Spoiler Warning – Sneak Preview of Book II

Between the power system failure, sudden trips for work, a move, and a generally heavy workload, progress lately has been intermittent. Accordingly, I have decided to post a preview of one of the early chapters of the second book here, to prove it exists and give readers a hint of what’s coming.

If you have not finished The Mountain Throne, you shouldn’t read past this if you care about spoiling the end of the book. Here’s a picture to help separate this warning from the meat of the post.

Naturally, this is a work in progress subject to revision. I include this part because it’s unlikely to change much.

Northern Bank, Raithos River, East of Felldun

22nd of Thaym (fifth month), 564 I.R., 1st year of the regency of Tamora I

It had been a miserable autumn, muddy and cold. Cool humidity from the most recent rain still lingered. The skies were somber with low grey clouds waiting to unload yet more rain and multiply their military difficulties of rust, bad logistics, and sagging morale. Though, on the bright side, they had been washed clean of the worst stenches of ash, smoke, blood, and human filth.

The riders drew up as they crested a last, low hill. The husky, blonde, bearded man beside Darius gestured grandly and spoke with pride. “Behold,” Morrus said. “The army of Kensorros.”

Such that it was. The military camp ahead was spread irregularly across half a dozen small hills, like the lumpy back of a great sleeping beast. Tents and shacks stood in the open, exposed to any who cared to look. Fighters wandered about, performing camp errands and whiling away time. Smoke rose here and there and the sharp sounds of a forge hammer rang out. Several groups were being put through drills, the shouting of their sergeants barely audible in the distance. There were even banners, dolorous and grey in the overcast light. The rebel army was out in the open. The days of hiding were over.

Darius seriously questioned the wisdom of this.

As the product of a vast and coordinated conspiracy, the rebellion had erupted everywhere simultaneously. Dralahr, Abarra, Brende, Felldun, Melbraun, Indara, Therras, Arkens; men from all over Kensorros had answered the call. They kept to the wild places, the fens and forests, and struck Imperial scouts, communications, supplies, and sympathizers. Darius rode with the fighters of Lorradon under Ralor Kasdan. He’d little choice after they saved his family’s lives when the Imperial Guard came for them.

Early successes brought in more fighters and contributions and the rebellion grew quickly. The scattered warbands coagulated over the next month into larger and larger groups. An army formed at Melbraun and advanced west toward the Imperial border.

But the Imperials had secretly deployed soldiers throughout western Kensorros in preparation for a major purge in Arkens and so were able to consolidate rapidly. The Kensorrosians withdrew and the campaign became a series of sharp encounters: ambushes and counter-ambushes, brutal raids and desperate retreats. The rebels avoided major battles. For all the advantages of fighting in friendly country, the Kens were still mostly peasants striving against trained and armored soldiers. An arrow at an unarmored man could be a terrible, lingering death. An arrow at an ironclad man was an irritant. So they clung to the wilderness and hid their numbers as their leaders struggled to fashion a proper force from their brave and hardy, but raw, men.

Things worsened when the Imperial Guard arrived. Darius knew they would be sent to deal with a rebellion as serious as this one just as they had dealt with Ferrin. They had vast experience in small-unit warfare and a fearful reputation.

He had expected them to be badly reduced following the summer’s fratricidal civil violence in Arleon. Many fell in the failed coup. Darius killed their leader, First Captain Jarvis. Their second-in-command, Lieutenant Daern, had gone missing and was almost certainly dead. They should have been understrength, leaderless, demoralized, and militarily ineffective and this is what Darius had told his comrades.

But they weren’t. They were soundly and routinely beating rebel forces and devastating the countryside. Their efficiency, skill, and toughness gave them an almost inhuman battlefield resilience, and the loss of their infamous First Captain had done nothing to temper their ruthlessness. Not a single Kensorrosian they captured on the battlefield had survived, civilian or not.

Darius feared his incorrect prediction would damn him in the eyes of his new friends, but nothing came of it. They, too, could hardly believe the Guard’s performance and did not seem to hold it against him even as the Imperial elite chased them all over the moors. They seemed to have a particular interest in Darius’s band, pursuing them east from Loraddon to the Hythos River, to the edges of the Old Forest, and in and about the Highfire until they finally slipped away and escaped back south to the banks of the Raithos. If they hadn’t been an unusually well-equipped and mounted warband, they would surely have been caught. As it was, they’d had to rely upon Darius’s fluency in Sindathi to slip past a cordon in the night and escape.

While the Imperial Guard waged a counter-insurgency against the likes of Darius, the newly-married husband of Princess Kaya, Imperial Regent Korgar Derranos, took personal command of the main Imperial army and moved east in force. They stormed Felldun after a brief siege and massacred its defenders. The screams were said to have lasted six nights.

Derranos remained in Felldun to consolidate and organize it as a supply center while the main force pressed on toward the Kens army near Brende under a firebrand named Kaibar Varn Aiyar. The High Subjugator avoided battle as long as he could but was eventually forced to fight by accusations of cowardice from allies. Aided by Imperial loyalist spies and scouts, the Imperials quickly discovered and easily defeated two separate rebel forces and razed the town. Darius himself had seen the fires from his horse as they fled south in the night. Brende was no more.

But, unknown to the Imperial army, the lost Kens forces were deliberate sacrifices. Those critics that had urged confrontation and sought battle were now conveniently dead. And the atrocity of razing an entire city for no military purpose enraged the populace, bringing a surge of support for the rebellion. With the Imperial army busy destroying the High Subjugator’s troublemakers and a strategically unimportant city, the main rebel army force-marched south and west past the busy Imperials to threaten captured Felldun. Liberating it would sever the Imperial lines of communication and they would be trapped in hostile and freshly angered country with only those supplies they had with them.

