Reread of The White-Luck Warrior: Chapter Seven

Reread of The Aspect-Emperor Series

Book 2: The White-Luck Warrior

by R. Scott Bakker

Chapter Seven

The Istyuli Plains

Welcome to Chapter Seven of my reread. Click here if you missed Chapter Six!

…and they scoff at heroes, saying that Fate serves disaster to many, and feasts to few. They claim that willing is but a form of blindness, the conceit of beggars who think they wrest alms from the jaws of lions. The Whore alone, they say, decides who is brave and who is rash, who will be hero and will be fool. And so they dwell in a world of victims.

—QUALLAS, ON THE INVITIC SAGES

Ever do Men use secrets to measure those they love, which is why they are less honest with their brothers and more guarded with their friends.

—CASIDAS, ANNALS OF CENEI

My Thoughts

The first quote is amazing. It’s how people embrace being a victim. How they have blame their lot in life on others not their own actions. It’s all the Whore. It’s not their fault they got a shitty deal. So to say that others are “heroes” who dared to be bold and seize their own destiny would mean they could have done something. So they have to say they really got lucky. Because if these people made their own destiny, then the victim’s lot is also their own fault.

The next quote goes on how we don’t like telling our dark secrets to our loved ones. We don’t want to hurt them. To burden them. To see them look at us with disappointment. Disgust. But with a stranger, they can be honest, be less guarded, because they aren’t risking the relationships. The more they conceal, the more they care. It’s a measure measure.

We see Sorweel has shared a secret with Zsoronga while searching for a friend. He swallows the shame because he’s desperate for his advice. He is gambling with the truth to get his friendship back. He’s taking that risk he wouldn’t normally.

Late Spring, 20 New Imperial Year (4132 Year-of-the-Tusk), the High Istyuli

The had fled and they had gathered, like sawdust before the sweep of the carpenter’s hand.

For a while, the Sranc of the Sakarpi Pale had retreated before the Great Ordeal. These Sranc were used to dealing with Men and knew that unless they outnumbered them, it was folly to attack them. These Isranz’horul, the Shining Man, shook the earth as they marched. The fleeing Sranc ran into new clans who inherited fear. Clan after clan after clan retreats before the Ordeal. As their numbers swell, their fear dwindles.

Not long after the army broke apart, General Sibawul the Nurwul wanted to show how badass his Cepalorans are. Disobeying Kayûtas’s orders, he goes far ahead of the hose. He wants to fight Sranc. He got his wish as he finds the teeming thousands of the Sranc. He fled and learns Sranc run fast, losing a third of his men in the first day. A running battle breaks out as hundreds die pointlessly.

Kayûtas is not happy, rebuking General Sibawul. Kellhus knew the Hording would happen but withhold word of it not to hurt morale until it was time to deal with them. So Kayûtas asks Sibawul how he punishes those who disobey his orders. Flogging.

So was the first Lord of the Ordeal whipped for a martial transgression.

And so did the Zaudunyani learn that beyond the northern horizon, their foe roiled in numbers that encompassed the horizon—numbers far greater than their own. About the campfires, those who had argued a bloodless march to Golgotterath were silenced.

None could deny that a grievous toll was about to be paid.

Proyas had seen armies afflicted by many problems from disease to starvation until they look like “doddering old men.” He finds himself thinking about how the First Holy War had been reduce to cannibalism before the end. He sees the Great Ordeal starting down that same path. The first wounds are bleeding.

And about once a week, Kellhus has a one-on-one meeting with Proyas. It’s so the Aspect-Emperor and Proyas can “sit and discuss… madness.” Kellhus comments that he’s still troubled about that Day in Shimeh. The day when Achamian had denounced Kellhus. Twenty years, and it’s still there. An old wound. He can’t get that image of Achamian out of his mind.

“I loved Achamian.”

Of course as a boy, Proyas had loved his “first true teacher.” He could tell that Achamian wasn’t there to teach out of duty but out of a desire to educate Proyas, not a prince. Kellhus says it troubles Proyas that a “soul so wise and gentle would so condemn me.” Proyas snaps back that a cuckold can’t be that. He was spurned. Proyas was too cowardly to even tell Achamian that Esmenet had become Kellhus.

Despite knowing Achamian was angry and bitter at being spurned, the fact he condemned Kellhus troubles Proyas. So much that he read Achamian’s Compendium of the First Holy War. Proyas smiles, having wondered when Kellhus would finally call him out and admits he read a summary of what it claimed about Kellhus. But he didn’t believe it, of course.

