Chapters (51)
- Dedication
- Contents
- PREVIOUSLY …
- PART I
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- PART II
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- PART III
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- PART IV
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
- About the Author
- ALSO BY DAVID WRAGG
- About the Publisher
‘Either way, this is another war without end. He will throw his forces against the city, dash them on its rock until it sinks into the gorge, all to claim his brother. Or the lordlings of the wetlands will find their mettle and declare on him, and mire our nation in another war of succession. Your prince, should he survive beyond the morrow, will be just one more loose end in need of the blade.’
‘So, we surrender? On your word?’
‘Sand-flower, on my eternal soul as a servant of the Shepherd, I do not lie. You must bring the prince to his brother.’
‘The word of a prelate of the Rose. Consider me utterly reassured.’
***
‘Did a chunk of stone land on your head? You cannot be giving this serious consideration.’
Rennic looked both wild and hollow, windblown and wide-eyed. He paced the rampart around Tarfel and Chel with an unnatural energy. Chel doubted he’d slept in the time since he’d seen him last; he’d simply reappeared on the ramparts, no mention of his whereabouts since the events on the bridge. He did not look rested in the misty evening light. Neither of them had mentioned their stricken friends, but the words not spoken yawned between them as wide as the gorge beyond the walls.
The ache of exhaustion hung heavy on Chel’s bones, the pulse of his shoulder vying with a thousand other hurts, and beneath it all the savage, sinking yawn of worry for his friends. Vashenda’s words played over and over in his mind, their echo of Tarfel’s qualms when they arrived. What have we accomplished, after all? he thought. Set half the kingdom on a path to ruin, handed its people to bloodthirsty Horvaun, let tribal raiders thicken their arms, brought Arowan to its knees and Korowan to ash and dust. So many dead and maimed, all to keep Tarfel from his brother’s clutches, and now … and now …?
I was trying to do the right thing. I was trying to do my duty. I wanted to stop the wars.
But all I did was make new ones.
Tarfel stared from the rampart, over two shattered gatehouses and the broken bridge, to the distant flutter of the black flag in the banks of mist that sat thick in the gorge and rolled over the plateau, burnished crimson in the sun’s dying light. It almost looked like a tide of blood.