The mud of the Royal Water Gardens was not just earth and water; it was a slurry of centuries of neglect. It was a thick, foul-smelling paste composed of rotting lily pads, dead koi, and the runoff of a palace that had spent generations polishing its marble while letting its foundations rot.
Captain Horgus of the Old Guard did not wake up; he simply ceased to be unconscious.
The transition was marked by a jagged, blinding spike of pain in his right shoulder. It felt as though a spear had been driven through the joint and twisted. He gasped, his mouth filling with the taste of stagnant swamp water. He gagged, coughing violently, the movement sending fresh waves of agony radiating through his shattered ribs.
He was alive.
It was a disappointment.
He lay on his back, half-submerged in the reed-choked shallows of the ornamental pond. Above him, the sky was a bruised purple, transitioning into the flat, grey light of a dawn that brought no warmth. High above—impossibly high—was the stone balustrade of the Plaza of the Gods.
Horgus remembered the fall. He remembered the blow.
He remembered Alaric.
Not the monster. The man. He remembered Alaric in the mess hall, laughing over a game of cards. He remembered Alaric teaching the squires how to wrap a hilt so it wouldn't slip in the rain. He remembered the Iron Pillar, the man who was supposed to be the best of them.
And he remembered the thing that had stood on the stairs. The thing of fused iron and leaking red mist. The thing that had caught his poleaxe like it was a toy and crushed it.
He let me live, Horgus realized with a sickening lurch of his stomach. He pulled the punch. He didn't take my head off. He threw me.
It wasn't mercy. It was indifference. Alaric hadn't killed him because Horgus wasn't worth the effort. Horgus was just debris to be swept aside so the monster could get to the King.
"Damn you," Horgus wheezed, trying to sit up. His armor, heavy plate mail that had once been his pride, was now a lead weight dragging him down into the muck. The mud sucked at his greaves. "Damn you, Alaric. You should have finished it."
He struggled, his boots slipping on the slime. He was going to drown here. He was going to die in a puddle of filth beneath the palace he had sworn to protect, while the world burned above him. It was a fitting end for a soldier of Gaan.
"He's moving! Gareth, look!"
The voice was high, terrified, but close.
Horgus froze. He turned his head, the mud caking his hair.
Pushing through the tall, sharp reeds were three figures. They were not soldiers. They were not nobles. They were the dust of the city.
The leader was a young woman, perhaps twenty. She wore a dress that had been hemmed up for travel, stained with soot and dirt. Her hair was matted, tied back with a strip of cloth. In her hand, she gripped a heavy iron skillet as if it were a mace. Her eyes were wide, dark circles of exhaustion bruised beneath them, but her jaw was set with a desperate, feral determination.
Behind her was a boy, maybe fourteen—Gareth. He was lanky, shivering in an oversized tunic, carrying a heavy sack on his back that clanked with the sound of pots and pans.
And clinging to the boy's leg was a little girl, no older than six. Mary. She was silent, her thumb in her mouth, her eyes huge and unblinking, staring at the armored man in the mud.
"Stay back," the woman—Juliana—hissed, pushing Gareth behind her. She raised the skillet. "Is he... is he one of the Monsters? Is he one of Them?"
Horgus coughed again, spitting black bile. "No," he rasped. "I'm... I'm a man. Just a man."
Juliana lowered the skillet an inch. She looked at his armor. She saw the dented, mud-smeared crest of the Gaanish lion on his breastplate.
"He's a guard," Gareth whispered. "Julie, he's a White Cloak."
"Old Guard," Horgus corrected, the distinction important even now. "The White Cloaks ran. We stood."
He tried to pull himself out of the mud again, but his broken shoulder gave way. He cried out, collapsing back into the water.
Juliana hesitated. She looked back toward the city walls, where the smoke was rising in thick, black columns. She looked at her siblings. Then she looked at the broken soldier.
"Help him," she said.
"But Julie—" Gareth protested.
"He's heavy," Juliana snapped. "He can walk in front. If there are arrows, they'll hit him first. Help him."
It was a pragmatic kindness. Horgus respected it.
The boy waded into the muck. Together, Juliana and Gareth grabbed Horgus's good arm. They heaved. Horgus gritted his teeth, pushing with his legs, screaming internally as his ribs shifted.
They dragged him onto the bank of the pond. He lay there, gasping like a landed fish, the water draining from his armor.
"Why are you here?" Horgus asked, his voice a ruin. "The Lower City... is it gone?"
"The gates were open," Juliana said, her voice flat. She was checking the straps of her sister's shoes, making sure they were tight. "The monster... the big one... he left them open. But then the Grey Men came."
"The Dolbey Legion," Horgus realized. Ragnaur's wolves.
"They're blocking the main roads," Juliana said. "They're herding people into the squares. 'For our protection,' they said. But they looked at us like we were cattle. We're not staying. We're going to the breach in the East Wall."
