“Suffer No Tyrants”

The last Scoth fell gurgling and clutching his throat. Danath jerked his sword free, a ribbon of scarlet splashing his armor. He panted as he watched his foe’s blood pool on the stone floor, the glimmer of torchlight on its surface offering up his reflection. Iron determination stared back. He was not a man anymore. He was revolution and redemption. Justice and vengeance.

Liberation made flesh.

He let his head drift back. The rest of his Namorites had overcome the remaining Grimshields guarding the Dawn Tower. In the heaving silence that followed, they awaited their leader’s command.

“I admire your work, lord,” one man said between breaths. “I would trade my son for that blade of yours. My daughter for the skill to wield it half so well. And my wife…well, I would trade her for free. Anyone?” The man gestured for takers. Most laughed. Those that didn’t were leaning on their weapons or against a stone wall, too tired to respond. A few others were preoccupied with assessing their wounds, mostly minor. Mostly earned from earlier in the battle. The carnage wrought in the hall was starting to smell.

Danath searched the faces of his men. Loyal and deadly, to be sure, but more than that, they were excited. The end had come. Freedom danced at their fingertips. He smiled. “One last step.” He motioned at the door to the Dawn Tower’s council chamber with his chin.

The man who’d made jest stepped over a Grimshield’s corpse. Another kicked one of the dead Scoths before joining his comrade at the door. They took the iron rungs and swung it open smoothly on well-greased hinges.

Danath strode forward and raised his blade, the infamous Scoth-killer known as Lamentation. Oily blood webbed the length of her steel, made milk-pale in the glow of torchlight. He paused, cocked his weapon back at a level with his chin, then stepped cautiously through the darkened portal.

Shadows peeled back as he entered a vaulted chamber. Three columns of stars burned in the satin blankness outside the windows that stretched from the floor halfway up to the spire’s tip—the highest point in the world made by man.

Braziers guttered, the draft from the open door sweeping sparks across the expansive marble floor. Danath crept farther in, his Namorites filing in behind at the flanks.

A single figure sat at one end of a long table, steepled fingers pressed to his lips. Danath surveyed the Dawn Tower’s interior, expecting a final gambit. But he hadn’t survived nine years of warfare against the mightiest military in the world without being able to sense assassins and ambushes.

There were none here.

He relaxed and the score of hardened soldiers behind him followed suit. “You are unguarded, Scoth.” Danath had dreamed of this moment with the Red Count, Ravin Guhlkov. The right arm of Scothea. “A poor choice for one who wishes to keep his head.”

The tyrant leaned back and then slowly came to his feet, his chair scuffing the stone floor. He was tall for a Scoth, taller than Danath which said much. His jaw was a band of iron. The tabard that draped him, boasting a war snake wrapped around a sun, was pristine.

With a poised diction, Ravin Guhlkov said, “You killed them all, so it seems my head is forfeit.”

Danath watched his enemy, jubilation roaring within like a caged lion. He had but to behead this snake and New Scothea would fall. Then, the dream of Namarr would be born. “So it is.” Face hovering over his shoulder, Danath nodded to the soldiers behind.

Three hurried forward to disarm the Scoth but found him weaponless. They forced him to his knees.

“You seem unaffected by your fate.” Danath moved into striking range, Lamentation’s worn leather grip a warm breeze in his palm. A lover’s breath preceding a kiss.

“Would begging stay your wrath, slave?”

The faces of the men holding Ravin jerked toward their leader at the slight. Danath remained motionless.

After a moment, the count continued with a sniff. “I had the life I had. I’ll have the death I’m meant to. If tears could stop blades, well, your people may have never been conquered in the first place.” Guhlkov looked at Lamentation. Hundreds of his countrymen had fallen under its edge. No doubt, he saw his doom reflected. His eyes drifted up to lock with Danath’s. “Besides, I wanted you to do it. Fights are such chaos. I may have been slain by one of these other, less worthy mice. But to be killed by one so mighty…that is an honorable death.”

