Read Online Refuge: Kurt's Quest by Doug Dandridge - Free Book Online

the alley that the wolf was
looking at.  There were soldiers in that alley, hidden in the shadows,
anxiously gripping their spears and crossbows.  The wolf was sampling the
thoughts of the telepaths among them, and reading their readiness to attack. 
[We’ll wheel into that alley and take out those soldiers, then hold it against
the rest of them.] 
    The Duke looked thoughtful for a moment, as if
weighing the plan.  Finally he nodded yes, and sent out his own acceptance of
the plan, while the telepaths whispered to those not gifted as they what the
plan was.
    “Now,” shouted Kurt in German, sending out the
same signal through his mind.  The riders opposite the alley mouth pulled their
horses hard by the reins and charged into the alley, while Kurt and Jackie rode
forward, blades swishing from their sheaths and aiming their mounts toward a
pair of the mounted warriors.
    Ten of Haraald’s men were in the alley in an
instant, riding toward the King’s men with drawn blades.  Fenri followed them,
his bow strung, eyes searching the rooftops for archers.  As soon as he saw one
he pulled and released, and a screaming man fell from the two story building
with a shaft sticking from his chest.  A bolt came flying from the end of the
alley, then another, neither on target, and Kurt picked up the laughter of the
wolf as he sent images of terror into the minds of the crossbowmen.
    Then he had no time for other thoughts as his
horse slammed into the chest of a lesser mount, and he had something more
immediate to take his attention.  The other horse went back, its hooves sliding
out from under it in its failed attempt to remain on its feet.  Horse and rider
crashed to the ground, and Kurt’s warhorse struck out with a front hoof that
connected with the head of the warrior.
    Kurt brought his blade around to parry the long
sword of another warrior.  Lenoris was not glowing with power in this battle against
mundane foes.  Still, it was a lighter than normal, sharper than seemingly
possible, two handed sword in the grip of a man stronger than any the Nordican
soldiers had ever before faced.  The sword batted aside that of the enemy
soldier, then reversed easily into a swing, propelled by Kurt’s massive
strength, to cut through the pauldron of the other man and knock him from his
horse with a gushing wound.  Kurt pulled the blade away and into a backhand
that took down another horseman.
    Jackie’s blades did not need the catalyst of an
evil creature to work.  Her right hand sword, a katana, glowed with the red of
heat, while the left hand sword shone an icy blue of super cold.  She swung
both blades in perfect rhythm, taking two men from their horses.  One fell with
his skin on fire under the hole in his armor, the other with a look of fear on
his frozen face, which shattered as he hit the cobblestones of the street.
    Crossbow bolts flew in, the Nordican soldiers
trying to down the two, to them, demons that were killing their close in
fighters with ease.  Jackie took two bolts out of the air with her swords,
moving in blurs of motion, one a streak of red, the other of blue.  One bolt
fell from the air melted in the center, the other shattered as it hit the
stones.  Two bolts flew at Kurt, bouncing from his tough enchanted armor in
showers of sparks.
    Kurt rode hard toward the pair of crossbowmen
who had taken him under fire, his two handed sword pointed outward in one hand
like a spear.  It sliced through the studded leather of the bowman like thin
cloth, skewering the man.  Kurt raised the squirming, dying man into the air
and flung him from the sword, then swung the freed blade into the other
bowman’s neck, decapitating the man.  By the time he turned toward Jackie to
see how she was doing, she had killed both of the men foolish enough to shoot
at her.
    [We need to get to where the rest of our people
are,] he sent her way, turning his head to see a wagon now set up to block the
entrance to the alley.  The