Read Online The Colour of Vengeance by Rob J. Hayes - Free Book Online Page B

yet, though everything had gone strangely dark and had a strange musky, feathery smell.
    Something sharp and painful started scrabbling at Betrim's face and his hand shot up and grabbed it. A moment later he opened his eye to find he had in fact hit the crates and had in fact managed to destroy every single one of them. A man stood close by spouting curses even Betrim had never heard before. The thing that had been clawing at his face turned out to be a chicken and a particularly scared one at that. It reminded Betrim of his parents ranch back in Sarth so many years ago, reminded him of the argument he'd had with them, reminded him of how that argument had led to their deaths.
    A shout from above and Betrim dodged out of the way just as a sailor came plummeting from the sky to land with a sickening crunch where the Black Thorn had just been lying. The man didn't move, just lay there, broken and gurgling out his last breaths. Betrim carefully placed the chicken on the ground and limped away.
    He was in a large street with plenty of stone buildings either side, some homes, some shops, one tavern. It wasn't busy but it wasn't empty; people moved about, some stopped to stare at the bloody mess of sailor, some just ignored the entire thing as if a bit of death was a normal everyday occurrence for them, chances were that wasn’t far from the truth. A number of mercs, those meant to police the city, stood by laughing and making jokes at the dead man's expense. He ignored them all. If he could just put some distance between himself and here he might...
    “Thorn!” Betrim recognised the voice as belonging to the sailor with the crooked eyebrow. He turned to find out he was correct. The man was jogging towards him, breathing hard and holding his side. Seems Betrim wasn't the only one not used to running. The cook was limping along just behind Crooked Eyebrow and as Betrim watched a third sailor was thrown out of a doorway by a big merc with more gums than teeth. The third sailor dusted himself off, looked around and then joined the chef and Crooked Eyebrow. “'Bout time ya stopped runnin'!”
    Betrim grinned, though he doubted it looked quite so menacing as normal as he was still gasping air into his lungs. “Reckon... reckon I got a bit more in me. How 'bout you?”
    Crooked Eyebrow snarled at Betrim. “Reckon ya a coward.”
    The grin disappeared. Betrim Thorn was many things but one thing that was not on that list was coward and he knew the moment he let one prick get away with calling him such then soon everybody would be at it and, when that happened, it wouldn't take long for those same folk to start trying to kill him. It was the nature of the game in the wilds, those with no name were always trying to make one off those with the big names and truth was they didn't come much bigger than the Black Thorn.
    Didn't seem like there was much else left to say. Betrim set his face into an expressionless mask, readied his axe in his right hand and plucked his dagger from his belt with his left. Then he advanced on the three sailors.
    All three men started to fan out, trying to surround him but the Black Thorn wasn't some green as grass boy, new to the ways of a fight. He charged Crooked Eyebrow with a wordless yell of fury. The sailor seemed caught somewhere between surprise and terror but he managed to dodge Betrim's first swing and blocked the axe with his cutlass on the second. Betrim was just about to stab his dagger into the man's face when the cook swung at him with his heavy meat cleaver. Betrim launched himself to his right to get away from the chunk of metal and nearly stumbled into the dagger wielding sailor who seemed more than happy to get in a good stabbing.
    He was a young sailor, the one with the dagger, Betrim couldn't tell how young but he reckoned he was just past reaching manhood. He had a real eager look on his face, the sort of look boys get when they want to make their first kill. Before they realise that