The queens blade, p.1
The Queen's Blade, page 1
The Queen’s Blade
The Queen’s Blade Book 1
D.K. Holmberg
Copyright © 2024 by D.K. Holmberg
Cover by Damonza.com
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Want a free book and to be notified when D.K. Holmberg’s next novel is released, along with other news and freebies? Sign up for his mailing list by going here. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
www.dkholmberg.com
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Series by D.K. Holmberg
Chapter One
The shout caught my attention first.
It was followed by a table crashing as somebody tumbled into it, and I hurried over, ready to intervene. It was uncommon for there to be such activity in the tavern this early in the evening, but a ship had docked in the small harbor along the river, and that often caused a bit more commotion.
I grabbed the man who had shouted and gave him a shove. He was a taller man but still about a hand shorter than me. He had on a dark jacket and pants, the casual navy uniform, and he had no weapon—at least not one that was visible.
As he spun to face me, rage flicked in his eyes for a moment, until he took a full look at me.
“None of that here,” I said.
He looked as if he wanted to argue with me, but then again, quite a few people looked like they wanted to argue with me until they realized what a mistake that would be. It was the advantage my size had.
“This doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he said instead.
“My tavern,” I said, thumbing toward the bar, where Janilla was working. She was a plump redhead and had been a good friend to me throughout my time in the town. I didn’t have to intervene, but then again, I didn’t have to do a lot of things.
“None of this has to do with you,” the man said again.
I shrugged. “Then take it outside.”
His friends behind him started to cajole him, making oohs and aahs to try to taunt him into action.
I didn’t want that. He didn’t want that, I didn’t think. Or maybe he did.
“Trust me. You’re not going to—”
He decided not to trust me.
Instead, he made the mistake of throwing a fist.
His technique was bad, and he didn’t have much of a base to throw the punch, which meant that he was already unstable when he tried to hit me. He was aiming up, and I had the sense that he wasn’t accustomed to fighting taller men, like me, so when he did strike, it was a little off target, and I barely had to move out of the way to avoid it hitting my chin. Instead, he caught me on the shoulder. He did have a little strength behind the punch, and it stung, though I doubt that it stung me nearly as much as it bothered him.
His eyes widened when I grabbed him by the shoulders, and I just carried him toward the door.
“I told you no fighting,” I said, and when I reached the door, I pulled it open and gave him a shove.
He sprawled in the street outside, looking up at me, and then the corners of his eyes twitched.
Sacred Souls.
I ducked and then lurched off to the side, avoiding the first of his friends barreling toward me. He reached the doorway, and I didn’t even bother to stop him as he went careening out of the door and followed his friend to sprawl on the ground outside.
I got up and turned.
Two more men were coming toward me.
“Not a good idea,” I said.
One of the men was missing a front tooth, likely from a similar scrape. His eyes were the hollow, reddened eyes of someone who had had too much to drink, and he staggered slightly. I just grabbed him by his shirt and pulled him out, letting him go sprawling into the street alongside the others.
The last one, however, looked as if he still had a little fight in him. Not only that, but he also seemed to be more awake than the others.
He reached for a knife at his waist.
“Not a good idea,” I repeated.
“You’re not going to get away with this,” he said.
“I’m not going to get away with what? Tossing you out of the tavern? I think I just did. Now go and join your buddies, or…”
I let the threat hang in the air, but I had the distinct sense that he wasn’t going to pay much attention to a threat. And that was a problem.
For him.
He jabbed with the knife.
I twisted out of the way, avoiding the strike, and grabbed his arm, but before I had the chance to pull on him, he started to yank back. I shifted, bringing his arm down onto my knee, which I drove upward.
There was a faint crack, followed by a sharp cry, and then I used his momentum against him and gave him one more shove to send him out of the door.
The four men were just outside the tavern, none of them moving much. The last man was holding on to his arm, and he had a look of murder in his eyes. That might have been a danger if he had been a local. He was not.
I closed the tavern door and strode back inside. The quiet that had fallen over the tavern began to ease as other patrons realized that there wasn’t going to be a widespread tavern brawl, and I sidled over to the counter. Janilla handed a mug of ale to me.
“Could have handled that a little differently,” she suggested.
“I wasn’t going to let them disrupt the tavern,” I said.
“I know.” She nodded to the ale. “That’s why I gave you that. It’s a thanks.”
“I didn’t do it for thanks.”
