“Mandan is now the konag. I am … in mourning for my dear…” Koll couldn’t go on. The words simply hung in the air. My brother. His shoulders shook under the crushing weight of memories.
The escort soldiers uttered low angry sounds, and restless hands strayed toward their swords. One of the men glared daggers at Queen Tafira. “Isharan animals,” he muttered, as if he blamed her.
“Norterra must decide what to do,” Kollanan said. His normally rough voice came out sounding like a lost waif’s. But he was the king. “And so must I.”
“Decide what to do?” Captain Rondo looked at his companions in disbelief. “We must ride back to Convera and offer our swords to Konag Mandan against Ishara!”
“Maybe so, but I will require you to stay here for a little longer. I must compile a report to … to the new konag about what is happening in Norterra. We must prepare for what the frostwreths will do to us here.”
* * *
Once the news had time to sink in, the king called his vassal lords for a private war council. After Koll’s recent strike on the ice fortress at Lake Bakal, they all knew the very real possibility that bloodthirsty wreths might sweep across Norterra and attack human settlements.
Kollanan squeezed his large hand into a fist. “King Adan and I traveled together to Convera. We warned Conndur about the wreths, but my brother was more worried about Isharan raids on the coast. Prince Mandan even scoffed at the idea of wreths. He is under Utho’s thumb.” Koll sighed. “After Mount Vada, though, I think Conn was convinced, and he went to Fulcor Island to enlist Empra Iluris as an ally. But if the Isharans did assassinate him, Mandan will not concern himself with our problems here.” His eyes stung with thoughts of his poor brother, but more painful still was the clear memory of his daughter and her husband, his grandson, and all the others blithely killed by the frostwreths at Lake Bakal. “We need to save ourselves from whatever comes down from the north.”
“And it will come,” said Elliel, imposing in her black Brava outfit. Her grim expression was marred by the rune of forgetting tattooed on her face.
“We will be strong—I certainly am! Ha!” said Ogno, the biggest and most intimidating of his lords. “We will be ready, Kollanan the Hammer.”
Koll rested his bearded chin in his hand. “Adan knows the wreth threat, too, down in Suderra.” His voice caught again. “He will also have received word of his father’s death. I need to go to him, so we can discuss how our two kingdoms can defend themselves. If the sandwreths and the frostwreths are intent on destroying each other, we will be caught in the middle.”
Tafira’s dark eyes sparkled. “Maybe you could convince the sandwreths to fight on our behalf, against a mutual enemy.”
Koll’s eyebrows drew together. “I would ask Adan’s counsel on that first.”
Elliel sat up straight. “I will accompany you on the ride to Suderra.” She shot a questioning glance at mysterious Thon, who nodded that he would join her.
“And I as well,” Lasis said. The Brava had served Kollanan much longer than Elliel, and had been captured and left for dead by the frostwreths.
Kollanan shook his head. “No, Lasis. While I am gone, I need you here to protect my queen.”
Tafira smiled. “And your kingdom.”
The other Brava bowed. “Yes, Sire. Perhaps we should ask Captain Rondo and his Commonwealth soldiers to remain as added defenders, while you are gone?”
“Yes, that is reasonable,” Koll said.
“We need regular scout riders, Sire.” Lord Teo ran a finger down the left side of his long mustache. “They can give us warning if the wreths move.”
“What good is a warning, if they can wipe us out with a blast of cold magic?” Lord Bahlen asked.
“It would give us a chance to evacuate the villages,” said Vitor. “Scatter our people into the wilderness. Some of them might be saved.”
Alcock said, “My county has open grassland and hills. We’re farmers with spread-out villages, and there is no safe place for them to go. We do not have fortress walls like Fellstaff.”
Teo said, “Norterra hasn’t been at war for centuries, barely even a squabble among holdings. We are vulnerable.”
“That is the weakness that peace brings,” Ogno grumbled.
“I fear the time of peace has ended,” Kollanan said.
Urok, Bahlen’s normally silent Brava, said, “We can shore up our defenses. We must.”
“Even if I wanted to, what sort of walls could I build against the wreths?” asked gaunt Cerus. “What material can stand against a frostwreth attack?”
Thon spoke up in a distant, musing tone. “Were the wreths not at war with one another for centuries? Their own defenses stood against the most destructive attacks, and those walls still endure.” He glanced at Elliel with strange eyes that sparkled like crushed sapphires. He looked almost human, but not quite. “Elliel and the scholar girl showed me one of the old wreth cities.”
“Ah, the ruins! Shadri is still determined to explore them more,” Elliel said. “Many abandoned wreth cities are still intact and could be turned into fortresses if we repaired them.”
Kollanan sat in his heavy chair. “Fellstaff has the greatest defenses, the thickest walls. We were always strong for the sake of the Commonwealth.” Another wave of sadness unexpectedly came upon him at the thought of Konag Conndur, his brother, his companion, his friend. The three kingdoms had to stand together, but faced with his own crisis, Koll felt distant from any Isharan threat across the sea. He had loved his wife for far too long to think of all Tafira’s people as inhuman animals, even if it was true that they had butchered Conndur.
“I have a large wreth city in my county,” Bahlen said, sounding pleased with the idea. “We could make it into a stronghold.”
Alcock lowered his head, scratched his dark goatee. “We’ve always avoided wreth ruins as bad places, maybe even haunted.”
“Now they might save us,” said Lord Iber.
* * *
That night in his chambers, Koll sat by the fire, holding a small carving of a cow, which he had whittled from a scrap of wood. Not his best work, but it kept his hands busy. Tafira had made honeysuckle tea, and she sat near the fire, reading a chronicle from Fellstaff’s remembrance shrine that told the life story of their daughter Jhaqi, as written by the scholar girl Shadri. Koll loved watching his wife read the story and comfort herself by keeping their memories alive.
Koll kept their memories alive as well, but at the moment he was preoccupied with thoughts of his brother. During the Isharan war, he and Conndur commanded divisions of the Commonwealth army that roamed the new world. They had gone to punish the Isharans for some imagined slight that Koll couldn’t even remember.
Conndur the Brave and Kollanan the Hammer, war heroes.
Koll and Conn.
The legaciers exaggerated the legends of the two brothers, but Koll remembered how dark those times were, on both sides. His own men had lost control, intending to raze a village, and the Isharan villagers, just as ruthless, decided to sacrifice an orphaned girl, Tafira, to their godling. Koll had rescued her as his prize and his bride-to-be. When that war ended unresolved, Koll had thought he would never worry about Isharans again.