Yet, the rebels had not attacked the city. They just camped on these hills, defensible but completely in the open. Had the High Subjugator not just executed a brilliant strategic deception that eliminated politically troublesome, reckless idiots while putting the Empire on the defensive, Darius would have judged him a fool and deserted the lost cause. Some already had.

But he didn’t. Though many could not look past the misery and setbacks to see the greater strategy, it was obvious to Darius the High Subjugator was no fool. And there would be no amnesty for those who raised arms against the Empire and certainly not for Darius personally. They would never forgive or forget his crimes.

And so he was still here, riding with his brother Alric, Ralor, Morrus, and the rest of the twenty-some-odd survivors of the Lorradon band to report the worrying nearness of the regent’s army. It seemed to have finally found them. Looking at the rough camp standing immobile in the open, it was no wonder.

Darius suddenly remembered that the Autumnal Games in Arleon would have been held last month. The ritual combat at its climax was often held as an omen for the coming year, perhaps correctly so. The last games, before all this mess, the slave slew the lion cruelly. He briefly wondered which way the great duel went this time, then wised up. The new authorities certainly fixed the combat so the lion won. A losing omen during open rebellion in Kensorros would be unacceptable.

He snorted. A couple of years ago, no such thoughts would have entered his mind. Rigging gladiatorial games? How absurd. But now, he couldn’t imagine otherwise.

Ralor spoke, his features as cold and hard as the early morning earth. “Let us go, then, and report. Get acquainted and find us lodging. We won’t be leaving again.”

They followed their leader up the rocky hills into the encampment. The worst of Darius’s suspicions about the Ballikite had been eased by the weeks of campaigning together, the way it always went when men fought together. He was intelligent and competent, brave and ruthless. He demanded complete obedience but he maintained the well-being of his men. They escaped and survived where other rebel bands were slaughtered. Despite some deprivations, they had not badly starved nor thirsted. His manner reminded Darius quite a bit of Jarvis. Darius might never like him, but he was worthy of respect.

They were not challenged as they crossed the perimeter of the camp. There was no mistaking the dark, foreign Sindathi for fair, pure-blooded Kens. Many of the rebel leaders knew one another by name anyway. Darius liked to imagine that a band of black-haired, dark-skinned strangers would be treated differently.

The camp’s organization was no model of efficiency, but he had seen worse. The men were rough, ragged, and less than well-equipped but betrayed no signs of disorder or mutiny. There was little idleness, no stench of redva or rill that often accompanied ill-discipline, and camp hygiene seemed adequate.

Ralor led them to the largest tent atop the largest hill in the center of the camp. Almost alone among the structures, it was a finely-made and well cared-for field tent that obviously belonged to a notable. The creamy white and intermixed silvery and charcoal grey colors implied the province of Orrandyl, though Darius could see no crest. Lean, hungry-eyed soldiers in white and grey stood watch and closely eyed their horses as they approached, either as a potential danger or a potential meal.

Ralor halted the group a couple dozen yards shy of the tent. “Morrus,” he said. “Find the quartermaster and get the men some food. Find what passes for stables here and put up the horses. Make sure one of our men is with them at all times and he knows where you are. Rest. I’ll come find you later.”

“Yes sir,” Morrus said and wheeled his mount to obey. Darius’s hand twitched as he resisted the compulsion to salute and he turned to follow.

“Darius,” Ralor said. “Stay.”

Darius nodded and did not follow the group as they left. He watched Alric, but his brother’s tired eyes looked only for Morrus and the coming rest. While Darius was a veteran of many battles and several campaigns, until a couple of months ago Alric was merely a farm boy with dreams of glory. The fighting, running, hiding, pervasive fear, and drudgery that characterized raiding warfare had been hard on him.

Morrus gave Darius a lingering, less-than-friendly look before moving off. He had been working as a hand on Darius’s family estate and the first to encounter him when he was a filthy, vagrant fugitive. He had also been Ralor’s second-in-command. The unexpected arrival of an experienced veteran and heroic assassin upset the natural order.

“What do you think of the camp?” Ralor got straight to the point, as usual.

Darius scratched at the days of growth on his face. The new hair itched. He insisted on shaving when he could, but opportunities were lacking these last few weeks. Kirros watched in suspicious fascination when he went through his urbane Sindathi grooming routine, but he ignored them. There were only a few things left from his old life he could hold onto.

“For an untrained body, it is satisfactory,” he answered. “These men will likely fight and not do it badly.”

“And the location?”

Darius closed his eyes and revisited regional maps of his homeland. “It is east of Felldun near the Raithos, close enough to the river for reliable water without being so close that Imperial riverine assets are a serious danger. It has access to the Imperial Way and so may eventually threaten the Imperial heartland, but more directly threatens the enemy’s supply line. The camp is on relatively high and open ground so attackers can be observed, preventing surprise. That also means it is easily spotted.”

“Is that deliberate?”

“It must be.”

“And your conclusion?” Ralor prodded.

“Since the force is encamped in a highly visible, defensible position credibly threatening but not advancing on a strategic resource, the High Subjugator is inviting attack. He thinks he is ready for pitched battle but wants to ensure advantageous ground.”

Ralor’s mouth turned with a hint of a smile. He seemed pleased with the results of his little test. “I think it’s time you met the High Subjugator.”