The night before his Coming-of-Age, Ghyll and his two friends escape their castle on a clandestine boar hunt that will forever change their lives. The hunt proves a disaster, and with one of them badly wounded, they return just in time to see their island castle destroyed by macabre warriors from a dragon boat, and by flocks of fire-breathing birds. Ghyll’s eighteenth birthday turns into a nightmare as they flee into the night.
Now begins an epic journey to find out who is trying to kill them – and most importantly, why?
Fortunately, they can count on the help of new friends, including a sometimes overly enthusiastic fire mage, an inexperienced paladin and a young beastmistress who is also a ferocious mountain lioness. It soon becomes clear that not one but several sorcerers want to kill them. Are those blackrobes really followers of a terrible, long-forgotten organization?
PURCHASE
The Author
Paul E. Horsman (1952) is a Dutch and International Fantasy Author. Born in the sleepy garden village of Bussum, The Netherlands, he now lives in Roosendaal, a town on the Dutch-Belgian border.
He has been a soldier, a salesman, a scoutmaster and from 1995 till his school closed in 2012 a teacher of Dutch as a Second Language and Integration to refugees from all over the globe.
Being unemployed and economically overage, yet still some years away from retirement, he is a full-time writer of epic light fantasy adventures. His books are both published in the Netherlands, and internationally.
EXCERPT FROM: RHIDAUNA – CHAPTER 10: SOUTHERN LEUDRA
Olle sat concealed in
the shadow of the willow tree, motionless. The stars cast a faint light over
the sleeping field and it was quiet, very quiet. His thoughts went to his
foster brother, and that murderous creep. Vasthul and the Dar’khamorth – what
had Ghyll to do with them?
Some movement caught his eye and he
saw a shape creeping towards the tent. A second and third followed. He
recognized their jerky movements. Golems! Noiselessly he rose and raised his
huge sword. Then he took a deep breath and hurled himself at the three shadows.
‘Ayooo!’
The golems’ reaction was slow enough
for Olle to hit one of them full on the forehead. As he turned to the second
golem, he saw Ghyll coming from the tent, sword in hand, with Damion close
behind. The third golem lashed out at Ghyll, who parried the blow, stumbled and
cried out, grabbing his wounded side. The golem raised its weapon for the kill,
but at that moment, Damion sprang into action. He jumped the mademan from
behind and clung to his back with one arm around its neck, while with the other
hand he rammed his poniard into the golem’s forehead. Then he leaped away.
Ghyll tried to avoid the toppling
golem, but his leg buckled and he fell. With a roar of despair, Olle turned
toward his own opponent and split its head in two all the way to the shoulder
blades. As he was about to run to his foster brother, a warning shout stopped
him. From their tent, a fireball sizzled into the night. A blinding flash lit
up the area, followed by a scream and the clip-clop of a running horse. From
the brook rose the deafening croaks of a thousand frogs, protesting the
disruption of their sleep.
‘Missed him, damn it!’ Bo’s voice
shouted from the renewed darkness.
Olle, blinded, was for a moment
disoriented. ‘Ghyll!’
‘It’s... all... right.’ His foster
brother’s voice sounded full of pain. ‘I made a wrong move, that’s all.’
Olle resisted an impulse to run to his
side and forced himself to inspect the fallen enemies first. After he had
ascertained that all three were down for good, he strode back to the tents. ‘How
is it?’
Uwella looked up at him. ‘It’s not so
bad; his muscles aren’t up to these capers yet. He must be careful of that leg.’
His foster brother said something Olle
didn’t hear, but Uwella shook her head.
‘Go back to bed. I’ll give you
something for the pain and tomorrow morning we’ll see how it goes.’
Olle turned. ‘Was it... Vasthul?’
‘No idea.’ Bo ran both hands through
his long hair. ‘I just saw a shadow in a cloak.’
‘Oh, yes, that was Vasthul all right.’
Damion came back from the direction of the road. ‘I heard him swearing and
shouting as he fled. He had the same voice as that guy I chased in Theridaun –
a voice like a file, and he wasn’t sparing with it.’
‘I could go after him,’ Uwella said,
scowling.
Olle shook his head.
‘Too dangerous.’ He stooped and picked
up something. ‘Here,’ he said to Damion. In his hand glistened a white crystal.
‘Keep it, you’ve earned it yourself,’ he said. ‘Idiot!’ He gave his friend a
comradely punch in the shoulder and walked away. Moments later, he returned
with two golems by the ankles. ‘Does anyone want to see them?’
‘Not me,’ Ghyll said, from inside the
tent. ‘Only the crystals, please.’
‘I got two for you. Away with the muddies,
then.’ With a casual heave, Olle dumped the makemen one after another into the
stream, where they sank, gurgling, to the audible annoyance of the frogs.
‘That’s the end of the show, noble
lords and ladies,’ he said as he sat down again under the willow tree. ‘Try to
sleep; it’s an early day tomorrow.’ The others went back to bed, but the sounds
of their twisting and turning betrayed that further sleep avoided them.
No comments:
Post a Comment