Year 432 of the Solar Calendar of the Five Kingdoms
— ✦ —
There was a truth Corvus Romulus II learned very early in life: men die in two ways. With noise, or in silence. Heroes fell amid fanfare and mourning. The forgotten faded away without anyone noticing.
He always assumed he would die the first way.
He was wrong.
Eastern border of the Kingdom of Iztheria. Coast of the Grey Sea.
The wind smelled of blood.
Not metaphorically. It was the real smell — dense and metallic — seeping through the torn canvas of the campaign tent where Corvus Romulus II, Second Prince of Iztheria, stood before his men. Eight hundred. What remained of ten thousand.
Eight months ago, those ten thousand soldiers had marched east with banners raised and the weight of a clear mission: hold the weakest flank of the barbarian advance while King Darius's main army crushed the northern front. A reasonable strategy, on paper. On paper, everything was.
Reality had the unpleasant habit of not reading the same documents as kings.
Corvus hadn't moved when they entered the tent. He still stood at the map table, armor still on — the same one he hadn't removed in three days — the short black-bladed sword hanging from his right hip and the curved dagger on his left. His men hadn't disarmed either. Sleeping in steel was a luxury when the enemy could appear before dawn.
Thirty years old. That was all he had. And in that moment, under the dim yellow light of the oil lamps, he looked ten more.
His pale skin was marked by the dust of battle. His hazel hair, which in peacetime fell neatly to his shoulders, was now tied back carelessly. His eyes, that same dark tone, moved across the map as if he might find there an answer that the last eight months had refused to give him.
—Prince— said Aster, his first commander, from the tent entrance. His voice was low, as always. Aster spoke little. It was one of the reasons Corvus valued him. —The men are waiting.
Corvus looked up from the map.
—I know.
He went out.
The eight hundred remaining men were gathered in the clearing before the tent, among the ruins of what a couple of months ago had been an ordered camp. Now it was a patchwork of torn shelters, weak campfires, and men who watched with the eyes of those who had already seen too much. Infantry. Archers. The twelve knights who could still channel essence without breaking. All dirty. All tired. All looking at him.
Corvus climbed onto the wooden crate that served as a makeshift platform and observed them in silence for a moment.
He was not a man given to grand speeches. He never had been. That was his brother Kayn's territory — Kayn had the gift of making words sound like music even when they said nothing real. Corvus preferred facts. Facts needed no ornament.
—We've been on this coast eight months— he began. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried the kind of weight that makes men stop moving. —When we arrived we were ten thousand. The barbarians were fifty thousand.
No one spoke.
—We survived because we aren't stupid. Because we ambushed their supply columns before they could establish lines. Because we used the tides of the Grey Sea to destroy three of their coastal camps before they realized what we were doing. Because every time they outnumbered us in open ground, we retreated, regrouped, and attacked where they didn't expect us.
He paused.
—Fifty thousand became five thousand. We reduced them to a tenth of what they were, with a tenth of the resources. Not every army can do that. The best ones can.
A murmur ran through the ranks. It wasn't enthusiasm, exactly. It was something older. Recognition.
—The king will send reinforcements— said Corvus. —Our mission was to hold the eastern flank. We have done that. We will keep doing that. In Iztheria we don't abandon a comrade, and we don't die in vain. That doesn't change today.
What he didn't say — what he couldn't say — was what had been growing for weeks in the place where certainty should have been: a seed of doubt.
Why hadn't reinforcements come yet?
The answer was uncomfortable precisely because it was simple. Probably his father and brother had already fallen, and only he remained.
Him. With ten thousand men now reduced to less than ten percent, on a flank the king had called the weakest. The question Corvus wouldn't fully allow himself to answer was whether that had been a miscalculation...
Essence was the soul made force.
That was the definition the weapons masters used, though none could fully explain what it meant. What they could measure was the result: a knight who mastered essence could multiply his physical strength, speed, and endurance beyond human limits. The rank depended on the multiplier you could sustain without your body breaking under the strain.
A multiplier of two was a competent knight. Five, dangerous. Eight, a living legend.
Ten was the absolute limit. The point where essence and the human body reached the ceiling of what they could sustain together without destroying each other. In all the Kingdom of Iztheria, only six people had reached it: King Darius, Prince Kayn, three royal guard commanders, and Corvus.
Corvus had achieved it at twenty-six. Without a private master. Without the royal academy his brother attended with all the privileges of a legitimate son. He did it alone, with books borrowed from the palace library and years of practice in the back courtyards where no one looked for him.