The Holy Aspect-Emperor frowned as if troubled by the vehemence of his denial. He lowered his gaze to the fire twirling in the arcane octagon of his hearth.

“But why would that be, when they are true?”

Proyas is bewildered. Shocked. He sees the halos around Kellhus’s hands and asks what he is saying. “That Men are children to me, precisely as Achamian claims.” Proyas agrees because he’s father to them. Kellhus stares at him and asks, “What father murders so many of his sons?”

What was this melancholy? What was this doubt? After campaigning so long, surviving so much calamity, how could the man who gave meaning to it all ask such corrosive questions?

“A divine one,” the Exalt-General declared.

As the Sranc grow hungrier, they become bolder. More violent. Patrols had to be done in force after losing two companies. They have to camp with defenses now. Despite this, the soldiers starting singing as they march. The “Beggar’s Lament” became very popular as they sing about their hardships, inventing new ones.

And so the Army of the Middle-North marched into the Horde’s shadow laughing.

Kayûtas and his council have little humor. Their supply situation is growing worrying and so far half the slaves have died from the reduced rations. When the nobles complained, Kayûtas points out that they’re only here because Kellhus conceded to the bitchy noblemen. It wouldn’t be long before those caste-nobles would have to kill their own slaves, the Slaughter of the Camp-followers. And with them not finding food, it wouldn’t be long for that to happen. And thanks to the drought, there’s not enough grass for the horses to eat.

They start devising new strategies to deal with the Sranc. They will soon be in such great numbers, they will attack. King Hogrim asked how many there are. “More than us, my friend.” King Narnol, whose son was killed by the Sranc, wants to reunite the Great Ordeal and face this threat together. Not a good plan since the army can’t feed itself which is why they broke apart in the first place. “To stand together is to stave together.” Fear is building in Kayûtas’s generals.

“Trust in my Father,” he [Kayûtas] pressed, “who has foreseen and planned for all of these dilemmas. Think of how fifty of your knight can rout a mob of thousands! The Sranc battle in crazed masses, bereft of design or coordination. You need not fear for your flank, only stand your ground! Hack and hew!” He turned to gesture to his sister, Anasûrimbor Serwa, the Grandmistress of the Sawayali, whose beauty was ever a lodestone for ideal eyes. “Most importantly, recall the Schools and the destruction they can rain down upon our foes! Have no fear, my brothers. We will cobble the horizon with their carcasses!”

And the Lords of the Ordeal filed from the council striking their chests and crying out in renewed resolution. So easy it was to kindle the lust for blood in the hearts of Men. Even those thrown more than a thousand miles from their home.

The army marches through dust, whispering about the Horde and speculating on their numbers. They take bets on the scouting patrols while those men feel like they’re at the end of the earth as they drive the Sranc before them through the dust. Sometimes, the wind would change and they’d hear the Sranc shrieking like “children.”

When they do spot Sranc, the patrols would “retreat” and draw the bold Sranc away from the horde to be slaughtered. At first, they count the amount of Sranc they killed, companies boasting about their numbers. But when they start hitting numbers in the tens of thousands, it seemed futile to count. Their enemy was inexhaustible.

As the rations grew worse, more slaves are abandoned, too weak to walk. The soldiers are eating amicut. Some lords murder their slaves at night, and macabre tales are traded. At night, there are less fires as they are running lower on fuel. This march is unlike anything. There is no prospect of battle and a victory to hearten the men. Just drudgery day after day. The men grow frustrated, but they still believe and fear the Judges. They crave battle, their foe just staying out of reach.

Soon, the Lords of the Ordeal hope the many rivers would trap parts of the horde on one side so they could be massacred, but the draught has reduced them to muddy channels. As they cross, they foul the water. Disease starts afflicting the Great Ordeal. Sick columns trail after the four armies and “quickly become pageants of death and misery.” The Great Ordeal learns what the histories and poet’s leave out: “more warrior die in offal than in blood.”

The Sranc keep retreating. But their attacks on the pickets grows in size and scale. The skirmish become more bloody. The ones who get closes to the Horde describe it as “the edge of screaming miles.” This idiom spreads through the horde. There are victories and slaughters, and General Sibawul gets flogged again. Mutters about how ancient emperors had led their men to their deaths out of pride.

Kayûtas reassures everyone that they battle will soon come because while the Great Ordeal is hungry, they’re starving. One guy snorts that they think to steal food the Great Ordeal doesn’t have only for King Vûkyelt calls him an idiot. They are the food.

