Take My Heart...: Dark Ages - Fantasy (Dark Gods & Tainted Souls Book 3) by julius schenk

the darkness, there was certainly someone there, but all he could see was sand and stones.
    “I’m ready,” he said in the desert tongue loudly.
    Within a heartbeat, a hand cut arrow painted bright red came flying from the darkness. He flinched back by instinct as it hit the air in front of him and glanced off as if it hit a well-held shield. He laughed to himself, thank fuck he thought. Three more arrows came from the dark and all bounced off the solid air. He heard gruff laughter from the darkness and then he saw them. They appeared from the darkness, the sand and the very stones. He saw some were dressed in clothes painted like the land and were crouching in the dark. Some hid in the shallow sands and others had small branches and twigs across their bodies, there was, at least, twenty, so the whole tribe.
    A woman walked in front of him and regarded him, her bow dropped to her side, held in her hand. She was younger than him but, at least, thirty name days. Tall for a woman, dark skin, and dark hair. She wore a leather patch across her eye which had a white circle painted on it. Her clothes matched. Tight leather pants and a sleeveless top that showed her dark arms and firm stomach, it was dark crisscross of symbols in dark scars. She pulled the eye patch aside and looked at him with strong dark eyes, then she smiled, it lit up her face with perfect white teeth and humor.
    “Well-crafted word fortress,” she said, or something like that, her tongue was a bit off from what he knew, but then again they’d been here a long time along and probably spoke their own dialect now. How did he know things like this, he thought.
    “Thank you,” he said with a little bow, she was clearly the leader. “I’m Grimm and I’ve come to warn you of a great threat,” he said.
    “You mean your friend who leads 600 of so red-faced killers to our home with pouches fat with the king’s gold,” she said back.
    He was crestfallen. What had he expected though? These were the people that taught the Gatherers their tricks.
    “That’s the one,” he said.
    She laughed, seeing the look of disappointment on his face.
    “Never fear, hero. They serve their purpose in bringing you to us, now we can speak properly,” she stood forward and with her two hands made a fast clawing motion through the air that was his circle. The power tore like paper and with a loud sound, like the wind ripping a canvas sail. She reached into the circle, took his hand and led him out.
    “Don’t be afraid, Grimm. You’re one of us, we know it,” she said.
    He walked with her dark hand in his across the sand. His boot sinking into it, her gliding on top on soft furred sandals. The others of her tribe leading the way, giving them privacy. In the distance, he could see firelight and the faint outlines of a few small huts and skinny animals tied up to rough wooden railings.
    “Are you white eyes’ child, is that why you have the eye patch,” he asked.
    “I think you’ll know the answer if you simply search for it within yourself, many before you came to us, the Gatherers, curious children asking all the questions you would,” she said.
    Grimm cast his mind back as they walked. He’d not delved too deep into the memories he held. There were too many, hundreds and hundreds of voices it was like trying to pick a whisper from a screaming crowd. He knew a face, Elizebetha’s father, he’d seen a portrait of him in the Keep. Kindly and soft but deep grey eyes that looked like a brewing storm. He focused on the man and saw him sitting in the sand, an old man by his side. He had two eyes that were white and blind, he spoke to the man, a different white eyes.
    “You’re not his child but you hold the most power in the clan,” they were a clan, not a tribe. In years past they would bandage a child’s eyes and turn them white and blind but now they just where the patch instead. Why?” he asked.
    “Being blinded was supposed to give more power, a greater