No one congratulated him.
The queen — he never called her mother, because she wasn't — looked away when he entered the throne room the day he was officially presented as Second Prince. She held no affection for him. He reminded her that her husband had been with another woman, and that woman had died giving birth to this son who now walked her corridors with too much confidence for someone who shouldn't exist.
His father, King Darius, put a hand on his shoulder and said: well done, boy, in the same tone he would have used to praise a well-trained horse.
Corvus smiled, nodded, and decided that was enough.
Affection didn't win wars. Steel did.
The messenger arrived the next day, at noon.
Corvus saw him from a distance: a lone rider, horse at the edge of its strength, a white cloth tied to his right arm that in Iztheria's military code meant urgent message from the capital. The man fell from his horse before it had fully stopped. He had a broken arrow embedded in his left side, below the armor.
He delivered the message anyway.
The men made way. Corvus waited at the tent entrance while Aster helped the messenger inside. The man walked hunched, hand pressing the wound, but his eyes were clear. He had decided to arrive. He had made it.
—Prince— he said, and his voice was steady despite everything. —I bring word from the capital.
Corvus took the sealed document. Opened it. Read it.
The tent was silent.
He read it again.
The document said several things. It said the capital had fallen. It said King Darius, before the northern barbarians entered the castle, had abandoned the city with the queen, with Kayn, with most of his possessions and dozens of men from his personal guard. It said they had departed for the southern kingdoms.
It also said, with a courtesy that hurt more than a direct accusation, that thanks to Corvus's efforts on the eastern flank, Zazha's barbarian force never managed to reinforce the northern siege. That was why the northern barbarians took longer than expected to take the capital. That extra time was enough for the king to secure his life and his son's.
It said, finally, that King Darius relinquished the crown. That he named Corvus Romulus II the legitimate heir to the Kingdom of Iztheria. That thanks to him, he had saved his life and his brother's. That he could die with honor.
Because he had fulfilled his mission.
There was a moment — a brief and absolute instant — when Corvus Romulus II stopped being the calculating strategist, the illegitimate son who had proven his worth in every battle, the prince who had held the eastern flank for eight months with less than any sensible commander would have considered sufficient.
In that instant he was simply a thirty-year-old man staring at a piece of paper and understanding that the world he knew no longer existed.
Then he was himself again.
—What does it say?— asked Aster, quietly.
Corvus folded the document. Tucked it inside the armor's inner pocket, against his chest, where the grey steel would press it with every breath.
—The capital has fallen— he said. —My father fled south. With the queen. With Kayn. —A brief pause. —He leaves me the crown.
The silence shifted in nature. It became dense, almost solid.
King of Iztheria.
King of eight hundred starving men, a ruined camp, a coastal flank no one would ever reinforce again.
King of nothing.
Corvus didn't move for a long moment.
He stood at the center of the tent, the folded document against his chest, his commanders' silence weighing more than his armor. Outside, eight hundred men waited. Inside, he stared at the ground without seeing it.
He thought about his father.
He thought about the letter. That specific phrase, written in the royal secretary's careful hand: thanks to your efforts, I was able to secure my life and your brother's. He reread it mentally. Dismantled it word by word, the way he had dismantled enemy strategies for eight months.
And then he understood.
Not as suspicion. As certainty.
His father and brother had surrendered like cowards.
Hold the eastern flank. Contain Zazha's barbarians. Buy time. And while Corvus Romulus II followed orders with the discipline of his entire life, his father — the king, the man who had put a hand on his shoulder and said well done, boy — had been buying his own survival with the time his bastard son gifted him from a forgotten coast.
Eight hundred men.
Eight hundred men who remained. With families. With names. With lives they had left behind when they marched east with banners raised.
All condemned to die.
Something broke inside Corvus. It wasn't grief. It was older than grief, hotter, cleaner. It was the rage of a man who had been betrayed.
—Aster— he said, and his voice was perfectly steady. —Gather everyone. I want them to hear me.
The eight hundred were formed when Corvus came out.
He climbed the wooden crate a second time that night. Looked at them. Breathed.
—King Darius abandoned the capital— he said, without preamble. —He fled south with the queen, with Prince Kayn, and with his possessions. He negotiated with the Kingdom of Zazha behind our backs. He sold Iztheria. And before leaving, he left us here. You and me. On this coast. With no reinforcements that were never going to come.
Absolute silence.
