It had been a desperate decision.
Now Vaenuth sat at the tavern Lerran of Sheld had recommended, the Old Glory, in the streets of Lo Mallago. She held a small note, with an address on it, and a mug of whiskey in the other. In Radregar, men drank strangely, she decided. The mug was warm, the whiskey fizzed with something else, and didn’t taste of fruit like the drinks she was used to. Continue reading Vaenuth 35
The brown fields had burned. As Raya, Benn, and Dondar trekked out of the ruins of Ellakar and the flattened forest around it, they found a haunted land, covered in embers. They stumbled on a dead oryx buck one day, laying amidst the uprooted or flattened grasses. It had no wounds and did not appear starved. Dondar said it had been poisoned by the ash. Continue reading Raya 21
“So, we’re just going to wait and hope that the random woman you met on the roads will handle this correctly?” Gadra asked.
Lerran had called a meeting between his siblings and he, a few days after his arrival back in Sheld. He squeezed his toes in the red carpet beneath his desk and took a sip of his mug before replying to his sister. “No, I’ll send a contract killer to make certain the job is done,” he said. “I’ll just pay him less beforehand, and he can collect a full contract if his skills are needed. You didn’t see Vaenuth and her friends. I’m quite sure the Jorath’s will be—” Continue reading Lerran 33
The long litter was coming back along West Corid Avenue, when Grandfather Athanu, as he was known, finally broke through their small talk. Aralim had been interrupted from his reading yet again, by the arrival of the apparently famous Chamberlain Athanu, a man in a black robe, with golden earrings and a dark grease holding his greying hair back. They had spoken briefly of the attack on the Palace, of course, but aside from that Grandfather Athanu had kept their conversation light. He finished off his glass of wine as they passed through the noisy market at the end of the street and then looked Aralim in the eyes. “I’m 78,” he told Aralim. “I was born in the first year of the century.” Continue reading Aralim 25
The gates of Sheld passed over Lerran’s head as he ambled along on Ash’s back. Each gate consisted of old wooden doors, though the arching stone overhead held a simple portcullis that could be lowered to slow a battering ram’s progress. Of course, Sheld had never been attacked by a battering ram, at least not in distant memory. War in southern Radregar was a political dance with skirmishes and mercenaries, not sieges. Continue reading Lerran 32
Farek and Norrey didn’t always only chat in the pub. They were friends, not just a bartender and a regular. One afternoon close to the middle of the Moon, they went down to see the tournament at Tarlow Ground. The chase was a four mile camping and trading area built on the coast of Raider’s Bay, and during the ides of each moon a number of the city’s lords put on gladiatorial fights. Each bout only lasted until a predetermined score of hits had been landed, or until one warrior yielded—this was not Radregar, where sport involved death. In Var Nordos, civilization was kept by its rules and guidelines. Continue reading Farek 4
Lerran, to the dismay of his comrades, decided to conduct the bulk of their marching during the hours before and just after sunrise. By the time mid-afternoon arrived, his party camped in whatever shade they could find or construct, only to begin journeying again in the early morning hours the next day. They avoided the blistering sun, as best they could, as they continued the long journey along the Barren Road toward Sheld. They were more than halfway, and had past a dozen other travellers on the road, when Lerran was presented with an interesting opportunity. Continue reading Lerran 31
Arn was surprised when his siblings persuaded their mother to still invite him to their cook fire at the big gathering midway through the month. Home-maker Urtha sat with folded legs on a leaf-stuffed blanket, with Arn’s oldest brother at her right. Joroth was more than ten years older than Arn, and was the village’s Builder Chief, like Torr was the Hunter Chief. Next sat all of Arn’s aunts and uncles, and then Keeya and Raal, his other two older siblings. Now that Bela had perished, the only one sitting on the far ring of the fire, with Arn, was the youngest daughter and his only remaining younger sibling, Ratha, whom Raal and he had called Little Rat for most of her life. Continue reading Arn 6
Three weeks scavenging the smoldering ruins of Ellakar proved to Raya that there were plenty of bandits prowling the defenceless still—she once had to hide in a roofless, ash-strewn shoe shop in order to listen to them thieving from, raping, and then killing refugees outside. Between Benn, Dondar, and she… there was nothing they could do but wait until they were safe again. It was worse than any nightmare Raya could imagine; when they heard the bandits stroll off down the street, she charged out to see if anyone had survived and needed help. No one had. Continue reading Raya 20
“This is horrible,” Pressip said. The Numa native had spent his lifetime hunting in the humid rainforest. Despite his days learning the ways of the deserts, the Barren Road lived up to its name. There was no sand to blow at them, just arid, dead ground. In the heat, they had all stripped down shirtless. Tagg hadn’t even hesitated to display the spider-web scar tissue on his shoulder, nor his significantly less toned arms. Continue reading Vaenuth 34