Dawn of Swords Read online

  That’s when the screams began.

  The first came from Ben Maryll, Geris and Martin’s friend. Ben hovered over Martin’s body, his blue eyes wide and filled with tears. He tugged on the fallen boy’s auburn hair, looking like he would rip it out of his head. Geris wanted to cry out to him, to ask his friend what was happening, but his voice stuck in his throat. The screams grew louder, and something whistled past his ear, followed by a soft thud. People rushed by, shouting in panicked, shrill voices. Geris sat motionless, watching as the Guardmaster of the Haven township—a tall, stout man named Torgen—was impaled in the throat by an arrow. Blood spurted as he gasped and fell just inches from Geris’s feet.

  Still the pointed shafts rained from the sky.

  A group of five huntsmen, clad in leather skirts and sashes, ran past him, hunting bows on their backs. They climbed the ladders propped against the high wall of the newly completed Temple of the Flesh. When they reached the top, looking at what lay outside the wall, they nocked their own arrows and began firing blindly.

  Geris watched it all with disbelieving eyes. He wanted to move—tried to move—but his body betrayed him. His heart raced and his throat tightened. Glancing back at the wagon, he spotted Ben staring at him from beneath it, his expression the same as when he awoke from a nightmare. He must have managed to drag himself under it without Geris noticing. Geris felt his bladder threaten to release. He could not name the emotions he was experiencing—only knew he had never felt them before. It was all so unreal. He shouldn’t even be here.

  He, Ben, and Martin were kinglings from the west, brought here from the Sanctuary to learn. He wished Ahaesarus, his mentor from home, were with him now, wished that he had the man’s wise council. Perhaps the Warden would know what to say to make his legs work, to banish the terrible shaking of his hands and the tears streaming down his face.

  “Ben! Geris!”

  At the sound of his name, Geris swiveled his head. It was Jacob Eveningstar, the kinglings’ chaperone and mentor for this journey. Jacob sprinted down the hay-strewn corridor between the temple’s central hub and its outer wall. His long, dark hair streamed out behind him as he ran like a man possessed. Geris raised his hand in greeting, as if this were a normal day and he were eating a lunch of apples and salted beef in the golden fields surrounding the Sanctuary. Taking note of Jacob’s clenched jaw, squinting eyes, and the reams of sweat soaking the front of his shirt banished Geris’s momentary relief, instead magnifying his already overwhelming fear.

  Jacob swept him up in his strong arms as another arrow sailed overhead, and then swung him around and threw him across the alleyway, where the arrows couldn’t reach. Geris struck the wall and slid down, letting out a cry of pain. Meanwhile Jacob pulled Ben from beneath the carriage and dragged him across the slender pathway too. Ben collapsed beside Geris, who sought out his friend’s hand. Their fingers intertwined, and they stared at each other, matching tears dribbling down their cheeks. Jacob hovered over them, shielding the two potential kings from the death that came from the sky.

  Balanced on the ladders that lined the wall, the huntsmen were but shadows beneath the blazing sun. At regular intervals they poked their heads over, and whenever the pace of the attack slowed, they slipped arrows from their quivers and launched them into the air. Bringing his gaze down to the streets, Geris realized that they were covered with blood. He watched as a woman was skewered through her stomach. Her bare breasts flopped as she doubled over, the bells adorning her silver girdle tinkling as she fell. She struggled forward, clawing at the dirt, until another arrow pierced the back of her skull. Geris squeezed his eyes shut for a long moment, desperate not to see any more. Ben trembled beside him. Jacob was standing over the two of them, his sturdy hand clutching Geris’s shoulder. He could feel the man’s hair brush against his cheek as he scanned one side of the path and then the other.

  Before long, all the people who were still alive had their backs pressed against the wall. Jacob ceased his protective hovering and sat down beside his two remaining charges. The arrows still came, but they were slower now, harmlessly pelting the ground and piercing already deceased bodies. Geris shivered, watching as the spilled blood formed tributaries in the open space. He spotted Martin beside the carriage, six shafts sticking out of his body. His eyes were open and unblinking, his face pale and bloodless. An irrational desire filled Geris, a yearning to see his friend shake off the arrows as if they were props from a game. Martin, so long the favorite for the kingship, would laugh and roll his eyes as if it were nothing. But Martin didn’t move, didn’t breathe. Geris’s eyes filled with tears. Jacob grasped Geris’s chin and turned his gaze away from the scene.

