The Blacksmith Queen (The Scarred Earth Saga, #1) - G.A Aiken Page 0,5

tossed it to her. She caught it easily without even stopping.

“What are you going to do?” one of them asked.

“Block this road.” She used the axe to motion behind her. “Over there. Now. Move.”

Samuel quickly followed her orders as, to his surprise, did the Amichais. Strange, since he’d been raised to believe they were barbarians that didn’t follow the orders of anyone.

Grasping the handle of the axe, Keeley raised the weapon high, her entire body tense, her muscles rippling. Then she brought it down, directly into the base of a large tree. She hit it once . . . twice . . . and the tree came down across the road.

“Gods, she’s strong,” one of the Amichais muttered behind Samuel.

Keeley moved across the road and attacked another tree. Now there were two very large trees blocking the road, but he could finally see what the others had felt. More mercenaries on horseback, riding hard toward them.

“Impressive,” the dark-haired male said, “but I don’t know what that’s supposed to do. We would have been better off running.”

The Amichai was probably right, although Keeley did manage to temporarily stop the riders. The ones in front pulled on the reins of their horses and halted their animals by the trees. The one in the lead laughed when he saw the roadblock.

“What is this?”

Keeley didn’t answer. She was too busy carrying the body of one of the soldiers’ compatriots toward them.

“You bitch!” one of the soldiers barked. “What have you—”

His question was cut off when that body and its insides hit him and several of the others. She then put two bloody fingers to her lips and whistled long and loud.

“You mad cow,” the leader said, pulling his sword from its sheath and—

Samuel stumbled back into the tribal female. He couldn’t help himself when a wolf appeared from seemingly nowhere, leaped over the soldier’s horse, and took down the leader with his fanged maw around the man’s throat.

More wolves came from the trees . . . or the ground . . . Samuel wasn’t sure. He really wasn’t. They seemed to come from everywhere. They weren’t larger than the forest wolves he’d seen in his travels but he’d never met any this bold, this bloodthirsty, or this mean.

Then one of those wolves turned toward him and Samuel immediately looked away, desperately chanting a protection spell at the same time. He had to.

Their eyes. Dear gods . . . their eyes!

But before Samuel could truly panic, Keeley came jogging toward him, carrying the axe and her hammer as if they weighed nothing. She tossed the axe back to its owner and said, as she ran past, “Now we run away. Run,” she cheerfully pushed. “Everyone run. Quick like bunnies!”

Shocked, confused, and unnerved by the death screams of the soldiers, Samuel and the others ran after Keeley.

Samuel whistled and the three horses he’d been traveling with appeared at the edge of the forest and followed their group, which made Samuel very grateful. He didn’t want to go back into that forest to find them and he didn’t want to tell his master that he’d lost the horses.

That would be a quick way to lose his head. And after he’d gone through so much to keep it on his shoulders . . .

CHAPTER 2

Keeley Smythe had to admit, she hadn’t expected her day to go like this. Not when she’d woken up this morning, forced her siblings out of bed so they could begin their chores while their mum slept until the new baby woke her up with her delightful squalling. Helped her father feed the horses, helped her younger brother turn those horses out into the east fields, and stopped a fistfight between two of her siblings.

All a normal early morning for her on her father’s farm. Then, as the two suns rose in the sky, she’d picked up her favorite hammer, kissed her mum and da good-bye, and headed out to her favorite place, the Iorwerth Forests. A vast, dense, treed expanse that Keeley had been exploring since she was a little girl. It was in Iorwerth that she saw her first wild horses. Several herds that had made the forest their home. She would go by every day and spend time watching them. She did it for so long, never bothering any of the animals, that they eventually came to her. The foals first, making their wobbly way over to her spot by a tree. Then the yearlings. Finally the beautiful gray lead mare