A Promise of Iron by Brandon McCoy (the reading list .txt) 📕

than the horns before and twice as ominous. It carried with the sound of a thousand footfalls. I closed my eyes and thought of Lira. I thought of her lips, of her body entwined with mine. I thought of a lifetime lost. I stabbed Nahdril into the red ground and sat upon the prime’s lifeless corpse. I had done my part. Now… now it was time to rest. Horns blasted from all around. I heard Borton giving orders to his men. What was the point? I kept my eyes closed. I welcomed the end.

“Faerin,” a voice said. I felt a hand on my shoulder, jostling me. “Faerin, wake up.”

I opened my eyes. Borton stood in front of me. An old man to his left. A boy to his right. Behind them was a host of hooded figures.

“I think you should stand,” Borton said, lifting me off the prime’s body. “If you can.”

We were surrounded—thirty around us, hundreds more around them. They wore robes of white with chest plates dark as if cast from iron. They carried bows made of black horn, each with an arrow ready and trained upon us. A figure approached me, holding a curved blade almost as long as a spear. It looked to be made of iron but had streaks of red running through it; dye perhaps meant to look like blood.

He was taller than a Golmere, closer to the height of a Cyllian. He removed his hood and revealed two long swept ears, red like the ground beneath us. Their color matched the rest of his skin, a hue like old brick, but it was his eyes that were most striking. They were a bright violet that seemed to glow as it reflected the light from the burning wreckage. He was Sunemere.

He pointed his sword-spear at the prime, then nodded.

I leaned forward and pulled Nahdril free. When I looked up, the bows were raised, strings taut.

“Perhaps you should put down your sword?” Borton said, palms raised to the Sunemere.

“I think you’re right,” I said slowly as I laid Nahdril to the ground.

The Sunemere cocked his head, then bent low to retrieve the blade. I held my palms out as Borton did, as the young boy did, as the old man did. The creature looked over the blade, nodded, then offered it to me. I took the sword and sheathed it slowly.

He bent again, this time retrieving the black horn bow that matched the one he had slung across his back. “Telrnur tulra alh harani,” he said as he placed the second bow around his shoulders.

I shook my head. “Any of you speak Sunemere?” The men shook their heads in unison. “Yeah, didn’t think so.”

He turned to me, and I watched his eyes shift from their second sight. They were as violet as before but darker, like deep pools of dark ocean, reflecting no light. He tapped on Nahdril’s lord stone with the tip of his sword-spear. “Illyria,” he said in accented Cyllian. “Good.”

Chapter Fifty and One

Summer 1272, Cyllian Imperial Count

The Sunemere took the prime’s corpse and left, heading west at some haste across the Heights. We collected our dead and buried them in a field overlooking the burnt-out granary. Borton marked the grave with stone from the ruins; it seemed fitting. The old man didn’t survive his wounds; we added him to the rest of the fallen. His name was Moors. We were only three now.

I placed Ros in a separate grave beneath an old oak and carved a Cyllian six-star into the trunk with Jaeron’s dagger. I removed his stars to return to the commander and gave Repent to Borton to carry. We bundled up the Golmere weapons, spears, knives, the arrows the prime used, and one iron longsword that I would be personally returning to Windshear, with questions. We took their ears as well, seventy and six pairs in all; we left their bodies to rot.

As the sun began to rise, we headed south. When we reached our camp near the old wall, Steven was there waiting. Ros’s horse was with him. I looked through the saddlebags until I found a healer’s kit. I did my best patching Borton up. His wounds were numerous, but I only considered a few of them to be urgent. The boy had taken a blow to the head but was otherwise no worse for wear. I looked through Ros’s bags and found my jacket and the provisions. I made a quick meal. We ate in silence.

I took the boy with me on Steven as Borton rode Ros’s mount. Only after we crossed the Woad did Borton speak.

“I saw you fall,” he said. “The next thing I see is you slicing through that creature’s neck.” He slowed his trot. “How?”

The boy was already quiet, but I felt him quiet even more as he listened.

“I’m not sure how to answer, Borton. I thought I was dead; then, I wasn’t.”

I looked down at the wound on my stomach. The flesh was still soft.

“We lost a lot of good men,” Borton said solemnly. “Never thought I would be counting an army of Sunemere among my blessings.”

I nodded.

“Well, I know I used up a lifetime of luck today,” Borton continued. “Quin spared me for a reason, better make it count for something.”

I chuckled. “You might want to look for a new line of work.”

He smiled. “Maybe farming.”

I touched at the healing flesh on my stomach and rode now with a different understanding. There are certainties in the world, things that are without doubt. Hot is hot, cold is cold. You can prove these things, and so you build a foundation rooted in those certainties. The certainties of my world were gone now, replaced with something else, replaced with things less certain, things that cannot be easily explained or reasoned. These were things that lived in a gray area somewhere between reason and faith. Weave lived here, as did quin.

Quin was real. Not as luck or some superstition the old roots