Richard Ford - Herald of the Storm

This last news seemed to trouble the prince and his brow furrowed as he brooded. Azreal could see it made the Khurtic generals nervous.

‘This is not enough,’ Amon Tugha said. ‘I need her dead. Once their queen has fallen the rest will crumble around her and the city will be mine. But there is more than one way to reach her.’

Amon Tugha glanced to the shadows of the tent, to the Khurtic shaman who sat in silence consulting his knucklebones. The prince’s dark mood slowly eased.

‘What now, my lord?’ Azreal was keen to have his instructions and be away from here. Though it shamed him, he could not shake the fact that this place, these people, disturbed him.

‘Now you go and wash the stink of the streets from your body,’ said Amon Tugha. ‘And then we will make our way south where my city awaits.’

This brought murmurs of assent from the Khurtas, Brulmak Tarr loudest of all.

‘As you wish.’ And with that, Azreal left the tent.

Once outside he took a deep breath of the night air. He would have followed Amon Tugha across all the lands and seas of the world, such was his love for his prince, but he could not help but feel this was all folly.

His master was a brave man, and it was an injustice that his name and position had been destroyed, and for nothing, but this was no way to regain glory. To take the lands of another nation, to reduce its capital to ruin and slay its queen was no way to prove your worth to a land that had rejected you.

But where Amon Tugha led, Azreal would follow.

And he would bring his hordes with him.

And they would not stop until Steelhaven had fallen.