Stunned, the breath driven from his lungs, Gruntle fell to the ground in a heap. An enormous weight pinned him, talons puncturing armour to pierce flesh. The three toes clenched around his chest, snapping bones, and he felt himself dragged forward. The scales of his armour clicked and clattered, dropping away as he was pulled along through dust and gravel. Twisted buckles and clasps dug into the earth. Blind, limbs flopping, Gruntle felt the talons digging ever deeper. He coughed and his mouth filled with frothy blood. The world darkened.

He felt the talons shudder, as if resonating from some massive blow. Another followed, then another. The claws spasmed. Then he was lifted into the air again, sent flying. Striking the ground, rolling, crashing up against the shattered spokes of a carriage wheel.

He felt himself dying, knew himself dying. He forced his eyes open, desperate for one last look upon the world – something, anything to drive away this overwhelming sense of confused sadness. Could it not have been sudden? Instant? Why this lingering, bemused draining away? Gods, even the pain is gone – why not awareness itself? Why torture me with the knowing of what I am about to surrender?

Someone was shrieking, the sound one of dying, and Gruntle understood it at once. Oh yes, scream your defiance, your terror and your rage – scream at that web even as it closes about you. Waves of sound out into the mortal world, one last time— The shrieks fell away, and now there was silence, save for the stuttering heart in Gruntle’s chest.

He knew his eyes were open, yet he could see nothing. Either Korbal Broach’s spell of light had failed, or the captain had found his own darkness.

Stumbling, that heart. Slowing, fading like a pale horse riding away down a road. Farther, fainter, fainter . . .

BOOK TWO – HEARTHSTONE

BOOK TWO – HEARTHSTONE

Midnight comes often in the dusk of my life, when I look back upon all that I have survived. The deaths of so many for whom I cared and loved in my heart, have expunged all sense of glory from my thoughts. To have escaped those random fates has lost all triumph.

I know you have seen me, friend, my lined face and silent regard, the cold calcretions that slow my embittered pace, as I walk down the last years, clothed in darkness as are all old men, haunted by memories . . .

The Road Before You

Jhorum of Capustan

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN

And all who would walk the fields

when the Boar of Summer strides

in drum-beat hooves,

and the Iron Forest converges

to its fated, inevitable clash – all,

all are as children, as children once more.

Fener’s Reve

Destriant Dellem (b?)