Thornto reached the little girl and held out his hand. She looked up at him beyond terror. He not only looked like a monster but had been a personal monster to her, terrorised her. Even so, Thornto could not leave her here with these people. The little girl must be in hell. No choice was a good one. There were monsters everywhere and her mother and father lay dead. Thornto was willing her to take his hand. Praying that she took his hand. The girl looked down at her parents, their blood staining the mud, diluting in the torrential rain. She looked at her brother, the undiluted hatred on his face as he stared at Thornto. She looked at the prince, cold and distant. Then she reached up and took the monster’s hand. Thornto dropped his halberd and picked her up. She wrapped her arms around him. Thornto turned to face the prince.
“Make sure I never see you or any of your people again,” he told the other man. The prince’s cold expression didn’t alter a fraction. Then Thornto turned and carried the girl away from the prince, the fool, her brother and the cooling bodies of her parents lying in the mud.
A ghoul, a killer and a monster: it wasn’t much of a family but better yet than the one she’d had. Thornto told her it would be all right. It was probably a lie, but right there, right then, he meant it.
About the Author
Gavin G. Smith is the Dundee-born author of the hard edged, action-packed SF novels Veteran, War in Heaven, The Age of Scorpio Trilogy and the Bastard Legion series, as well as the short story collection Crysis Escalation. He has collaborated with Stephen Deas as the composite personality Gavin Deas and co-written Elite: Wanted, and the shared world series Empires: Infiltration and Empires: Extraction.
Table of Contents
One: The Tourney
Two: The Breach
Three: The Bodypits
Four: The Ponce
Five: The Hierophant
Six: The Ambush
Seven: The Kidnapping
Eight: The Murders
About the Author
Chivalry Page 9