Jaw clenched, Danath said, “You seek an honorable death where an honorable life would have served better.” He eased into a crouch until his nose was a foot from the Scothean tyrant’s. Guhlkov’s pristine white and gold tabard filled Danath’s fist as he dragged Lamentation through to clean it. “How does it feel to see it all come crashing down? To watch your might reduced, your glory usurped?” His voice adopted a tone sharper than any sword’s edge. “What echoes in that twisted soul of yours knowing Scothea’s reign has ended?”

Guhlkov shot a breath through his nose. Danath held the man’s gaze. He didn’t delight in unnecessary cruelty but he wanted to see the hubris die in this man. He wanted to watch the spirit of his people’s tormentors wither and become dust.

Though it came in the barely perceptible slump of the Scoth’s shoulders, and the fractional dip of his chin, Ravin Guhlkov gave no satisfaction with his words. “How did you do it?” he hissed. “A slave who married a princess. A slave who commands the might of the Dominarri. A slave who broke his chains with his bare hands.” He shook his head, disbelief overwhelming him. “A slave—”

“No longer.” Danath gathered Lamentation into both fists as he straightened to stand. “I am free. We are free.” He stepped into position, sword rising.

With the end near, Guhlkov swallowed as he stared at the blade in Danath’s hands. “You asked how I feel knowing my nation is defeated?”A lesser man might have balked or begged or gibbered in fear but Ravin was cold, unyielding iron all the way through. “Know this—I am at peace, for Scothea’s shadow is long and my countrymen do not forget.” The tyrant’s upper lip twitched and his jaw tendons flexed. “Change…is inevitable.”

Danath inclined his head. “So it is.” He inhaled and then with a practiced step and twist of the hips, he whipped Lamentation around and down. Flesh whispered and parted under peerless steel.

Before the Scoth’s head had struck the floor, a roar of triumph rose among Danath’s Namorites, the accumulation of anguished decades spent under foreign occupation. Of families broken. Of rape and abuse and murder and imprisonment—all of it released.

And they wept. Men weathered by war slung arms around one another and wept. For an end long dreamed of. For a beginning claimed in blood.

They were free.

Namarr, a nation united, was finally theirs.

“Treachery”

At least a score lay dead.

Blood pooled beneath them, a half hour old at most. Tabards once white and gold and proudly worn, were now soaked a deep scarlet. Vacant eyes wreathed in serpent tattoos fixed on Ikarai Valka as he approached. Axes lay out of reach of limp fingers. Shields embossed with suns and falling comets were deeply scored. Horned helms and broken bits of chain littered the ground.

A sudden wet sputter.

The men behind Valka hefted their weapons. Shouts of alarm had drawn them to the archway leading into the interior of Darkfall’s keep. Prior to that, Valka had been on course for an audience with King Rathon in the Holy Chamber.

Now, he crouched over a man propped against a brass serpent statue. Entrails snarled his fingers in his lap and fresh blood leaked from his slack mouth. Valka watched the man another moment as he died, then lifted a slab of armor from the chest of a twisted corpse beside him. There was a long rent through its center. “Darksteel breastplates…cleaved by darksteel blades.”

He let it drop with a clatter.

Warm wind carried crescents of dust over the sky-terrace from the surrounding cliffs, forcing him to squint. “It’s the boy. The false messiah.” Valka stood, quick despite his age, like a bow bent then released. “He’s here.”

Captain Yanos stepped close, speaking in hushed tones. “General, these were Grimshields.”

Valka knew the meaning of the worry in Yanos’s tone. It was a fear they all shared. A single question slithering through every mind. The answer threatened to stick in Valka’s throat but he spat it out all the same. “We are betrayed.” For bloodshed to penetrate so far into Darkfall’s keep before the outer defenses had been alerted could only mean one thing: there were traitors in their midst. A good many of them. High-ranking traitors.

Wind slammed the sky-terrace, inserted among the cliffs like a fungal disc growing from a tree. Valka turned to address the fourteen soldiers awaiting orders, their faces dour masks. The furl and snap of their cloaks was the only sound; the lean of their greased mohawks from angry gusts of wind, the only movement.

