Hjorst. The Diviner of the Hintervold.
Although one side of the Diviner’s line was descended from the same Cymrian refugees from which their hated foe had come, he was also a descendant of an even more ancient indigenous people, ice dwellers who had lived in the cold mountains and frozen seas of the Hintervold for a thousand years before the Cymrians even thought to leave their doomed island homeland.
His primitive bearing and warlike demeanor belied the fact that he had been educated in the modern capital of Marincaer half a world away, a place where he had grown fond of elegant potables, whiskeys, brandies, and rums from the finest distilleries in the world, as well as flaky pastries, fresh fruit, and dainty finger sandwiches with the crusts cut off.
But even if he had been modernized in his education and experiences, the Diviner’s heart belonged to the primeval earth. He not only loved this glistening land of almost year-round snow and ice, where elk, mountain goats, and tirabouri wandered the permafrost in thunderingly gentle herds, but he believed unwaveringly in the animist beliefs and sacred rituals of the earth that were practiced by these people.
Bloody, uncultured, and violent as some of them might be.
As he stood atop the rise, the Diviner looked down for a long moment at the troops gathering at his feet. The cold of winter had abated; Second Thaw was here now, the earliest days of spring which the more southerly parts of the continent had been enjoying for several months. With the spring came the melting of the barriers that the Icemen carried around inside them. They were stoic in the winter, a time when anger or distress cost more energy than it was worth, but in spring the blood ran close to the surface, spinning rivers of rage and the lust for vengeance in their hearts and bodies.
As it was running now.
Quiet as they were, the Diviner could feel the black anger building on the fjord in front of him.
An anger he shared.
Hjorst had not undertaken a specific divination to confirm the circumstances over which he was about to launch bloodshed. Divinations were only safely performed at Yule, in the depths of a frozen winter, when the sacred teachings were proscribed, for divination in any other time was considered risky at best, and at worst, offensive to the animist spirits.
It was a gift to be able to access knowledge that one’s own senses were not entitled to by the spilling of blood; to expect to be able to do it on a whim was arrogant and insulting to nature. The Diviner had already bent the rules by performing divination at the turn of spring for a friend, the recently crowned emperor of Sorbold. He did not wish to anger nature and the upcoming war by spilling blood intentionally for other reasons, even if they were sacred ones.
In the back of his mind he recalled the divination of Yule at the beginning of this past year. It had warned direly of treachery, but the specifics were uncertain. The only hint that the holy augury had offered was that the traitor to his nation was one who presented himself in the guise of a friend. Hjorst had immediately guessed who the only person was to which the augury could apply.
Gwydion of Manosse.
The Lord Cymrian, the leader of the Alliance to which the Hintervold was a friendly confederate, though not a member, spanning the vast bulk of the Middle Continent.
And who, by circumstance, was therefore the holder of the majority of the grainfields and vineyards, orchards and foodstuffs of most of the continent.
The Lord Cymrian himself had traveled to the Hintervold to offer the friendship of the Alliance upon his investiture, bringing with him his new wife, a woman of surpassing beauty and wisdom. She was herself trained and experienced in agriculture, having been responsible for the rehabilitation and expansion of the vineyards, rice bogs, and vegetable fields of the realm of Ylorc, where the first-era Cymrians had built their great civilization, Canrif, a thousand or more years before.
In addition to making suggestions that had been implemented with great success in the sparse farms and hatcheries of the Hintervold, the Lady Cymrian had offered songs of growing and harvesting which had helped the Riverlands, the only part of the Hintervold with reliably tillable soil, produce crops with almost double the yield. The Lord Cymrian had offered a tariffless delivery of grain and other foodstuffs as a sign of friendship to help the Hintervold recover from some of its worst droughts that had occurred over the previous three years.
