Padric’s thoughts were of home. He wished he were back there, helping his father and the other men, coming home sore and soiled to find a warm meal waiting, his mother’s easy smile and quiet acceptance filling their small house. The ciderhouse would be up in the fort and the warriors as well; other men to do the fighting, the killing, the dying. He would learn all the things he had ignored or been too downtrodden to pay any mind. His father would help him build his own house, and he would take Svala inside each night and feel no guilt or shame or fear. They would not seek comfort in each other, it would simply exist between them, and he could allow himself to love her. He would walk into the still woods alone and hear that bright laugh, her laugh, and he would look up to see his friend smiling down from the branches, eternally playful.

Like him, the thoughts were a lie. He could no more be a contented farmer than he could a king. Stone Fort may have suffered the same fate as so many other villages; burned by the very maniacal immortals that now sought to serve him. It was a maddening thought, and he pushed it away, willing his family’s survival by stripping it of the sweet dream he drizzled upon it. His father did not need his help. Padric had been nothing but a breathing misery to his mother, a burden she had been too kind to put down. He hated the fort and the ciderhouse and the warriors. The day he turned his back on them had been a cause for rejoicing. Svala would never be his wife, and Rosheen was gone. Even if she lived, he would never hear her laugh again. That chance had ended the night he first saw Torcan Swinehelm and the Flame Binder.

Both goblins waited on him now. The wizard was outside in the Cog Yard amongst his sleeping children while Torcan stood in Padric’s chamber, watching as Svala helped him don the raiment provided for the ritual. No fur trimmed robes of soft cloth for him. Torcan wanted the king to greet his army as a warrior. Boiled leather, studded with iron over blackened mail. Gauntlets covered his hands and a heavy cloak of crimson hung from silver brooches.