He nodded to Yanos. “Take three of your men and get a message to my daughter, Nera. Tell her to take the gilded box from my wardrobe and go to—”

Shouts and the clash of arms echoed from a nearby hall then dissipated once it met the open air. Yanos slid into position beside Valka with expert poise, ax upraised.

No time. I must trust my household guard with Nera’s safety. “Strike that. We make for the Holy Chamber.” He dispatched two men down the outer stair to the raek burrows to find Lord Rhul. “Tell him we gather strength around King Rathon.”

A pair of soldiers departed. Yanos wrung the haft of his ax as he turned back to Valka, eyes darting toward the broken bodies all around them. “We are still with you, General.”

Still with me?

Never before had Valka needed to worry about his men’s loyalty. Nothing in his life had ever been more ironclad. The weight of implication buckled his knees. He followed Yanos’s gaze, sweeping the terrace littered with dead Scoths. He’d trained the men who’d been killed, and he’d trained those who had done the killing. If not for the evidence at his feet, it would have been incomprehensible to imagine that the boy-turned-messiah could override the decades of psychological indoctrination it took to be one of the revered Grimshields.

I underestimated the boy. We all did. He poisons every ear that hears him.

Anger simmered in Valka’s chest. Just like the children starving in the lower terraces or the elderly succumbing to plague out on the plains, Valka laid blame at King Rathon’s feet. But his allegiance to his country didn’t allow room for disobedience. To turn his ax against his own was unthinkable.

While Rathon’s weakness had turned a mild famine into a widespread disaster, it was the fault of a devastatingly hot summer as much as the king’s. But with the false messiah pointing a finger, the rage of the masses had found their villain.

Valka surveyed the dead one last time. The men who’d done this had younger brothers and sisters bloating in the streets; mothers weeping over their children as they decided which one they should feed; fathers forsaking their faith to join raiders in attacking farms on the open plains. Many, it seemed, had found the boy’s cult.

Atrocities motivated by circumstance make an afterthought of morality. There was the truth of it. Family was the first loyalty. Only a hardened few could elevate allegiance to their country above that of family. Oath before ethic. Fealty before family. Death before betrayal. Valka recalled that part of his pledge at the feet of Acramis II before the Second Invasion of Namarr but it was quickly replaced by thoughts of Nera.

He prayed that his duties wouldn’t conflict with keeping her safe. His heart raced.

Nera above all. The anger for those who would betray one love for another was leached away as understanding settled in his bones. He found it hard to condemn the lowly in light of their plight.

“General,” said Yanos.

In battle, seconds were more precious to survival than air. Valka could tell Yanos thought his commander wasted them now. Doubt rose cold at the nape. Nera will be okay. He exhaled. I’m still the general of Scothea.

He gave the reins over to the part of him that was trained to snatch victory from chaos.

“To the Door of Khaldis.” He drew Mournfang from a belt loop. A gilded, steel raek coiled around the grip; its head and fangs formed a counterweight at the back of the battle ax while its six-inch horn served as a spike. The legendary weapon hummed and gave off a wave of simmering heat. “We protect King Rathon at all costs.”

They made their way at a jog along the sky-terrace. A handful of scouts sprinted ahead, each one leapfrogging past the next at three second intervals. There was a honeycomb of archways peppering the cliffside terraces. At every one, Valka’s troop slowed until a scout waved them onward.

Three entrances came and went. At the fourth, a scout paused. Valka’s guts twisted up worse than a nest of mating vipers. The seconds dripped by. A half minute later, Valka touched Yanos’s pauldron and motioned for him to see what transpired.

The captain crept forward, silent as a ghost, conferred with the scout, then returned.

“He sees the backs of Grimshields in diamond formation—they’re under attack. He can’t make out the enemy.”

The last was reported with a hint of hope that it might not be their own fighting them. Valka knew better. “How many of ours?”

“Ten in reserve. A score in the thick.”