Hjorst was a man who took such offers reverently and seriously. The Hintervold valued its independence enough to be judicious in accepting contracts or partnerships. The violation of a promise of peace and friendship with the Hintervold was an offense of deep insult and threat, one that could not be overlooked the way the provinces of the Middle Continent and the nations of Ylorc, the Bolglands, and Undervale, the mountainous realm of the Nain far to the east, had forgiven the ancestors of these new leaders, put old enmities aside, and reunited.
But there was such sincerity in the visage of the two handsome leaders of the Cymrian Alliance that he could not overcome the way his heart rose in hope at their offer of peace and friendship. Hjorst, by nature a skeptic almost from birth, put his nagging doubts aside and signed on as a friend of the new Alliance.
So when the shipments of grain did not arrive on time, or did not arrive at all, the Diviner was enraged. When the ones that did arrive were laden with poison or rat feces, or showed signs of widespread mold, and his communiqués to the Lord Cymrian demanding explanation were met with silence, the Diviner could not stand by in similar silence.
Not when his people were being starved.
And not when he had learned that the Alliance was secretly planning to attack and annex the Riverlands at the end of spring. It sickened Hjorst to realize that the tour he had given the Lord and Lady had merely been a scouting trip for them, which he had supplied and hosted.
He had clandestinely thrown in his lot with the leaders of two other nations who had each been similarly injured by the deceitful leaders—Beliac, the king of Golgarn, whose southern coastlands shared a northern border with the Bolglands, who had discovered his lands were about to be invaded by the Firbolg, also signatories to the Alliance. Beliac had an almost obsessive fear of being devoured by the Firbolg who had been his distant neighbors for five hundred years, and had been relieved to find friends among the enemies of the Bolg.
And Talquist, the regent of Sorbold, about to be crowned emperor, who himself had been betrayed by the Lord and Lady, though in the back of his mind, Hjorst had still not completely put the pieces of that betrayal together.
Talquist’s taking of the holy city-state of Sepulvarta, an independent nation between the borders of Sorbold to the south and Roland in the Cymrian Alliance to the north, had been confusing to the Diviner, even after he and Beliac had been given a carefully guided tour by the emperor himself.
But it didn’t matter.
If revenge was not struck soon, if action was not taken, within the short growing season the Riverlands would belong to the Alliance, and all foodstuffs to his mysterious and ancient land would be gone.
In the gutteral tongue of their indigenous forefathers, the Diviner spoke.
As with most other things the Icemen undertook, there was silence. Unlike the armies of the men to the south, there were no war screams, no roars of approval, no shouted cheers in response to their leader’s quiet commands.
The place, the fjord where they had chosen for centuries to meet was a natural amplifier; the Diviner’s words, spoken in his gravel-toned voice, solemn, stern, and with deadly intent, made their way through the permafrost itself, through the soft leather boots wrapped around their legs and feet and tied with rawhide, permeating each individual soul.
So that every man present heard and understood him without question.
We leave, this night, to destroy those that are killing our people and our land.
Even in silence there was unanimous consent.
The Diviner’s instructions and Rule of Engagement were clear: no women were to be raped, no children were to be killed i
f at all possible. Any material goods, spoils of war, were to be gathered by commanders and returned to the central command center behind Hyvensfalt glacier, where they would be sorted through and distributed as needed.
When the specifics of the attack had been laid out, the Diviner summed up his commands with a final spoken thought.
“The Lord Cymrian, Gwydion of Manosse, is a liar and a traitor. Despite professing his friendship and support in alliance to us, he has undertaken to starve and kill our people. The evidence of this is clear. He who finds this man and returns him alive to me will find entrance to the Afterlife upon death. Anyone who brings me his body or a recognizable part thereof shall be rewarded handsomely in this life.
“May the moon hide you from the enemy. May the Earth give you strength. Should you die, die bravely.”
In silence, each Iceman raised his arm in assent.
From the rise, looking down at the fingers of seawater reaching into the coastland of the fjord, Hjorst thought, they looked like a vast and innumerable forest of strong trees, pointing to the sky.