Some whine to Kellhus for him to give a speech and silence all the doom and gloom. “If your nations cannot endure trials so paltry without my intervention, then truly the Great Ordeal is doomed.” So the soldiers tighten their belts and trudge on, exhausted and moving “like men trapped in nightmares.”

It always shamed Sorweel that he had no brothers. It never made sense why he felt bad that his mom had failed to have another son or his father refusing to get a new wife after her death. His father would fight with advisers when they pointed out if Harweel died, the dynasty would end. It made Sorweel feel precious, and if he had a younger brother, he could share this burden with. So he’d always looked for a brother among his peers, but he was always the Prince. Now, Sorweel needs to have a brother and isn’t sure he has any friends.

Because the Scions had found a vast Sranc horde following the Great Ordeal. They are in peril, especially when they see the Nonmen in command of the army. Insane Erratics who look like Sranc walking around like men. A perversion of what’s “natural.”

There’s barely a hundred of them leading them along with a different type called “Ursranc” as Eskeles calls them. They’re bigger and more obedient than the wild Sranc. The uniformity of their armor marks them from their “wolfish kin” whom they whip and patrol around. Even the numerous Ursranc were nothing compared to the tens of thousands of Sranc all yoked together in squares of ten thousand of them. They’re staring at a Yoke Legions. The Erratics and Ursranc would drive them to the Ordeal and hit them from behind.

The Consult was real. If the unmasking of the skin-spy in the Umbilicus had not entirely convinced Sorweel, this most certainly did. The Aspect-Emperor warred against a real enemy. And unless the Scions could find some way to warn Kayûtas, the Army of the Middle-North was doomed.

For the last “crazed fortnight” the Scions had been trying to catch up with the Great Ordeal. As fast as their going, the Ten-Yoke Legion matched them. They’re pushing their ponies to the limits and, after the first week, the beasts began to flag. As they ride, mounts died. When they did, the best riders were kept and the weakest were abandoned to run on foot. Obotegwa was the first to be left behind. Charampa followed. Only Eskeles was not subjected to this even as the fat Schoolman gained the nickname “Pony-Killer.” Out of shame, he stops eating.

When Baribul has to be left behind after the fifth pony that died beneath Eskeles, he demands to know why he doesn’t use his sorcerer to walk the sky. The sorcerer points out that there are Nonmen Quya hunting them, and if he draws their attention, they’re dead. The youth protests and Harnilas kills him. Then Harnilas shouts that he doesn’t care about who their fathers are. All that matters is the mission. Only one man needs to reach the Great Ordeal to raises the alarm.

Sorweel lingered behind, staring at the body in the dust. For the first time, he understood the mortal stakes of their endeavour—the mission his insight had delivered. The Scions could very well be doomed, and unless he set aside his cowardice and pride, he would die not only without brothers but without friends as well.

They keep riding, exhausted, half-asleep. Zsoronga tells Sorweel that he’ll be the next one left behind when Eskeles kills his current mount. “Imagine. The Satakhan of High Holy Zeüm, stumping along through the dust…” Sorweel tries to reassure his friend, but Zsoronga uses humor to brush it aside, saying when he’s Satakhan and a courtier whines about their problems, he’ll say, “Yes, I remember the time I was forced to hobble alone through Sranc-infested wastes.”

It’s now that Sorweel blurts out he’s not a Believer-King. Zsoronga is surprised Sorweel speaks Sheyic. He protests again and Zsoronga snots in disgust and says he knows. Sorweel asks how he can.

Exhaustion has a way of parting the veils between men, not so much because the effort of censoring their words exceeds them, but because weariness is the foe of volatility. Oft times insults that would pierce the wakeful simply thud against the sleepless and fatigued.

Zsoronga points out that Kellhus saw it, and he always sees true. Sorweel objects and struggles to find the words in Sheyic. He can’t explain with happened that day. Zsoronga says its easy that Sorweel was revealed to be as false as the skin-spy.

Sorweel feels frustrated. He almost feels like giving up. What does it matter. He’s exhausted. Then he gathers himself and growls, “He murdered my father!” Zsoronga asks then why. Sorweel says to make them not trust each other. To make Sorweel not trust himself. He then adds that maybe Kellhus was mistaken. That makes Zsoronga laugh. It’s ridiculous because a barbarian is supposed to have deceived Kellhus. He protests that there’s another reason, but Zsoronga will think him mad.