Valka stared at the archway. Other forces were making their way to the Door of Khaldis. If he were the messiah, he would purge the interior palace while the element of surprise was strongest before assailing the king. The dead Grimshields at the first archway had been taken unaware, which meant friends had turned to foes in a blink.

It’s a race to King Rathon now.

He considered the men fighting in the hall ahead. A rear rank of ten in diamond formation meant the Grimshields were at least twenty strong. The fact that they were on the defensive meant they faced a larger force. How much larger? If his unit joined forces with those in the corridor, they could make a push, slay the traitors, and make their way to the Door of Khaldis with more men.

Valka cursed. Without knowing the enemy’s numbers, it was too great a risk. “They will hold. We proceed.” A sour taste filled his mouth. In all likelihood, they would fight to the last man. And to the last man, they will die.

Yanos nodded.

The sky-terrace bent around Darkfall’s Keep. Empty space and pressing winds harried them as they ran at an even pace. Valka’s lungs ached, his breath becoming ragged as they went. The rigors of time had humbled him, reducing his physical abilities to that of a sophomore recruit. He fidgeted with Mournfang, questioning if its legendary bite would help him survive the day. Fourteen years had passed since he’d seen live combat during the Second Crusade, and though he still sparred like all soldiers in Scothea’s army, he did so infrequently. Age and higher priorities had devoured his abilities. What seemed a lifetime ago, when he was a captain, he could have crossed axes with any of his shock troops and bested them. With the exception of maybe Yanos.

Valka glanced at the man hustling along beside him. When it came to violence—and it would—he hoped his captain’s ax and those of the men trailing them would be enough.

If the men sent to fetch Lord Rhul succeed, our chances of victory will drastically increase. Rhul the Red and his Gravequeen were worth fifty Grimshields. Possibly more.

A chill ran up Valka’s spine as he recalled seeing the pair in action a year prior.

Raeklord Rhul had invited King Rathon and Valka to the raek burrows to discuss hatching issues. An alarming number of defective stock had been yielded, all incapable of one day bearing riders. “It’s the food stores,” Rhul had claimed. “Pestilent cattle feeding on impure grain.”

“Nonsense,” said Rathon. “My agriculturist assures me he provides what is needed.” Rhul knew as well as Valka that the agriculturist the king referenced was a cousin who’d been appointed to the position for aggrandizing Rathon’s accomplishments.

“My King,” Rhul said. “It is not as you say.”

Rathon sneered, twisted toward Valka for some validation that wasn’t forthcoming. When none came, he laughed and spoke in mocking tones. “So you’re an expert in farming now, is it? Rhul the Red…” Rathon spat. “They say you are fearless, that you charged a column of the White Flame’s knights alone with your Gravequeen and sent them into retreat during the Second Crusade. Yet you fear a little moldy grain.”

“I would do anything for my country.” Rhul had narrowed deep-set blue eyes at Rathon. “In that pursuit, my fears come last.”

Rathon purpled. “You dare push your king!” A short man with a wide constitution, he planted thick fists on his hips. His voice fell low. “For that insult, I call on you to prove yourself.”

“Your Grace,” Valka started. “The raek cavalry are the backbone of our army. It may be wiser to—”

“He’s going to prove his prowess right now!” Rathon rounded to a cadre of servants who cowered under his ire. He gave them orders to fetch his new toy, which turned out to be a decrepit cave bear he’d purchased from a circus. “Merit. Our kingdom lacks it. That is why our raeks wither. The man tasked with their care has lost his touch.” Rathon rubbed his palms together. “I propose a wager. Wrestle my bear to its back and I’ll give a tenth of my personal food stores to your hatching mothers.”

“I accept.” Rhul hoisted his famously jutting chin into the air.

“Fool!” said Rathon. “I’ve not told you what you stand to lose. If you’re injured or killed, or you fail to put the bear on its back, your Gravequeen will forfeit her meals to the hatching mothers for a month. And you, Lord Rhul, will resign.”

Valka stepped into the space between Rathon and Rhul, attempting to disrupt the conflict. “Your Grace, the Gravequeen is our army’s greatest asset. To gamble her health, or lord Rhul’s in such a way, is folly.”