Then, just as silently, they turned, thirty thousand strong, and began their long journey over the warming permafrost to the Riverlands in the south.
And beyond.
WESTERN PASS, KRI’SAN PROVINCE, SORBOLD
One hundred seventy leagues away, in an entirely different clime, an entirely different set of circumstances, similar instructions were being given, though they varied in several critical places.
Titactyk, second-in-command of the western division of the army of Sorbold, was indulging in the exact opposite of the Diviner’s vocal artistry.
Upon receiving his orders from Jierna Tal on the day prior elevating him to command of the first through fourth divisions of the imperial army of Sorbold, Titactyk had crowed with delight, startling the soldiers who were standing nearby.
The orders were dated effective the next day, so their new commander-to-be had immediately encouraged any of them willing to do so to join him for some celebratory rambles. As many of the soldiers in his presence at that moment had been part of the division that he had led, along with the stone titan sent to accompany them by the emperor, to the Abbey of Nikkid’sar, where the wanton rape and murder of the women and children of the sanctuary, the sodomizing of the abbess, and the flinging of the eleven infants present into the sea via catapult had all been a sanctioned part of their mission, there were few that did not enthusiastically follow him off into the flesh markets of the province in which they were quartered, awaiting deployment.
“Men, it is our mission tonight to prevent the rampant robbery that has been happening across the city,” Titactyk called in great exaggeration from the back of the wagon in which the rabble had ensconced him, a skin of wine in each of his hands. “Women’s purses have been stolen in broad daylight, if you can imagine that! Let us be certain that we not only keep those purses from being taken, but that we spend as much of our coin in them as it is possible to ram in there!”
Raucous laughter and hooting cheers followed his wagon up the street.
* * *
One of those who did not choose to join in the merriment toasting Titactyk’s new promotion was the nephew of the man who still officially held that post.
Kymel Alo’hari Fyn, a young lieutenant in the second division, was the son of Fhremus’s sister and the fifth generation in the family to serve the Empress Leitha, whose passing had elevated Talquist to the Sun Throne. Kymel had been a zealous soldier, following proudly in his uncle’s footsteps.
Until the raid on Nikkid’sar.
Now the young lieutenant, who had been a pleasant conversationalist, generous to his fellow soldiers about taking unpopular shifts and duties, and proud of his service to the royal house of Sorbold, had gone quiet and taciturn, appearing occasionally hollow-eyed and unkempt, though he was still reliable in arriving on time for muster and completing any duties assigned to him in a satisfactory manner.
Kymel had confided the details of the raid on the abbey to his horrified uncle, had interrupted Fhremus’s subsequent rantings about execution and courts-martial to assure Fhremus that the unit had been acting under the direct orders of the emperor to leave no inhabitant of the abbey alive, even knowing that its purpose was to be a sanctuary for the poorest and most vulnerable of the continent’s children.
Upon bearing witness to Fhremus’s own shock, Kymel had gone mostly silent, responding regularly, if slowly, to questions and commands, but otherwise keeping to himself.
Fhremus, delayed in Jierna Tal, had tried to find a way to keep a quiet surveillance on his nephew, but to no avail. There are no secrets for long in the army went one of the most common expressions in military rapport, and to be seen as overseeing or providing special treatment for a family member was one of the most dangerous games that could be played. The supreme commander did not have enough experience or connections to do so without endangering Kymel even more, so he kept his distance and continued to pray silently to the All-God for his nephew’s safety, an action that in itself was punishable as treason by the crown if the authorities were aware of it.
So on the eve of deployment into battle, a few short weeks after the rout in the fields of Roland just north of Sepulvarta that the unit had already experienced, Kymel was sitting alone on the rampart of the city wall, staring north.
He knew the next day would bring a muster, a palpable excitement in which he would be expected to partake enthusiastically. He had already overheard Titactyk practicing his call to arms, his rhetoric of defense of the nation and retribution for wrongs perpetrated on Sorbold by the Cymrian Alliance and its leaders, the Lord and Lady Cymrian, his inflammatory speech designed to whip the soldiers of the first through fourth divisions into a frenzy of war-hate and rage, exploding into violence of both sanctioned and unsanctioned kinds.
