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ve, King Grieve. We’ll all grieve!” He ran over to the fireplace and stared into the flames.
Grieve waited in awkward silence, and the humiliated captains didn’t move.
The shaman reached his hands into the fireplace until his fingers nearly grasped the fire. “I see it. The cities, the Old World, the whole continent!” He turned back toward the throne and shook his head. Drool came from the mangled corner of his mouth. “Not a little fishing village, my Grieve. You must go to Ildakar. Send all your ships. Conquer that city. Ildakar should be your capital.”
Grieve considered. “Ildakar would make a fitting capital.”
Captain Kor finally raised his head. “Yes, it would, my king. I offer no excuses. I meant to capture the people and burn Renda Bay to the ground, but it was only a gesture. They have just a handful of people in fishing boats, but Ildakar is one of the grandest cities on the continent. It is a fitting place from which to rule a vast Norukai empire.”
Grieve sneered at him. “You couldn’t even take a fishing village, and you mean to conquer Ildakar?”
“Not just Ildakar,” Chalk said, frenetic with energy. “All cities, many cities! Big cities, old cities. I know their names. I’ve seen them in my dreams. Serrimundi, Larrikan Shores, Tanimura, Skald’s Keep, Effren … so many more, my thoughts are dizzy. You must conquer them all, King Grieve.”
The king wrestled with his need to punish these weaklings. Kor continued to look up at him, not pleading. His expression was strong and fierce, enhanced by the hideous scarification. “Listen to your shaman, my king. Ildakar is a worthy center of your empire. I’ve given you all the information I can report. Use it wisely.” He bowed his head again. “Our lives are yours to take.”
Grieve stewed, wanting to lash out to demonstrate his power over these captains. He was tempted to seize all their crew and feed them one at a time to pools of razorfish. He gnashed his teeth again, knowing that now was not the time to sacrifice so many warriors. But he could not doubt his shaman.
The Norukai were restless, and with their many wives, they had given birth to numerous children, a whole new generation of warriors that needed a continent to conquer. And King Grieve would deliver it.
He stepped over to the glass-walled tank, from which his father’s eyeless skull stared out of the murky water where the fish swam. He could be vengeful, or he could be strategic. From his maps, he envisioned the path of his conquest, how once he took Ildakar, the Norukai could spread up the Killraven River, then inland over the mountains, while more naval attacks struck the major cities on the coast. They could conquer the entire continent, and then the Norukai would no longer need to raid and pillage. No matter how glorious they were, raiders were nothing more than violent scavengers. King Grieve wanted an empire of his own.
He turned back to the three captains. “Your lives are mine, and I command your execution.”
The Norukai men sagged, but braced themselves.
Grieve continued, “But I will be the one to decide the time of your execution—especially you, Captain Kor. You are the greatest failure.” He crossed his meaty arms over his chest. “Look at me!” All three captains turned their faces up. “Kor, I command your execution on the battlefield. I want you to lead strikes up the coast, ignore Renda Bay for now, as my shaman insists.” He grunted with displeasure, but he would listen to Chalk. Chalk had never let him down.
“Take ten ships and the maps I will give you. Attack and plunder Larrikan Shores, Skald’s Keep, anywhere you encounter, and if you do not fall in battle in those places, then I command you to attack Serrimundi. If you conquer that city without being killed, then move on to another city and another.” Grieve leaned forward, lowering his voice. “You can delay your execution as long as you like, if you continue to be victorious.”
Kor seemed stunned, as if he couldn’t believe his fortune. “I will die as you command, my king. I’ll do my best to die on the last day of the last battle, after the final city in the Old World has fallen to you.”
Grieve stepped to the other two captains, who continued to avert their gaze. “Lars, you will do the same. Take ten ships of your own. You bear the same death sentence for the disgrace you have brought upon the Norukai. I command you to die fighting in my war of conquest for the Old World.”
Finally, he stepped over to Yorik, lifted his foot, planted it on the man’s chest, and shoved hard, knocking him backward so that he sprawled to the floor.
Chalk danced about with glee. “Yes, yes, it was in my dream! You knew, King Grieve, my Grieve! You knew.”
“The serpent god must be appeased,” Grieve said. “There are other prices we need to pay for the strength of our race. Yorik, the serpent god will drink your blood, even though it is contaminated by failure and cowardice. You’ll be the sacrifice for us.”
Yorik closed his eyes, and lifted his arms, lying on his back on the floor. “I will gladly embrace the serpent god.”
King Grieve bellowed for warriors to rush into the Bastion’s throne room, where they seized the unresisting Yorik, keeping him in his manacles while a smith was called to strike the chains from Kor and Lars, so they could prepare to die in battle.
