The Legacy of Lord Regret: Strange Threads: Book 1 by Sam Bowring Page A

of warm satisfaction. So long since he had felt such a thing, he could not bring himself to douse it. Instead
     he cradled it like a treasure, makingsure to keep it small and contained. He would not allow it to grow, to consume him.
    A scream sounded nearby as a Plainsman was torn from his horse by a swooping silkjaw, borne into the air leaving a trail of
     misted blood. A second ’jaw crash-landed nearby, bowling over a couple of soldiers. It scrabbled to stand up bat-like on the
     elbows of its wings, swinging its long head about, searching for targets with hollow eyes.
    Of all Regret’s creations, Rostigan disliked silkjaws the most. Everything about them was wrong. He was not sure they were
     even truly alive, for they carried nothing of flesh about them. Instead, the bones that gave them shape were bound together
     by sheets of coarse white silk, which stretched and contracted like fibrous muscle. They had no voices, and the only sound
     they made was the occasional rustle or clack of bones. The ’jaw on the ground opened its mouth, elongating the strands that
     held it together, giving a clear view of fangs embedded along misshapen jawbones. It gnashed so hard it drove the points through
     its own snout, and didn’t appear to feel a thing.
    A soldier leapt at it, slicing the silk along its wing, and it snapped down over his head and shoulders, biting savagely.
     The act looked like a semblance of feeding, but there was no stomach in the creature’s empty body. Instead, blood soaked its
     white silk, and it shook its prey to absorb as much as possible.
    A red silkjaw was a happy silkjaw.
    A flaming arrow thudded into its side, but failed to set it ablaze, for the soaked strands were already too damp.
    ‘I told him threaders work best,’ muttered Rostigan, as he turned away. He could attack the silkjaw himself, even slay it
     – but it would be a laborious matter of cutting and slicing until the beast was a pile of bone and fluff. His time was better
     spent on the Unwoven, for he could kill them far more quickly.
    He strode headlong into the thick of it, where bodies already grew plentiful underfoot. Unwoven had begun to spread out, and
     many of them now faced multiple opponents. Rostigan chose the ones who moved about with greatest ease, who batted away swords
     as if they were switches – until they met him, of course. Always he went for the heads, for there was no helmet, no shield,
     no weapon that could stand in the way of his sword. His bouts were swift and methodical, and again and again he crunched through
     skulls with powerful downward blows. Soon he took hurts of his own, and in places his armour dinted painfully inwards. He
     knew that he was bleeding at his side, that shards of metal were sticking in his flesh.
    In the sky, silkjaws fell apart as threaders undid the magic that bound them together. One dove towards him even as its wings
     unspooled, bones falling free of the tatters. He sidestepped as it ploughed into the ground, and lifted its head almost piteously
     as its last fibres dropped away. Plenty of the creatures remained airborne, though – takingthem apart, Rostigan knew, was not swiftly done, nor every threader’s talent. Some of the threaders were employing fire instead,
     sending up thin snakes of it from torches, and arrows flamed upwards too. Here and there white shapes suddenly blazed, as
     ’jaws flared to cinders.
    Some ways behind, Loppolo roared encouragement as he waved his sword, thickly protected by soldiers and threaders, and no
     enemy came within spitting distance of him. Then a sudden series of silkjaw dive-bombings thinned his guards, and Rostigan
     saw Tursa knocked from his horse. The king’s steed cantered sideways as his soldiers jostled to enclose him once more, the
     group moving away from Tursa. Dazedly the fat advisor lifted his head from the churned earth.
    Redstreak strode out of the tumult wearing a rabid grin. Tursa saw him and started, a terrible fear