“I’ve seen you in battle,” he [Zsoronga] finally said, speaking with the semblance of cruelty that men sometimes use to make room for a friend’s momentary weakness. He smiled as best as his heart could manage. “I already think you mad.”

A single teasing accusation, and the rift of suspicion between them was miraculously healed. Often men need only speak around things to come together and so remember what it means to speak through.

Sorweel tells Zsoronga about everything since the fall of Sakarpus including the way Porsparian made Yatwer’s face before the council where Kellhus saw Sorweel as a Believer-King. Zsoronga is still doubtful. But ever since, Kayûtas has been congratulatory at Sorweel’s “conversion.” He asks what Zsoronga thinks.

He’s dismissive of Yatwer, calling her a slave Goddess and beneath them. Sorweel knows this. It shames him that she touched him. He’s pledged to Gilgaöl. However, Zsoronga says she’s still to be respected. She’s the oldest and strongest of the gods. Sorweel asks what he’s getting at.

The Successor-Prince absently stroked his pony’s neck rather than answer. Even when hesitating, Zsoronga possessed a directness, a paradoxical absence of hesitation. He was one of those rare men who always moved in accordance with themselves, as though his soul had been cut and stitched from a single cloth—so unlike the patched motley that was Sorweel’s soul. Even when the Successor-Prince doubted, his confidence was absolute.

“I think,” Zsoronga said, “and by that I mean think… that you are what they call narindari in the Three Seas…” His body seemed to sway about the stationary point of his gaze. “Chosen by the Gods to kill.”

“Kill?” Sorweel cried. “Kill?”

Prince nods. His face goes blank like he doesn’t want to show the pity he feels for Sorweel and thus shame him. “To avenge your father,” is Zsoronga’s reason. Sorweel had known this, but had been afraid to admit that he has to kill Kellhus. He begs Zsoronga to tell him what he has to do. What does Yatwer want from him.

Zsoronga is dismissive, saying that the Gods “are children and we are their toys.” One day, they like you, the next your city is destroyed. It’s why in Zeümi they pray to their ancestors. Sorweel presses what Zsoronga thinks he should do. Zsoronga laughs and says he should stand before him as a joke. Sorweel had learned the Zeümi prize making jokes no matter the situation.

Zsoronga gets serious and points out that Yatwer is guiding his fate. She’s won him accolades on this raid so that now Harnilas looks to Sorweel for advice when everyone used to think him a kid.

“She is positioning you, Sorweel.”

Another truth that Sorweel wanted to ignore. Now he regrets telling his friend what was going on. It felt so absurd looking for a friend in Zsoronga who’s from the other side of the world. He asks what if doesn’t want this?

“We Zeümi pray to our ancestors for a reason.”

Clouds are spotted and the Army of the Middle-North thinks rain is coming. All they got was a break from the dust and a black night. The Sranc attack the Galeoth flank. The surprised men hold ground as alarms are raised. But by the time the army is raised, the Sranc war-party is already defeated, an easy victory. Still, Kayûtas sends out the Kidruhil to scout the night. Calvarymen hate riding pickets at night. Too easy to be ambushed or to have horses crippled. They wouldn’t even get to feast on their dead mounts because one captain deliberately killed a few horses to feed his men. He’d been executed for wasting a valuable resource.

The assembled soldiers grow bored. But then cries come from the night. Patrols fail to return. Kayûtas summons Serwa from the Sawayali Witches camp, cloistered from the rest. Because not only are they witches, who until recently were forbidden to openly use their gift, but also women. A few men had already been executed for pursuing their “deranged infatuation.” The witches were important. In reality, the armies were really just the means of delivering the Schoolmen and Witches to Golgotterath. But the time had come to use them.

The “Nuns” are deployed in billowing robes. All are young women since the school is so new. They walk the sky like “flowers of golden silk.” They began chanting and lit the world with Bars of Heaven, about two hundred of them. It reveals that a mass of Sranc are close. A huge host crawling on their bellies.

They had come as locusts, where the lust of the one sparks the lust of the other, until all is plague. They had come, answering a cunning as old as the age of their obscene manufacture. They had come to feast and they had come to couple, for they knew no other possibility.

The Nuns unleash their Gnostic sorcery. The soldiers watch. For seven heartbeats, there is only fire burning Sranc. Some arrows try to strike the Nuns, but they’re destroyed by wards. The Sranc shriek so loudly, men clamp hands over ears. The Sawayali advance and unleash more sorcerer. It’s so loud, no one can communicate even by drum or horn.

