“We move to strike at the heart of the Horde!” The head of the council called out.
Harin put his hand on the hilt of Dawnbringer, a comfort in his days on the march. He had begun to feel a sinking feeling as he’d
“The heretics are plenty in the east, but the west, the Horde are all Heathers! We must cleanse the land of the godless horsemen!” Father Kent shouted.
Many in the hall shouted their agreement to the proclamation, hands high in the air balled into fists.
The Council Chambers were hewn into the Car Lauch Mountains, just as the Pass had been. His tutors had explained that this was once a natural passageway, that men and women had once traveled from east to west without fear. Many centuries ago. The Skellen Pass had been built as the west, the Horde began to war with the east.
Nothing could stop the onslaught of the Horde. Their horses, arrows and men were uncountable. They blotted out the sun when their archers fired, almost every man and woman atop a horse had their own bow and quiver. The Eastern Kingdoms had joined together to build the Pass. Blocking the only real avenue of travel between the two worlds. No one traveled the other passes, it was death in the mountains.
“They speak as if these things were shite from Kiever’s arse,” Harin said to Brago beside him.
The usually stoic Praetorian couldn’t help but let out a snort.
Anastasia turned to look at Brago with a wry smile from across the table that the Landorian delegation was seated at.
The hall was filled with such tables, men from Lugdon, Alesia, Hasal and others to the south of Landor. At the end of the hall, the groups of table all looked up to the raised dais for the seats of the Council. Each man and woman of the Council seated for tonight’s gathering of the Compact’s leaders. He recognized the men and women at each table, nobles or highly ranked martial folk. All armed and armored. As if they were already at war.
“And they must be stopped!” Kent shouted again to thunderous applause throughout the room.
Harin felt his stomach drop. He knew the cadence of this speech. He knew where it was going to. He’d heard it from his own father many years ago. The Council wanted a war. The Church wanted a war.
“We must show that the kingdoms of the east are strong! We must send forth our nations legions and put these Heathens in the ground!”
A woman from Alesia stood at her table, waiting for the room to quiet. She stood, and all eyes were on her.
“Is that, Hethal?” Brago asked.
“It is,” Harin said, sharing a look with his sister.
“I thought she’d lost half her hand? What is she doing here?” Brago said quietly as the rooms shoes began to slow.
Harin sighed. “Father doesn’t lie about such things. Said that Hemmelle took it off in one of the last battles he fought in the south,”
“What is Queen Kassay thinking sending her here?” Brago asked.
Anastasia looked across the room with some hate in her eyes. “She is thinking that Landor will be here, and that she would like to spit in our face one more time. Her cloak still has mud on it, she just got here,”
Harin looked at the female warrior who’d plagued Landor’s Legions in the southern wars. Heathel had fought in the forests and swamps. Never meeting the Legions on open ground, but cutting away, bit by bit, soldier by soldier. A sting that became a wound. His father had trapped her one night, a series of trenches cut around the camp he’d set, pickets that were unmanned, tents empty with fires lit. After he’d killed most of her people, he and Hemmelle had battled her private guards and Hethal until the last. “I thought she had gone off to grow fat and die. Kassay it cunning,”
“Here me! I am Hethal from Alesia!” The warrior woman shouted. She was tall and thin. Her hair was braided into two braids behind her head on ether side. Once blonde, now a steel gray. Her face wore a permanence scowl, her left hand gloved in block leather.
“Speak, Hethal, you are known to this Council,” One of the Council members said from their dais.
He then nodded her thanks. “I speak for Queen Kassay when I ask, what proof do you have? I will not march my queen’s legions into the desert on the word of a priest,”
“Interesting,” Anastasia said.
Harin said nothing. It was not surprising to him that one such as Hethal would not believe in the purity of the Church of Zufier.
“How dare you!” A shout came from the crowd.
Hethal looked on cooly.
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Father Kent spread his hands and stepped towards the warrior woman from where he stood in front of the dais. “Is it not enough that they do not pray to Zufier like you and I?”
