Do not fear mankind. They cannot withstand the might of Lord Despair.
“Damn these humans,” the wyrmling lord Yikkarga growled as he knelt near a pit on the side of a small creek, the full moon shining brightly upon his pale face. “They’ve gotten to another cache!”
Crull-maldor stood on a levy behind the lord, some nineteen days after the binding of the worlds. There had once been an outcropping of a blood metal by the creek—red stones, soft and heavy and coated with small particles of metal the consistency of sand. Crull-maldor recalled having seen a few stones on the surface here several de cades ago, but obviously the humans had been digging at the site. The pit here was twenty feet in diameter now.
She tried to calculate the loss. A dozen pounds of blood metal, she suspected. That was all that she remembered seeing on the surface here. But the pit might have yielded more ore. A great deal of dirt had been removed. There might have even been a ton or two deposited here underground—enough to make tens of thousands of forcibles.
The threat provided by so many forcibles was incalculable.
Over the past three weeks, Crull-maldor had begun creating her own army of wyrmling runelords, twenty thousand strong.
Victory over the humans had come rapidly, it seemed.
After the binding, the human runelords had spent the greatest part of their strength attacking her fortress. But Crull-maldor’s counterattacks had been swift and brutal, decimating the humans until none had the strength to openly defy her any longer.
She’d taken throngs of the small folk captive—marching them down into her fortress where they were either butchered for meat or put to the forcible.
The young men were the first to go—those who were strong in arms and firm in their courage, those who had no wives or children and therefore had little to lose.
Some had been taken slaves, sent to work the mines. Others were forced to gather cattle, horses, and fish for the wyrmling hordes, thus freeing her wyrmlings for the more important duties of guarding Crull-maldor’s empire.
The humans’ weapons had all been seized—as much as Crull-maldor had been able to find; their gold and treasures had all been looted.
Thus, her armies had subjugated the vast majority of humans in the Northern Wastes.
But her hold was tenuous. There was far too much to do. The women and children in her tunnels were struggling to carve their own armor. The smiths at the forges kept their hammers ringing night and day. Her troops were grappling to hold on to the human territories—even as her scouts raced to relieve the small folk of their blood metal.
The emperor was being stingy with his blood metal, keeping her weak.
Often, a new slave will strain at the bands that bind him, and that was an ever-present danger.
She could not afford to let the humans gain an advantage.
Not three hundred yards away, a dog was barking and snarling furiously at the edge of a small village, distraught at the scent of so many wyrmlings nearby.
Crull-maldor knew that one of the humans from the village must have discovered the ore, probably within hours of the binding. Crull-maldor had sent her troops to mine this outcropping twice already; and both patrols had come back empty-handed, unable to locate the trove. Now she knew why.
“We should destroy the village,” Yikkarga suggested.
Crull-maldor scowled. She didn’t trust Yikkarga. He was the emperor’s man. It had only been six days since his ship had arrived from the mainland, and already he was seeking to wrest control of her troops from her.
Rumor said that Yikkarga was someone special. He was more than a runelord—he was under the protection of Lord Despair himself, and “could not be killed.”
Crull-maldor did not know if that meant that she was forbidden from killing the wyrmling or if it was literal—the wyrmling Yikkarga could never taste death.
There were strange tales coming out of the South since the binding, and Crull-maldor did not know what to believe. It was said that the Lord Despair had taken a new body, that of a human. It was also said that the Knights Eternal had captured the wizard that had bound the worlds, and Lord Despair now employed strange creatures to guard his captive.
Great things were afoot. History was in the making, and it was a grand time to be alive.
But she did not trust Yikkarga. The emperor was obviously grooming him to be her replacement.
Already Yikkarga had sent some of his spies back to the emperor, to warn him that Crull-maldor was creating runelords of her own. She imagined how he would snarl and rage when he heard the news. Perhaps he would even report her insubordination to Lord Despair. If the emperor did, Crull-maldor would point out that she was only trying to empower her troops, prepare them for battle.
What would happen next, she could not guess. Perhaps she would be punished. Perhaps she would be praised.
Either way, a battle was coming.
“Don’t be too hasty to deal out death to the humans,” Crull-maldor told Yikkarga. “We shall have vengeance in time, but first we must recover the blood metal.”
“So much of it, it will probably be hidden nearby,” Yikkarga suggested. “I can have my scouts sniff it out.” Yikkarga had brought a small contingent with him. His scouts had taken endowments of scent from dogs.
“Good idea,” Crull-maldor agreed, “get to it.” Secretly, she hoped that his scouts would fail to find the cache. She wanted to humiliate Yikkarga. He was hasty in the way of those who have taken endowments of metabolism, but Crull-maldor’s troops would be willing to take days in a concerted search. Given time, her own troops could find the treasure.
Yikkarga’s scouts rushed off to hunt. With a jerk of her head, Crull-maldor sent her troops swarming toward the village.
There were over a hundred wyrmlings in this band. Most of them were Crull-maldor’s men, but four of the scouts and a captain served under Yikkarga.
If the humans had hidden the metal, it was going to be a race to see who could find it first.
Crull-maldor was becoming adept at rooting out hoards of blood metal. In the past week, her troops had recovered ten pounds of the precious stuff hidden beneath the stones of a hearth, and another bagful secreted beneath a pile of cow dung on a farm.
She knew that a man could be counted on to hide his treasure near.
But another three hoards had gone missing completely, had been spirited away— far from the site where the blood metal was mined—and her troops had yet to find them, though she was sending scouts out on a nightly basis.
In moments the barking of the dog was cut short by a yelp, and the wyrmlings swarmed into the village. They did not enter the homes by doorways or windows, but instead simply tossed the thatch roofs off or put their shoulders to a wall. They grabbed toddlers from their cribs and pulled women into the streets by their hair. Any man who dared defy them quickly succumbed with one blow from a meaty wyrmling fist.
The humans, perhaps four or five hundred strong, were gathered in the village square beneath a great sprawling oak.
Crull-maldor floated to them. She could not easily question the humans. She hadn’t had time to master the small folk’s speech, but Yikkarga spoke it well enough. The big wyrmling had taken five endowments of wit, and now remembered everything that he heard.
He went among the folk of the village, growling at the head of each family, demanding to know where the blood metal had gone. Men shook their heads, muttering the word “No!”
It was one of the few words that Crull-maldor understood in the speech of these small folk; she’d grown weary of hearing it.
The wyrmling troops hesitated now, encircling the humans. Crull-maldor’s scouts were rushing through the town, sniffing at each hovel, sometimes rummaging under a bed or scrutinizing an attic.
It took nearly twenty minutes for Yikkarga’s captain to report, “The blood metal is not hidden here in the village. We found a wagon that smells of it, though, out behind that barn.” He jutted a chin toward a large building on the road north of town, near a small manor house.