Touch of Iron (The Living Blade #1) by Timandra Whitecastle Page A

the same cup as Wolfe at her handfasting.
    She fell asleep leaning against the tree trunk and woke at dusk. Shouldering her empty backpack, Nora climbed the steep stone way. As she reached the top, she crouched low, spying over the last cuff of rock to see what was up there.
    The square was empty.
    The flat cobblestones still shone with a wet gleam. The waxing moon snatched a peek from behind the clouds before veiling his face once again. Most of the houses were burned, leaving behind charred beams like raised fingers. The door to the smithy was gone, a gaping dark mouth. The torches at the inn were flickering in the wind, and behind the colored glass windows shone the only light to be seen in the whole village, right down to where the bakery once stood, the large bread oven now a tombstone looming in a forlorn heap of rubble, sagging like the shoulders of a widow.
    Two men stood in front of the inn. Men wearing swords at their sides.
    Nora hoisted herself up the rock and crouched down behind a bench. She slid her knife out and clutched it tightly. In the shadows, she ran to the smithy and pressed herself against the stone wall. After a moment she looked around the corner to the inn. The men were talking to each other in low voices. One had his back turned to her and was scratching his head. She passed along the wall to the far side of the smithy. To the front, facing the square, was where Rannoch had set up his shop with the forge. The old men liked to come and stand at the door or at the windows, chatting with Rannoch as he beat something into shape. Nora made her way to a window and climbed through, crouching low. It was strangely silent in the forge. The chatter, the men laughing and grunting, the hammering, the hissing, Rannoch cursing and shouting at the men not to tell lewd jokes in front of Nora—it was all gone. The only thing left was ashes and moonlight. And that smell. The smell of meat gone bad. It was the smell that made her feet step forward.
    And in the dark, she saw something. A familiar shape. Beside the anvil lay a man’s body, a body without forearms. The corpse was bloated and stank, and white maggots were wriggling and falling out of the dark rim of the severed neck. She doubled over, retching, holding the anvil tight. Face pressed against the cool iron, she wiped her mouth with her sleeve. The head was gone. It didn’t matter. She didn’t need his face to recognize him. There was the smith’s apron. And the white cotton shirt with the new patch at the elbow. Nora had sewn it just before the handfasting. She swallowed down the dry heaves and hid her head in her hands. What had she been expecting? There would be no coming back home. No reconciliation. Owen was right. She had been chasing an illusion. Her world lay broken, chopped into ruins, rotten, full of maggots.
    Don’t look at him. Oh gods, don’t look!
    Nora flattened herself on the floor next to the body when she heard a commotion in the street. She crawled deeper into the shadows, away from the wriggling white mass. Through the other shop window she could see the inn door open and bright light spill onto the cobblestones. A young girl fell on the ground between the two guards. It took Nora a moment to recognize Becca, the innkeeper’s daughter. Becca’s normally artfully-styled blonde hair was a mess, and instead of her pristine, fashionable clothing, she wore nothing but her torn undergarments and bruises on her face.
    “You beast!” Becca screamed and scrabbled to get up.
    The two guards paid her no notice. One bent inside the inn’s common room and called something. There was laughter from within. Nora pressed herself closer to the wall. She watched the girl scurry around the square, throwing all the loose cobblestones she could gather at the guards and the inn. Then she turned and ran toward the smithy. Nora quickly moved through the second doorway into her old kitchen, wondering whether Becca would enter the building. For a long