GULLS SCREAMED AND turned in lazy circles above the gray waves of the firth of Thrain. It slashed inland like a dagger, slicing six miles east until it narrowed into a rock-strewn river. Brown hills loomed there, whose their bare heads had long known the feet of sentinels watching the marches between the realms of Luathon and Arthon. Those somber brows had overlooked numberless centuries of war between the Celban tribes that waged war and spilled blood over those grassy voids, had watched soberly as they fought between their long, low-walled ships in countless skirmishes upon the dark waters of the firth.

No more. The age of little wars, of brother slaying brother, was ending. A new fire was sweeping up out of the south, and at its head rode a golden-eyed king. The silver dragon pennants of Arthon, and the rearing stags of Nuadon, rode now beneath his banner: that of the bloody, crowned lion into whose maw would fall all of Celba.

Five winters had seen his banners slung high above the hundred halls of Nuadon, and two winters now the lion had stood atop the stone-walled fortresses of Arthon-over-the-river. But peace is ever the enemy of ambition, and the twice-crowned conqueror had turned his grim eyes north, toward Luathon, where the congress of Low Kings that held reign over the marshy realm named themselves a war council, and girt their blue-eyed conscripts in bronze scale. They proclaimed King Caolais their High King, and he sent proclamations, and then assassins, south to stop the Lion’s advance. In reply, the Lion sent back their heads.

Though they feared for their honor and their homes, and certainly their sons, the realm of Luathon was but another link in the chain he was building. No, the Lion would not destroy Luathon, or any of its sister lands, unless King Caolais and his foolish generals and war council of pumped-up nobles left him no choice.

Only one man had conquered the seven Celban lands, and he was a thousand years dead. Ten centuries of fighting and squabbling, and the steady decline of men who never lifted their eyes higher than the crowns and hills they lusted after had left Celba weak and broken. Those little wars and eager grudgemaking had rendered naught but lesser sons of lesser men, for all that they were strong of back and long of leg.

But now a strong man had come as if out of shadow of legend; an outlander, a savage barbarian of the Oron Isles that lay across the channel. A long-lost son of the ancient enemy of the Celbans, in whose veins flowed the blood of hated raiders and rapers, and wild men who howled like wolves and knew no gods. He came with the swiftness of an arrow, with the compromise of a headsman’s ax, arriving from the drylands with no more than the clothes on his back and a strange ring on his finger.

In five years, he had claimed two thrones. Five more yet lay before him. The Lion, they called him, and the name suited his broad features and long, lean muscle. He was a giant of a man, a head taller than any in his service, and broader at the chest and hip than most. He stood now on a cliff overlooking the firth. In his youth, his eyes would have been the same iron color as the waves far below. A black wolfskin cloak was laid over his shoulders, and the long fur caught and flapped in the stiff breeze that blew in off the sea, carrying with it the tuneless song of the gulls.

But now those eyes were golden, and seemed to shine when the light caught them just right. His unnerving gaze swept east, where he knew the enemy lay in camp no more than four miles distant. Slowly, they came west, ignoring the dark ships that lay with sails furled out in the bay. Pirates, drawn close by the promise of his coin, and now awaiting his word. Far off, a few Luathi galleys lumbered along the coast, but the tide and wind would keep them away for hours yet, and whether they carried men or tribute, it was too little, too late.

"Ulrem.” The speaker’s voice was low, coarse. Not the honeyed words of an adviser, or a man born to power. Indeed, Culrann, the speaker, was nearly as wild as the golden-eyed king. He stood with two of his wolves at heel, and whether it rankled Culrann’s pride to see the king wrapped in the black wolfskin, he never said.

“Sometimes I think I can see it, just there on at the edge of the world,” Ulrem said. His face seemed chiseled from stone. Hard, broad features stood out sharply from a long face. A dark mustache fell over his lip. Wisps of steel-gray hairs stood out in the otherwise jet-black mane of hair pinned at his temples by the only overt sign of his kingship: an unadorned iron circlet.

He might remove that crown, but he could not remove the ferocity and thunder of his presence. No one would mistake him for aught but a king trueborn.

“Too far,” growled Culrann by way of answer. He peered west over the channel and shrugged. He was a rugged man, raised deep in the mountains between the Corvaria and the Troichish holds. He had no true home, but like his wolves, a range for which his heart sometimes ached in quiet moments. Culrann’s red hair was mostly gray now, and his skin a deep, battered brown.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Both men were mapped by scars, but Culrann seemed the worse off. He wore an ax at his hip, though he seldom had need of it, and a gray cloak around his shoulders. His green eyes were flecked with gold that seemed to glimmer when he was moved with anger or pride. And he was strong. Much like Ulrem, Culrann was bound by heavy muscle. So much so that he seemed to stoop beneath its mighty weight, though that was more the product of age and hard use. Like Ulrem, Culrann had already passed his sixtieth year, though the king looked little more than half that.