It would certainly be effective, he knew.
What he did not know was what he would do upon witnessing it.
Kymel watched the sun burning orange on its way down the welkin of the sky to the horizon.
Wishing to be anywhere than where he was.
11
IN THE DEEP KINGDOM OF THE NAIN, UNDERVALE, NORTHEASTERN MOUNTAINS
Lady Melisande Navarne, all of ten years old, stretched wearily and yawned.
This day, like each day, had been long and dark, even with the luminescence of the sconces that brought the equivalent of daylight into the underground kingdom built into the forbidding mountains beyond the Teeth, north of the Bolglands, that she was now residing in.
At the very end of the world, as far as Melisande was concerned.
Logically, she was very glad to be where she was, happy that her life was what it was, given what she assumed was going on in the world beyond those mountains.
But as time passed, as the days went on, as she assumed they did in the world outside, Melisande was growing bored.
Boredom was not a bad thing, she reasoned. Safety and boredom went hand in hand for her these days, unlike her recent exploits, which were exciting but highly dangerous.
She had been sent into the Great Forest by her adoptive grandmother, Rhapsody, the Lady Cymrian, on a mission to discover what had happened to the dragon Elynsynos, an ancient being of legendary stature and a beloved friend to Rhapsody. Elynsynos’s terrifying rampages had been recorded in famous ballads like The Rampage of the Wyrm and The Burning Fields, epic songs studied by every Cymrian child. Melisande, who in her heart had craved excitement tinged with danger from a very young age, had discovered that the fantasy of dangerous adventure and the reality of it were very different.
Even though, if the truth be told, she had enjoyed a good deal of it.
And was even more grateful to have survived it.
After agreeing to accept Rhapsody’s offer of the mission, she had been packed into a carriage, surrounded by soldiers from her brother’s forces, and sent under guard due west to the Great Forest with the ultimate destination of a sacred, untrod
area north of the Tar’afel River known as Gwynwood. She was expecting to be looking for Gavin the Invoker, a man she had never met but who was known to be the religious leader of the biggest population of believers on the continent, those nature worshippers called the Filids, numbering more than three million.
Instead, Gavin had found her.
She had not recognized him when she met him after her carriage was attacked by highwaymen and set on fire. She had been lost in the virgin wood and wandering helplessly, just a few days short of her tenth birthday. She had thought him a vagrant, at best a forester, and had traveled grudgingly with him to what turned out to be his own center of power, the Circle, the central place of religious observance for the nature priests of the Filidic order.
Only to discover that he was their leader.
Gavin had guided her successfully from the Great White Tree to the sacred lands where Elynsynos’s cave was reputed to be, then let her go on alone as the Lady Cymrian had instructed them. She had found the dragon’s lair, had entered it bravely, in her own opinion, only to find it empty, with no sign of the beast.
But at least she had been able to find Krinsel, a Bolg midwife who had been badly injured in a battle of dragons between Elynsynos and her vicious daughter, Anwyn. The sight, upon discovering her, of the midwife’s eye, white like a poached egg, still haunted Melisande’s dreams.
So while she had been able to rescue the midwife, instruct Gavin to seal the dragon’s cave as Rhapsody had ordered, and make it back safely to Highmeadow where her brother and the Lord Cymrian were waiting for her, planning to send her off again, Melisande could not help but feel like a failure.
Especially since immediately thereafter she had been packed off on a journey to the Nain mountains, mostly for her own safety in the upcoming war, but also because she was accompanying Rhapsody’s oldest friend in the world, a First Generation Cymrian named Analise, and the Bolg midwife she had rescued, who was being sent for healing to the Lady Cymrian herself, who herself was planning on going into hiding with her baby in the Nain mountains.