Read the Dark Army by Joseph Delaney Online Free

  Contents

Cover

About the Book

Title Folio

Dedication

Map

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter one: Similar a Puppet

Affiliate 2: Lukrasta

Chapter iii: Farmer Boy

Chapter 4: A Council of War

Chapter 5: The Haunted Attics

Affiliate 6: A Little Detour

Chapter 7: The God-Maker

Chapter eight: The Dead Prisoners

Chapter ix: An Anvil of Hurting

Chapter 10: Beaten and Controlled

Affiliate 11: Endless Nightmares

Chapter 12: Shape-Shifting

Chapter xiii: Blood and Spittle

Affiliate xiv: Prisoner of the Kobalos

Affiliate xv: The Shameful Death

Chapter 16: Pause for Thought

Chapter 17: The Earth Witch

Affiliate xviii: Grimalkin's Plans

Affiliate nineteen: The Final Winter

Chapter twenty: The Space Between Worlds

Chapter 21: A Globule of Acid

Affiliate 22: Toxicant

Chapter 23: The Globe Screamed

Chapter 24: White String

Affiliate 25: Wolf Meat

Chapter 26: Not Safety Anywhere

Chapter 27: The Body in the Sack

Chapter 28: The Hope

Affiliate 29: The Butcher God

Chapter xxx: The Night Attack

Chapter 31: Mirrors

Chapter 32: The Winter Business firm

Chapter 33: The Round Loaf

Chapter 34: Toppling Like a Tree

Chapter 35: Boy of Tears

Glossary of the Kobalos World

About the Author

As well by Joseph Delaney

Sneak Preview

Copyright

Virtually the Volume

Terrifying warriors of the dark have formed an army,

the like of which has never been seen before.

They will spill human claret – enough to make the

waters that divide our lands from theirs run carmine.

Thomas Ward, the Canton Spook, fought the nighttime with his own amateur. He travelled far from home to lead an uprising against a legion of beasts intent on locking the whole globe in a never-ending wintertime.

But Tom now lies cold in his grave, and those who remain are in despair.

Who tin now take up the boxing – before the dark army brings the fight back to the County, and the world is changed for ever?

The clash with the forces of darkness continues in this terrifying new tale from the bestselling author of The Spook'southward Amateur.

For Marie

We face a night army, but its whole is greater than merely the Kobalos military might, and far larger than the terrible boxing-entities that they have created.

It includes the gods who back up them – deities such as Golgoth, the Lord of Winter, who volition blast the dark-green from the Earth and create a road of ice along which their warriors may glide to victory.

Grimalkin

Nigh AN HOUR after nighttime, Jenny began to climb the screw steps that led to the tallest of the high eastern turrets. She was slightly breathless, but it was not only because of the exertion of the steep climb.

She was nervous. Her palms were sweating and she could feel a weakness in her knees. The cranium she was heading for was haunted.

She was just an amateur and information technology would be many years earlier she'd go a spook. Was she taking on likewise much? she wondered.

Information technology was cold, and her breath was steaming from her nostrils. Step afterward step she forced herself upwardly.

Jenny was conveying a lantern; one pocket was filled with common salt and the other with iron; additionally she had tied the silver concatenation around her waist and was as well gripping a rowan staff. She was prepare for whatever threat from the dark.

The way to deal with ghosts was to talk to them – to try and persuade them to get to the lite – but Jenny wasn't taking whatever chances. In this cold northern country, so far from the County, who knew what she might see? Ghosts might exist very different here. She felt better with her pockets full and a weapon in her hand.

She reached the stout wooden attic door and tried one of the eight big keys on the heavy bunch. She was lucky: although the lock was potent, the second key turned.

The door creaked open on rusty hinges, the lesser juddering towards her over the flags equally she dragged it open. It had swollen with the clammy and probably hadn't been opened for many years.

