Clay had never heard of tidal engines, and he sure as shit didn’t know what a “gyre” was supposed to be. As for duramantium, he’d always half-believed the metal was a myth devised by merchants to sell you a sword for ten times its worth. “So basically magic,” he mumbled.
Another chuckle from Moog. “Not magic exactly, but close.”
The palanquin the Narmeeri had unloaded from the ship was borne to the hilltop by eight hulking Kaskars in bronze-plated lamellar skirts and calf-strapped sandals. Northmen, especially those with blond hair and bright eyes, were paid a princely sum to serve as elite bodyguards to Narmeeri nobles. Most who did so were criminals or outcasts, and Clay noted that the Sultana’s guardsmen were careful to avoid the First Shield’s gaze as they lowered their burden and took up places on either side. Their mistress, the enigmatic ruler of the southernmost court, remained ensconced within the palanquin while a trio of ministers with plaited beards and patterned robes conferred with one another in hushed voices.
It was late afternoon before the Carteans turned up at last, plodding across the ancient battleground on sturdy steppe ponies. The yellow-and-blue pennants of the High Han drifted limply down below, but by the time they reached the summit they streamed and snapped in the crisp autumn breeze.
“My Queen!” The lead horseman, who Clay assumed was Obolon Han, called out to Lilith from the back of his mount. “See how my banner stiffens when you are near!” His remark drew a round of guttural laughter from the men around him and brought an oddly gratified smirk to the queen’s lips. Clay glanced between Matrick and her bodyguard—the one she’d called Lokan at breakfast—and couldn’t decide which of the two looked more affronted.
The Han dismounted with the practised ease of a man getting out of a chair and advanced at a saunter. He was flanked by two of the Ravenguard, denoted by the wings tattooed beneath their collarbones. All three men bore a black stripe painted over their eyes and the bridges of their broad noses, and each shouldered a horn bow and carried a naked sabre on his hip.
Obolon was a short man but sturdily built, with broad shoulders and muscles packed beneath a meaty frame that bespoke a man who loved eating and drinking just a little bit less than he loved riding and fighting. His battle-scarred arms, like those of the men behind him, were browned by long days beneath the sun. His head and cheeks were shorn clean, though he wore a wispy beard on his chin that Clay thought looked pretty stupid, all things considered.
The Han’s narrow, heavy-lidded eyes were hauntingly familiar, and Clay was trying to decide whether or not he’d met the man before when Gabriel, standing on his right, sucked in a breath.
“Holy shit”—his whisper carried a note of disbelief over Clay’s shoulder—“the fat one.”
Clay frowned. He didn’t …Sweet Maiden’s Mercy. He tried to keep his jaw from hinging open as Gabriel’s words clicked into place. This man, the warlord who ruled the Cartean tribes, was very obviously the true father of Matty’s son, Kerrick. Little wonder Matrick loathes the man, he thought. Let’s just hope the two of them can stay civil long enough to get this council over with.
Obolon stopped before the king and spread his beefy arms like a man expecting a hug. “Old King Matrick! Long time, no see. How’s my boy doing?”
Clay sighed. Or not.
To his left, Moog’s bushy eyebrows climbed halfway to the back of his head.
A few of the king’s guards exchanged furtive glances, but Matrick did nothing but clamp his lips and force a smile. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
The Han kept on, undeterred. “Hungry little bastard, ain’t he? Runs in the family. Is that why you can’t afford to defend your borders against my raids? Have you emptied your coffers feeding that brat o’ mine?”
Matrick pretended to ignore him, but Clay saw the king’s fingers twitch, itching for the pommels of knives he wasn’t carrying, at least not visibly. After all, if the king wanted someone full of holes there were a dozen guards around him happy to oblige.
“And who is this stallion?” The Han’s shit-eating grin grew wider as he took stock of Lilith’s bristling bodyguard. “Looks like it won’t be long before we welcome another little warrior into our happy family!”
Lokan, being possessed of more pride and less sense than Matrick, drew his sword.
Obolon, growling, drew his.
And Matty, who had indeed been hiding a pair of knives, brought them spinning out.
