“General!”

The sound alerted Dragh to the danger moments before it happened.

A blade flashed in his face, a shadow in the alleyway he’d been walking through to the Loggers Inn.

The Clover Inn had been a fine place to stop on all of his journeys south, just north of the border between Coven and Landor, the Jannis River separating the two countries. The Inn was surrounded by fields of clover, hemmed in by forests to the north and south. The Car Lauch Mountains loomed in the west. Dragh, Pello and Cello’s horses had been tired after long days of travel from the Capitol.

Dragh threw up his sword in a wild blocking stroke upward, the movement embedded in him for many years.

A shooting pain ran down his arm as his blade connected with his assailants. He threw headbutted the man coming from the shadows, throwing himself forward.

“Oof!”

Dragh pinned his sword and the man’s to the wall at waist height as he pushed the man into the brick wall of the alleyway.

The man Dragh tackled let out a grunt before slamming his free fist into Dragh’s back.

Dragh bit into his tongue at the jolt, the tangy tase of blood quickly coating his mouth as he held onto the would be killers tunic. Tears welled in his eyes.

Dragh drove his knee up into the man’s groin, felling the pop of a ruined life as he did it again and again.

The man screamed in pain, dropping his sword to the ground.

“General, duck!”

Dragh let go of the man, pushing away and dropping to the ground.

The crunch of metal on bone above gave Dragh pause. Death was never far for a man of the blade. Steel was the unforgiving currency of his trade.

“Dragh, are you okay?” Cello asked.

Dragh looked up, grabbing his Legate’s hand and hauling himself up to his feet. “Zufiers balls. Where did he come from?” Dragh rubbed his neck.

“Clear the area Pello!” Cello called out to the man behind them in the alleyway.

Cello put his boot on the body of the dead man, pulling his sword while keeping one foot on the head. His sword came loose with a sucking sound.

The two brothers had been with Dragh since the Second. Always there, always protecting him.

“Must be the fifth time,” Dragh muttered, looking down at the dead man. Cello had almost split the man’s head. His sword had cut through most of the skull just below the nose, cutting the man’s teeth off and striking all the way back to his ears.

Dragh swallowed, his mouth dry from the fight.

“Fifth. This year mayhap,” Cello scoffed.

“Cello, search the body, I must know who sent him. And watch your back, there will be more,” Dragh pointed to the body on the ground.

“Where are you going?” Cello asked as Dragh walked down the alley.

“Pello and I are going to ask the Innkeeper some questions,” Dragh said without turning back.

Dragh walked through the front doors, the hinges well greased and noiseless as he threw them open. The two oaken doors, bolted through with iron keepers throughout banged into the walls on either side as Dragh stood with Pello at his side.

He’d asked Cello to check the body because what came next required Pello. Both brothers were built like athletes, broad shoulders and narrow waists. Their faces flat and tanned like his from battle. Cello let his beard go, where Pello’s vanity did not allow him to be unkempt.

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Pello, unlike his brother had the capacity for cruelty. He was hardened to killing in a way his brother was not. Cello had principals, Pello was a killer like him.

Ask Pello to kill, and he would. Ask him to sneak into an alley in Landor and slice throats, he would ask no questions.

“Who are ye?” Refn, the small hawkish owner of the Clover Inn asked from behind the bar.

Dragh looked around at the patrons of the Inn. It’s makeup like any other in the realm. Light spilled from the windows on all sides. The bar was at the far end of the room, tables and chairs set up between the door and the bar. A rough wooden stairway to the rooms above on the right hand side. Hard men and women of the road were seated, some drinking ale from mugs, some eating whatever Refn had prepared during the day. The place was full.

The patrons grumbled at being interrupted.

“Close the pit forsaken doors!”

Pello pulled out a dagger, letting the slithering of steel last moments longer than necessary. Dragh would normally have put his hand out, stopping his Legate from the outright threat. But he could still feel his heart pounding from the attempt on his life.

Some of the men around the bar stood in response to the challenge.

One man from among the crowd ran forward, the glint of a blade in his hand. He ran at Dragh, leaping over the table between he and Dragh. Dragh stood still, breathing through his nose.

Pello darted forward, quick as a cat. The man leapt, Pello batted at his legs, sending the leaping man spinning sideways and to the ground.

Pello stomped on the man’s hand with the dagger. A scream, guttural and piercing erupted form his lips. His hand and wrist that held the dagger were now at an odd angle

Pello lunged down, slamming his dagger through the mans other hand and into the floorboards. He screamed again, surprisingly louder than when Pello had stomped on his other hand.

Men and women stood in numbers, shouting at the violence. Shouting to Refn and Dragh to stop it.

Dragh pulled his sleeve down from his arm, holding it high in the air. “You all know who I am.”

The room quieted, the men who’d stood in challenge sat back down, some of them turning white. Dragh looked up at his arm, the red ink of the tattoo in sharp contrast to the scars of a lifetime of war. The dragon tattoo snaked around his arm, it’s head snarling on his hand.