  Then, just as quickly as it began, the barrage of arrows ceased. All was silent but for the cawing of the birds and the moans of the dying. It stretched on for a long moment before it was broken by an unnaturally loud voice from the other side of the wall.

  “Citizens of Haven!” it shouted. “There is no need to hide any longer. Show yourselves, or risk our renewed wrath!”

  The huntsmen on the ladders glanced at those gathered below them. The people who were huddled at the base of the wall stepped back into the alleyway, weaving through the arrows and corpses, their faces masks of shock and incomprehension. One among them, a brawny man wearing a long, silken robe, stepped forward. His broad chest heaved as he ran his fingers through his beard. His name was Deacon Coldmine, and he was the appointed lord and leader of the fledgling city. Deacon gestured to the man beside him, who darted down the alley and disappeared through a doorway cut into the side of the rounded temple. A few minutes later a woman emerged. Geris’s gaze lingered on her. Her name was Aprodia. She was the temple’s priestess and was beautiful beyond words. Her hair was long and black, and her flesh was a tantalizing bronze. A tattoo of an eagle with spread wings adorned the space between her ample breasts. Only yesterday, the three boys had snuck a look through a peephole in the temple wall, watching in wonder as the woman danced like a dervish among the gathered worshippers. Feeling sad and strangely shamed, Geris turned his eyes away from her bare body.

  Together, Deacon, Aprodia, and a large gathering of other citizens exited through the gates in the wall, vanishing from sight.

  Jacob snapped his fingers before Geris’s face, commanding his attention. Geris looked up at him, surprised to see a hard gleam in the man’s eye.

  “We are here to learn,” Jacob said. “And even in moments of death and horror we may still find wisdom.”

  He slid three ladders together along the wall.

  “Come see what is happening,” he said. “I trust you are wise enough to understand and endure.”

  Now that the arrows had ceased their flow, Geris felt his paralyzing fear slowly start to ebb. With his back to the dead, he put a hand on the rung. Jacob’s trust in him sparked a bit of pride, giving him the will to climb the ladder. Geris was only thirteen, and although Jacob looked no more than a decade his senior, the man was older than time itself. Still, Jacob treated Geris more like a younger brother than a kingling who needed to be shielded from the world. He didn’t fawn over him like his mother did, or act stern and distant like his father. Jacob even treated him better than Ahaesarus did, as the Warden was often annoyed by Geris’s flights of fancy. Granted, perhaps this was because it was Ahaesarus’s responsibility to teach him, whereas Jacob was only in charge of Ben’s training.

  Jacob scaled the middle ladder, gesturing for the two boys to follow.

  “Let’s go,” Geris said to Ben, but the other boy was still shaking, his head between his knees. Geris waited, and when it became obvious that Ben would not be moving, he left him there and climbed the rest of the way up.

  Once he reached the top, he peered over the edge, as his chaperone was doing. He gazed on the fields of yellow poppies and marsh grasses that grew along the banks of the eastern spine of the Rigon River delta. Just beyond those grasses was Karak’s Bridge, at the end of a dirt roadway less than a m
ile away, its black marble trusses shimmering in the sunlight. Geris’s breath caught in his throat. Beside him, Jacob whistled.

  Over a hundred men stood on the Haven side of the bridge. They wore light bronze chainmail over simple tunics, with red paint splattered across their chests. Most of the men were equipped with bows and swords. Two men held aloft silver banners adorned with the black outline of a roaring lion, the sigil of the eastern god Karak. In front of them all was a lone man with flowing white hair, whose horse shifted side to side, as if impatient. The delegation from Haven approached him, stopping not far from the safety of the wall. As they neared, another soldier rode from the back of the army to join the man with the white hair. He had a shaved head and a long beard peppered with white, and was naked from the waist up. The largest sword Geris had ever seen hung from the man’s back by a thick leather strap.