—He condemned us to die— said Corvus. —Us. His soldiers. The men who had been bleeding for him on this coast for eight months while he prepared his escape.
No one spoke. No one moved. But something shifted in the air.
—He leaves me the crown. —A pause. —He can keep his crown. I don't care about being king. What I do care about — the only thing I care about right now — is this.
Corvus swept his gaze across them, one by one, as far as the campfire light reached.
—The capital of Iztheria has fallen. The northern army was destroyed. Your families, your friends, everything you left behind when you marched with us — dead or prisoner to Zazha's barbarians. And the man who was supposed to protect them fled like a coward while his soldiers died to buy him time.
The murmur that ran through the ranks wasn't like the ones before. It was darker. More real.
—Tomorrow we go to war— said Corvus. —Not because I am your king. Not because Iztheria asks it of us. We go because out there are the barbarians who killed our comrades, who have our families as prisoners, and because someone has to send them to hell. —He paused. —And after we're done with them, we go for the coward who sold us out.
The murmur became something else.
—This land no longer belongs to any king who runs. It belongs to you. To every one of you who has spent eight months fighting with nothing on this coast. If we survive, it will be your kingdom. All of ours. I swear it.
He drew the short black-bladed sword. Raised it.
—And if we fall, if we die... we will do it fighting until the end. No one will forget the warriors of Iztheria who refused to surrender when their king abandoned them. There is nothing more honorable than that. If you no longer have a reason to fight, do it to avenge the king who left you behind.
Corvus pointed the sword at the dark sky.
—The sun goddess will smile upon us! I will be first at the front! For our fallen, for our families, for our vengeance! For our victory!
The cry that answered was not from tired men.
It was from eight hundred men with a reason.
YES! DOWN WITH THE KING! LONG LIVE CORVUS! LONG LIVE THE NEW KING!
That night, Corvus didn't sleep.
He sent his scouts before the echo of the shout died out. He needed to know where the main camp of Zazha's eastern forces was. While he waited, he mentally divided his eight hundred men into two columns.
Four hundred with him: all available horses, the twelve knights who mastered essence, the fastest infantry. Strike force.
Four hundred with Aster: all archers, ranged support. Movement along the coast to reach the enemy's rear while Corvus drew them to the front.
The attack would come at night. Divided into groups of thirty-five under each essence knight's command, they would advance through the river hidden in the dusk and darkness. Create chaos in the camp, withdraw, hunt those who pursued them. A contraction maneuver, dragging the entire barbarian army toward them while Aster closed the pincer from behind.
It was almost the same strategy they had executed for eight months.
Except now it was night, with minimal visibility, against five thousand, and they were betting everything on a single hand.
The scouts returned before dawn.
Corvus studied the map with Aster. Memorized every detail.
—This is what we'll do— he said.
They advanced at dusk in separate groups, hidden in the shadows of the river running toward the coast. The water was cold and silence was an order no one needed to repeat. Each knight carried thirty-five soldiers. Each group knew its attack flank. Every man understood that error was not an option.
They found the camp when the moon was high.
Corvus raised his fist. The groups halted.
Something was wrong.
No campfires. No visible sentinels. None of the usual sounds of a five-thousand-man camp: voices, movement, horses. Only darkness and silence, thick as a sprung trap.
Something feels wrong.
Corvus didn't say it out loud. He didn't need to.
They advanced anyway, because not advancing was also dying.
In the center of the empty camp sat a single man.
On a log, two war axes crossed on his back, splitting an apple with a knife with the calm of someone who had been waiting for hours. He was large. Larger than any man Corvus had seen in eight months of war. The scar that crossed his face from eyebrow to chin gleamed white under the moon.
He looked up without surprise.
—You made it, Prince Corvus— he said, with the guttural accent of northern Zazha. —Or should I say... King Corvus.
A chill ran down Corvus's spine.
—You acted exactly as your brother told us you would.
—What the hell are you talking about?— said Corvus, and his voice was cold as the river they had just crossed.
The man bit the apple without hurry.
—I'm surprised you lasted this long. Eight months with so little, against so much. You're a better warrior than they told us. —A pause. —Though I should be honest with you, Corvus. When the north fell a few weeks ago and your father surrendered, everything became much simpler. Until then, we didn't know what would have happened if your father kept resisting. You were the real problem. It's a shame... —Strunggel sighed. —You would have given us much more trouble. I won't deny it.
He paused.
