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King Gaius addressed the troops. “Today is a day a thousand years in the making. A day when we take what has been kept just out of our reach. Out of your reach. What you see across this kingdom is yours for the taking—every one of you. No one can hold you down unless you refuse to get back up. Take this strength that I know you have—take it and help me crush those who would oppose us.”
A chant began among the gathered soldiers, quiet at first but growing in strength and volume with each repetition.
“King of Blood! King of Blood! KING OF BLOOD!”
Before long, Jonas found that he was joining in—and in doing so, he became charged with the energy and bloodlust of the crowd. But a part of him knew that King Gaius wasn’t his king. He had no king.
Yet he was following this King of Blood into battle and was willing to lay his life on the line in the process.
“Three months ago, an innocent Paelsian boy died at the hands of a selfish Auranian lord,” the king roared. “Today we will gain vengeance for that. We will take the Auranian kingdom and strip the king of his power forever. Auranos is ours!”
The crowd cheered.
“Bring me King Corvin’s head and I will give you treasure unlike anything you’ve ever seen,” he promised. “Spare no one. Show me a river of blood! Take it all. Kill them all.” He raised his sword above his head. “Attack!”
The troops charged forward, racing across the field. The ground thundered beneath their feet. At the river less than a mile from the palace walls, the Auranian force met them head-on in a violent slam of bodies and clash of sword and shield.
Men on both sides fell all around Jonas, taken down by steel-tipped arrow, by battleax, by sword before the fighting had barely begun. The coppery scent of blood filled the air.
Jonas slashed and fought his way through the thick mass of bodies, staying close to Brion, the two lifelong friends watching each other’s backs.
The carcasses of horses fell heavily to the ground and in the river itself. Their riders, crawling off, met with the thrust of their enemy’s swords through their chests. Pain-filled screams and cries filled the air as flesh met metal and hacked-off limbs scattered.
They fought to get closer to the walls. To take the palace by force. They were so close now, but the Auranian troops were equally vicious and brutal.
Jonas found himself knocked to the ground by the slam of a shield to the side of his head, and he lay there stunned, the metallic taste of blood flooding his mouth. A hawk soared in circles above the battle as if observing from a disinterested distance.
An Auranian knight appeared above Jonas, raising his sword to bring it down into Jonas’s heart.
But another sword swung first, taking the Auranian down hard. A figure slipped off his mount and quickly rammed a smaller blade into the knight’s neck, wrenching it to the side to rip out his throat in a spray of blood.
“Are you going to just lie there like a rock?” a voice snapped. “Get up. You’re missing all the fun.”
A gloved hand appeared before his face. Jonas shook his head and forced himself to sit up before Prince Magnus helped yank him to his feet.
“Make sure to leave a few for me.” A glimmer of a grin played at the prince’s lips. He got back on his horse and rode farther into the battle, bloody sword in hand.
The battle had progressed closer to the palace—but not yet close enough to take it. Fires burned in patches all over the expansive battlefield. The stench of death filled Jonas’s nostrils. He forced himself to take stock and found that his sword was gone.
Jonas had been out cold and hadn’t realized it. For how long had he lain there in the trampled grass surrounded by bodies? He swore loudly and worked his way through the bodies, searching for another weapon. Someone had been by—a scavenger for one side or the other who’d collected the weapons of the fallen. Finally he found an ax. It would do.
An enemy charged him—an enemy with his left arm already hanging off him after a brutal injury. But there was more fury than pain in the man’s eyes.
“Paelsian scum,” he snarled as raised his sword. “Die, you maggot!”
Jonas’s muscles ached and burned as he swung his ax upward to meet flesh and bone. The spray of blood hit his face dead on.
• • •
Lit only by the torches stuck in the ground and the bright moon in the black sky, Jonas fought his way forward. He’d traded his battle-ax for a pair of short curved swords that looked as if they belonged to one of the chief’s personal guards. They felt right in his hands and allowed him to slash through anything that opposed him.
Many had already fallen beneath his blade. He’d lost count of the lives he’d taken.
Jonas also showed the signs of a battle that had lasted nearly twelve hours without relief. He bled from a wound on his shoulder. Another blade had found his abdomen, just beneath his ribs. He would live, but the injuries were starting to slow him down.
“Jonas,” a voice called out to him from the tangle of bodies on the ground.
Jonas thrust a sword up into an Auranian’s gut and watched the light leave the man’s eyes before he glanced to his left.
