Exert from the Screaming Into the Void post…

What follows below is the prologue to The Aos Si’s Gift. It is not overly long, so it will be in a single part. Some future chapters may have to be divided into parts due to length. If you like this and are interested in reading the rest of The Aos Si’s Gift, then it is available through IngramSpark eCommerce as well as Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

PROLOGUE

The summer air was hot and damp in the forested wetlands of the northeastern frontier of Heran. The Gemini Legions had failed to stop Emperor Gaius’s madness before it could get out of hand. They had been too late to save the emperor’s family. The emperor himself was gone. Reinforcements from the main body of the legions were late, and the cohorts that had marched ahead with the cavalry found themselves in a desperate last stand.

Legate Falco used his shield to cover his body as he pulled himself out from under his fallen horse. His sword was a longer design, intended for use by cavalry, and its single-piece bone grip was slick with blood. More spattered his cuirass, which was made of overlapping bands, and the arm guard made in a similar manner down his arm. One of the strips of his leather kirtle caught on the saddle, and he let his sword go so that he could free himself. He was a tall, muscular man with penetrating brown eyes. Part of his helmet’s long, red and black horsehair crest had been cut away early in the battle. He reached for a second sword strapped to his saddle skirt as one of the creatures that Gaius had summoned leaped at him.

The creature was twisted in its appearance with pointed ears and fierce, golden eyes. It wore a maille shirt, and its other clothes were a mixture of grays and browns. Its skin was the color of rotting bark and seemed to fit the creature wrong. Arrows streaked from the woodline to his rear to bury themselves in the creature’s chest. It toppled onto Falco’s sword as he managed to raise the blade to defend himself. Black blood oozed from the creature’s wounds and onto Falco’s hand as the sword sank to the hilt in its chest.

Falco heaved the creature aside, wiped off his hand and the hilt of his sword, and dragged himself the rest of the way out from under his horse. He tried to stand and cried out, falling to the ground. His leg was broken, and the ankle was twisted wrong. He panted as he pulled himself back toward the woodline. More of the creatures were coming behind their fallen comrade, some of them falling to arrows largely indistinguishable between the legion and the elves who called themselves Thunarrin.

Falco’s relief was the measured tread of a quick march as the rest of the Gemini Legions finally arrived. Two lines of legionnaires stopped between Falco and the creatures charging him. The front rank formed a wall with their rectangular shields while a legionnaire with the long, red crest of Falco’s second-in-command dropped his shield, seized Falco’s cuirass, and began dragging him back toward the woodline. “Lucius,” Falco breathed. “By the gods, I’ve never been happier to see friendly faces.”

Continue reading…