—But when Darius surrendered... your knights fell faster. Their families had been our prisoners for weeks. We only had to let them know.
The cold arrived before the understanding.
The twelve essence knights — the men who had fought beside him for eight months — turned. Twelve swords pointed at Corvus.
—What are you doing?— Corvus's voice sounded strange even to him. —What the hell are you doing?
—I am General Strunggel— said the man, finishing the apple. —Commander of Zazha's eastern forces. You were always in the palm of our hand, Corvus. From the moment your king decided his life was worth more than his kingdom.
Corvus drew his short sword and dagger. His regular soldiers stood paralyzed, without orders, watching their knights with the same horror he felt.
—Your father— continued Strunggel, rising slowly —I'll tell you everything, since I want to see your face when you find out. Your father sold his kingdom for a reasonable price. When his northern army was destroyed, when he saw the war was lost, he begged for his life like a coward— hahahaha. Said he didn't care about the people or the kingdom. That we could take everything as long as we let his legitimate son, his wife, and himself live. The King of Zazha accepted. He gave them free passage south.
Strunggel walked toward Corvus with the calm of someone who knows the outcome is already decided.
—He also warned us about you. Said his other son — the bastard — would refuse to surrender. That we could kill you if we wanted. But you're strong— —A pause. —So we used your knights' families as our winning card. —Strunggel smiled.
—I'm sorry, Prince Corvus. —The voice came from one of the twelve. It sounded broken. —We had no choice.
—TRAITORS!
Corvus's shout filled the empty camp.
—Not all of them are traitors— said Strunggel, with a wicked smile. —This one, for example.
He reached into the cloth sack hanging from his belt. Threw it.
It rolled across the ground and stopped at Corvus's feet.
It was Aster's head.
The world stopped for one complete second.
—We knew the strategy— said Strunggel. —The four hundred on the coastal flank were mostly archers. Easy to crush when you know in advance where they're coming from.
The second ended.
—BASTARD. I'LL KILL YOU.
Corvus activated essence to the absolute limit. By ten. The world slowed around him, his body became something more than flesh, and he threw himself at the twelve before any of them could fully react.
The short sword broke one's arm on the first pass. The dagger found another's side. He leaped back, read the angles, advanced again. It was one against twelve who also mastered essence, and for thirty seconds that seemed eternal, Corvus Romulus II demonstrated exactly why he had reached the multiplier of ten alone, without a master, without anyone.
But there were twelve.
Steel found him from behind.
He fell to his knees. Rose. Decapitated the knight who had stabbed him. Spun and cut another's arm with the dagger, went for his head, and then the cold pierced him from the center of his chest.
Strunggel had drawn one of his axes.
Corvus fell onto his back.
The sky of Iztheria was black, cloudless. The moon was full and white, indifferent, watching from above the way those with power had always watched him: without pity, without guilt, from a safe distance.
—You were a good warrior, Prince Corvus— said Strunggel, from somewhere above him. —The best I've seen in a long time. If your king had half your courage, perhaps this war would have ended differently.
Blood in his mouth. Blood in his ears. The cold was no longer cold — it was absence.
—Traitors— Corvus whispered. —Damn traitors.
The tears came on their own, without permission, without shame. He raised his hand toward the moon. His fingers didn't reach.
If there were another chance...
The thought was the only thing left intact.
Sun goddess. If you hear me. Give me a chance. Just one. I swear I'll return. I swear I'll kill them all. The General. The traitors. Kayn. My father.
I'll return from hell to have my vengeance.
Corvus's hand fell.
I feel tired.
I'm dying, aren't I?
I don't want to die.
I don't want to die...
The darkness lasted an instant, or an eternity. There was no difference.
And then there was light.
What... is that light?
Am I dead?
The light slowly became clearer.
Who is she? Why is she looking at me like that? Why can't I move? Where am I? What is this place?
A voice. Warm. Close.
—Look, my love. He's a beautiful baby. Don't you think?
Another voice. A man. Broken with emotion.
—Yes. He's our son.
The man was blond, broad-shouldered, built like someone who had spent his life carrying more weight than most could imagine, with tears falling down his face and not caring in the slightest. The woman holding him had black hair and black eyes and a smile that Corvus Romulus II, in thirty years of life, had never received from anyone.
She looked at him as if he were the most precious thing in the world.
Why is she looking at me like that?
The woman drew him closer to her chest.
—Your name is Lucius— she said, softly. —Welcome to your new home.
...
Huh?
— ✦ —
End of Chapter 1