McCloud’s. But at least he would not have done so right away. He would have given McCloud a little bit of time to think he was free, before he ambushed and butchered him and his family.
But McCloud had not gone along with it, and that put Andronicus in a rage. Now, to send a message to the rest of his empire, he would not just destroy McCloud and his loved ones, but torture them first. He smiled as he imagined dismembering them slowly, carrying their body parts to all four corners of the empire. Yes, he would shrink their heads and preserve them, and maybe even replace his current necklace with McCloud’s shrunken head. He reached out and fingered the shrunken heads dangling at the base of his throat, and he enjoyed the thought immensely. He already started to imagine the type of chain he would bore through McCloud’s head.
Andronicus’ men caught up to him, fifty paces behind, charging with a scream into the village of flames and slaughtering the villagers who ran out of their homes. Andronicus looked back and smiled, as he could already see blood filling the streets. It was gearing up to be a fabulous day.
This was the tenth McCloud village they had ravaged today, and the second sun had barely risen in the sky. They had landed earlier in the morning on the McCloud shore, Andronicus leading a fleet of ten thousand ships. As his feet had touched down on the sand, he’d marveled that he was back here in this place, on the outer shores of the Ring, twice under a single moon. This time, though, he had come prepared for war, not for talk. He had brought along the McCloud prisoner who held the key to breaching the Canyon. This time he would not meet with McCloud. This time he would lead his men across the fifty mile wasteland of the McCloud’s outer territory, ride right to the Canyon itself, and use the McCloud prisoner to show him how to breach it. His men would cross the Canyon, onto the other side, and he would surprise McCloud and burn his court down to the ground. He looked forward to the look of surprise on McCloud’s face when he saw Andronicus in his own backyard, across the Canyon. It would be priceless.
And when Andronicus finished destroying the McClouds, he would then turn to his real target: the MacGils. Once inside the Ring, he would cross the Highlands, bring his million man army to MacGil’s front step, and wipe out any memory there ever was of King’s Court. When he was through, it would be a distant memory, a pile of rubble. He could already see the smoke and ashes and fumes in his mind’s eye, could already see the MacGil land, once so choice, nothing but a desolate ruin, a sign for all those who dared to fight him. The thought made him smile.
Andronicus charged, not pausing any longer to terrorize this village, but focusing instead on the looming Canyon. His men caught up, charging beside them, and they raced across this desolate wasteland, populated with random McCloud villages, foolish frontiersman who had been dumb enough to live outside the Canyon. It served them right. They should have lived inside the Canyon. Did they all really think they would be safe here forever from the reach of the great Andronicus?
They rode west for hours, getting closer to the Canyon, ravaging several more villages along the way. As the second sun grew long in the sky, finally, they rounded a hilltop, and Andronicus saw it: the great Canyon. It was as awe-inspiring now as it was when he had seen it as a boy. It perplexed him to no end, this wonder of the world, with its magic energy shield which had kept his people at bay from the Ring for generations. It was the one place left on the planet that his army could not breach, and it vexed him to no end.
Now, finally, he had the information he needed to cross it. He would accomplish what all of his ancestors before him had failed to do. He would enter the one last untouched, pristine part of the planet, and have his men soil every inch of it. He would crush it until it was entirely under his dominion. He could already savor the rush of power he would feel when he was done. There would be no place left on the planet he