“Quiet now, Ikarai.” A self-satisfied grin split his broad face as he waved away Valka’s worries. “Lord Rhul is the strongest of the strong! The mightiest warrior in Scothea! Have some faith.” The king snickered. “It’s only a bear. But I’ll give our raeklord some wiggle room here. If he doesn’t wish to take the wager, he can come down from those high heavens where his pride lies and grovel to me instead. I’ve seen plenty of strong men fold under pressure when—”

Rhul’s tidal frame moved past them, encased in seven feet of darksteel from neck to heel, and took up position opposite the bear. The dusty floor formed a haze around his ankles in the dimly lit caverns at the heart of Darkfall’s keep. His golden cape piled onto the ground behind him as he lowered into a crouch. “Release it,” he said to the animal-tamers. The four of them glanced at one another, then withdrew the long poles hooking its manacles and spiked training collar.

The bear roared at its freedom and then lumbered toward an exit but the raeklord circled to cut off its escape. The bear swiped at the man and huffed. Valka had seen bigger bears but it still outweighed its human opponent by double. Despite the immensity of the wager, Rhul appeared calm as he barred the beast from leaving and waited for it to close with him. It rose onto two legs and roared—the moment Rhul had been waiting for, Valka realized.

The raeklord shot forward and clasped his hands around the bear’s haunches, dust swirling. The creature gave a startled whine as Rhul hoisted it into the air with a grunt of his own. It twisted in his grasp and bit an armored shoulder. Fighting for purchase against the man raising it aloft, it clawed at the chain covering his back. Sparks spit into the dim.

With a dip of his hips, Rhul heaved upward then slammed the bear onto its spine on an upthrust stone. There was a sickening crunch. Rhul rolled away, glanced at the injured creature, then disappeared into the pitch black stables at the back of the cavern.

Rathon gaped at the cave bear writhing in the dust, useless legs flopping back and forth as it struggled to leverage its upper body to rise.

There came an echoing hiss. The bear thrashed harder, efforts rendered futile by its injury. In dawning horror, Valka watched the Gravequeen materialize from the shadowed stables, Rhul wordlessly directing her. The colossal war snake loomed over the bear, midnight orbs assessing its broken prey.

The Gravequeen struck. Fangs the size of short swords pinned the cave-bear’s torso between its jaws. Three more bites in rapid succession and the bear lay motionless. The entire time the Gravequeen worked her mouth around her meal, Rhul the Red watched his king impassively. A normal raek would be incapable of ingesting something so large, but like her rider, she was anything but normal.

If Rhul can get here in time, we could hold the Holy Chamber for months.

Valka returned to the moment at hand. He wiped sweat from his brow and hot air filled his lungs. A dull ache emanated in his legs under the weight of his armor. The oldest among the unit by a decade, he refused to call for a stop. Just a little farther.

A pair of bridges came into view, spanning the distance between Darkfall’s keep and the Holy Chamber. Cliffs disappeared to either side of the great square structure sitting on a pedestal of naked rock in a sea of cerulean sky. The Door of Khaldis, a foot thick and banded with iron, was sealed. If King Rathon is within the Holy Chamber, he’s safe.

The terrace curved around the keep and terminated at the bridges. Valka brought his men to a slower pace in case another force lay in ambush. None came. Nevertheless, two scouts were dispatched to the other end of the bridge while they waited.

A pang of sadness assailed him. Will I ever see Nera again? Outside of his service to his country, she was the most important thing in his life. In part, she gave him the necessary impetus to fulfill his duties, for there was little point in protecting Scothea if the only good he’d ushered into the world was gone.

I have to get to her. Even now, men of his once loyal legion could be raiding his home. Hurting her. Binding her. Preparing to use her as leverage. Or worse.

He grit his teeth, suffocating the dire ruminations. Such vagabond sentiments were the death of strategic clarity. He needed his wits. Already, he’d been woefully outmaneuvered. Rathon’s head could be on a spike within the Holy Chamber. Maybe we’ve already lost.