A breath later the Ravenguard put arrows to string, Maladan Pike and his fur-clad northmen brandished axes, and Etna Doshi’s silk-clad pirates tore scimitars from their scabbards. The Sultana’s blond brutes levelled long spears and hard glares at everyone, including Clay and his bandmates, who were among the few people on the Isle left unarmed.
And thus stood the Lords and Ladies of Grandual as the shadow of a wyvern’s wings fell upon them all.
Chapter Thirteen
The Duke of Endland
Clay had once tried describing to his wife the difference between a wyvern and a dragon. They were each vaguely reptilian, he’d admitted, and covered with metallic scales. They shared commonalities like razor-sharp fangs and claws that could punch through an iron breastplate as though it were made of eggshell. They both had leathery wings and sinuous necks, and were equally capable of shearing a man in half with a snap of the tail. Ginny had stopped him there to point out what a piss-poor job he was doing of differentiating the two, whereupon Clay was forced to concede that there was essentially no difference between them whatsoever.
Although now, as a wyvern touched down on the hillside before him, a few notable distinctions sprung to mind. For starters, a wyvern’s front arms were built into its wings, with curved spines flaring from the elbow and a joint spiked with curling talons. On the ground, wyverns plodded along on their knuckles, like apes. Their long tails were barbed on the end, and could inject a poison strong enough to paralyse a plough horse in seconds flat.
Unlike dragons, they weren’t especially cognizant. A dragon could plan and plot; it could speak, although no one (not even Moog) could decipher their draconic tongue. A dragon could, if given sufficient reason, hate you—something Clay and his bandmates knew all too well.
A wyvern, on the other hand, was a predator, compelled by instinct to hunt and to kill. It was a beast, and like any beast its will could be broken, its instincts subverted by the understanding that it was not, after all, the most dangerous thing in the world.
At least that was Clay’s assumption, or else why in the Frost Mother’s Frozen Hell would a wyvern permit someone to ride on its fucking back?
The “someone” in question was a druin, as Moog had mentioned yesterday. He slid down the wyvern’s black scales with a grace that mirrored Obolon Han dismounting his pony.
The Duke of Endland wore a long leather coat that was either burnished brown or bloody crimson, and carried three distinct swords in three distinct scabbards across his back. He was tall, like many of his kind, and thin, with skin pale as cream. His hair was the colour of a late autumn leaf, or a freshly minted copper coin, and but for a few strays the wind had plucked loose it was swept back against his skull. His features were typically druin: severe, all hard angles and jutting lines. He had a strong, sylvan nose, thin lips, sharp teeth, and long ears tufted like a rabbit’s and sheathed in fine white fur.
An old scar sliced through his left brow. It wasn’t obvious from where Clay stood behind the bristling crowd of Matrick’s guards, but he knew it was there.
Because he’d met this particular druin before. Knew his name even before Matrick said it out loud.
“Lastleaf?”
Lastleaf, son of Vespian, from whom Gabriel had inherited Vellichor.
Lastleaf, who had tried and failed (hence the scar) to take the Archon’s sword from Gabriel many years ago.
Lastleaf, the Duke of Endland, master of the Heartwyld Horde.
Clay found himself wondering what the Council of Courts etiquette
was regarding vomiting your breakfast onto your boots. He suddenly wished he were elsewhere, anywhere—or better yet, someone else entirely. A simple man doing simple things. A cobbler, maybe. Cobblers rarely, if ever, made enemies of vengeful immortals, or so he figured.
The druin stopped where he was. He didn’t appear to notice the king had spoken. The wyvern craned its neck and lowered its head so the druin could stroke the glossy scales along its jaw. Clay assumed the beast was a matriarch, since it was twice the size of most wyverns he’d seen, and he’d seen quite a few. The creature emitted a sound like ten thousand cats purring at once, and the ribbed fins along her neck and below her chin vibrated in pleasure.
Clay made a note to congratulate himself later for not shitting himself right then and there. The same could not be said for the horses, however. At a word from the king—and a gesture from the Han—the skittish mounts were led away, off the hill and into the babbling throng. The great good fortune of seeing a druin and a wyvern on the same day had created a fair bit of excitement down below. Clay saw one fellow setting up an easel and mixing water into a bowl of dry paint—no doubt he’d have the whole affair framed and hung on a brothel wall by tomorrow.
