Excerpt #4 from ‘The Hammer and the Blade’

February 3, 2012 at 7:09 am | Posted in Books, Sci-Fi | Leave a comment
Tags: angry robot books, paul s. kemp, tales of egil and nix, the hammer and the blade

Author Paul S. Kemp has posted the latest excerpt from his upcoming novel The Hammer and the Blade. Here’s a snippet:

She smiled shyly, sat, and nodded at the wand. “What’s that?”

“’This? This is nothing, just one of my gewgaws, as Egil would say. I took it from the tomb of an Afirion wizard-king after defeating the devil that guarded it.”

He spoke casually, but his words summoned the response he’d hoped for. Her eyes widened with wonder and she made a circle of her ring finger and thumb, a protective gesture, the symbol of Orella. She leaned in close to him, and he felt the warmth of her through his clothes. Her hair smelled of vanilla and the scent made him more lightheaded than Gadd’s smoke.

“A real devil of Hell?” she asked.

“Indeed,” Nix said, warming to the tale. “He stood twice as tall as Egil, coated in scales as large as my hand and as hard as steel. He had fanged rictuses at the ends of his arms. A terrible foe. Terrible.”

“Gods preserve! How did you escape it?”

Beside Nix, Egil harrumphed. “Escape it? Bah. We slew it.”

Click here to read the full excerpt, plus Paul has links to the previous excerpts and links so you can pre-order.