CHAPTER 39
After miserable days of fighting through awful swamps and monstrous creatures, Maxim finally saw the thornbushes and razor grasses open into a normal marsh. It was still an unpleasant wilderness, but he was relieved to face a natural hazard rather than a predatory and malicious obstacle. Small wonder that no enemy had ever attempted to strike Ildakar from the direction of the swamps, although he had never envisioned that those defenses might hinder his own escape.
At least he had left the persistent Adessa far behind.
He was sore and hungry, and perspiration clung like grease to his skin. His fine garments, the stylish pantaloons and silk shirt open at the chest, had been through rough conditions. He had used his gift repeatedly to dispel the grime and freshen his clothes, but the rigors of the swamp now resisted even his powers of magic. How he longed for a pleasure party again in the grand villa!
So many centuries ago, he had given everything for the glory of his city, to protect it. He and Sovrena Thora were the heart and soul of Ildakar, but he had come to despise the wealth and obliviousness of the nobles. Endless ennui would do that to people. While sealed beneath the shroud of eternity, the society had rotted. Maxim recognized that, while Thora had merely grown blind to what was going on. It was only one of the reasons he had come to hate her.
Originally, Thora had been fresh and desirable, like his beautiful city, but like a fish left too long out in the sun, both had grown foul. Maxim had devoted much of the last century to planning how to tear down Ildakar. The people would destroy their own lives and their homes. It was so delicious!
He merely dabbled to amuse himself in the endless days, and he hadn’t known exactly how to bring his plans to fruition, until the great shroud faltered, as magic itself weakened and then abruptly changed. Ildakar had been thrust back into the normal world, stripped of its protective barrier. The wizards had been able to erect the shroud again and again, through extensive bloodworkings, but it wouldn’t last.
That taste of freedom and the outside world after fifteen long centuries had convinced Maxim to finally set the wheels in motion. Ildakar was doomed, and the revolt was inevitable. The downtrodden people needed to cling to hope and were so easily manipulated, like a cart loaded with boulders tilted downhill. Maxim simply provided the nudge, and let the slope and the weight of their oppression drive the city to its inevitable crash.
Maxim relished the thought of starting anew, creating another legendary city, a perfect society under his own terms. Once he found a new home, Maxim would be wizard commander again, without the shrewish Thora, but he hadn’t really thought it through.
As he splashed along through the mud and grasses, he plucked at his garments, releasing more of the gift to freshen the color and dispel his unwashed body odor. His once neatly trimmed goatee had grown out and
the stubble on his cheeks was long and scratchy. Bugs hummed around him, thirsty for his blood, and he used more of his gift to dispel them. It was exhausting and annoying.
With no trail to follow, he kept to hummocks of grass, working his way through reeds taller than his head. He easily vanished among them. He was surprised to find a path of trampled grasses on solid ground, a trail perhaps made by swamp boars or deer, but the path widened as he walked along. The reeds were too high for him to see far ahead, but the narrow streams led to larger pools of water where fish jumped—and he found baskets tied with cords and weighted down in the water. Animal traps of some kind? He saw footprints in the mud on the path.
He paused, wondering if these were Adessa’s footprints, but he hadn’t seen the morazeth leader in days, and he was sure he had lost her. No, this was something else, maybe a real settlement with dry homes and good food.
Maxim followed the trail through the reeds until it became an actual footpath, joining other paths leading from the scattered fishing ponds. Abruptly, the reeds opened up, giving him a view of the Killraven River, a calm oxbow on which stood a village of more than fifty reed huts, some structures extending out on stilts, with smaller huts built in the marshes. He saw racks of gutted fish angled over smoky fires, and his stomach grumbled with hunger. Villagers went about their daily business. Some took canoes through the waterways, while larger boats ventured out of the calm oxbow into the river’s main current.
Seeing the settlement, Maxim felt true joy, not just at the thought of warm food, clean clothes, and a dry place to sleep. This was a real town with a fair number of people, and he needed people if he was ever going to build a new city for himself.
Maxim counted more than a hundred men, women, and even rambunctious children. Fishermen in canoes dumped their catch on wooden docks, while half-naked villagers sat on reed mats at the shore to gut the fish and cut the heads off, separating the meat and the offal into different buckets. Old women tended smoky fires to preserve the fish. Teenagers clustered together weaving reeds and marsh grasses into baskets, while groups of women pounded the reed fiber and twisted it into twine, with which they wove and strung nets. Women and men came in from foraging in the marshlands, carrying sacks of spiny seedpods or muddy tubers they’d pulled up from the soft ground. Small children lay on paddleboards in the mud near the shore, using little nets to scoop up crayfish, which they dumped into pots.