She smiled again. “I know.”
I took a seat and looked around the rest of the tavern. There was a minstrel playing on the slightly raised stage, his fingers dancing along the strings, seemingly unconcerned and unperturbed by what had just happened. There were three men who had been in the middle of a busy game of cards, and they had paused during the brawl, but not for very long. As their game resumed, they occasionally cast a furtive glance in my direction but quickly turned back again and focused on each other, not wanting to get caught looking my way. I didn’t blame them.
Another man was seated by himself, a tray of food in front of him, a mug of ale, and not much else. Probably some merchant coming through town. A smattering of other people, none of them locals, occupied the rest of the tavern.
“Never like it when we get those navy ships in,” Janilla said. “Always get a little jumpy.”
“They’re not all like that,” I said.
She leaned forward, resting her elbows on the bar. “No? What was it like when you served?”
“I wasn’t in the navy,” I said.
“So it wasn’t anything like that, then. You were probably much better behaved.”
I sat quietly, sipping at the ale.
“Not better behaved?” Janilla said, arching a brow at me. “Oh, I’m sure there’s a story there. Maybe that’s something you’d like to share with me.”
“Not anytime soon,” I said.
She chuckled. “Well, I’m glad you’re here now.”
“I don’t have anywhere else to go,” I said.
She grinned, as if I were making some sort of joke, before grabbing her rag and picking her way along the bar. I just looked down into my mug.
Around me, the sounds of the tavern began to build.
I was accustomed to such chaos. It was an easy enough thing to ignore. Not only that, but I had the distinct feeling that the sounds around me were very typical for the tavern. I’d been in Lavrun for the better part of six months. In that time, I’d picked up a few odd jobs, but mostly I worked in positions like this.
Jeremiah, the owner of the tavern, and Janilla’s uncle, had hired me to keep the peace, as he liked to call it. And he wasn’t the first one to hire me for jobs like that. I towered over most men and had the muscle to go along with my height. I didn’t like to fight, but I tended to attract the wrong kind of attention.
It had been a long time since I’d left the army—long enough that I now tried to think about anything else, but that was difficult to do in Lavrun.
The door to the tavern opened, and I glanced over. I had been looking every so often, making sure that the men I’d tossed out didn’t decide to return, but so far, there had been no sign of them. That was probably for the best. We didn’t need them to come stumbling back in, or to try something else. But I also understood that there were quite a few men who wanted to prove themselves, and I was as good a target as any.
When the minstrel began to play, it covered up quite a bit of the noise of the tavern, giving everything a much more buoyant and jovial energy. I found myself tapping my foot, listening along, and feeling some of the stress of the fight finally starting to fade. Still, each time the door opened, I found myself looking over to see if the men had returned.
Most nights were calm in the tavern. Most nights involved me just sitting, nursing a mug of ale, and watching. It was nights like these, when the ships came into port, that Jeremiah asked me explicitly to spend my evenings here. These were the nights when I earned coin.
Not a lot. And that was a problem. A job like this didn’t pay all that well. And though I was fully capable of doing more—at least, I believed I was fully capable of doing more—I didn’t have the opportunity to take on other jobs too often. Far too frequently, I was only seen as one thing: muscle.
As the night began to die down, I finished my ale—I made sure not to drink any more than one mug each night, as I didn’t want to dull my senses—and then nodded to Janilla. The tavern itself was slower and quieter; we didn’t have to worry about the presence of sailors now, so I wasn’t concerned about anything more happening here. I headed out to wander around the perimeter of the tavern, just doing one quick check.
A light above the tavern caught my attention, and I looked up. Jeremiah was seated at his desk and had his head down, though I could see that he was working on something. He was more than just a tavern owner. He was a businessman in Lavrun, and someone that my father had known before he had left the army. Somehow he must have noticed me, or perhaps I’d made too much noise, as he looked up and glanced down from his office, frowning.
He leaned forward, pulling his window open. “Leaving already?”
“Everything is quiet,” I said.
“I heard there was a little commotion already.”
I nodded. There was no use in denying it. I was meant to be a deterrent, but it wasn’t always effective. “Four men. Decided to get a little rowdy. I just tossed them out.”
“I heard one of them ended up with a broken arm.”
“Is that right?” It surprised me he’d heard that already.