Hethal spit on the floor. “You ask for my blood priest, I ask for proof of this plot to invade the eastern kingdoms!”
Kent reared back as if he’d been bitten by the feral warrior. “I will not be spoken to like that, I am a messenger for the one truer god, Zufier!” Kent shouted.
“My friends! There is no need to fight with each other!” Councilman Jard said from atop the dais. He was seated three seats from the head od of the Council.
All in the room looked to him. Harin could feel the tension in the room. Hethal, as much as she was an enemy of Landor had spoken a truth that many felt but would not say aloud.
“I’m with Hethal, what proof have you?” Harin stood, speaking as he did. He surprised himself, ignoring the looks of shock from Brago and Anastasia. He was not a fighter, but a politician. He did not like his nickname, the Ink King. But he did understand it. Paper was his weapon, ink. He’d now stepped onto the field of battle.
The focus of the room turned again, this time to him. He felt the wave of attention hit him like a stampeding horse. He had to put one foot back, a shift on the balls of his feet to stop from staggering.
“My lords and ladies!” Jard said, his face serene and nodding as he spoke. “I understand that many here have not faced the horde, that they are but a story in the books of our histories. A tale that we tell our children at night. But, I assure you that the threat is real. It is real and it faces us now. Our Legions have been fighting this menace since this place was build. We have bled to keep the eastern kingdoms safe.”
Murmurs spread through the room now.
“And they like to remind us of it at every opportunity,” Anastasia quipped.
“Guards! Bring him in!” Councilman Jard said.
The doors to the Council’s Chamber opened with a crack that filled the space. The large doors were of oak and metal, aged hard and gray. They were double the height of any man and seemed to melt into the stone of the mountains.
Between the doors walked a nightmare.
Two guards of the Council’s Legions walked on either side of a monster. The man was a head taller than then both, his broad chest bare. His head had dark hair, hacked off as if by knife. His face a mess of bruises and cuts, blackened scabs and open bloody wounds covered his entire upper torso.
Chains clanged with each step that the man took.
“Kiever below, look at that thing,” Brago exhaled.
Harin looked to the Council members and Father Kent as the rest of the room watched the prisoner, the tune of the chains at his waist, hands and ankles exhaling them as if they were snakes from a basket and the chains were a flute. The men and women all smirked, the look of satisfaction. Brief, but there.
“I’ve never seen the likes,” Harin muttered.
“No one has in our lifetime brother, this smells of lies,” Anastasia said across the table.
Harin watched the guards parade the chained man to the front of the room, just before the dais of the Council. The taller guard kicked the prisoner’s leg, crumpling the beaten man to the ground and to his knees. The room was quiet enough that Harin heard the slap of leather boot on flesh as the guard made contact.
“Behold! One of the Iron Guard!”
The room erupted. Shouting and hammering of cups, fists and weapons on wooden tables. All stood at the proclamation.
“I thought them myth, how did they capture one of the elites?” Anastasia said.
Harin glanced at the warrior woman, Hethal and was surprised to see her staring at Harin. She dipped her head to him. Harin nodded back. Then, she turned and hollered with the crowd.
“I cannot believe it myself. Looks although Hethal and her kin have nothing left to say. I’ve never heard of a live member of the Iron Guard being captured in generations. The texts in Landor tell us that they were the King’s weapons in the west. The best riders and warriors of their people,” Harin watched in disbelief. He’d read the texts of the west, heard the stories from his tutors. Never did he think he’d see one.
The Council was either wrapping them up in more lies, or the west was truly planning an invasion of the east.
“Quiet!” The call came from Father Kent, starting out quiet and growing more irritated the more times he had to ask. “Quiet! Quiet!”
The room settled, the shouting receding like a wave on the beach.
“What you see before you are the only member of the Iron Guard captured in over one hundred years. The Council’s Legions have been fighting this menace to keep us safe for many generations. But this, the Iron Guard itself attacked villages to the west, and then scouting this very Pass tells us all we need to know!”
Roars of approval now rang through the hall.
Father Kent smiled.
