Chapter One: Frejara
It had started with the drums. Slow, deep beats, quickening as they went. The rhythm was bewitching in its simplicity, booming in the dead of the night. You could hear the drums well before you saw who beat them, and by then, it would already be too late. And tonight, it had been too late for the harbour city of Haedor.
The Jewel of the Northern Sea, they had called it. A glittering beacon of trade and culture, a free city with a proud history of defiance against foreign forces that would have plundered it for its riches, for its fertile lands, for the glory of conquering a city that had seemed unconquerable for generations. Yet, the drums had come for Haedor as they had for countless others, their rhythm a relentless tide eroding the city’s will even before those who beat them reached her walls. By the time the moon passed overhead, Haedor was a city of the dead, covered in blood. A grotesque tableau of contorted bodies and vacant eyes. The once vibrant streets now echoed only with silence.
It wasn’t about the drums, of course. The drums did not put peopleto death or take over a city; that was the work of steel, fire, and an army larger than any that had ever attempted to breach Haedor’s walls before. The drums only warned of our coming. They weren’t a weapon of war but a weapon of fear. They had crept into the hearts of the Haedorians, gnawing at their courage, their resolve.
Steel, fire, and armies had always come to Haedor. They had come and they had gone, their edges blunted against the unyielding spirit of the city. But this time,I had come to Haedor. And Haedor had yielded.
I only realised the incessant clash of steel and the wet gargle of the dying had gone quiet when one of the Sergeants called my name. From the rasp in his throat, it sounded like he’d been shouting for some time – not just my name, but in the battle, to the enemy, to his comrades, maybe even for help. It was impossible to tell. But I recognised the eagerness in his throaty voice that I had heard many times before; he had news, and I was awaited.
“General Frejara”, he called to me again. “The Captain is looking for you.”
“Is he now?” I asked as I stood up from where I had knelt to wash the blood off my hands. I hadn’t drawn it, but it had found me all the same – the pervasive stain of battle, the deep red echo of the day’s grim work, clinging to everything. The small puddle on top of the hill overlooking Haedor and the Northern Sea was now thick and heavy red, barely reflecting the full moon above it. The waves struck against the hill beneath us, in a rhythm not so unlike the drums from mere hours prior. The drums had quietened their beat; the waves had not. And they, much like the puddle underneath my hands, were coloured by blood.
“He said you should come at once.” The Sergeant breathed, his voice lower now, fearful.
“You’d almost think it was Captain Benjadir who gave the orders here,” I said, letting a hint of warmth into my voice. I sometimes forgotthe fear my presence instilled in those who served in my army, not because I was their General, but because my Mother was their Queen. And while not everyone feared her daughter, everyone certainly was afraid of the Sorcerer Queen Mowgara. “Sending me away from the battlefield and then calling me back like I was a servant girl tasked with bringing his beer.”
The Sergeant didn’t say anything, his eyes darting around the hill as he shifted his weight from one leg to another.
“Well, then. We mustn’t keep the Captain waiting.” I said and turned to walk down the hill, the bewildered Sergeant now at my heels, trying to keep up.
“The captain is…” he called from behind me when he realised I was not waiting for him.
“I know where he is.” I said, not to him, but towards the battlefield ahead of me, littered with the waste of war. Broken swords, shattered shields, and the twisted remains of bodies lay strewn across the scarred ground before the city walls. The air hung heavy with the stench of death and the acrid smoke of burning buildings.
I could see where we had pierced the wall, brought it down like it was nothing but mere clay instead of a structure that had withstood attacks like ours a hundred times over. Except this time it wasn’t just cannonballs and soldiers crashing against its mighty stone surface. It was magic. Old as the earth I walked upon, and as strong, cast into hollow shells by the Sorcerer Queen herself.
Inside the city, fires licked at the remnants of proud structures, casting distorted shadows that danced in the flickering light. The harbour, once alive with shouts and sailcloth and the scrape of crates on stone, was now a scene of utter desolation. Ships smouldered at their moorings, their masts reaching towards the sky like skeletal arms.
It may have been magic that brought down the city walls, but it hadbeen steel and strong arms wielding it that brought the city to its knees. My Mother and her damned magic could claim the walls of the city. But I claimed the city itself.
I had long since stopped asking why we waged this war. The causes shifted with the wind – trade disputes, broken treaties, supply chains and taxes. Whatever reasons she kept behind veils of fire and deceit weren’t mine to question. I didn’t ask. I had my orders. And the lines I held – the ones I bled to keep – were for the people beside me, not the causes of the crown.
And in any case, she did not ask for counsel. Not from me, not from her nobles, not from those who might offer insight or restraint. She listened elsewhere – to the flames in her hearth, and the patterns they cast that only she could read. I did not know what she heard in them, only that she trusted it more than she trusted the minds that marched beneath her banners.
There were once eleven Free Cities in Eryndia, proud and walled and full of history and power. Now, there were three. I did not know when she would call for the next one – only that she would. And that she would send her blade again to take them.
“Help… me.”
The quiet voice gave me pause. It was raspy but high, like a child’s voice. I slowed my stride, and just when I thought it was the wind, it came again. The same voice, the same plea.
“Help… me.”
A flicker of movement caught my eye – not two feet away, among the pile of bodies. A small, thin arm rose from the heap of fallen Haedorians, reaching up toward the moonlit sky.
“What is this?” I asked, more to myself than to the arm’s owner. A boy, no more than fourteen summers old. His narrow chest heaved under the weight of bodies far larger, their armour crushing him down like steel tombstones.
Far too young to be at war, far too young to hold the small knife glinting weakly in his hand. His tabard, embroidered with Haedor’s silver waves, hung on him like a shroud, made for a man twice his size. He’d probably stolen it, thinking it would protect him – or worse, someone had given it to him, hoping the illusion of a soldier would make a difference. It hadn’t.
I went to shove the armoured bodies aside one by one. Each corpse revealed more of the boy – his frail frame, his face twisted in agony, his chest pierced by a sword that was cruelly disproportionate to his size. I recognised the futility, even as I worked. The blood in his lungs wouldn’t be undone; the gaping wound in his chest wouldn’t mend.
When the weight was gone, his green eyes locked on mine – wide, terrified, and already fading. I paused, just for a moment, caught by something that didn’t quite belong to him. Not the boy himself, but what he had been before this. Before the sword, before the fear. I knew that look – I had worn it once, too.
The boy’s lips moved, trembling with words he couldn’t voice. I leaned close enough to hear the wet rattle of his breath, the desperation in his gaze.
“It’s all right,” I murmured, though it wasn’t. It never would be. “Be still.”