“Speak, Culrann. I cannot read your mind as those dogs do.”

The other man grunted. He shrugged, a little higher on one side, Ulrem noted, and rested his hand on the head of his ax. “Word has come from the Luathi.”

Ulrem’s eyes narrowed. The gulls wailed their song.

Culrann sighed. He was ill-fit to play the messenger, which is why Ulrem had tasked him with the burden. The man didn’t know how to lie. Nor did possess that unfortunate instinct of many men, especially when near those with power, to soften or sharpen truths to fit their needs. Culrann was much like his wolves: a staunch, if simple ally.

“King Caolais says that he desires to meet with you regarding a delicate matter.” Simple enough, yet incomplete. Ulrem waited. Culrann’s scowl deepened, though his mustache, even longer than Ulrem’s largely hid it. “At an old stonework by the sea yonder,” he added, pointing east, down toward the neck of the firth.

“What sort of place is it?”

“We scouted it out,” Culrann said unnecessarily. Talking to him could be like pulling teeth, particularly when he was uneasy. Culrann was a killer, but he was no soldier. When Ulrem’s unified army had first clashed with the Luathi at the firth a week ago, he had set Culrann and his wolves ranging. Ulrem’s scouts and vanguard could read the land, but the red-haired man possessed an unequaled nose for trouble.

“Do not waste my daylight, Culrann,” Ulrem warned.

“It’s An old fortress, laid out in a circle. The walls are in poor repair. Useless as a defense, now. But it overlooks the river, and once must have been a proud place. I asked the men who live on the river. They knew little of it, except that it is taboo.”

Ulrem listened thoughtfully, his chin tucked to chest. “Taboo?” he said when the other was done. Culrann gave him the eye, and the king snapped,

“Speak, damn you, or I’ll order my women to give you a bath!”

Much aggrieved, and somewhat shocked, the words nearly tumbled out of Culrann: “Here is what they said: Long ago—don’t ask me when, I didn’t care enough to learn—a princess of Alron, and her Luathi lover, fled for the sea. Their fathers pursued them, but when they met on the river, they fell to war, each thinking the other had kidnapped their bairn. Well, the castle was at the middle of their fighting. In the night, raiders stole up the river in long boats, and by dawn the kings found the Luathi prince dead and the girl gone. The Alron retreated, and the Luathi king tore the castle’s tower down and made ruin of its walls.”

“Who were the raiders?”

Culrann gave the king a long look. The wolves whined at his feet. Then he said, “Oron. Seawolves, was the word the fishers used.”

Ulrem grit his teeth, refusing to give voice to the anger that simmered in his breast. Then he threw back his head and laughed. It was a large sound: the gale of a titan, as free and forceful as an avalanche. The other man paled at this strange response.

When he was done, Ulrem said, “That must be the story of Oalein and Neath. I heard it told at my grandfather’s knee, though I never learned where the castle lay. Only, as my folk reckoned it, Oalein had captured Neath. Oalein was the Luathi prince, and Neath the princess. They fled

Neath’s father’s hall in Alron, as you say, under hot pursuit. Oalein’s father rode out in turn to drive the Alron back, and they met on a river.” He cast an eye up the firth.

“And your folk, Lion? What of the Oron?” Culrann absently at one of the wolf’s heads.

“Neath was a pious girl, and her heart had led her astray just this once. She prayed for deliverance.” The king’s eyes had a faraway look, the glance of the mind through time. “And deliverance arrived. She became a queen among my folk. She died free, and her sons were great men among my people.”

“Which is true?”

“It doesn’t matter,” said Ulrem, sweeping past the other man and leaving the cliff behind. His camps stood arrayed not far off, gray and black tents arrayed with order and purpose. “They’re all dead. But King Caolais knows that story. His men will know a version of it, too. He chooses this place to meet, knowing his men will look on me and my armies as an echo of those raiders.”

Culrann kept up with the king’s stalking pace. The wolves trailed behind, noses to the ground. “Will you meet him?”

“Caolais? I must. We could waste the season fighting them, and spilling blood in futile battle… or we could find a new path forward. There are more, and greater, foes beyond Luathon.”

“As you say,” said Culrann.

Ulrem stopped abruptly. He took Culrann by the shoulder. The man raised a grayed eyebrow. “What word from Dorr?”

“Nothing, Lion. Last we heard, he was still in the Luathi camps.”

“Damn. Five days overdue,” Ulrem muttered. “He was to return with the new moon. Your eyes are open?”

“And ears to the ground,” said the other. The king squeezed the man’s shoulder. Culrann gave him half a grin.

“Make ready my horse, then.”

Ulrem had seldom known Culrann to hesitate when given an order. Yet now the man paused. “You ride alone?”

The golden-eyed king gave a feral grin that split his savage features. “In both those stories, my friend, the Oron came alone.”