But the Believer-Kings had no need of communication; they had but one inviolable order…

Yield no ground.

The army watches the “cyclopean charge” as the horde rushes through the gauntlets. The survivors rush at the army line. They crash into the soldiers. Packed so tight, the dead can’t even fall. The army stands their ground stubbornly. If they flee, the men know they’ll die. From behind the packed phalanxes, the archers shower arrows on the horde. They blind fire, knowing they must hit one of the enemy but there are so many Sranc, what did it matter.

The knights can only watch on. Some want to abandon their mounts and fight with the infantry, but the Judges reminded them of the Aspect Emperor’s Martial Prohibitions. One man, Earl Hirengar, could not be stopped. He killed a few Judges and charged into the fight with his men. They made it thirty yards beyond the line before they were pulled down by the Sranc. All died. This sent a panic through the nearby infantry men, but the Nuns arrived and attack the Sranc before them. This gives them time to recover their morale.

Despite the brutal fight, the men began to sing the Beggar’s Lament at the howling Horde. They they laughed as they fought, “weeping for the joy of destruction.” The song becomes their banner. It’s something pure that can’t be soiled. They became unconquerable.

Sorweel and the Scions raced north. Exhaustion presses on Sorweel. He’s heaving trouble staying upright in his saddle. He and Zsoronga share mock encouragement and insults, the words not mattering just the fact they were speaking that helped the other endure the misery. After days, they had finally outdistanced the Ten-Yoked-Legion, down to only fifteen men. They are riding toward what they thought is a thunderstorm but there’s too much metal ringing in the air. They hear it over the drum of the hooves.

The Horde.

A sound so titanic that Harnilas, for all his ruthless determination to reach General Kayûtas, called the ragged company to a halt. The scions sat rigid in their saddles, squinting at their shadowy companions, waiting for their dust to outrun them. Sorweel peered ahead, struggling to make sense of the flash and flicker that now extended across a good swathe of the horizon.

He looked to Zsoronga, but the man hung his head, grimacing and thumbing his eyes.

Eskeles casts his sorcerous lens to show what is going on. Despite being exhausted, the Scions are horrified by the sight of the “Heaving, howling masses, pale and silvery like fish schooling through dark waters.” The men of the Ordeal are almost impossible to see, but the witches in the sky unleashing destruction are easy enough to spot.

Sorweel thinks the army is doomed while also thinking Kellhus’s war is real. Eskeles mutters he’s seen this in his dreams. Sorweel finds himself saying, “This time the God marches with us.” These words are something he suddenly wants to believe. At that moment, they hear the Beggar’s Lament is being sung, which heartens the Scions. The drinking song is glorious to hear.

A massacre of the mad many by the holy few.

That was when they heard another sound, another ear-scratching roar… one that came shivering through the dark and dust and grasses.

More Sranc.

Behind them.

Kayûtas knows that the Sranc will envelop them, not out of tactics but out of a mad need to mob them. So he’s ready for them to try and flank his army. The fight is brutal, but despite the enemy numbers, none breached the line.

Sorweel and the Scions flee before the Ten-Yoke Legion riding toward the sorcery. Behind them, the Sranc howled. Sorweel realized that the half-starved Sranc have been unleashed on the Horde. He glanced behind him to see the horde on their heels. Eskeles pony dies and he is thrown to the earth. Sorweel goes back for him. He leaps from his mount and grabs the prone Eskeles. He lifted the fat sorcerer and marched ahead as a Sranc rushed at him.

And for a heartbeat he smiled. A King of the Horselords, dying for leuneraal…

One last humiliation.

The beasts surfaced, as if looking back had become looking down. Faces of pale silk, crushed into expressions both crazed and licentious. Slicked weapons. Glimpses piled upon glimpses, terror upon terror.

Sorweel looked to them, smiling even as his body tensed against hacking iron. He watched the nearest leap…

Only to crash into a film of incandescent blue—sorcery—wrapped into a hemisphere about them.

He is surrounded by wards that protect him. The Sranc can’t get to them. But Eskeles is thrashing. Panicking. He’s terrified and wrestling with Sorweel. He has to pin the man and shouts at him to look at him. But the sorcerer is terrified, pissing his pants. Sorweel shouts that Eskeles has to do something as the cracks appear in the Wards. They’re failing. Eskeles babbles, so Sorweel cuffs him.

Sorweel shouts that Eskeles has to summon light to warn the Great Ordeal. That gets through to Eskeles. He pushes Sorweel out of the way as the Ward fails. He stars chanting, light gleaming from his mouth, illuminating all the Sranc around them.

