Neither creature followed, for which he was thankful. Every step taken by the huge beasts set the camp’s dogs to howling and he was in no mood for their brainless cries.
Half the night was gone. He had called in the clan leaders and the most senior elders, one and all crowding into the hut that had once belonged to Hadralt. They had come expect ing castigation, more condemnation from their new and much feared war leader, but Redmask had no interest in fur-ther belittling the warriors now under his command. The wounds of earlier that day were fresh enough. The courage they had lost could only be regained in battle.
For all of Hadralt’s faults, he had been correct in on thing-the old way of fighting against the Letherii was doomed to fail. Yet the now-dead war leader’s purported intent to retrain the Awl to a mode of combat identical to that of the Letherii was, Redmask told his followers, also doomed. The tradition did not exist, the Awl were skilled in the wrong weapons, and loyalties rarely crossed lines of clan and kin.
A new way had to be found.
Redmask had then asked about the mercenaries that ha been hired, and the tale that unfolded had proved both complicated and sordid, details teased out from reluctant, shamefaced warriors. Oh, there had been plenty of Letherii coin delivered as part of the land purchase, and that wealth had been originally amassed with the intent of hiring a foreign army-one that had been found on the borderlands to the east. But Hadralt had then grown to covet all that gold and silver, so much so that he betrayed that army-led them to their deaths-rather than deliver the coin into their possession.
Such was the poison that was coin.
Where had these foreigners come from?
From the sea, it appeared, a landing on the north coast of the wastelands, in transports under the flag of Lamatath, a distant peninsular kingdom. Soldier priests and priestesses, sworn to wolf deities.
What had brought them to this continent?
Prophecy.
Redmask had started at that answer, which came from Natarkas, the spokesman among the copper-faces, the same warrior who had revealed Hadralt’s murder of Capalah.
A prophecy, War Leader, Natarkas had continued. A final war. They came seeking a place they called the Battlefield of the Gods. They called themselves the Grey Swords, the Reve of Togg and Fanderay. There were many women among them, including one of the commanders. The other is a man, one-eyed, who claims he has lost that eye three times-
No, War Leader, this one still lives. A survivor of the battle. Hadralt imprisoned him. He lies in chains behind the women’s blood-hut-