Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

The first thing Persephone noticed were the seagulls. The white birds circled in flocks, squawking in a chorus of lonesome cries. The dahl’s survivors were a full five days from Rhen. Five days! She could hardly believe it, and had begun to wonder if Tirre, along with the Blue Sea, had been moved farther away. The trip had never taken so long. On the few occasions when she and Reglan had traveled there, it had only taken two days. Of course, they hadn’t traveled with a host of hundreds that included scores and scores of children and the elderly. Persephone didn’t have the heart to drive the column harder. This wasn’t a vacation to visit and trade with neighbors. They were broken families grieving for loved ones, children without parents and parents without children. They walked into an unknown world, and on their backs they carried their whole lives. Letting them sleep, giving them time to prepare hot meals, and providing rest were the least she could do, even if it prolonged her own torment.

Today we’ll discover how strong the bonds are among the clans.

Tirre knew she was coming. Persephone had sent runners to all the dahls the day after the giants’ attack, explaining what had happened. She’d had the messengers draw sticks to see who would go to the Gula clans in the north, the people who had been their enemies for centuries. Aberdeen, Montlake, and Morgan were the unlucky ones, all three farmers. Two of the men had families who’d survived the attack, but both had nodded grimly and set out without complaint on the perilous road north. All of them knew it might be suicide, but they went anyway. They left Persephone to care for their families—and cultivate a tremendous feeling of guilt.

I should have gone instead of one of them. I gave the order, and I should live, or die, with the consequences. But I didn’t even draw a stick.

Dahl Tirre was larger than Dahl Rhen had been, more elaborate, too. While Rhen had the forest with its wood, berries, and animals, Tirre had the sea. The water was more than just a source of fish and salt. Across its aqua waves lay Belgreig, the land of the Dherg, and from there came riches. The Dherg influence was impossible to miss. Dahl Tirre was built of stone. Although some buildings were fashioned from clay bricks, the wall that surrounded the dahl was constructed of neatly stacked slabs, as was the lodge. Unlike Dahl Rhen, some of the village had grown up outside the fortification.

The most abundant wealth of Dahl Tirre existed in the settlement around the docks. Hundreds of brick buildings were stacked upon one another as they climbed the steep slope from the water’s edge. The people of Tirre called this dock-village Vernes, which she’d been told was the Dherg word for “pier.”

As Persephone’s parade rounded the bend that sloped down to the rocky coast, they could see the whole of the dahl, the village, and the sea stretching into the horizon. The dahl could see them, too. Hard to miss a column of several hundred people marching toward their gate, which at the moment was still wide open.

“You all right?” Raithe asked.

He walked beside her as he had every day of the trip. She hadn’t asked him to. She almost never asked anything of Raithe. She didn’t feel she could. Persephone was the chieftain of Clan Rhen, but Raithe was Dureyan, and he certainly wasn’t anyone’s servant. Raithe was the God Killer, a valuable asset to a clan chieftain about to go to war with the Fhrey. Still, he was more than that—she felt comfortable with him. Except for the Fhrey, who still frightened her, it felt as though everyone else depended on her for something. Raithe didn’t need anyone. At times, when things grew bleak, she shamefully indulged in his fantasy of running away together. She imagined slipping off the shackles of responsibility and living with Raithe in his carefree world, but it was only an illusion. The real world didn’t work that way.

“No, I’m not all right,” Persephone replied, and she could tell it wasn’t the response he had expected. “I’m waiting to see who has more power: Mari or Eraphus.”

“Eraphus?”

“Clan Tirre’s god.”

The gate remained open as they began their descent. Just as Persephone started believing everything would work out, at least for the next few days, she heard the horn.

This is the moment, the hinge our future swings on. What has Tirre decided?

As the first horn’s wail faded, Persephone held her breath. Her heart sank as a second blew and then a third—no mistaking what that signal meant. One horn indicated a greeting, two horns indicated potential danger, but three horns…three horns warned of a threat, calling all the residents to arms.

Remarkably, the gates didn’t close—not at first. The initial movement came from people just outside the wall. Wherever they had been going, and whatever they had been doing, became unimportant as they rushed inside, shoving one another in their haste to reach the protective walls before the gates closed.

What she had feared the most had come to pass: Tirre wouldn’t welcome them.

Lipit, the dahl’s chieftain, had never impressed her as a courageous man. Pompous and arrogant, made so by his dahl’s wealth, he’d faced few real threats. Rich men—especially those who came to their wealth through no effort of their own—didn’t like risk, and challenging the Fhrey was as risky as it got. As far as Tirre was concerned, Clan Rhen carried a plague, and they didn’t want it spreading to their shores.

Just when she imagined things couldn’t possibly get worse, Persephone heard a scream.

Behind her, the lead cart crested the hill and began to descend. Most of the men driving it had been behind, pushing. Only Malcolm and Cobb pulled. The trip to Tirre had, until that point, been across reasonably level ground. So it came as a surprise to everyone when the cart began to roll downhill under its own power. Malcolm leapt aside, but Cobb had been too slow. The cart lurched as its front left wheel rolled over him. The following wheel ended Cobb’s screaming. Yet the cries weren’t over. Everyone ahead of the cart panicked, because Cobb’s death hadn’t stopped or even slowed the rampaging cart. If anything, it rolled faster.

Roan’s creation rumbled down the hill on that horribly smooth road, picking up speed until it ran faster than a rabbit. Mari bounced in the back, trapped amid barrels of water, wheat, and beer. The god looked furious as she rattled by. The wobbly wheels shimmied badly, but Roan’s invention held together, and the cart gained astounding speed.