Chapter 3: The Month of the Dog, Turisday the Fifth.

Kaessekros on the Red Isles in Kellalh

The last time Alec Rathwig had stood in Kellalh, he watched a city burn. He had sailed away as flames consumed everything behind him. He had survived Surraev’s invasion, but his home had not. His friends had not. His father had not. Behind him, he had left a mother, a brother and a sister. Behind him, he had abandoned his family. That still haunted him.

He could not surrender, not then and not now. He would not let Surraev win. Someday, somehow, he would beat them. Back there, on the mainland, his soldiers mustered. Still under Taulmeeran pay but ready for something more. He had not told them of his plans. What would even his most trusted lieutenants say if he told them they were going to free a nation? What would they say if he told them Taulmeer wanted rid of them, but feared them, and so was willing to finance this compromise?

Perhaps he would lose them. Perhaps he would lose his army. But he could not lose the Cyclops Banner. That would be forever his. That was worth any army. Surraev’s king knew it. Surraev’s nobles feared it. They had stopped trying to beat him in the field. Instead, they had first tried to buy him and then they had tried to assassinate him. The Cyclops Banner did not fall. And raising it in Kellalh? That was worth all the coins Taulmeer could offer.

He had never been to the Red Isles, an archipelago in the province of Selcost. In his youth, he knew of it as a remote fief of fishermen and kerns. It had no wealth, only stubborn warriors ready to die for their leaders and fast ships that destroyed everything arrayed against them. When the armies of Surraev came, wealth didn’t matter so much any longer. Selcost had proved inaccessible and defiance counted for more than the depth of one’s purse.

Clustered around the docks, few of the buildings had even a second story. Having just come from a bustling port in the Republics, it seemed open to the sky, touched by a glimmer of sun from between the clouds. The walls of the structures were stacked stone, and Alex could discern no mortaring at all. It had been a long time since he had seen a building in the traditional Islander fashion. In his time, he had seen that kind of construction in more than a few locales in the north.

“Well, this is . . . different.” Johanna offered a smile.

Chapter 2

The Month of the Dog, Talaymansday the Fifth.

Aubrien Port in Taulmeer

He paused and looked east. The jumble of buildings—most of them two or three stories—blocked his sight, but the smell of sea still air reached him. Over there—he could see it from the docks—was home. Over the Small Sea were the islands of his home’s west coast, protected by a jumble of rocks and shoals that made navigation dangerous for any but the most seasoned and familiar of sailors. In his youth, he had denigrated the Islanders, called them savages and barbarians. Now, he would kiss that rocky ground if he ever stood on it.

Turning back to the laneway, he scratched his stubbled chin. He knew this city well, but had never ventured so deeply into its the warrens and alleys. Here he found the desperate and the poor. Did he belong? He had long ago fought his way out of poverty, but in some ways he remained desperate. He desperately wanted to stand again in the court of his father’s home, to hunt in the forests of his youth, and to breath its free air.

People walked through the narrow street, cut off from the sky by the overhanging upper stories of the surrounding buildings. Those structures looked old and decrepit, many tilting at odd angles. The people on the streets had much in common with the structures—ill-maintained and stooped. They watched him like crows over a battlefield, their eyes on the pack slung over his shoulder. His hand didn’t leave the elaborate, basket-style hilt of his straight-bladed sabre.

Though not born with it, he now carried the name Alec Rathwig—the surname a reference to the Cunning Snake, an ancient trickster from the Northern Reaches of the West Kingdoms. He led the Free Company of the Cyclops Banner with five thousand trained, tried, and blooded soldiers at his command. He had fought for, or against, every one of the West Kingdoms and beyond. For fifteen years, he had lived with the sword, from the far north to the southern Mother Sea.

He had come to the mainland from the Fist—the peninsula that encompassed Kellalh—his home—and Surraev—the kingdom which had conquered it. He had come fifteen years ago with nothing. He had nothing except his body and his talents. He had come from a culture of personal honour and warfare, so he knew how to fight.

On the mainland, he had first learned how to fight in wars. Then, he learned how to lead soldiers in wars. Finally, he learned how to win those wars. 

Chapter 1

The Month of the Sparrow, Ferisday the Twenty-Second.

Kaessekros on the Red Isles in Kellaldh

She sat watching the sea. The sun set somewhere at her back, out of her view. The window of her room looked out over the Small Sea, to the west. Somewhere beyond the horizon lay the Republics. That was where most of the smugglers that sheltered in Kassekros sold their goods. Strong Kellei spirits, wool, dried kelp, all of these without the tariffs placed on them by the king of Surraev. Cheaper than anything a Surraev merchants could offer, whether they stole it from the Kellei or from their own people.

Rhona Trevean pinched the bridge of her nose. They had buried her father that day, the ceremony secret. He had long stood against Surraev, claiming to fight for a Kellei crown which no longer existed. Fifteen years after the rest of Kellalh fell to it, Surraev still could not conquer the barony.

In her heart she knew that was because they had not tried. Not really. The Old Baron, her father—Argus Trevean—had a fleet of fast ships manned by fearless crews who knew how to fight on the water. Surraev had knights and cannons, and could crush most forces on land. At sea? That they had not mastered. Her galleys protected the Red Isles and on land, Selcost nestled in the Shieldlands—rocky hills and mountains cut through with rivers and glens but no real roads or open fields on which to array ones cavalry or set up ones cannons.

To the people of Selcost, even those of Kaessekros where he had hid in the all but impregnable keep, the Old Baron symbolized resistance. It didn’t matter that his daughter accompanied him to all councils, that he made no decision without consulting her and her mother, or that he had ensured Rhona could read, write, and fight. This made no impression on most of the Old Baron’s retainers and adherents. Eccentricity was accepted in the great, and who but a great man could oppose Surraev with such success?

Hyperbole, perhaps. Many of his retainers knew well that the Old Baron relied on his daughter and wife. They had helped maintain the secret of his passing from the people of Selcost and of Kellalh more widely. But what would happen when her mother made a decision with which they disagreed? Could she impose her will on them as the Old Baron had? Could she command the loyalty and respect he had? Their culture valued a woman as a wife, a homemaker, and a mother.

And Maura Cornavia, Rhona’s mother, was all those things. She had been a good wife to Baron Trevean. She had made a fine home for their family. She had raised Rhona. These were all admirable things. But like her husband, she could be politic, she could be strategic, and she could rule. What of the stories of the queens among the Kellei, great warriors who had faced down empires or led their people on great migrations? Ancient history or myth, what did it matter now?

Rhona rose from the window and straightened her tunic. Melancholy? Self-pity? Is this what her father would want? Is this what he had taught her? Decisions were being made in the hall right then. The retainers would be drinking the family’s best spirits, toasting the memory of the Old Baron, and deciding on the future of Selcost.

Her future. Her mother’s future.