Read Online 01 - Empire in Chaos by Anthony Reynolds - (ebook by Undead) - Free Book Online Page A

to say to him. “I
don’t think you can understand me,” she said. He stared at her blankly.
    “Did you kill that family? Did you murder those poor little girls?” she said.
“And are you going to kill me as well?”
    The elf shrugged his shoulders and stood, moving around the campfire towards
her. She recoiled back away from him. He squatted down in front of her, and held
out his hands. Looking down, she saw that he was offering her his meal—he had
not eaten it all. She felt foolish suddenly, and a blush rose over her lightly
freckled face. She shook her head. He offered her his meal again, his face
emotionless, and this time she accepted it. She touched his hands as she took it
from him—though they looked as cold and hard as the whitest marble, they were
warm and soft.
    She blushed again, and began to eat as he moved away. After she had finished
this second meal, she tried talking to him again.
    “Thank you for the meal,” she said. She felt somewhat foolish talking to this
silent, aloof figure—it was like talking to a blank stone wall. But she was
determined to attempt to communicate. His impassive, ghostly white face gave
away not a hint of what he was thinking.
    She tapped herself on the chest. “Annaliese, Annaliese,” she repeated. Then
she pointed at him and raised her eyebrows questioningly. He made no movement,
merely continued staring at her with his lavender eyes.
    “Annaliese,” she said once again, tapping herself on the chest. She pointed
at him again and made a questioning motion. He probably thinks I have lost my
mind, she thought. He stared at her for a moment longer, and began to turn away.
    He turned back briefly, and tapped himself on the chest, “Eldanair Lathalos
ath Laralemenos lo Nagarythe,” he breathed in a carefully enunciated voice, the
words clipped and spoken quickly.
    Annaliese stared at him. She didn’t catch any of what he had just said, and
it was clear on her face.
    The elf blinked, then spoke more slowly, tapping his chest.
    “Eldanair,” he said, then turned his back on her.
    “Eldanair,” said Annaliese quietly to herself, listening to the sound of the
name as it rolled off her tongue. The way she said it didn’t sound quite how the
elf had spoken it, but at least she now knew his name. It was a start.
     

 
 
CHAPTER FIVE
     
     
    The darkened cellar was a bloodbath.
    Men lay strewn upon the rough cobbled floor, moaning in agony as their
lifeblood leaked from fatal wounds. The stench of the dead and dying was
overpowering. There were shouts and curses, the ringing of steel upon steel, and
the sickening, wet, meaty sound of swords cleaving flesh.
    A thunderous voice rose above the din.
    “No clemency! Let none leave here alive!”
    More soldiers pounded down the stairs, swords drawn. They wore the black,
slashed doublets of Nuln, and carried swords and bucklers—their more
traditional halberds would have been next to useless in the confined space.
    The enemy were not hard to discern amongst the frantic melee, for they wore
long silken robes of blues, yellows and purples. They had drawn weapons of their
own, and once they realised that there was to be no escape, they fought with a
frenzy and lack of self-preservation that was off-putting, even to the
battle-hardened of the state soldiers—they fought rabid, cornered animals.
    “Grunwald! To me!” came the booming voice.
    The burly, unshaven sergeant loosed a shaft from his crossbow. It punched
through the forehead of one of the coven members who fell to his back, dead.
    “You heard the man,” Udo Grunwald roared, hurling the crossbow to the side
and pulling his heavy, flanged mace from his belt. “Push forward! We end this
now!”
    With a roar, he led a group of black-clad soldiers into the fray. He swatted
a blade away from him with his heavy weapon and smashed the mace-head into a
cultist’s face with his return blow, shattering his lower jaw in a spray of
blood and