“Tell me your name,” Harin commanded.

The bloody faced man sneered at Harin, his white teeth laced with blood from the beating he’d been given by the Landorian who’d hauled him to this place on their backs.

He hadn’t seen it when they first hauled him in, but the blood was crusting now at the corners of his mouth. Falamar had said they’d hit him off his horse with the haft of a spear. He could see the bruising and the swelling on the man’s face and around his eyes.

Didn’t matter how tough you were when you got hit in the face. The mighty all fell hard when they fell.

The horseman spit on the ground in front of Harin.

Harin walked over to the chair they’d tied him to, inspecting the bindings on his arms and legs. The chair itself was sturdy, made in a bygone age by the look of the wood. He wondered at his sisters proclamation that this had once been a place surrounded by forest and water. The thick oak chair gave him second thoughts of the past.

“You see that door?” Harin pointed at the one door to the room in the building they’d occupied. It was in the center of town, two stories up, a large room for converging to plan with his leaders. As if it were a command tent.

The man’s eyes darted to the door and back. Harin could see fear there, beneath the tough exterior. He was a large man, broad of shoulder with legs the size of a barrel. A man who’d clearly grown up horseback.

“There are legionnaires out there, and Praetorians. My Praetorians. I will not bore you with the details, suffice to say if you tell me what your name is, if you make this easy, I will not have them force it from your lips,”

The man raised his chin, baring his throat in defiance.

Harin laughed. “I’ll not kill you. No, I leave that to my father. I will make your life uncomfortable, I will have my men do that. And then you will speak. And when this is all over, you have my word that you will be free to go,”

“Free? You think that I trust you me of the east?”

“Huh, the men of the east? Funny, we think of others as men from the east,” Harin commented.

The horsemen glared openly at Harin. “Kill me and have it done with, torture me if you must, I will give you nothing,”

Harin sat across from the man, waiting for the silence to envelop them.

It lasted longer than Harin expected. He had nothing to offer this man but threats. He knew that. He also knew that torture would give him a truth, whatever truth this man could force out. A man or woman being tortured would give nothing up that was to be trusted.

Another lesson from his grandfather.

The silence stretched. Harin could hear his men in the next room. Brago had fought him, pled with him to let him come into the room with Harin. Harin had refused. This was a thing to be done between one man and another.

The man looked down, his strong shoulders slumping. “Atlan, my name is Atlan,”

“Atlan,” Harin said, the name odd in his mouth.

“I am of the Iron Guard, you will get nothing from me!” Atlan insisted.

Harin put his hands out in front of him, empty. “I ask only what your people have done to the villages outside the Skellen Pass. It is why I am here, my people are here,”

Altan’s brow furrowed. “Skellen Pass?” He asked, almost halting.

“The Pass in the Car Lauch Mountains, your people attacked villages, raped and killed it’s people,”

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Atlan snorted. “The Iron Guard would never. Never do such a thing. It sullied my honor to even suggest it. If I were free I’d kill you for such an insult,”

“My grandfather told me of your people, he said that you were honorable people, once, long before,”

Atlan turned his head, his face flushed.

“Tell me the truth Atlan, who killed those people if not you and your kin,”

Atlan grunted. “We are not one people, not like you easterners,”

“You are not?” Harin asked.

Atlan grunted again, closing his eyes and rolling his neck. Harin could hear the cracking of his neck as he turned it back and forth. “We are here to stop the same thing you are. The people of the plains, of the desert, we are one people. Not of one mind,”

“So the Iron Guard was sent out to stop the same problem as us?”

Atlan opened his eyes, wary of Harin. “We were sent to keep the peace, the peace that we have kept for hundreds of years. Long before you Pass,”

It was Harin’s turn to sit back in his chair.

“So, you were sent to stop this from happening, an invasion of the west,” Harin replied.

Atlan nodded. “It appears we were too late,”

“Sire,”

A knock at the door surprised them both.

Harin tried to hide the irritation in his voice. “Brago, what is it?”

Brago entered the room, closing the door behind him.

Harin watched Atlan as he leaned to the side to see what he could through the cracked door. When Brago closed the door Atlan leaned back upright and met Harin’s stare.

“Sire, I need to speak with you outside,”

“Say what you must, Brago,” Harin replied, watching Atlan.

Harin could feel Brago fidget.

“It’s the Guard,”

Atlan smiled for the first time since Harin had entered the room, his teeth white but still bloody.

“They come for their kin, eh?”

“It appears so,” Brago said.

