Strapped to his back was the fanged broadsword he’d prised from the dead fingers of Lord Akass, his predecessor: the first great feat of many, and the one that had set him on this path. All those years ago - centuries, now - Kastan had realised it was true, that he was like no other mortal. His time in the Reavers had been not only for training and preparation, it had been a refuge against the weight of expectation placed on his shoulders when he had turned sixteen. That day he had been offered a glimpse of his true potential, the weapon the Gods intended him to be.
Even for a white-eye, it was almost too much to bear, Styrax thought as he let the waves of cheering crash over him. Even when I saw the Reavers were lesser kin, it was too much to ask of a boy.
Lord Styrax smiled, and with a deliberately slow movement he reached behind his head and drew the enormous black broadsword. The cheers became deafening and the élite Bloodsworn dropped to one knee, weapons touching the ground as their lord raised Kobra’s split tip to the sky and added his own booming voice to the tumult.
‘We go to war!’ Styrax roared as the thousands raised their own weapons. He turned slowly, watching the faces around him fill with fierce pride.
‘This long march has been hard,’ he called, pausing to give them all time to remember the stories of the tribe’s past, ‘and it is more than the weak who have fallen along the path!’
Deverk Grast had marched the Menin away from the West and ordered that the weak be allowed to fall at the wayside. Once the greatest of the seven tribes, the Menin had endured horrors in the Waste as they travelled to the Ring of Fire; they had nearly been broken as they tried to carve a new home in the wilderness. There were many sects within the tribe who saw this invasion as a return to glory; the rightful return to their place as the foremost of the tribes of man.
‘The pain has been the same for us all, the loss and the suffering shared among proud brothers!’
Styrax felt his face tighten. In his mind’s eye he saw Kohrad exchanging blows with Lord Isak, matching the silver-blurred stokes of the Farlan with all the fire and ferocity he’d possessed. He saw Kohrad struck and stagger, the emerald hilt of Eolis blazing through the storm of magic as he pitched backwards and fell.
‘The end is not yet in sight,’ he shouted, ‘but the reckoning has come. We have beaten all in our path, and when Narkang falls the spine of the West will be broken!
‘The Chetse we defeated, and they honoured us by joining our cause!
‘The Farlan we defeated, and they ran for home!’
Whistles and catcalls came from all around, then laughter. Styrax waited for the noise to abate, then went on, ‘The Farlan ran, and they will run again - but first we take down this self-anointed - a man too afraid to let his rabble of an army past their ditches to face us like men.
‘Show them how men fight, brothers; call the names of our fallen and show them the price of cowardice. We go to war!’
His last words were barely heard as the soldiers yelled in frenzied abandon. General Gaur signalled the drummers to beat to orders, but even the heavy thump of the huge wardrums was swallowed by the clamour. Only when the great curling horns of the Chetse legions sounded and the Menin drums repeated the command did it die down and order resume.
Styrax turned to Gaur and the beastman bowed awkwardly. General Vrill appeared behind him.
‘The legions have their orders?’ Styrax asked.
‘They have, my Lord,’ Vrill called, also bowing. The duke was ready for battle, the ribbons fixed to his white armour trembling in the dull morning light. ‘My infantry are moving out as I speak.’
‘Good. I’ll be counting on you to stir up a little confusion and panic.’
‘While you assault a fixed position,’ Vrill said pointedly. ‘While we both assault fixed positions, with our forces nicely divided.’
Styrax gave the small white-eye a sharp look and sheathed Kobra again. ‘Vrill, you may lecture me about dwindling supplies and lines of communication, or you may remind me of Erialave’s tenets of the field. You may not, however, do both.’
Vrill bowed, lower this time. ‘Apologies, my Lord. I remain yours to command. My concerns are