Jenny took a deep jiff to steady her nerves and stepped into the room. She was a seventh daughter of a seventh girl with the gift of sensitivity to the night; instantly she sensed that something threatening was nearby. She raised the lantern loftier and examined her surroundings: a small-scale room, the wooden panelling stained with patches of fungus, and the table and two chairs were covered in a thick layer of dust. Another door was directly ahead of her, no doubt leading to the chief chamber.

She shivered. It was cold enough to brand her glad of her sheepskin jacket. But the worst thing was the smell. This was just virtually one of the stinkiest places she'd always been in. Dorsum in the County, she'd once walked out onto the Morecambe Bay sands to come across what a crowd of people were staring at. There'd been a shoal of huge fish washed up on the beach. They'd been dead for some time and they stank. What she smelled now was like, merely there was some kind of living beast smell mixed in. It was a bit similar walking into a stable of sweating horses and sodden sawdust. Then in that location was a third element to the mix – a hint of called-for flesh and a taste of sulphur on her natural language.

By the yellow light of the lantern she saw a big spider high on the wall above the inner door. As she approached, the creature scuttled off towards a huge spider web in the corner.

There was no lock – just a metal handle. She turned it and tried to open up the door by pushing it abroad from her. At that place was resistance so she reversed direction, pulling information technology smoothly outwards.

Her sense of a threat from the dark was growing.

The lantern illuminated what had once been someone's opulent living quarters, now ruined by damp and neglect. Three huge fireplaces gaped like monstrous mouths, their rusty metallic grates filled with ashes. Water dripped from the ceiling onto a rusty chandelier. At that place were the remnants of fine carpets on the floor; now they were damp, dirty and mildewed.

Then something unexpected caught her attention: iv couches at the centre of the room formed a square, facing inwards towards something very unusual – a nighttime circular pigsty near x feet in bore. Information technology was ringed with stones – someone had left a wine glass precariously counterbalanced there. It looked as if the slightest disturbance would send it plummeting down into the darkness. The stones themselves glistened with water.

Jenny approached the ring of stones and gazed downward into the dark hole, belongings the lantern over it. Information technology looked like a well. Was in that location h2o at the bottom?

And then Jenny realized that there was something impossible nigh what she was seeing: how could it be a well?

She was standing in an cranium correct at the top of a turret. At that place were rooms below. Directly beneath them in the palace was a kitchen and then, on the lowest level, the 2d largest throne room where Prince Stanislaw, the ruler of this state, received petitions, held meetings and dispensed justice.

She had been given a tour of this role of the castle a day or then earlier. If this dark shaft ran through the turret rooms and then down into the basis, then there would accept had to be some sort of round stone construction, like a chimney, in each of the large rooms near the basis. Surely she would take noticed such a matter?

Except for the audio of her muffled footsteps beyond the damp rug and the water dripping onto the chandelier, the room was repose. But Jenny co

uld hear something new: a trickling, as if water was being poured into some modest vessel.

She stared at the wine drinking glass. It was slowly filling with cerise wine. A sparse stream was falling into the glass but there was no visible source for the liquid. Was information technology being poured by an invisible hand?

A second later an unmistakable metal odour told her that she was incorrect about the liquid. It wasn't vino. It was blood.

Jenny watched in fearful fascination as the drinking glass slowly filled. The claret reached the skirt and then spilled over onto the stone. The droplets began to steam, and the sudden abrupt stench made her boost. Equally she watched, the blood in the glass began to chimera.

And so the vessel wobbled and barbarous into the dark shaft.

Jenny counted to ten simply in that location was no splash, no sound at all. The shaft appeared to exist abysmal.

The room had been dank and cold, simply at present information technology seemed to be growing warmer. Steam began to rise from the circle of moisture stones.

Her sense of danger increased. She could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand up up and her fingertips were tingling. These reactions told her that this attic contained something far worse than a poor soul needing to be coaxed towards the low-cal. She had hoped to demonstrate her bravery and show her competence to become a spook. She had to larn to cope lone.

Terror gripped her. She sensed that there was something really bad here; something big and unsafe; something that wanted to kill her.

