beyond you. You love yourself far too much to answer it.”
Other Skeltir would have bridled at the insult but Kehlbrand just laughed. “No, you venal fool. I love myself far too much not to.”
“What was it?” I asked him as we rode back to our encampment. Whilst he had shared a great deal with me regarding what our brother had told him, much still remained hidden. “What was the second question?”
“It was a simple thing really,” he said. “He asked me, ‘What is a god?’”
“And the reply?”
“All in good time, little colt.” He laughed and spurred his horse to a gallop. “All in good time.”
Kehlbrand’s masterstroke in securing eventual dominance of the Hast came the following spring when he persuaded the other Skeltir to cede to him control of their tors. Kehlbrand had long understood that the true wealth of the Stahlhast has always resided in the tors from where we source our iron and smelt our steel. Each tor had its own cluster of hovels and workshops where the slaves laboured to craft the metal into weapons and armour, whilst others are set to work in the pens where we breed the finest horses in the world. Such labour has long been considered beneath the dignity of those born to the Hast. In fact, the raids we launched into the southlands were often driven by the need to replenish the enslaved workforce who had a tendency to perish after barely a dozen years of productive use. The whole enterprise was undoubtedly effective in producing steel of good quality, but it was also massively inefficient.
“Every season you must leave half your warriors behind to guard your tors and whip your slaves,” Kehlbrand explained to the assembled Skeltir. “If we are ever to sweep to the Golden Sea, this must change. Place your tors in my hands. They will still belong to you, all the slaves and steel will be yours, but I will oversee them, and the rewards will be great.”
“But who will guard them?” the Skeltir enquired. “And who will whip the slaves?”
“Soon the Stahlhast will be one,” Kehlbrand replied. “And Skeld will not steal from other Skeld. As for the slaves . . .” He paused then and I remember a small smile playing across his lips as he lowered his head, muttering something in the language of the southlands, a tongue unknown to all present save me. “What god need whip his supplicants?” The smile disappeared as he raised his head once more, face forming the purposeful glower expected of a Skeltir as he replied, “They will come to fear the merest glance of the Darkblade far more than the kiss of your lash.”
There were objections, of course, voices raised in condemnation of one who would undo centuries of tradition, one who would lead us away from the path set down by the Unseen countless years ago. This obliged Kehlbrand to engage in another brief round of battle and challenge, and within the space of another year the tors were in his grasp.
“What do you see, little colt?” he enquired as we toured the hovels clustered around one of the largest tors in the Iron Steppe. It had been named the Fist of the Unseen by some long-forgotten ancestor, and generations of Stahlhast had fought to possess it ever since, it being so rich in ore. Until recently the Fist had rested in the hands of the Wohten Skeld, whose Skeltir, a stubborn man with an unfortunate attachment to his name, had chosen death rather than subservience. Tacitly, the Fist remained the property of the Wohten, but any fool could see that only my brother’s will held sway here now.
“I see a den of slaves,” I replied, surveying the ramshackle huts. Filth ran in shallow channels through the narrow streets, and the place stank of smoke and human waste. Most of the inhabitants were at work in either the mines or the pens, the few who remained careful to seclude themselves in their hovels as we passed by. Here and there a body lay in a shadowed corner, stripped of clothing and shrouded by flies. Whilst I would dearly love to claim some welling of compassion at this juncture, the unpalatable truth is that the plight of the slaves had never troubled my thoughts to any great degree. They were not of the Hast, and their bondage and labour were necessities blessed by the priests. It had always been this way.