“My soldiers must eat,” Utros said. “My challenge is managing the supplies and stockpiles.”
“Then your soldiers are weak.” The Norukai king reached inside his wide mouth and used a fingertip to dig a morsel of meat from his back molar. “We don’t worry about supplies. We raid to take what we need, then we move on.”
“They’ll all grieve!” Chalk said.
“We will have to follow your example,” the general conceded, though the empty foothills and the great valley offered few resources.
King Grieve leaned forward, studying the general’s half mask. “I may want one of those myself. I like the way it looks.”
Utros peeled off the golden covering to reveal his flayed face. By now the wound had healed, the dark muscle scabbed and hardened over the skull. “It was not my choice. It was necessary for a spell.”
The Norukai nodded appreciatively and fingered the mouth scars on his own cheeks. “Sometimes we do what is necessary.” He planted his elbows on the rough wooden table. “So tell me your plan to conquer the world.”
Utros gazed beyond the pavilion toward his huge army. “I have many thousands of fighters, armed and ready to march. Are any of your ships still intact after being crushed in the river ice?”
Chalk squirmed at the rough-hewn table. “Ships and fish, ice and fire, great serpent ships.” He grinned. “Serpent ships! Splintered ships now!”
“Not splinters!” Grieve roughly knocked the albino in the shoulder, then apologized by sweeping his arm around Chalk, squeezing the scrawny man. He faced Utros. “When the river froze, a hundred ships were anchored in the river, many up against the docks so we could climb the bluffs and invade Ildakar. The ice crushed some hulls, snapped the keels.” He pounded a heavy fist on the table. His knuckles, augmented with small iron plates, made the wood ring loudly from the blow. “But we will repair them. The Norukai are great shipbuilders.” Grieve glanced behind him toward where the land dropped abruptly to the river. “The swamps provide all the wood we need. We have tools. We have slaves.”
The general took him at his word. “We will need your vessels and your Norukai fighters for the war. You said you have many more ships back at your islands? We require your navy and your fighters, along with my entire army.” He grew more serious. “Your ships will move faster down the river out to sea. Even at a hard pace, my army will take longer to travel overland to the coast.”
“Some of my serpent ships are nearly repaired, and I am anxious to move, too,” Grieve said. “I will sail back to our Norukai islands, where I expect another hundred ships will be completed by now. My raiders are thirsty for victory and plunder. While we wait for your marching soldiers, we will attack cities on the coast, like a storm of steel and blood.”
In his calculating mind, Utros manipulated the pieces, saw the large tactical picture. “If the Norukai raiders attack the coast, and my army sweeps overland, we will form a pincer across the Old World.”
Grieve bit down on the bone from which he had stripped the deer meat. “We will crush the land like a grape between two fingers. It is a good plan.”
“Once our fighting forces unite,” Utros added, “we will march together and subjugate Tanimura, Altur’Rang, and then move on to the New World.”
“King Grieve!” Chalk cried. “They’ll all grieve.”
“Yes, they’ll all grieve,” said General Utros.
The Norukai weren’t much for small talk. After they finished their feast, the raiders were anxious to get back to their ships. Like General Utros, they had expected to conquer Ildakar, but now that the city itself was gone, neither army had a reason to remain here in this empty place. King Grieve departed as if the two commanders had planned the entire war in detail, and Utros realized that the Norukai were not much for planning. They simply attacked, moved on, then returned whenever they felt like it.
He suspected Grieve would be an even worse leader than Iron Fang had been, but Utros would worry about the brute later, when it became an issue. He would use these violent Norukai to accomplish his aims. He had sworn to grind the entire continent under his boot heel—out of loyalty to his emperor and secretly out of love for Majel. Now all of that had broken inside him, and so Utros would have to do it for himself and no other reason.
The Norukai returned to the bluffs above the river and climbed back down to their damaged ships. When the ugly raiders were gone, First Commander Enoch approached Utros, deeply concerned. “All the supplies were distributed, General. They did not go far.”
“I did not expect them to,” Utros said. “There was truth in what the Norukai king said. Recently, our scouts mapped out some nearby settlements. We know where there are supplies for the taking—at least a few—and we must have them. Disperse raiding parties in all directions. Find every town and strip them of every scrap of food.” He lowered his head. “It’s the only way our army can survive.”
CHAPTER 4
As the following dawn spilled across the river flatlands, Norukai taskmasters pounded on drums to rouse the groaning slaves, kicking the ones who didn’t move swiftly enough.
“Time to work!” bellowed Gara, a muscular female shipwright with gray braids dangling like drowned vipers from her patchy scalp. “Work until your fingers bleed.” She opened her scarred mouth and snapped her teeth back together.
Tied on the tilted deck of a damaged Norukai ship, Bannon squirmed to avoid a vicious kick. A raider cut his bonds so he could join the others at work.
The captives set about their repairs in the faint dawn light. Gara used a mallet to pound boards and pegs into place, but Bannon had seen the ugly woman employ the bulky tool to bash the skull of a slave who worked too slowly.
As Bannon rubbed his raw wrists where the rope had chafed him during the night, the ghostly pale shaman crept up and grasped his shoulders with spidery fingers. “Time to hammer, or time to be a nail!”
Bannon shook him off, uneasy about the strange behavior of the scarred albino. At least he understood the uncouth Norukai, but Chalk was deeply unsettling. For some reason, the shaman found him fascinating.
After days of captivity, Bannon’s body was battered and sore. He still had healing cuts, torn fingers, and massive bruises from fighting the Norukai invaders on the bluffs below Ildakar. He had nearly killed Chalk and King Grieve before they all tumbled down the cliffside to crash in a heap of bodies and weapons.
But rather than dying then, Bannon had been taken as a slave. Being captured by the Norukai was one of his greatest nightmares, ever since the slavers tried to seize him as a boy on Chiriya Island. Back then, his best friend, Ian, had been seized in his stead while Bannon got away, and he had regretted that moment of cowardice ever since. Now, many years later, he found himself a slave after all.
Chalk shook him by the shoulders again, and Bannon lashed out instinctively, remembering what they had done to Ian. “Don’t touch me, filthy Norukai!”
The albino cackled, delighted by Bannon’s reaction. In the brightening daylight, King Grieve saw him rebuff his pale friend, and the big man strode forward, his expression like an angry storm rolling across the sea. “Show respect or die, slave!” Grieve grabbed Bannon by the neck and yanked him off the deck. “Are you worth the air you breathe? Are you worth the water you piss?”
Bannon struggled, ready to fight back even though he knew he’d be severely beaten or killed. He was not a coward, but he would not be an example for these monsters.
Scowling, shipwright Gara stepped up to intervene. “Break him later, my king. We need the workers if you want these ships repaired. Lost three men yesterday, and we’re not getting any more workers from the city.” The shipwright glanced at the bluffs rising above the river. The top of the cliff above, where Ildakar had been, looked like a cleanly sheared tree stump, the city simply swept away. “We need to use the ones we have, at least until we’re done.”