“He treats me like a whore. I am not.” She held the sword steady at his face, and Bad Tom didn’t move.
“Say you are sorry, Tom.” The captain sounded as if it was all a jest.
“Didn’t say one bad thing. Not one! Just a tease!” Tom said. Spittle flew from his lips.
“You meant to cause harm. She took it as harm. You know the rules, Tom.” The captain’s voice had changed, now. He spoke so softly that Tom had to lean forward to hear him.
“Sorry,” Tom muttered like a schoolboy. “Bitch.”
Sauce smiled. The tip of her riding sword pressed into the man’s thick forehead just over an eye.
“Fuck you!” Tom growled.
The captain leaned forward. “Neither one of you wants this. It’s clear you are both posturing. Climb down or take the consequences. Tom, Sauce wants to be treated as your peer. Sauce, Tom is top beast and you put his back up at every opportunity. If you want to be part of this company then you have to accept your place in it.”
He raised his gloved hand. “On the count of three, you will both back away, Sauce will sheathe her weapon, Tom will bow to her and apologise, and Sauce will return his apology. Or you can both collect your kit, walk away and kill each other. But not as my people. Understand? Three. Two. One.”
Sauce stepped back, saluted with her blade and sheathed it. Without looking or fumbling.
Tom let a moment go by. Pure insolence. But then something happened in his face, and he bowed—a good bow, so that his right knee touched the mud. “Humbly crave your pardon,” he said in a loud, clear voice.
Sauce smiled. It wasn’t a pretty smile, but it did transform her face, despite the missing teeth in the middle. “And I yours, ser knight,” she replied. “I regret my… attitude.”
She obviously shocked Tom. In the big man’s world of dominance and submission, she was beyond him. The captain could read him like a book. And he thought Sauce deserves something for that. She’s a good man.
Gelfred appeared at his elbow. Had probably been waiting for the drama to end.
The captain felt the wrongness of it before he saw what his huntsman carried. Like a housewife returning from pilgrimage and smelling something dead under her floor—it was like that, only stronger and wronger.
“I rolled her over. This was in her back,” Gelfred said. He had the thing wrapped in his rosary.
The captain swallowed bile, again. I love this job, he reminded himself.
To the eye, it looked like a stick—two fingers thick at the butt, sharpened to a needlepoint now clotted with blood and dark. Thorns sprouted from the whole haft, but it was fletched. An arrow. Or rather, an obscene parody of an arrow, whittled from…
“Witch Bane,” Gelfred said.
The captain made himself take it without flinching. There were some secrets he would pay the price to preserve. He flashed on the last Witch-Bane arrow he’d seen—and pushed past it.
BY MILES CAMERON
THE TRAITOR SON CYCLE
The Red Knight
The Fell Sword
The Dread Wyrm
The Plague of Swords
The Fall of Dragons
MASTERS & MAGES
Cold Iron
Dark Forge
Praise for
Cold Iron
“Cameron brings an intimate knowledge of history and warfare to a remarkably complex, real-feeling work of epic fantasy.”
—B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
“Utterly, utterly brilliant. A masterclass in how to write modern fantasy—world building, characters, plot, and pacing, all perfectly blended. Miles Cameron is at the top of his game.”
—John Gwynne, author of the Faithful and the Fallen series
“Cold Iron is fantastic. It shimmers like a well-honed sword blade.”
—Anna Smith Spark, author of The Court of Broken Knives
“A terrifically good novel that epitomises how good Fantasy novels can be when done right. This is an author with a tale to tell and the skills to do so admirably.”
—SFFWorld
* See “The Storm” in the anthology Art of War edited by Petros Triantafyllou.
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