“Anytime the sailors get a little unruly, I get reports.” He grinned. “And I make a point of telling them that if they weren’t so difficult, they wouldn’t have such trouble.” He chuckled. “Then again, very few of them pay much attention to that kind of thing. All they can think about is getting drunk, and sometimes a little bit more.”
I knew immediately what he meant by “a little bit more,” unfortunately. I had seen it too often. Quite a few men decided that they would get a little handsy with Janilla. While she was perfectly capable of defending herself, I didn’t love that they assaulted her. It made me more uptight, so I would usually just intervene, though from time to time, I had to admit that I intervened a little bit more forcefully than I probably needed to.
“Glad you were there, anyway,” Jeremiah said.
I nodded. “I’m glad I was there as well.”
I took a deep breath and headed onward. My home was a small room that I rented near the edge of town. It was nothing fancy. It was tiny, at least for my frame, and the bed was barely large enough, but it was quiet, and for that I was thankful.
Besides, it was all I could afford. I tried picking up odd jobs here and there, adding to the income that I got from Jeremiah—which wasn’t nearly as steady as I would like—but there were only so many jobs that I could take. I missed the steadiness of the work, and the income, in the army.
The town was relatively quiet most of the time. But on nights like this, when the navy came to port, and sailors had shore leave, things got a little bit out of hand.
I passed a pair of sailors, and they gave me a wide berth, though I did hear one of them saying something about “the tall bastard.” I ignored him, knowing that he was probably drunk. Jeremiah’s tavern wasn’t the only drinking place in the town. I moved on and made my way toward my home, but I began to feel a strange energy.
It was the kind of feeling that left me expecting a storm. I glanced up. In Lavrun, storms weren’t uncommon, but the sky was relatively clear. The air didn’t have the humidity that I would have expected. It wasn’t that I was a sailor, able to pick up on such things, but a man got used to certain activity, and a coming storm was one that I could feel.
Which left me wondering what the strange energy was coming from. Why was I picking up on it now? The only thing I could think of was that it was my own unease.
Maybe a night spent in the tavern, a night spent avoiding fighting, and being forced to fight, was what had put me on edge. Whatever it was, I headed toward it.
I tried to tell myself that I wasn’t a fighter, but the truth was that all too often I ended up in fights, even though I would much rather avoid them than run to them.
It didn’t take me long to find the source.
Lanterns lined the road along the riverfront, and I had a sense of activity here. Strange shadows loomed and lingered. Something was off, but maybe it was just me, and my own reaction and response to such things.
I wandered for a little along the river’s edge but still didn’t see anything. At least, not at first.
But on the far side of the water, across the arching bridge that led over the river, there were shadowy forms. Something about them set me on edge. I shouldn’t get involved, but I didn’t like the look of them.
I headed across the bridge, slowly and carefully. By the time I reached the far side, the shadowy forms had disappeared.
Maybe I was just chasing my own demons. I certainly had enough of them.
The air seemed to crackle with energy like a storm building. Three men were heading along the street. I didn’t know what compelled me to follow them, but I did.
Was it boredom? Was it instinct? Was it a desire for more excitement?
Maybe it was just that I had spent my days feeling less than useful.
Rounding a corner, I nearly collided with one of the men that I’d been following. He looked up at me. He had dark skin, and his eyes were narrowed, a hood pulled up over his head. That was not suspicious at all.
When he bounced off me, he backed away for a moment.
“Excuse me,” I said.
He looked as if he wanted to say something more, but he didn’t.
I didn’t see the other two. Just this man.
“Were you following me?”
“Not following,” I said.
“You sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.”
I waited. These moments were familiar to me. These were the moments when I just had to bide my time, give men like this an opportunity to decide if they were going to take a swing at me, test themselves, or if they were just going to relax. Too often men didn’t, and seemingly couldn’t, relax.
The man finally slipped away into the darkness of night. There was no point in following him. No point in anything, really. And that was the trouble.
Maybe that was my trouble. I was looking for excitement, for what I had once thought I was going to find within the army, for an opportunity to feel useful. Maybe more than useful. I could do something of value.
I let out a sigh.
Now it was just me searching for something that I claimed I didn’t want.
It seemed as if I were looking for fights, despite everything I told myself.
And that was dangerous. Eventually, as I had been warned, one of these fights would end up with me being killed.
And there was a part of me, one that bubbled up in times like this, times when I was alone, wandering the town and trying to figure out what I was supposed to be doing, that wondered if that wouldn’t be all that bad.