Jenny stepped away from the circumvolve of stones, away from the couches, pressing her back confronting the wall.

From the depths beneath, something enormous took a breath. It was so vast that the air information technology sucked in rushed by Jenny with the force of a gale, slamming the inner door shut with a bang. The blast fabricated her stagger forward onto her knees before it swirled away downwardly the dark shaft towards an unseen mouth and cavernous lungs.

She dropped the lantern and was plunged into full darkness.

Jenny cried out in terror as a monstrous glowing shape bulged upwards out of the vast impossible space and hovered in the air above it. Six glowing carmine-cherry optics stared towards her; eyes set deep within a bulbous caput.

When information technology exhaled, the jiff of this brute – whatever information technology was – felt hot and putrid; there was a stench of disuse, of dead things that nonetheless slithered or crawled in a subterranean darkness.

And so tentacles were coiling and writhing, reaching out towards her, intending to twine about her and drag her back downwards into that dark impossible hole.

She would never alive to become a spook at present.

She would dice here lone in the darkness.

JENNY CALDER

YESTERDAY WAS THE worst day of my life.

It was the solar day that Thomas Ward, the Chipenden Spook, my master, died.

Tom should accept been back in the County fighting the dark, dealing with ghosts, ghasts, witches and boggarts. Nosotros should take been visiting places such as Priestown, Caster, Poulton, Burnley and Blackburn. I should have spent time in the Chipenden library and garden existence trained as a spook's amateur. I should have been practising digging boggart pits and improving my skills with a silvery concatenation.

Instead we followed the witch assassin, Grimalkin, on a long doomed journey north towards the lands of the Kobalos. They're barbaric non-homo warriors with a thick hide of fur and faces similar wolves. They plan to make state of war on the human race; they intend to kill all the men and boys and enslave the females.

One of their warriors, a shaiksa assassin with deadly fighting skills, had been visiting the river, the dissever between the territories of men and Kobalos. He'd been issuing challenges, and so fighting human opponents in single combat, killing his adversaries with ease. Simply the holy men of this land, the magowie, had been visited by a winged effigy – a effigy who had the appearance of an angel and who had fabricated a prophecy:

One mean solar day before long a human volition come up who will defeat the Kobalos warrior. After his victory he volition lead the combined armies of the principalities to victory!

Hearing of this prophecy, Grimalkin had formulated a program. Information technology was a program that cost Tom his life.

Grimalkin'southward scheme was for Tom Ward to fight and defeat the warrior and and then lead an army into Kobalos lands so that she could learn of their magical and military abilities.

Tom had indeed defeated the warrior, but the Kobalos's dying act had been to pierce Tom's torso with his sabre.

And then Tom Ward had died too.

That was yesterday.

Today we are going to bury him.

Tom's coffin rested on the grass in the open. Prince Stanislaw, who ruled Polyznia, the largest of the principalities bordering Kobalos territory, stood beside it, flanked past two of his guards. He nodded towards Grimalkin and me, and then beckoned four of his men frontwards. They hefted the bury upwardly onto their shoulders.

He and this armed escort were with us to practise laurels to Tom. I wished they didn't have to be here; I wanted to take Tom back to the County where his old master was buried and his family still lived on their farm.

I glanced sideways at the prince – a large man with curt grey hair, a large nose and close-set eyes. He was in his fifties, I guessed, and hadn't an ounce of fat on his body. His intelligent optics looked sad now.

He and his warriors had been impressed by Tom's fighting skill. Despite suffering a mortal wound, he had slain the Kobalos warrior, something that the prince'due south ain champions had been unable to exercise.

As we trudged up towards the place where Tom was to be cached, thunder crashed overhead, and presently torrential pelting had soaked u.s. to the peel. Grimalkin gripped my shoulder. I suppose she meant to be comforting – in and then far every bit someone every bit wild and vicious as a witch assassin can be. Simply Tom's death had been brought about by her machinations and acrimony began to build within me. Her grip was firm to the point of hurting, just I shrugged her off and took a step nearer to the open grave.

