“I know they’ll come,” Leftrin agreed. He turned to meet Reyn’s eyes and a wolfish smile came over his face. “But they think all they’ll face is a band of half-grown kids and some crippled dragons. But when they reach Kelsingra, what they’ll get may not be at all what they were expecting.”

Five bodies lay on the floor of the Stone Way Chamber. The Duke of Chalced looked down on them with annoyance. It had been an exhausting morning. Each man had insisted on his right to tell his story to the fullest before judgment fell upon him. Each had endeavored to spin out his life’s thread a bit longer. What fools they were. They had failed and they knew it, and they knew they would die for it. They had only come back to report in the foolish hope that perhaps their families would be spared.

They would not. What good would it do to keep the seed of failed men alive, to let them inherit their fathers’ lands and possessions? They would only breed more weaklings to disappoint in the future. Better to cleanse the ranks of his nobles and soldiers of weakness before it could spread through them and undermine the ancestral might of Chalced. His chancellor was looking at him, waiting. The Duke looked once more at the sprawling dismembered bodies. “Clean the room. And clean their houses,” he gave the order.

The chancellor bowed deeply, turned, and relayed the command. At the rear of the hall, six commanders turned to their chosen squads of men. Sixty spears thumped the floor in unison, the heavy wooden doors swung open, and the troops departed. Once the soldiers had exited, a very different squad entered. Crawling on their bellies, dragging their sacks, a ragged swarm of death-men scrabbled into the chamber and advanced on the bodies. No one looked at them. They were disgusting, born to wallow in filth and carrion, forever beneath notice of real men. But they had their place in Chalcedean society. They would carry off the body parts, scouring the floor with their rags before they departed. Whatever valuable items remained on the bodies became their possessions, as did the clothing of the dead and the meat from their bones. There would be little that was worth anything. These men had all known they were going to die; doubtless they had rid themselves of anything of value before they came, selling off rings and armbands to pay for one final visit to the whores, one final meal in the bazaar.

The smell of the spilled blood was thick and unpleasant and the scuttling of the supine men disgusting. He looked at his chancellor. “I wish to be in the Sheltered Garden. Chilled wine should await me there.”