eastern cliffs.
For several long minutes no other movement. The cliffs remained empty, the sky silent, the valley dormant.
The detachment stopped near the ruin steps and quickly went to work digging a hole.
“Anything?”
Brack’s mount shifted beneath him. “Nothing. But they watch.”
Undoubtedly. And they would see.
The preparations took only a couple minutes aided by thick muscle and sharp shovels. They pulled the Mortal from the cart, still bound to the ten-foot pole. The air stirred, lifting something from the top of the pole a banner bearing Saric’s crest.
They hoisted the prisoner up for all to see before moving him into position over the hole and unceremoniously dropping the end of the pole inside.
The Mortal’s body jerked and hung still, like a pig on the end of a stick, arms bound to his sides, feet dangling.
They filled in the hole, tamping down the earth so the pole could stand on its own, then stepped back and awaited his signal. Nomads were too strong to be demoralized by the sight, but planting the body would serve as clear notice:
He nodded. Brack lifted a red flag.
One of his children withdrew a sword, walked over the Mortal, and shoved the blade up under his rib cage. The man on the pole jerked his head back and strained, the cords standing out along his neck, then went limp, a lifeless puppet on a spike.
As he watched the slaying, Saric could not help but consider just how easily life was taken, yet how difficult it was to create. How it was his to give and take.
There could be only one Maker.
The Dark Bloods gathered the cart and left the pole standing in front of the ruins. High above a lone buzzard had already begun to circle in the gray sky.
“Take us up,” Saric said.
The army surged ahead.
In less than ten minutes they were across the small river along the western floor. Saric glanced back at the army winding its way up the slope to the plateau, now only a half mile distant. Numbers, not agility or speed, would win this day. Overwhelming power, bred for war by alchemy. He wondered how many of his children would die today. For him. And he vowed in his heart that for each one that gave up his life, he would mourn and make two more in their stead…
And then four.
A scout at the top of the rise signaled clear.
“You should hold back, my Lord,” Varus said.
“They run. I do not. Form the ranks wide.”
Varus issued the orders and the serpentine formation broke into three, two of the companies veering west.
Like a rising tide of black water they crested the hill and edged onto the plateau that stretched nearly a half mile before falling into distant canyon lands. The grass stood two feet tall. Trees to the west. Cliffs to his right, east.
Still no sign.
Within half an hour, the division he’d sent earlier would be in place to flank the Mortals. With any fortune at all, they had pulled their scouts in to focus on the plateau. Surely they needed every man.
“Hold.”
The massive army fronted by fourteen hundred cavalry rumbled to a standstill along the plateau’s southern edge. To a man, they faced forward, eyes and muscles fixed, waiting for command. The air grew quiet.
Saric felt his eyes narrow. Not with impatience or anxiety, but with strange appreciation.
The Nomads were nowhere to be seen. The field was empty. Nothing except a tall, stripped sapling in the middle of the field, a quarter of a mile distant. Only after a moment’s curious scrutiny did Saric notice one additional detail: hanging from a rope affixed to the top of it was something like a bladder or a large gourd…
Or a head.
The appreciation drained away as the head lolled in the wind, turning so that he could see the gaping mouth and bloodied face even from this distance.
“Janus,” Varus muttered.
Ice flooded Saric’s veins. Not at the thought of the man himself, but because in killing him, the Mortals had struck far more than the man. They had lashed out at the image the man was made in.
At Saric, himself.
So then… the Mortals would neither flee nor die quietly. So be it.
He stared a moment longer at the head hanging like a macabre ball from that pole. Black rage bubbled up within him like tar.
It was in that state that he wondered if the lone figure galloping at breakneck speed from the far side of his vision had been conjured by his own wrath. If it had risen up from the ground like the vengeful dead.
But this was no apparition. It was flesh and blood. A feral tangle of beaded braids and leathers with a starburst of metal studs as though Chaos itself had touched it. All that was refined was untamed in the rider. All that was evolved was primal in him.
Roland.
The Nomad slowed his horse to an arrogant, easy walk and stopped next to the pole.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
FIVE MILES NORTHWEST OF THE SEYALA VALLEY stood the old outpost at Corvus Point, an abandoned crossroads along the ancient highway toward which Jonathan and Jordin now rode.
The building itself was barely eighteen feet in length. Its boards were weathered, its paint, if there had ever been any, washed gray. Even some fifty yards off Jordin could see the darkness of the interior between the planks. Off to the right, the crumbling remains of a concrete trough had sprouted tufts of grass and creeping weed. The pump was gone, likely requisitioned decades ago along with the door.
A horse was tethered to a post on the end of the shack’s crooked front walk-a black, majestic animal that Jordin found herself envying for its sleek lines and sheer aesthetic beauty. Seeing it didn’t help her state of mind.
A knot of apprehension had tightened in her belly during the ride from camp that morning. She’d seen Feyn at the Gathering, but only from a distance, and even then the Sovereign had been veiled.
Was Feyn beautiful? Could one person possess both power and beauty in equal portions? Not that it mattered- Feyn stood for Order. And she was Dark Blood. On principle alone, everything within Jordin should revolt at the very thought of her.
But Feyn had also died for Jonathan once, and for that Jordin would grant the sitting Sovereign a measure of trust.
She glanced at Jonathan, riding at her side. Enigmatic preoccupation and nervous energy had rolled off him in frenetic waves since their leaving. At first she thought he was simply anxious. But it soon occurred to her that Jonathan might actually be excited to see this Sovereign who had died for him. Who might, if all Jordin had observed and heard was true, make way for him to rule with her.
Jonathan and Feyn, side by side.
Jonathan leaned forward in the saddle. Lanky and strong, darkened by the sun, he was a magnificent warrior who had come into his own.
He was eighteen today.