  Geris turned to Jacob and tugged on his sleeve. Jacob’s head swiveled around, revealing his soft blue eyes and furrowed brow. It was always strangely difficult to read his expression, but he seemed worried.

  “What’s going on?” asked Geris.

  Jacob shook his head.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Geris had never seen Jacob uncertain before. It frightened him. He closed his eyes and prayed to Ashhur that everything would be all right.

  Vulfram Mori sat motionless in his saddle, stroking his beard. His heart pounded with anticipation, his stomach churned from indecision. Despite the distance, he could still hear people sobbing from the other side of the wall. He had never liked bringing pain to anyone, even the wrongdoers he’d been obligated to punish in his days as Captain of the City Watch back in Veldaren.

  Beside him, Highest Crestwell cleared his throat.

  “You have their attention,” Clovis said, his voice reedy and grumbling like a whistle blown beneath the water. “Why do you delay in giving them Karak’s orders?”

  Vulfram straightened on his horse, and he met Clovis’s piercing blue eyes. Though Clovis was older than him by more than two decades, he had not aged a day since the first moment Vulfram laid eyes on him. Agelessness was a gift bestowed upon the forbearers and children of the First Families, a gift Vulfram had renounced the moment he dedicated his whole heart to his wife, Yenge.

  “In due time, Highest,” said Vulfram. “Our display of force has frightened them beyond measure. I wish to let them regain a sense of order.”

  Clovis’s mouth twisted into something resembling a smile.

  “Karak would be most proud,” he said, urging his horse backward.

  Vulfram let out a deep sigh. He tried to guard his thoughts at all times, just in case his god could see into his very soul, but it proved a difficult task. He had not been confident in the decision to march on the temple. The residents here had fled the east long ago, their chaotic souls unable to adhere to the order of Karak. This isolated land in the delta had gone unclaimed by the religions of the east and west for the last ninety years, and it was only when they began worshipping themselves that Karak had even seemed to notice. Although Karak had not been seen by mortal eyes in over two score years, Clovis assured the people of Neldar that he still held the god’s counsel. Vulfram remembered when Karak’s orders had been read to him, Clovis’s voice crystalline clear in his mind.

  This temple is an act of chaos. They are citizens of an unlawful land, denying worship to their creator to instead worship the very forms I crafted. It is defiance; it is disorder; and they must be taught a lesson. They must choose a better way or succumb to the cleansing fire.

  Deep down, Vulfram did not agree. He saw no harm in these people constructing a meeting place to celebrate their earthly bodies. He and Yenge celebrated their own bodies in a similar fashion each night back at his childhood home of Erznia. To be honest, the thought of having an entire edifice dedicated to the carnal pleasures intrigued him.

  Yet never once had he voiced these doubts, for he knew it would be akin to sacrilege. Karak was divine; Karak was the wisest of the wise; Karak was the creator of life. If Vulfram had a problem with the verdict, it was a problem for him to solve within himself. Fulfilling the order of his deity was what mattered, not the dead inside the temple or the two of his men who had perished from return volleys launched back from the temple walls. Those two men were in Afram now, the afterlife, free from pain as they waited for their loved ones to join them. Vulfram would meet them again one day, and then they would drink and cavort and fill the afterlife with good cheer.

  Vulfram shook his head. The decision had been made, and as Lord Commander of the newly formed Army of Karak, it was his duty to see it through. He had no use for uncertainty, for Karak waited for no man.

  “Citizens of Haven,” he said, while fingering the rune-carved onyx stones in his left hand, using their magic to amplify his voice so that it carried across the expanse. “We come in the name of Karak, God of Order, Divinity of the Eastern Realm of Neldar. This structure you have built, this Temple of the Flesh, is a blasphemy of the greatest offense. By the authority given to me by the Council of Twelve and our beloved King, I order you to tear down the walls of this atrocity. Turn your eyes away from one another and set them on Karak, the true god of this land. If not, this is only the beginning. We will return on the night of the third full moon, with the Divinity himself by our side. If you have not repented to the supreme law, you will be judged, and judged harshly. Three months’ time. Do not tarry.”