Like a nightmare. Like a mad fresco depicting the living gut of Hell, bleached ever whiter for the brilliance of the Schoolman’s unholy song. Words too greased to be caught and subdued by the Legion’s vicious roar, echoing through canyons.

And there it was… striking as straight as a geometer’s line from the ground at the fat sorcerer’s feet. Dazzling the eyes, stilling the inhuman onlookers with salt-white astonishment…

Reaching high to illuminate the belly of the overcast night.

A Bar of Heaven.

Kayûtas was the first to see the Bar of Heaven to the south. There should be nothing but “dead earth” in that direction. He glanced at his sister who had seen what he had. Others, too. One glimpse at her brother’s face is all for her to know what to do. After all, they “were children of Dûnyain.” She mounts the sky.

Sorweel smells burning snakes. Light explodes around them. He sees women in the air, the Sawayali witches singing. He then notices a Goddess has picked him up and carried him. He gasps out, “Mother?” But he’s not referring to his mother. Yatwer. The Goddess says no. She’s worse. He realizes it’s Serwa as she smiles with “the cruelty of the peerless” while asking him how many will die for her to save him.

“Drop me then,” he croaked.

She recoiled from the floating fury of his gaze, looked out across the threshing darkness, frowning as if finally understanding she bore a king in her arcane embrace. Through acrid veils of smoke, he breathed deep the scent of her: the myrrh of glory and privilege, the salt of exertion.

Let me fall.

My Thoughts

I do enjoy these more removed narrative sections to tell us about these historic events. Not up close, but very dry. Like we’re reading history of what had happened. It’s a good way to cover information that a POV character isn’t witnessing, or would take a chapter to write from such a POV and do it in a dozen paragraphs. It’s effective and conveying important information that might be just told to a POV character by another author.

Cannibalism? I don’t recall cannibalism in the first series. But we’re getting ready for what’s to come. That is why Proyas is thinking these thoughts. He’s being condition. I wouldn’t be surprised if Kellhus was behind it or capitalizing on it. After all, Proyas will be his scapegoat for what the Great Ordeal has to do to survive crossing the Fields Appalling.

Now we get to Kellhus deconstructing his mythology to Proyas. To drive this good man, this man of faith, to do such horrendous acts so that Kellhus can keep his hands clean of the atrocities. I like Proyas, and there are a lot of reason I hate Kellhus, and what he does to him is one of those crimes. Kellhus might be fighting to save the world for Esmenet and to end the cycle of damnation for Serwë, but his methods are evil.

So interesting to see how familiarity can affect perception. Sorweel sees the Sranc as something familiar so the Nonmen look strange to him since they’re like Sranc pretending to be men.

I remember the debate. Did Kellhus really see Sorweel as a Believer-King or not. What’s clear from the next book is that Serwa sees Sorweel as a Believer-King and is vexed that she can’t get him to hate her in preparation for arriving at Istherebinth. So there is some supernatural protection on him that Yatwer gave Sorweel. All to make him one of her Narinder. The White-Luck Warrior is another. She’s not using one way to kill Kellhus, but several.

So Zsoronga knows what Sorweel is, but he has the reason wrong. Yatwer does not care about avenging his father or anyone. She’s just scared about losing the power of her worshipers. She can see a lot of people are about to die.

Sorweel doesn’t want others to die for him. He wants to die himself. He wants to be dropped. He doesn’t want Yatwer to use him as her bitch. He rejects that. It shames him. Just like it’s shaming him to be saved by a woman.

Yet, she’s a goddess. Serwa. He loves her, or the idea of her. The princess. The beautiful witch.

Not a lot of comments on this chapter. It’s mostly just setting up this battle. The plot of it. More historical than personal.

If you want to read more, click here for Chapter Eight!

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When the Stormriders attack …

…Ary’s people have little chance.

Can he find a way to defeat them?

At 19, Ary has spent ten years mourning his father’s death. The aftermath of the attack still haunts him. Now, on the eve of the draft he faces his greatest fear, being sent to become a marine.

He knows the cost of war.

All he wants is to marry Charlene, who he has loved since they were kids. Building a farm and starting a family sounds perfect. There’s just one problem, his best friend Vel adores her, too. He’d give anything for peace.

But wanting the Stormriders to stop attacking…

…isn’t going to make it happen.

For love, for his people, and especially for the life he wants, Ary makes a decision that will change everything.

The adventure begins.

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