Read Soulbreaker for Free Online

size as himself.
    “Must be a hell of an offer for you to betray your own,” Thar said, voice echoing.
    “You are not one of us,” Barrel-gut replied in a rough accent, pronunciation deliberate.
    Thar nodded, impressed that the man not only understood, but also spoke Kasinian. “Oh, I wasn’t speaking of me. I meant those like you enslaved in the Farlands.”
    “What would you know of them?” Barrel-gut asked with a scowl.
    “I know enough,” Thar said, shrugging, “more than you give me credit for. I know that we are related.” With those words he allowed the outer layer of skin on his face to fall away, revealing fine golden scales.
    Barrel-gut snarled in a guttural language. The words did not sound friendly. Confirmation of intent arrived when fire and smoke belched from the black hole at the tip of Flathead’s firestick. Thunder accompanied it.
    Thar dodged, a purely instinctive shift of his body, and was happy for his reaction. Another one of his instincts had been to harden the nimbus surrounding him, making it like steel. Vision enhanced, he tracked the metal ball streaking in an instant toward him. It passed through his nimbus like a hot poker through snow, striking the wall behind him, the impact echoing.
    Refocusing on Flathead, Thar picked out a slight motion from the man’s hand where it held the rear section of the firestick near his face. The Farlander’s finger was contracting, an easy squeeze like an archer aiming before he loosed an arrow.
    Fire and smoke belched. More thunder.
    Again, Thar tracked the metal ball and dodged it. The ball shifted , changed trajectory. One moment it was tearing by, heat trailing from it, and the next it was zipping toward his head. A bit of soul clung to it, extending back to Flathead.
    Eyes wide, Thar managed to turn his face a heartbeat before the pebble-sized ball struck. Fire scorched his cheek. The metal projectile continued on by, splashing into the sewage behind him.
    Flathead’s finger was tensing once more. Snarling silently, Thar poured a major portion of his soul into his legs. He imagined massive coiled springs. With one motion he bent his knees and drove forward. In the instant it took Flathead’s finger to squeeze, Thar covered the distance between them, water sloshing around the tunnel with the backlash of his velocity.
    By the time the fire and projectile erupted from the hole at the front of the firestick, Thar was slamming into Barrel-gut’s shield. Thar expected the men to be blasted off their feet. Instead, the short Farlander stumbled back a few steps through sewage, and then regained his balance, but not before he bumped into his partner.
    Thar was on them, attacking with punches and kicks. In the limited space of the tunnel his sword would be useless. He became a blur of blows, strikes landing with metallic thuds, water splashing.
    Barrel-gut parried every attack simply by shifting his shield a foot or two in the appropriate direction. Behind the short man, Flathead had taken advantage of the situation by sprinting farther down the tunnel. He was bent, head down, attention focused on the firestick, hands working with practiced efficiency. Thar glimpsed more metal balls.
    Thar feinted a kick to the right. When Barrel-gut shifted, Thar brought his foot up and over the shield too fast for the man to respond. The kick caught the Farlander in the side of the face. Pain shot through Thar’s foot. Barrel-gut was grinning at him, metal glinting where the kick had sheared away skin.
    Hissing in surprise, Thar took a step back. The Farlander’s scales weren’t golden. Neither were they the polished silver or bronze he’d come to know. They were dull, iron grey.
    Another blast of thunder chased away Thar’s shock. Flathead was standing, firestick aimed. Flames and smoke spat from the weapon two additional times.
    Barrel-gut chose that moment to strike, hand a blur of movement, deceptively fast for his girth. With no time to dodge both attacks