His mind sifted through the list of potential traitors. The kings of Scothea had rarely faced challengers to their rule. It wasn’t like Malzacor, where Imperial Lights cut the throats of their cousins or siblings every decade or so. But Valka was a historian of some acumen and Scothea didn’t stand outside of history. Where one held power, another most certainly coveted it.

What fanaticism could sweep my ranks without my knowledge of its magnitude? Pockets here and there, yes, but those had been dealt with harshly and without delay. Valka still heard the eerie quiet murmurings of those soldiers charged with heresy. He’d expected screaming when they were stripped naked, slathered in goat fat, and then chained to a post. Criminals condemned to the same blubbered and wet themselves. Not the boy’s cultists. At least, they should have wailed or gone white with fear when the raeks descended for the feast. But the only sense of dread throughout the process of such executions had been the one that gripped the living, that silent, widening pit at the backs of their minds after witnessing such a testament of devout fanaticism.

The common people, with little but their suffering to rely on, were easily culled into dangerous beliefs. Agents of the Shadii reported that none was better at this than the false messiah. The Arrow of Light, his followers called him. Loosed from the heavens to strike evil from the world. The Shadii suspected he was Awakened but it was never confirmed. Outwardly, he displayed no signs of power. Valka’s knowledge of the messiah had waned since King Rathon had begun shouting down reports from the Shadii Master, Essuhd. He’d not wanted to hear of the boy unless he’d been dealt with.

News that never came.

His sermons swept the canyons. Then the plains. When the first royal farm was ransacked, the Shadii sent assassins to kill the boy. None returned. A month before today’s treachery, Essuhd had warned of a possible uprising.

How could I know the boy’s influence had spread so far, so fast?

It was the Shadii who were tasked with gathering intelligence, but Ikarai Valka was no slouch when it came to spying. He’d rooted out his share of heretics and fed them to the raeks. Outside of those rare instances, reports had claimed his legions were unmolested by the boy prophet’s ravings.

Lies and more lies.

The scouts returned from across the bridge and signaled for safe passage. Valka led them across, stealing glances over the parapet as he went. Columns of smoke rose from the lower terraces, dark stains smudging the sky. Cries of battle bounced around the canyon—whether it came from within the keep or somewhere far below, he couldn’t be sure. Scotheans, little more than spiky blots, moved through the streets like ants charging over spilled honey. It was unclear whether they were fighting against or celebrating an outcome Valka dreaded.

Perhaps Rhul has secured the keep and launched a counterstrike against the mobs.

The niggling intuition in Valka’s gut that had served him more times than he could count said it was otherwise.

They came to a flight of marble stairs leading to the Door of Khaldis, a monstrous thing with a golden emblem at its center. A pair of raek statues faced outward on either side, their horned heads pointing at the rising sun. Only the Dawn Tower of Alistar had been built higher in the world, a point of frustration for all Scotheans ever since the Namorites had slain Count Ghulkov and taken it for their own.

“Hold here.” Valka’s men fanned out and took up a defensive position at the mouth of each bridge, facing back the way they’d come. He took a deep breath and hurried up the steps, heart hammering in his chest. The frightening image of one of his men burying an ax in his skull from behind sent cold tingles down his spine.

He crested the final step, then made for the Door of Khaldis.

A silk-smooth voice from behind froze him in place. “Sheathe your ax…that’s a good general. Take one step back—now one to your right. Another. Turn around.”

Valka complied without hesitation. To disobey would be death. A poisoned dart-sling, or thrown dagger, or Mimborean night powder—the Shadii used them all in the ways of the silent kill. None was more capable than the owner of the voice. Their master. “Greetings, Essuhd.” He turned to lock eyes with the Shadii Master.

A moon-pale face hung in the shadows of one of the titanic raek statues. Placid eyes regarded him from a cleanly shaved skull.

“Your men cannot see you, nor can they save you if you shout.” The Shadii Master spoke fast and pointedly. “If I so wish it, you will die before your next breath and I will be gone before you strike the stones.”