Blood Falchion: Blood Blade, #1

Blood Falchion

~BLOOD BLADE~

TALE ONE

by J.M. Ney-Grimm

Copyright © 2012 J.M. Ney-Grimm

Cover design by James, GoOnWrite.com

Blood Falchion

is also included in the collection titled

Tales of Old Giralliya

Table of Contents

Blood Falchion

Bonus Tidbits

Author Bio

Excerpt

More Titles by J.M. Ney-Grimm

For Miles,

who responded so enthusiastically

to a late revision of this story,

and

who instructed me on the intricacies

of the pommel, grip, and crossguard

which together comprise the whole of a sword hilt

Blood Falchion

The lord’s young heir, Caelan, was the second to see the blade.

It arrived amidst a pile of carpets from far Bethpaarean, and the carpet merchant’s son Sathon discovered it when he unpacked the bale to arrange the carpets in his father’s stall in the bailey.

Caelan sought his friend the instant he received word the carpet merchant was passing through Castellum Balazoron’s gates. It was a hike from his high chambers in the donjon down to its courtyard and out the barbican to the sunny bailey, and Caelan suffered palsied limbs, the result of a fever in his infancy. He could not move fast, but he was just fast enough to see the sword—a falchion—a moment after Sathon uncovered it.

Catching his breath and his balance at the gap in the curtains flanking the stall doorway, Caelan inhaled the exotic perfume lingering on the carpets from the incense so pervasive at their point of origin. He suppressed a sneeze. The aroma conjured visions of wonder, strangeness, and adventure, but it did tickle the nose!

The patterned rugs made glowing banks of color all around the stall. Near the back stood Sathon, still short—like Caelan—but wiry, where Caelan was gangly, and black hair curly, where Caelan’s was straight.

Sathon bent over the carpet mound before him, astonishment and shock evident in the strain of his back muscles through the thin linen of his tunic. Caelan could just see a glimpse of a gleaming bronze hilt in the gap between Sathon’s torso and his reaching tan arm.

With that glimpse of rich bronze, all else fell away from Caelan’s awareness—the perfumes, the vivid carpets, the close stillness of the stall’s air, even Caelan’s gladness to see his friend.

The blade to that hilt exuded an aura of dread carried by an insubstantial, seething halo of shadow. Caelan’s in-breath hissed. Don’t! he cried.

Sathon’s reaching hand stopped, and he glanced over his shoulder, in surprise—not that Caelan was there; the boys were always immediate in seeking one another—but in surprise at his friend’s tone of warning. Puzzlement knit his brow. What? he said.

Caelan hurried closer, limping a little in his haste. "Don’t you feel it? See it? What do you see?

Sathon relaxed, answering readily. "The