Atlan laughed, the laugh filling the room. It was a laugh of joy. “You are doomed, I tell you now. The Iron Guard will come for me, through the Pit if they must. I will be free of this place, of that I can promise you Harin,”

“Welp. Address him as King Sunborn or Sire,” Brago cuffed Atlan.

Atlan’s eyes widened as he rocked back in his chair, almost upending onto the floor.

“Brago, enough! You can leave!” Harin commanded his Praetorian.

Brago ground his front foot, and then turned to leave.

Atlan spit on the floor as he left. The door slammed shut, Brago shouting at the men outside of the door, an unintelligible anger radiating from him at being dismissed again.

“I’m sorry Atlan,” Harin said.

Atlan had taken on a new demeanor at the mention of Harin’s name. His mouth hung open, his eyes wide.

“Your name, it’s Sunborn?”

“Aye, Harin Sunborn, King of Landor, nice to meet you Atlan,” Harin said.

—--

Harin opened the door to the prisoners room, nodding to the guard at either side of the door before entering. He balanced two bowls in one hand, stack one on top of the other.

Atlan was asleep in the chair he’d been tied to, slumped down and to the right. A day had passed since Harin had spoken with the horseman.

“Atlan,” Harin said, taking the seat opposite him.

Atlan opened his eyes, blinking away the sleep he’d been woken from.

“Sunborn,” Atlan said.

“Hungry?” Harin asked, offering one of the bowls in his hand.

Altan’s stomach rumbled in response, the noise bouncing off the stone walls. Atlan nodded to his hands.

Harin set down the plates on the floor, the dust shooting across the floor from underneath it. He pulled out a dagger or plain steel and started towards Atlan.

Atlan leaned back.

“Just your bonds,” Harin said, slowly putting the dagger on one of Atlan’s tied up hands.

Once the bond was cut away Atlan flex his hand and rolled his wrist. All of the blood from his cuts had dried, crusting and flaking on his face and chest. Harin noted the scars across the top of his chest, something he’d not noticed the day before.

“My people, they have come for me?” Atlan asked.

Harin picked up one of the plates of food and handed it to Atlan.

Atlan picked up a cut of meat and held it to his nose, inhaling deeply.

“If I wanted you dead, your head would have been removed from your body after speaking to you yesterday Atlan,” Harin sat back down with his plate of food and began to eat it.

After watching Harin for a few moments, Atlan began to devour his food, shoving mouthful after mouthful in, chewing and swallowing. He finished the plate it the time if took Harin to eat four mouthfuls.

“Tell me of your people, what will they do now, Atlan?”

“Water,” Atlan said, licking his teeth clean under his lips.

Harin pulled his own water skin off and tossed it the short distance between them to Atlan.

Atlan caught the water skin with one hand, pulled the top off with his mouth and drank deeply.

Harin suppressed a smile.

Atlan took another swig, picked at the cork with his mouth and returned it to the top of the water skin with his one hand.

“Impressive, you wont finish it?” Harin asked, chewing his food slowly.

“I don’t want you to die Sunborn, my Khan would be displeased,”

“Your Khan is your leader, yes?”

“You will meet him, if you do not die here,”

“And how would I die Atlan? I’ve got Legions of men at my command and a walled city.

“The walls are older than the east. This place was not whole in generations,”

“And the Legions?”

Atlan’s face turned cold. “They will die for the same reason I give you this water,”

Atlan tossed the water skin to Harin.

“Why’s that Atlan?”

“Because it takes barrels of water to feed them. To keep them strong in the siege you will be facing. And I know what horse flesh tastes of. That is your own skin, a man like you would not take extra, and so I know that the wells of Yestvata will not provide what you need,”

“Yestvata?” Harin asked, shaken by what Atlan had surmised of his own armies situation. He now knew that they would be under siege. The Council’s lies had said they marched at speed to them, but they’d lagged behind again. They were at least

“We call this place Yestvata. In your tongue, The Cursed.” The man said, slowly and methodically chewing small pieces of bread.

“I don’t believe in tales of myth. Tell me the truth of this place,” Harin said.

“It is what I tell you, nothing more. We do not enter this place. It is a cursed place. From the time before. It was abandoned and we dare not stay here any longer. The locals avoid it for many miles. They say even the water is cursed,”

“Then you are cursed now too,” Harin tapped the water skin.

“I could taste the sand in it, the wells here are shallow. It maters not. I will die for my people,”

“What do you fear, Atlan?”

Atlan considered Harin for a moment, then a dark smile crossed his face. “The Sinovi, they are what we fear. You men of the east? You are soft, you will not survive this place,”