The Thieves of Blood: Blade of the Flame - Book 1 by Tim Waggoner Page A

thank for saving him, but he had no time to spare for even a grateful wave. He heard a growl and turned just in time to meet the shifter’s charge. The man had assumed his more bestial aspect; his eyes were feral yellow, his teeth longer and sharper, fingers now hooked into deadlyclaws, and his body hair had grown wild and shaggy, more like wolf fur than human hair. Often the mere sight of such a transformation was enough to startle a shifter’s opponent, causing him or her to hesitate for one fateful second … and a second was all any shifter needed.
    Ghaji had faced many shifters on the battlefields of the Last War, and he’d fought far more fearsome foes since joining up with Diran. Thus the half-orc didn’t hesitate as the shifter came lunging toward him. He didn’t have time to swing his axe, but he was able to bring it up in time for the shifter to slam face-first into the flat of the axe-head. The shifter staggered back, nose gushing blood.
    “Leave now and I’ll forget I ever saw you,” Ghaji offered. “Stay and die.”
    The shifter glared at Ghaji with his amber eyes and licked at the blood covering his upper lip.
    “Big talk from a half-breed,” the shifter snarled.
    Ghaji’s grip tightened on his axe. “Now
that
was the wrong thing to say.”
    He stepped forward and swung his axe in a vicious arc at the shifter’s neck. The shifter leaned backward just in time to avoid having his throat sliced open. He countered with a swipe of his claws aimed at Ghaji’s face, but the half-orc brought his left arm up to block the blow. Ghaji had allowed the momentum of his failed axe swing to bring the weapon around, and now he brought the axe up over his head and slammed it down on the shifter’s. The sharp blade sliced through the shifter’s scalp, shattered the top of his skull, and bit into the soft pulpy mass within.
    The shifter stopped fighting and stood looking at Ghaji,blinking several times in an expression of bewilderment, as if he couldn’t quite understand what had happened to him.
    “Oh,” the shifter said, as if something profound had just occurred to him. Then his eyes rolled white and he collapsed to the deck, his ruined brain making a wet sucking sound as gravity drew it away from Ghaji’s blood-smeared axe-head.
    Ghaji didn’t pause to savor his victory over the shifter. He turned to check on the tattooed man, and good thing, too, for the wounded thief was on his feet and moving toward Ghaji, his features twisted into a mask of rage, Diran’s dagger still embedded in his shoulder.
    Ghaji waited for the man to get closer, and when he was near enough, the half-orc stepped aside from the railing. Unable to stop his approach, the tattooed man slammed into the railing, pitched over, and fell toward the water, bellowing his anger and frustration. His bellow didn’t last long, however, for it was cut off as soon as he plunged into the sea.
    Still holding his axe, Ghaji stepped back to the railing and looked over. A series of ripples spread out from where the tattooed man had sunk. Ghaji watched, waiting for the man to swim back up to the surface, planning to offer him the same choice he’d given the shifter. Ghaji waited … and waited …
    A fountain of bubbling froth broke the surface, and an instant later the foamy white turned crimson. The tattooed man’s head bobbed above the water, and his mouth opened wide to scream. Before any sound could come out, the maw of a large grayish-white shark much larger than the one Flotsam had caught rose up behind the man and snapped its jaws down on his head. The shark then disappeared beneath the water, taking thetattooed man with it and leaving behind nothing but a roiling mass of blood and seafoam.
    Looks like the shark Flotsam caught wasn’t the only one plying the waters around Nowhere, Ghaji thought. He had a sudden thought and turned to look at the dead bodies of the shifter and the half-elf. The corpses needed to be disposed of, so why not a