At last the druin turned and addressed the king of Agria in a measured voice. “Hello … Matrick, was it?”
The queen turned on her husband. “You know this creature?” she asked, which seemed to Clay like a piss-poor way to begin what was supposed to be a negotiation.
Though they were here at Lastleaf’s demand, Matrick had explained last night that the Council’s aim was to convince the self-proclaimed “Duke of Endland” to abandon his siege and disperse the Horde he claimed to lead. Though the kingdoms of Grandual had few—if any—ties to the faraway Republic of Castia, it seemed unwise (and somewhat callous) to sit by and do nothing while a horde of monsters wiped an entire city of humans off the face of the world.
“We’ve met before, yes,” Matrick told his wife. “It was a long time ago.”
“Not so long,” said Lastleaf, whose kind counted the turn of seasons as though they were hours in an endless day. “Not for me, anyhow, and yet I barely recognized you. You have grown old, and fat, and judging from the crown on your head it appears someone was foolish enough to make you a king.”
Obolon sniggered, and Matrick shot the Cartean ruler a glare before he replied. “I’m the king of Agria, yes.” The old rogue tried puffing out his chest but was forced to settle for thrusting out his gut. “And you look … exactly the same. Except the scar, of course,” he added with a decidedly undiplomatic wink. “That’s new.”
The scar had been dealt by Vellichor’s edge on the day Lastleaf, along with a few sylf henchmen, had ambushed Saga shortly after Gabriel had inherited Vespian’s fabled sword. The sylfs—druin-human halfbreeds most often shunned by everyone but their mortal mothers—were killed or driven off, and when Clay had last seen Lastleaf, the Archon’s son had been curled in agony around Ganelon’s boot, blinded by blood, heaping promises of retribution upon Gabe and his bandmates.
Just now the druin’s face remained impassive, which Clay found troubling for a number of reasons. Lastleaf touched his thumb to the pale scar beneath his left eye. “It suits me, don’t you think?”
Before the king could answer, Maladan Pike cut in. “Excuse me, Duke, but I didn’t come here—”
“We,” said Etna Doshi with a pointed look.
The First Shield of Kaskar sighed. “Fine. We didn’t come here to listen while you and Old King Matrick swap stories. We came because—”
“—you want me to lift the siege of Castia,” finished Lastleaf.
“Well, yes,” said Pike. The northern prince was still holding his axe. In fact, members of several delegations hadn’t bothered to resheathe their weapons since the wyvern landed. Clay had a moment to wonder if putting everyone on edge had been the Duke’s intention in the first place.
“And my Horde?” wondered Lastleaf with feigned naivety. “Should I disband it? Bid my monstrous minions return to their forest lairs? Crawl back to their caves? Retreat to the deep, dark places of the world and wait patiently for some glory-hungry adventurer to come and claim the bounty on their heads?”
Pike wasn’t the sharpest sword in the armoury, but he knew when he was being toyed with. “Sounds like a plan,” he grated.
The ghost of a smile haunted the druin’s lips, but quickly vanished. “What’s done is done, I’m afraid. The arrow has left the string. Castia will fall, and soon. I could no more resurrect the Dominion than rescue the Republic from the doom that awaits it.”
The Phantran delegate shook her head. She’d slung her cutlass back into the sash at her waist, but her fingers lingered on its jewelled pommel. “What does the Old Dominion have to do with any of this? Who are you, even? Where did you come from?”
The druin regarded Etna Doshi as if she were a mouse that had poked its head out of the salad he was partway through eating. “I am from the forest. You may call me Lastleaf, or Duke—whichever you’d prefer. And as for the Dominion …” His long ears twitched. “We are each what the past has made of us. You would do well to remember what has come and gone before. Time is a circle, history a turning wheel. Though I can hardly expect a human to understand. Your memory is as limited as your mind is narrow.”
Doshi was on the verge of an angry retort when Lastleaf spoke up again. “I mean no insult to you personally, of course. I am merely pointing out the fact that humans are short-lived, short-sighted, and prone to repeating the mistakes of both your ancestors and mine.”