I glanced at the headstone and began to read what had been carved upon it:

Hither LIETH PRINCE THOMAS OF Caster,

A BRAVE WARRIOR

WHO FELL IN Gainsay

Only TRIUMPHED WHERE OTHERS FAILED

The lie nosotros had created – that Tom was a prince – had gone too far; and now here it was written upon his gravestone. Information technology made my stomach turn. Tom was a immature spook who had fought the night, and this should accept been acknowledged. This shouldn't take happened, I thought bitterly. He deserved the truth.

Merely this again had been Grimalkin'southward doing. Tom had needed to pose as a prince because the armies of the principalities would not follow a commoner.

I watched as a hooded magowie, one of their priests, prayed for Tom, rain dripping from the finish of his nose. The smell of wet soil was very potent. Shortly it would cover Tom's remains.

Then the prayers were over and the gravediggers began to shovel wet world down upon the coffin. I glanced back at Grimalkin and saw that she was grinding her teeth. She seemed more than angry than sad; only I was churning with mixed emotions too.

Suddenly the men stopped working and looked up. At that place was movement and light in the air high above u.s.a.. I gasped as I spotted a winged figure hovering far above the grave; information technology glowed with a silver light, its fluttering wings huge.

It was the same affections-similar existence that had hovered over the hill while the 3 magowie made their prophecy, foretelling the coming of a champion to defeat the Shaiksa assassin and lead humans beyond the river to victory.

Suddenly information technology folded its white wings and dropped towards us like a stone, coming to a stop less than thirty feet above our heads. At present I could make out a beautiful face that shone with stake lite. Anybody was gazing upwardly now, gasping in astonishment.

At that place was a noise from the grave just, fascinated past the winged figure, I continued to look upward. Information technology was merely when the sound came over again that I glanced downwardly.

At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I wasn't the but person staring downwardly into the grave. I saw that the casket was slightly tilted, and the sodden earth that covered it was sliding away to reveal the wet wooden lid.

G

rimalkin hissed in anger and stared up at the winged being. I could understand her badgerer at the interference. Couldn't Tom even be left to be buried in peace? But then I saw that the coffin was moving. What could be causing that?

I hardly dared to hope . . . Could it be that Tom was live . . .?

With a jerk, the coffin rose up into the air in a higher place the grave and began to spin, spraying mud and droplets of water in all directions. The corner caught one of the gravediggers and knocked him backwards into the waiting mound of earth.

I stared open up-mouthed as the coffin slowly rose upward. Grimalkin rushed forward, stretching out her artillery every bit if to grab it. But, spinning faster and faster, it eluded her grasp and whirled towards the winged figure. I heard another hiss of anger from Grimalkin – merely it was lost in an ear-splitting boom of thunder that set my teeth on edge.

Suddenly the heavens were split with intense light – not the sheet lightning we had experienced then far: this was a jagged fork of blue lightning that seemed to come up from the winged figure. It struck Tom's bury with a crack that injure my ears.

It had to be something supernatural – a wielding of dark magic. Judging past her reactions, it certainly wasn't Grimalkin's doing. But who was responsible?

The bury immediately disintegrated, splinters of forest falling towards us. I apace retreated, shielding my head with my arms, bumping into people in my haste to get clear.

Some of the pieces splashed into the h2o at the bottom of the empty grave; others barbarous around me.

When I looked up once again, Tom'south corpse was spinning to a higher place us, his arms and legs flopping and jerking, his body spiralling down towards the grave once more. I stared at him in amazement. His eyes were airtight in death; he looked similar a puppet dangling from invisible controlling strings. I could inappreciably bear to watch: that such an indignity should be inflicted upon him!

All of a sudden, far above him, the winged animal vanished like a candle flame snuffed out by a behemothic pollex and forefinger. Sheet lightning flashed and Tom'southward corpse fell twenty feet or more into the mound of soil beside the grave.

For a moment there was absolute silence. I held my jiff, stunned by what I had simply witnessed, a whole range of emotions churning through me.

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