered his men to row for the ice shelf in search of fresh game.
    Gruum had time then to look up and take note of how the battle at large was going. To his surprise, the other war arks had joined the struggle. How long they had been present, he had no way of counting. The hand-to-hand fights on each ship had taken every ounce of his attention. He had little idea if he had fought for an hour or only ten minutes.
    Now, however, he was able to take stock of the battle as a whole. It appeared to him that they were winning. The first ark had done such terrible damage that the arrival of ten more sent many of the barbarian ships fleeing in terror.
    Just then, as he began to feel the hope of victory blossom in his heart, a great red flare gushed nearby. Up close, the breath of the Dragon was awesome to behold. It was not a simple tongue of flame, it was more like a conical plume that grew in size and