  He loosened his grip on the stones, cleared his throat, and then squeezed them again.

  “Please, I beg of you, do not force Karak’s hand in this matter. Unlike we faithful, he shall not leave you with a second chance.”

  With those words, Vulfram lifted the giant sword Darkfall from his back, raised it into the sky, and roared. He then re-sheathed the sword and pulled back on his horse’s reins. The stallion whinnied and circled around the throng, clomping back onto the bridge, its hooves clacking on the smooth stone. The men bearing the banners of the lion kept formation, mimicking the horse’s strides with their human feet, breathing heavily, never looking back. Vulfram followed their example, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead. He did not want to reveal any of his skepticism. Uncertainty was weakness, and weakness was unbecoming of a Lord Commander.

  Once they reached the other side of the bridge, Clovis took his place again at Vulfram’s right. On his left appeared another horse, a marvelous black mare whose rider was a lithe woman of ghostly pallor and long silver hair. She fixed him with a bitter and curious glare.

  “What is it, Avila?” Vulfram asked.

  Avila was Clovis’s daughter through and through. She shared his complexion, his coldness, and his unwavering faith in Karak. Her youth remained as eternal as her father’s, and she served as Shepherd of Southern Neldar, doling out punishment to wrongdoers in the growing provinces of Omn and Revere.

  “Do you think they heard you?” Avila asked, her voice just as grating as her father’s.

  “Aye,” replied Vulfram. “They heard, and they will obey.”

  “And you are certain Karak will be with us when we return?”

  Vulfram gestured behind him. “Ask your father. They were his words I spoke.”

  Avila grinned, an expression that contained all the joy of a block of granite. Vulfram shivered and urged his stallion onward without another word. The horse settled into a mild canter as it maneuvered down the well-worn path through the sparse grasslands, pulling ahead of his vanguard. He wished he were home, back in bed with Yenge, touching her, tasting her, loving her. It had been eight years since he had been given the mantle of Captain of the City Watch, and his home visits were limited to once every six months. Each time he returned home, he wished to stay longer than he was allowed. He missed the simplicity of life before.

  “Is that so wrong?” he whispered into the dead wind.

  His only replies were the phantom memories of the screams from behind the wall, coupled with the marching feet of his army. He put them all out
of his mind and rode in silence as the sun began its journey toward the other side of the world.

  CHAPTER

  2

  The road was narrow, cutting a jagged swath through the rocky, desert terrain. Jacob bounced in his saddle, the pain from the cuts and bruises on his thighs beginning to work its way up his spine. The sound of his horse’s thumping hooves filled his ears. He glanced to his left, where one of the Rigon’s snaking tributaries flowed in the distance, and then to his right, gazing down on the cracked red clay speckled with sparse brown grasses. The heat in the south was so insufferable that the river’s nourishment died only a few feet from its banks.

  He wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, yanked on the collar of his tunic, and then ran a clammy hand through his hair. Yes, the heat was oppressive, but it would have been so much more tolerable had he been able to walk. Whereas Jacob hated riding, he loved walking; it was a pastime he had indulged in for over one hundred years. But it had taken days to reach this far on horseback, and he wished to return to the Sanctuary in haste, which meant that traveling by foot was out of the question.

  Besides, he would not make the kinglings walk such a distance.

  Someone sniffled behind him, and Jacob cast a glance over his shoulder. There he saw Ben and Geris following on their tethered donkeys. Ben’s posture was slumped, and each time his donkey took an odd step, the boy swung far to the side, coming close to falling off. It was up to Geris to reach over and assist his fellow kingling, straightening the boy in his saddle and patting him on the back. For his part, Geris seemed to be handling the whole situation rather well. Whereas Ben’s eyes were constantly downcast, Geris would periodically steal a look at the third donkey trailing behind them. On its back Jacob had tied the body of Martin Harrow, draped in a cloth etched with the symbol of the golden mountain. Geris appeared solemn whenever he looked back, but there was an acceptance about him, a stalwartness that Ben, even though he was almost two years the boy’s elder, simply didn’t have. Geris was a born freeman, an independent soul with a quick wit and even quicker hands; his memory was short in regard to failure or, in this case, grief.