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Back By the Sword Save as PDF
Chapters (30)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Dedication
  4. BOOK ONE - Kerowyn’s Ride
  5. One
  6. Two
  7. Three
  8. Four
  9. Five
  10. Six
  11. Seven
  12. Eight
  13. Nine
  14. Ten
  15. BOOK TWO - Two Edged Blade
  16. Eleven
  17. Twelve
  18. Thirteen
  19. Fourteen
  20. Fifteen
  21. Sixteen
  22. BOOK THREE - The Price of Command
  23. Seventeen
  24. Eighteen
  25. Nineteen
  26. Twenty
  27. Twenty-one
  28. Twenty-two
  29. Twenty-three
  30. Twenty-four

It was amazing how little she owned that she wanted to keep. Her armor, Lordan’s outgrown castoffs, a few personal treasures and the jewelry and books Lenore had left her ... it all fit into two saddlebags with room to spare. She started to take a last look around her room—and realized that it held nothing of her or for her anymore.

So she turned her back on it, and strode out, chain mail jingling with a cheer she began to feel herself.

Out in the stable, even the grooms were absent, enjoying their own version of the wedding feast. All the better; that made it possible for her to saddle up Verenna and ride out without anyone noticing.

The mare came to her whistle and stood quietly while she saddled and bridled her. She felt Verenna’s tense eagerness as she mounted, as if the mare was as ready to be free of the place as Kero was. She touched her heel lightly to the mare’s flank; Verenna leapt forward. They trotted across the courtyard, cantered to the gates. She was at a full gallop as they passed the gates in the outer wall. Kero laughed as they burst out into the sunshine, wind whipping her hair, Verenna striding effortlessly under her. Nothing was going to stand in her way now!

But she pulled Verenna up abruptly at the sight of the two mounted figures waiting for her at the crossroads. Suddenly sick with dread, she approached them at a walk. What if they tell me to go back? What if they don’t want me? What if—

“What kept you?” asked Tarma.

Six

Six

This was not precisely what Kerowyn had pictured when she’d asked for teaching.

“Chopping wood I can understand,” Kero said slowly, hefting the unfamiliar weight of the ax in her right hand. She eyed her appointed target, an odd setup of two logs braced against the tree, and shifted her hand a bit farther down on the haft. It wasn’t a very big ax, and she had the sinking feeling that it was going to take a long time to chop her way through the pile of log sections stacked up at the edge of the clearing. She’d already put a dent in the pile over the past few days, using a larger ax in a conventional manner, but this tool baffled her. It wasn’t much heavier than the hand axes some of Rathgar’s men had fought with. “I’ve been cutting wood for you since I got here, and I can see that you still need firewood. But why brace the logs so that I’m cutting at that angle?”