The Rise and Fall of a Dragonking - By Lynn Abbey Page 0,85
season after changeless season.
The ones who couldn’t take the boredom packed up and left. Hamanu had thought he was well rid of them. He went back to teaching the land-wisdom he’d learned from his father and grandfather to the veterans who remained. But the veterans who returned to the lowlands—and those who’d never left—couldn’t live without war. Rumors reached the Kreegills of brigands who terrorized the plains, flaunting the medallions he’d given them. The rumors claimed that lowland farmers and townsfolk believed Hamanu Troll-Scorcher had become Hamanu Human-Scorcher, ready to enforce the demands of any petty warlord.
Even now, a thousand years later, Hamanu’s sweaty shoulders stiffened at the memory. The first time he’d heard what his discharged veterans were doing in his name, he’d been stunned speechless. The second time, he’d vowed, would be the last. He’d always been ready to take full responsibility for his war against the trolls, for the orders he’d given that his veterans had carried out. But he wouldn’t—then or ever—bear the blame for another man’s crime.
In a cold fury, Hamanu had left the Kreegills for the second time. With his loyal veterans behind him, he tracked down those who betrayed both him and humanity. He killed the boldest—and found he had as much a taste for human suffering as he’d once had a taste for trolls. He could have killed every medallion-bearing brigand and every low-life scum who’d fallen in with them. But killing his own kind—those who’d been his kind when he was a mortal man—sickened Hamanu even as it sated him.
His metamorphosis advanced. He grew too massive for any kank to carry and, therefore, walked everywhere in the half-man, half-lion guise he’d adopted before his final battle with Windreaver. His followers didn’t mind; for years, they hadn’t believed he was a man like them. They thought they served a living god.
A living god, Hamanu thought as he went down to his knees in the reeking sludge, would pay better attention to where he put his feet!
The Lion’s reputation spread far beyond the Kreegill Mountains. Human refugees from deep in the heartland, where other champions had fought other cleansing wars, came to him with complaints of brigands and warlords who’d never fought a troll or worn his ceramic medallion. At first, he refused to help, but there were more refugees than the Kreegill plains could support. So, he walked westward, chasing rumors and warlords across the Yaramuke barrens until he came to a pair of sleepy towns named Urik and Codesh, where rival warlords fought for control of the trade-road between Tyr and Giustenal.
A delegation from Urik met Hamanu while he and his followers were still a good day’s journey from the paired towns. There were nobles and farmers among the Urikites, freemen and -women from every walk of life—even a few individuals whose odd-featured appearance bespoke a mixture of human and elven blood, the first half-breeds Hamanu had ever seen.
Prejudice older than his champion’s curse reared up within Hamanu. He thought he knew what he’d do before a single word was spoken; raze Urik for its impurity and let that town’s fate bring Codesh into line. But he went through the motions of listening—a god, he thought, should appear, at least, to listen. His arm—the arm where he’d secreted the pebble that held Windreaver’s silent spirit—ached the entire time he listened to the Urikite’s carefully reasoned plea not only for his help in ridding their town of the warlord, but a proposal that he make Urik his home forever.
“An immortal sorcerer rules in Tyr,” the Urikite leader had explained. “Another rules in Giustenal. Urik lies between them. First the warlords bled us dry, O Mighty Lion; now they bleed the trade caravans that travel between Tyr and Giustenal. Already, the gods of those cities threaten us for crimes we cannot prevent. We beg you to deal harshly with the warlords and to stay with us, to protect us against the greed and anger of our neighbors. If we must live under a god’s yoke, then we wish a god of our own choosing, not the god of Giustenal or Tyr.”
“Tyr and Giustenal are cities,” Hamanu had countered, ignoring the rest. They tempted him, these proud, pragmatic people who thought nothing of the differences between the work men did—indeed between the very races of men—and everything of their common safety. “What can Urik offer me, that I should become its god?”
They told him how Urik occupied the high ground. It dominated the surrounding