“We tell you truthfully that the Horde is at our door. They are Heathers, and if they take this Pass, this land, they will spill into the east as a plague on our peoples!”
More roars of approval.
Harin knew what was coming next. The call for arms.
“Brothers and Sisters of the east! I ask you now, will you answer the Church’s call, Zufiers call to break this demon from the west?” Kent shouted.
“For the East!” A shout came from the back of the room.
“For the East! For the East! For the East!”
The chant filled the hall, bouncing off the stone walls. On the chant went as the smile on Father Kent’s face widened.
Harin looked to the man in chains between the two guards of the Council. He met Harin’s gaze, a deep hatred in his eyes. Harin blinked, and found he could not match the man’s gaze. Looking back around him, he could see fear on his sister’s face. One he’d not seen in many years.
They were going to war. This time, the south was with them.
—--
Harin tipped his cup back, letting the spirits burn their way down into his stomach.
“Another!” He called to the Innkeeper.
The Inn was full, soldiers celebrating the news of the coming war. Of their impending death. Anastasia and Brago had tried to steer him clear, but he needed to think before he returned to his men and their camp to the east. The men were happy to have purpose Harin thought. A goal, a mission. Destroy the heretics.
“Can we not challenge the call to war?” Brago asked.
Ansi Taisa laughed, burying her face in a drink.
“No. The Compact was clear. The members of the Council voted for what they thought best. They used the church to stir up the masses, paying off those they couldn’t convince. Those from Lugdon are still starving since their fields were salted. They would take anything they were offered to support this farce, They need not vote the nations, they know they will win,”
“The roar of the crowd, that is all the vote they need,” Anastasia said.
Brago pursed his lips.
Harin rubbed at his temples. He’d come to the Pass to placate the Council. They wanted leverage on Landor. He knew he risked his legions. But now? Now he was being pushed into a battle he did not want to fight. His nation was still weak from the wars, as were most of the eastern kingdoms.
What did the Council want? War was always a means to something else. Killing and battle was only part of why nations fought wars, his grandfather, the was in the south taught him that.
“King Harin, thank you for joining us tonight,” Councilman Jard said, sitting at the end of the table.
Harin groaned inwardly. He was trying to escape the bastards from the Council, and here one was. He must have followed them from the Councils Chambers in the center of the Skellen Pass. The taste of the ale turned to ash in his mouth.
“Jard, what are you doing here?” Anastasia asked flatly.
Jard looked over, his eyebrows raised. “My dear princes, what ever are you doing out with the army?”
Anastasia smirked. “I guess I just lost track of my cooking and ended up in the armies train. Odd really,”
Jard’s mouth twitched. He reached for a glass of watered wine from the center of the table.
Anastasia met his gaze without looking away.
“Councilman Jard, what do we owe the pleasure of your company to?” Harin asked.
Jard tore his eyes away from Anastasia. Hair could see the man re-compose himself. The fake smile slipping back into place on his pudgy face.
“My lord Harin, thank you for asking,” Jard waved around. “The Council has discussed it and we would like to bestow a great honor on the Legions of Landor,”
Harin raised an eyebrow to Jard.
“We ask that Landor serve as the Vanguard to our host against the Horde,” Jard smiled, splaying his fingers in offer to Harin.
—--
“We haven't been here a week and we’ve been asked to march out of the damned gates? No army has done that in this generation!” Anastasia shouted, throwing her hands in the air.
Harin grimaced, looking around the crowded street they traveled on in the main thoroughfare of the Skellen Pass. Mothers pulled their children across the way as Harin and Anastasia approached. She had outwardly soured the moment Jard had sat at their table. Harin had worried that she would attack him.
“It’s an honor to serve as the vanguard for the Compact’s army,” Brago said, looking to Harin.
“No Brago, it’s our warrant for death. The Iron Guard will smash us like grapes for wine in the desert,” Harin said, exhaling.
“No one has fought a true war against the Horde in our generation. No one. The Council has damned us to death,” Anastasia finished Harin’s thoughts.