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

At that distance, they didn’t look like men, but rather tiny things—an army of ants. The swarm of humanity spilled from the highlands, funneling into the valley much like a wash of dark water, the host so numerous it appeared to be a great flood, a deluge certain to drown.

“Couldn’t they just have sent emissaries?” Tegan asked, disgusted. The Warric chieftain sounded cavalier, but there was fear in his voice.

“They’ve brought all three clans,” Raithe said, spotting the tri-colored banners held high on poles. “Erling, Strom, and Dunn, they’re all here.” Then he added with a dry chuckle and a slight shake of his head, “Udgar and his banner men are out front. Nothing changes.”

“You know them well, do you?” Lipit asked. Their host stood with one hand on the guardrail as the other wiped sweat from his brow. The summer sun was warm, but not that warm.

Raithe shrugged. “I haven’t faced the Gula myself, but it was all my brothers ever talked about. My family made a career fighting them. Most Dureyans do…did,” he corrected himself. That one word—did—felt too final, as if he were lighting the pyre beneath his people. He’d found Tesh, there might be others. A fine line divided acceptance from giving up.

“You should speak to them,” Lipit said with an eager expression. His other hand came up to help the first in getting the sweat out of his eyes.

“Why me? This is your dahl.”

“I don’t know the Gula-Rhunes. None of us do, right?”

The other chieftains nodded—a long line of bobbing heads and hopeful faces.

Raithe’s father had had little respect for chieftains, and none for the leaders of the southern clans, who’d grown fat on green pastures. Their wealth is their wool, and like all sheep they fear being sheared, he used to say. Raithe had believed that his father, like all Dureyans, was jealous of the southerners. Plenty to be envious of as they had everything—everything except courage.

“He’s right.” Tegan stepped forward and threw an arm around Raithe’s shoulders. The action was probably meant as a fatherly gesture, or what passed for one in places like Warric and Tirre. Tegan had no clue the sort of gestures Dureyan fathers extended to their sons. Hugging wasn’t among them. “This meeting is dangerous.” Tegan looked out at the army descending on them. “It has to be handled carefully. The slightest misstep and we could be facing disaster.”

Raithe laughed.

The others looked at him, shocked, but he couldn’t help it. The irony was too much to bear. Somewhere the spirits of tens of thousands of Dureyans were laughing along with him. “You want a Dureyan to speak as your ambassador because you don’t want trouble?”

Tegan pulled his arm back and scowled enough to show teeth. That was the sort of fatherly gesture Raithe knew well. “Who would you suggest?” Tegan asked, his tone reproachful—another Dureyan father–son tradition. Tegan was finally hitting all the right notes if his intention was to appear Dureyan-paternal. All he lacked was a solid cuff across the side of Raithe’s head.

“Lipit?” Tegan answered his own question. “It is his house, but forgive me, dear host, you are far too civilized to deal with their lot. The Gula-Rhunes will sense weakness and see an opportunity for a winter home by the sea.”

Lipit’s eyes went wide as his head began to shake. “Oh, no. No, we don’t want that.”

“Indeed not,” Tegan said. “And what about Harkon here? Melen is known for poets and musicians, and if the Gula were the sort to be impressed with a ballad, I’d be the first to shove him onto the field. As for Krugen…he could…well, he could try to bribe them, but it’s impossible to entice a thief with jewels he can take for himself.”

“You’re right,” Krugen said, rubbing his rings. “Nothing I could offer would appease them.”

“There’s always Alward,” Tegan went on, casting a hand out to the new leader of Nadak. They all turned their attention to the willowy man in rags who blinked back at them as his mouth formed an appalled and fearful O. “Perhaps not,” Tegan agreed.

“You seem capable enough,” Raithe told him. “Smart, even.”

“You’re right; I’m very smart, smart enough to know I’m not the man for this. I’ve never seen a Gula-Rhune until this moment. My ignorance could be our undoing, but the little I do know about these northern men is that they are fighters, and the one thing that a warrior respects is another warrior.”

Raithe squared himself in front of the Warric chieftain, fixing Tegan with a steady stare. “I’m not the keenig.”

Tegan sighed. “I don’t care, not right now. Look out there!” He waved his arm at the ant army creeping down the hill. “You don’t have to be keenig, but if you don’t make them think twice about marching on these walls, we won’t need one.”

This brought a small moan from Lipit, who by then had resorted to mopping his head with a sleeve.

Once more, Raithe noted the three banners rising above the approaching horde: Erling, Strom, and Dunn. These were the three Gula clans, violent sons of continual warfare. Raithe had more in common with them than with those beside him on the wall. That’s what Tegan was saying, but Raithe wondered if the chieftain of Warric knew that.

“Okay,” Raithe said. “I’ll go, but I want to point out, it was your idea to send me. Whatever happens is your fault, not mine.”

“What could be worse than them attacking?” Tegan said, prompting another chirp from Lipit.

Raithe shrugged. “Who knows? But I once met a Fhrey named Shegon, and look where we are now.”

This raised Tegan’s brows, and he nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll go with you.”

—

At midafternoon, Raithe walked uphill through the tall meadow grass. The waist-high shoots, with green tops and straw-brown stems, had gone to seed. The whole of the field lay over, brushed to a permanent western lean by a tireless ocean wind. True to his word, Tegan walked alongside. Malcolm joined them as well, along with Tesh, who was treating his responsibility as Shield with the excessive seriousness of a boy tasked with his first adult duty. None of them wore weapons. This was Raithe’s decision. He’d heard his father speak of battlefield meetings, and how weapons were left behind to indicate a peaceful talk. He hoped this practice would be honored and wasn’t just one of Herkimer’s tall tales.

They walked to the top of a small rise halfway between the walls of Tirre and the vast horde that was the Gula encampment. The four waited on the windswept knoll.