The man with a dagger through his hand screamed on the floor, puling at the dagger that Pello stood on.

Pello pulled down his sleeve, his own tattoo black instead of red. None moved.

The Blood Dragon on Dragh’s arm had stayed them.

“General, we want no trouble here!” Refn called out.

Heads nodded.

The shuffling steps of a man with a heavy burden came from behind Dragh and Pello.

“Ugg” Cello grunted, throwing the dead body onto the floor in front of the trio beside the writhing man with the dagger through his hand.

“For the love of Heiser!” Refn said, putting his hands up in the air behind the bar.

None moved from their seats, all eyes on this bloody trio who’d trapsed through the doors, broken one man and thrown a dead body onto the floor beside him.

“I will have answers tonight. Oh, I will have answers lads.” Dragh said, looking around him, meetings men’s eyes.

All of them looked away, some down, some to their mates seated around them.

“Who knows these men? You tell me now, or I will burn this place to the ground with your bodies in it.” Dragh said.

—--

Dragh sat on a chair in the middle of the Inn’s main floor, flexing his hands. The blood had dried on them, crusting around his fingernails in an iron brown.

“It’s more than we knee before isn’t it?” Cello said from behind him.

Dragh grunted.

“We suspected, but now we know.” Pello said.

“Brother, we know nothing of the sort. He simply said that they met with a man from Landor that wore the robes. It does not mean we know,” Cello said in a tired voice.

“What do you think? You think that the church has nothing to do with this? That they are not aligned with the Council? He told us the man had the air of a priest. The robes of the church itself,” Pello shouted.

The shout echoed off the walls in the empty Inn.

Dragh listened to the two brothers argue, thinking on what the dead man had said. Cello was angry that they’d tortured him. Pello angry at the judgement that his brother levied at him for being what he was.

He knew that Kent was moving south with gold. According to his man, a lot of gold. Payment for something. That he knew. They church would wrap it up in a lie, telling them that the gold was for the building of a new church in the south. A new church to quell the memories of death form the southern wars. He’d seen the church, he knew it was a good lie.

A war he’d killed in. A war that Dragh had started.

Cello stood from his own seat and walked forward to the dead body tied to the chair in the center of the room. His boot steps squelched from the sticky blood on the floor. He pulled the man’s head up by his hair. “Look at this. Is this what we are now?”

A chairs legs scraped. Dragh felt the wind of Pello before he walked past.

“It’s what I am brother,” Pello said.

Pello reached forward and pulled the dagger from the dead man’s leg, a dribble of blood leaking from it onto his leg, welling at the rope binding the man to the chair.

“General. Tell him,”

Dragh looked up at the brothers. Both of them with flush faces. Both for different reasons. “They tried to kill us,”

Pello and Cello both looked at the bodies on the ground and the third in the chair.

“Refn knew what he getting into when he took gold from them. He knew that he had signed his death warrant when he took money for information about our movements,”

“Why’d they attack you Dragh?” Pello asked.

Dragh looked to the other brother. “They wish to end my line Pello, first they demanded the Dragon Legion serv e at Skellen. Then, they would have filled my Legion with dissent and spies.”

“And for that they tried to kill you?” Cello scoffed.

Dragh nodded. “There is some larger game at play here. One that my father had began to unravel before his death. The Council is pulling the strings of the puppets. We are being moved like pawns on a board with this new Compact.”

“What will the King do?” Pello asked.

“He will pretend this did not happen, as he must. There will be enough men between the church and the Council that we will never connect them. The men responsible for hiring this lot,” Dragh pointed to the dead men. “They are already feeding the earth,”

Pello nodded.

Dragh and Pello understood what must be done to protect a nation, what must be done to protect a secret.

“And what of us? We pretend too?”

“And what of the church, the men who have paid for your blood?” Pello asked.

Dragh picked up a mug and smashed it on the ground. “We will kill these bastards. These men who came for us are of the same ilk that killed my son and wife. I will hunt them down and skin them alive.”

Cello hung his head, looking at the ground.

Pello smiled, his white teeth showing.

“Send a message to my son. He must know that they come for us. That they come for him. The Council is behind this,”

Cello nodded to Dragh and began searching behind the bar for ink and paper to scribe the message to Harin.

Dragh stood and cracked his back, leaning backward with both hands on his hips. “Let us be done with this place,” He nodded to Pello. “Be quick Cello, we have a priest to visit,”

Pello moved to the walls and pulled down one of the many oil filled lanterns from the walls that illuminated the Inn and began emptying the contents over the wooden tables and chairs.

“For the love of Zufier,” Cello muttered.

“To the pit with this place,” Pello said, tossing the lit lantern into the puddle of oil.

Flames licked at the dry wood, catching quickly as Dragh walked from the Inn and into the dark night.

Cello and Pello followed behind him as smoke issued out of the doorway.