Hurlind was bowing low as Morget came upon him from behind. The scold had a velvet pillow in his hands, upon which lay the crown of Skrae. Morget knew it had been recovered after the battle of the eastern gate, picked up from where it fell in the grass. The crown was crushed in on one side now, and a few of its emeralds were missing, but someone had polished it to a high luster.
And now Morg, Great Chieftain of the eastern clans, was reaching for it.
Morget struck Hurlind across the back of the neck with one massive fist and drove him to the floor. The crown went flying, to spin in circles in a corner of the room.
Morg frowned at his son. From behind a column, Torki, Morg’s champion, loomed into the firelight, a great-axe in his hand.
Morget sneered at the burned face of the giant champion. He’d beaten him once, and could do it again. If challenge were offered, he was ready to accept.
But it seemed Morg had received the message his son meant to send. That crown was not for the Great Chieftain. No man of the eastern steppes could ever call himself king-that was the law. The Great Chieftain only spoke for the men under them. He did not rule them.
Besides, the battle might be over but the war was just beginning. Helstrow had been taken and sacked, but Helstrow was not all of Skrae. Nor was it certain the true owner of that crown was dead. Most of the clans believed the king had perished in the fighting, but until Ulfram V’s body was found, Morget would not believe it.
Morg stared down into his son’s eyes as if mistrusting the fire there, the fire that would not let Morget rest, even in triumph. The fire that had always separated father from son and kept them understanding one another. Morg had never respected that fire. You put it there, Morget wanted to say, but this was not a time for words. Eventually the Great Chieftain waved away his son, and Torki took a step back. Morget spat on the floor near Hurlind’s face and went back out into the night.
He spent a while by the eastern gate, digging bodies out of the rubble. Even after the portcullis came down, the gate had not been wide enough to admit the barbarian horde en masse, so much of the stonework was pulled down-while defenders still thronged its battlements. There were plenty of corpses to find.
None of them belonged to the king.
Howling with frustration, Morget picked up stones and threw them into the night, not caring what he struck. He trampled on the king’s banner, dropped here by a sniveling herald.
There will be other days, he told himself. Other battles. The clans will not be satisfied for long by this blood. They will want more, and I will give it to them, in the name of our mother Death. I will make this country bleed until it runs white.
He sat down on the pile of fallen masonry and took from his belt the only souvenirs he’d kept from the day’s spoils. A hilt, its corresponding blade broken off at a jagged edge, and six inches of another blade from a sword older than history. Bloodquaffer and Crowsbill, or what was left of them.
He’d been surprised as anyone when the swords shattered. The axe he carried was of the finest dwarven steel, he knew-he’d stolen it himself from an abandoned dwarven city. The mirror-bright face of its blade was streaked with wavy shadows, and in a certain light the axe looked iridescent. It was a fine weapon, though not magical in any way.
Yet it had sheared through two Ancient Blades without stopping. Morget had long believed the seven swords to be indestructible. Everyone believed that-it was an article of faith. Yet here he had the proof that even magic swords were mortal.
Knowing that, he could only wonder one thing.
Will I truly find an enemy here in Skrae, the enemy I’ve sought so long? The enemy who will be more precious than any lover-the enemy who can challenge me, and make me sweat, because I do not know I can beat him?
He had conquered every foe he’d met east of the mountains. He had pushed so hard to come west because he thought he would find there what he sought. But if even the legendary Ancient Blades of Skrae were so easily brought low His reverie came to an instant stop when he heard a moan rise up from the pile of corpses. A survivor-one he had not found in his frantic search, one his sister had not discovered as she haunted the dead city.
Morget leapt down from his perch on the rubble and kicked bricks and bits of scorched mortar away from the source of the sound. Then he reached down with one massive hand and lifted his prize free of the debris.
“You,” he said, the first word he’d spoken all night.
“Are you going to kiss me now, or stick me on a spit and roast me alive?” Balint the dwarf asked. She must have fallen here when the gate collapsed, staying with her ballista crews until the fatal moment. “Either way, I need a change of breeches first.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Just outside the gates of Ness a recruiting serjeant had been broken on a wheel and hung up on a pole. The man’s kettle hat had been nailed to his head so it wouldn’t fall off, and so anyone passing by would recognize his occupation. Then his legs and arms were broken in several places so his limbs could be woven through the spokes of the wagon wheel, and then the wheel had been lifted high in the air so all could see.
Malden just hoped that he’d already been dead beforehand.
The message this grisly execution sent was clear. Recruiters had swept through all the counties and baronies around Ness, calling up every man who could fight for Skrae. Ness had refused that call. As a Free City it technically owed no obligation to the king-he could not conscript Ness’s citizens, nor could he demand they pay taxes to fund his campaigns. Clearly, at least one serjeant had been foolish enough to think the people of Ness were patriots all the same.
It was that independent streak that had birthed Malden and made him who he was, that unique Nessian truculence in the face of authority. Still, he doubted the serjeant deserved such treatment. Surely the Burgrave who ruled Ness could just have had the man tarred and feathered and sent on his way.
But of course Malden knew it had probably been the Burgrave himself who ordered the death of the serjeant. Ommen Tarness, the current Burgrave, was fiercely independent of nature. He answered only and directly to the king, and even then he excelled in sticking to the exact letter of the city’s charter. Tarness saw the Free City as his own personal fiefdom, and he would not have looked kindly on any attempt to recruit from among his people.
“Poor bugger,” Slag said.
Cythera didn’t even look at the dead man. Her eyes were on the city walls. “Home,” she said, with some weary measure of relief and hope. Malden took her hand, not caring who saw it. Their journey from Helstrow had been an endless round of nights spent slogging through muddy fields and long days hiding in abandoned barns when they saw signs that bandits were about. Velmont and his crew had given them numbers, and a certain degree of security, but Malden hadn’t been willing to chance an encounter with desperate men.
Funny, that. It wasn’t so long ago he’d considered himself as desperate as they came.
“It’ll be good to get back to my workshop in Cutbill’s lair,” Slag said, rubbing dust out of his eyes.
“Aye, Cutbill should be glad to see us,” Malden said.
The dwarf shot him a meaningful look. Malden chose to ignore it.