The Admiral’s daughter looked decidedly unimpressed by the Duke’s apology. “Since when was Endland a duchy then?” she asked sharply.
Lastleaf grinned, just as sharply. “When Castia is mine—and it will be mine very soon—I may remake of it whatever I wish. Why not a duchy, with myself as its duke? Or would you rather I chose a more … ostentatious title? Shall I call myself king, or emperor, or archon?”
Moog was right, Clay found himself thinking. The whole duke thing is for our benefit, a way to make him seem less threatening to the kings and queens of Grandual. Which seemed unnecessary, he thought, considering the druin commanded a force that was larger and substantially more terrifying than what any of the courts could muster on their own.
While Lastleaf was speaking, Clay saw a white-gloved hand push aside the silk curtains shrouding the Sultana’s palanquin. He caught the barest glimpse of a gold mask in the gloom as the occupant spoke with one of the three ministers, who then turned and cleared his throat before addressing Lastleaf.
“My Esteemed Lady, the Sultana of Narmeer, Bride of Vizan the Summer Lord, Mistress of the Scorching Throne, Herald of the Devouring Wastes, Scourge of the Serpent Clans, Bane of the Giants of Dumidia, Eternal Enemy of the Palapti Centaurs, bids me ask you this: How is it you control the Heartwyld Horde?”
“I do not control them,” said Lastleaf. “I compel them.”
“There’s a difference?” asked Obolon Han.
“The Horde cannot be controlled,” the druin replied. He had an odd manner of speaking, Clay noted. He opened his mouth very little, as though ashamed of his serrated teeth, or else reluctant to put more effort than necessary into the act of conversing. “My own kind learned this lesson long ago, and far too late. But it can be coaxed, threatened, provoked—”
“Well how about you provoke them into leaving Castia the hell alone?” asked Doshi.
Lilith leaned in and whispered harshly into Matrick’s ear. The king blinked and started like a man roused from a peaceful nap. “Ah, yes, how about we adjourn to the—”
“I will not sit,” said Lastleaf. Behind him, the wyvern’s wings shuddered with a sound like wind-cracked sails.
“Fair enough,” said the king, earning himself one of Lilith’s many and varied scowls. The queen would be tired, of course, but to sit alone in this company would be seen as a sign of weakness from a woman who had very serious aspirations of ruling as Agria
’s lone monarch before long.
The druin turned to face the First Shield, and when he did Clay got a good look at the scar left by Vellichor above his eye. The catlike pupil beneath it had ruptured, swelling to encompass the iris around it, which lent the druin an odd, unsettling gaze. “Imagine you lead a host of bloodthirsty warriors into the country of a bitter rival. You face their army on the field of battle and vanquish them.”
“Who says vanquish anymore?” Moog breathed.
People who vanquished things, Clay supposed.
“Your enemy retreats behind their walls, and though you cannot breach them it is only a matter of time before their refuge becomes a grave. But your army, too, grows hungry. They have been promised blood, or coin, or flesh. And more: They crave the immeasurable joy of seeing a mortal foe brought to ruin and all they have loved turned to ash.”
“Been there,” quipped the Cartean Han, to the amusement of no one but his own clansmen.
“The Horde is an army like no other, and I have promised them Castia. Were they but men, then perhaps I could call them off. But they are not men.” He said these words very carefully, and seemed to savour each as they left his mouth. “They are wild things, fey creatures. They are everything you fear and many things you would fear to know, and they will not be turned back. Not even by me.”
The First Shield’s face had gone stern as a stormcloud. Doshi shrugged and shared a helpless glance with her fellow Phantrans, while the Han growled something over his shoulder to the Ravenguard warrior behind him. Matrick’s head was bowed as Lilith grumbled into his ear. Clay looked over at Gabriel, who was staring through the soiled mess of his hair as if the druin were a puzzle he was determined to solve. The Duke had yet to recognize any more of Saga’s members, standing as they were behind the screen of Matrick’s guards.
I don’t imagine he’ll be happy to see Gabe again, he figured, and wondered—not for the first time—if attending this council had been a wise idea after all.
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