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    A Question of Honor (Swords and Salt, Tale 1)
    A Question of Honor (Swords and Salt, Tale 1)
    A Question of Honor (Swords and Salt, Tale 1)
    Ebook76 pages1 hour

    A Question of Honor (Swords and Salt, Tale 1)

    By Lindsay Buroker

    4.5/5

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    About this ebook

    With less than six months until his entrance exams for the famed Nurian warrior-mage academy, Yanko is sent to his uncle’s salt mine for “hardening,” as his father calls it. He expects endless days of physical labor; what he doesn’t expect is to have to choose one of the mine’s prisoners as a sparring partner.

    Not wanting his uncle to think him a coward, Yanko picks a big scarred man from Turgonia, a land known for its ruthless warriors. Only after his selection does he learn that he’ll be expected to kill his opponent... before his opponent kills him.

    A Question of Honor is a 19,000-word novella.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLindsay Buroker
    Release dateDec 21, 2013
    ISBN9781310894183
    A Question of Honor (Swords and Salt, Tale 1)
    Author

    Lindsay Buroker

    Lindsay Buroker war Rettungsschwimmerin, Soldatin bei der U.S. Army und hat als IT-Administratorin gearbeitet. Sie hat eine Menge Geschichten zu erzählen. Seit 2011 tut sie das hauptberuflich und veröffentlicht ihre Steampunk-Fantasy-Romane im Self-Publishing. Die erfolgreiche Indie-Autorin und begeisterte Bloggerin lebt in Arizona und hat inzwischen zahlreiche Romanserien und Kurzgeschichten geschrieben. Der erste Band der Emperor’s-Edge-Serie „Die Klinge des Kaisers“ ist jetzt ins Deutsche übersetzt.

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      Book preview

      A Question of Honor (Swords and Salt, Tale 1) - Lindsay Buroker

      A Question of Honor

      (Swords & Salt, Tale 1)

      by Lindsay Buroker

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2013 Lindsay Buroker

      Part I

      The bamboo cage rattled as it descended into the depths of the earth, the cool stale air laced with the scent of old sweat. Pressed into the corner by far too many bodies for such a small space, Yanko struggled to keep his breathing slow and even, to loosen the tightness clutching his chest.

      It’s a lift going into a mine, not a cage being hurled down a dragon’s throat. People do this every day. Perfectly normal people who suffer no ill effects because they toil in the darkness from dawn to dusk, never spending time under the sun.

      The man next to Yanko inhaled deeply and coughed, a moist throaty cough. In the darkness, he didn’t see the phlegmy spittle fly from the miner’s mouth, but a gooey gob spattered against his cheek.

      All right, maybe not no ill effects…

      This wasn’t the first miner who had coughed or sneezed on Yanko that morning. Of course, that might have more to do with being related to the controller than any true medical issues. His uncle must have mentioned his impending arrival, for several of the bleary-eyed men, reporting for work before dawn, had given him dark looks. Someone had thrust a pickaxe against his chest hard enough that it might have broken ribs if Yanko hadn’t anticipated the blow and tensed his muscles. Though he had loathed the hours of combat training he had endured in the last few years, they had inculcated useful instincts.

      The cage jerked, the floor trembling beneath his feet. Yanko would have flailed for something to hold onto, but the bodies pinning him into the corner kept him upright.

      Lantern light appeared between the bamboo bars. Yanko stood on his tiptoes and craned his neck, trying to see beyond the men in front of him. At five foot nine, he wasn’t short by Nurian standards, but many of the peasant workers had mixed blood, and some of the burly miners were Turgonian prisoners. Those were the ones who had glowered especially menacingly at Yanko, as if the enmity between their peoples was his fault.

      The bamboo door opened, and the miners shuffled out.

      Shaft Thirteen, a gruff voice said.

      The miners shouldered their pickaxes, bowed their heads, and walked past a lean man in yellow and orange robes that remained vibrant despite the dim lighting. Nothing else about him was vibrant. Furrows pinched his eyebrows together in a perpetual frown, and gray streaked the black hair flowing down from his topknot. He had the almond eyes and yellow-brown skin of a pureblood Nurian, and Yanko could see many of his father’s features reflected in the man’s narrow face: a snub nose and pointed chin. Yanko had the same skin and eyes, but a broader face; he had always wondered if he took after his mother, but he’d never dared ask.

      After fortifying himself with a deep breath—some of the sweat vapors had dissipated with the miners’ departure—Yanko stepped off the lift. He pressed his palms together before his chest and bowed his head. Honored Uncle. As my father bade, I have come to assist you in the mines.

      Assist me, eh? Uncle Mishnal withdrew a parchment scroll from his robes, unrolled it, held it up to one of the whale oil lanterns guttering on the wall, and read aloud. The boy’s warrior-mage exams are in six months, but he dawdles with his training and his studies. He would rather make flowers than fire, and he prefers composing poetry to practicing with blades. Please harden the boy, so he won’t disgrace the family any further than it already has been. He is our only hope at redemption in this generation.

      Though the temperature fifty meters below the earth’s surface was cooler than that of the sun-beaten scrublands above, Yanko’s cheeks warmed with impressive heat. Studying the earth sciences was a perfectly respectable passion, and he had only made a flower once, intending to leave it for Arayevo as a gift she might appreciate. And the poetry had been for her, too, or it would have been if he had ever found the courage to recite it for her. His father had simply chosen an inopportune moment to barge into the room and stumble across it.

      Honored Uncle, Yanko said, continuing to use the formal greeting since he hadn’t had many interactions with his father’s brother in his life and no idea what to expect, I am competent with a blade and have studied the thermal sciences. Though not to a degree that he’d claim competence with them. He thought he could stick a sword in an enemy’s heart to defend himself, but the idea of roasting a human being like a lamb shank… His belly always went queasy at the thought. Not for the first time, he wondered what kind of hardening his father might have in mind.

      Competent, eh? We shall see.

      Uncle Mishnal strode across the empty chamber—the miners had disappeared down one of several tunnels supported with wooden timbers—and touched a communication orb mounted on a pedestal carved from the same grayish white salt that formed the walls and floor. He folded his arms into his voluminous sleeves and gazed down a tunnel. Faint clanks and clinks had been drifting up from it since Yanko had arrived, but a new sound joined the noise, the clomp of footsteps.

      A queue of figures shambled into view, all with their hair and beards uniformly cut to within a half inch of their skin. New workers for the mines, none of

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