"The East Wall?" Horgus shook his head. "That leads to the Badlands. To the river. It's suicide."
"Staying here is suicide," Juliana countered. She looked up at the Palace.
At that moment, the ground shook.
BOOM.
High above, a massive cloud of dust erupted from the Southern Wing of the Palace. A section of the fortress collapsed, sliding down the cliff face like a stone avalanche.
Horgus watched the destruction. He knew that wing. It was the Armory.
"The King?" Horgus whispered.
"Dead," a voice said. It wasn't Juliana. It was the little girl, Mary.
They all looked at her. She wasn't looking at the palace. She was looking at the air, at something invisible floating in the wind.
"The Sun is cold," Mary said, her voice eerie and small. "And the Dog is hurt."
A chill went down Horgus's spine. He didn't know how she knew, but he felt the truth of it in his bones.
"We have to go," Juliana said, pulling Mary up. "Soldier. Can you walk?"
Horgus looked at his legs. They were bruised, heavy, but unbroken. He looked at his duty. His King was likely dead. His squad was dead. His city was occupied by a foreign power that viewed them with contempt.
He had no orders. He had no command.
He looked at the three children. They were the only things in this city that hadn't tried to kill him or betray him.
"I can walk," Horgus said.
He forced himself up. The world spun, grey and dizzy, but he locked his knees. He reached down to his belt. His sword was gone, lost in the fall. But he still had his dagger—a long, heavy rondel designed to punch through mail.
He drew it.
"The East Wall is guarded by the City Watch," Horgus said. "Or what's left of them. They'll be looting refugees. They won't let you pass without a toll."
"We have no money," Gareth said, clutching his bag of pans.
Horgus looked at the boy. He looked at the skillet in Juliana's hand.
"I don't pay tolls," Horgus growled. "Lead the way."
The journey through the underbelly of Gaan was a tour of the apocalypse.
They moved through the drainage tunnels and the narrow, winding alleys of the Sunless Quarter. The city above was screaming. They could hear the tramp of Dolbey boots on the main avenues, the shouting of orders, the breaking of doors.
Martial Stewardship, the Dolbey officers called it. Horgus knew what it really was. It was a foreclosure.
They passed a tavern that had been smashed open. Bodies lay in the street—looters killed by other looters. A cart was overturned, spilling sacks of flour that were now soaked with blood, turning into a red paste.
"Don't look," Juliana whispered to Mary, covering the girl's eyes.
Horgus walked in front, his dagger held low. He moved with the muscle memory of twenty years of service, ignoring the fire in his shoulder. He was the Shield again. Not for a King who drank wine while the world starved, but for a family carrying pots and pans.
They reached the East Wall breach. It was an old smuggler's hole, a collapsed section of masonry hidden behind a tannery.
Three men stood there. They wore the yellow tabards of the City Watch, but they had stripped off their badges. They were deserters. They held crossbows and sacks of stolen goods.
"Halt," the biggest one said, aiming his crossbow at Horgus. "Toll gate. Ten silver marks per head. Or we take the girl."
He nodded at Juliana.
Horgus didn't stop walking.
"I know you," Horgus said. His voice was calm, the voice of an officer. "You're Sergeant Krell. You were drunk on duty last week."
Krell squinted through the gloom. "Captain Horgus? You're dead. Everyone says the Red Beast killed the Old Guard."
"I'm hard to kill," Horgus said. He was ten feet away. "Put the bow down, Krell. Let them pass."
"No," Krell sneered, stepping forward. "The King is gone. The law is gone. I'm the Captain now. Pay up, or bleed."
Krell pulled the trigger.
The bolt flew.
Horgus didn't dodge. He couldn't. He stepped forward.
The bolt hit him in the chest. It punched through the breastplate, burying itself in his pectoral muscle, missing the heart by an inch.
Horgus grunted, stumbling back.
Juliana screamed.
But Horgus didn't fall. He looked at the bolt sticking out of his chest. He looked at Krell.
"Is that it?" Horgus asked.
He charged.
It was a clumsy, stumbling charge, fueled by pain and stubbornness. Krell fumbled to reload, terrified by the revenant-like endurance of the Captain.
Horgus slammed into him. He drove the rondel dagger into Krell's neck.
It was messy. It was ugly. It was war.
The other two deserters didn't fight. They saw the look in Horgus's eyes—the look of a man who had already died once that morning and didn't care if he died again. They dropped their sacks and ran back into the shadows.
Horgus wiped the blade on Krell's tabard. He turned to the family. He was bleeding from the chest, his shoulder was broken, he was covered in mud.
"Go," Horgus said, pointing to the breach. "Through the hole. Stick to the tree line. Head for the river caves."
"You're hurt," Gareth said, his voice trembling.
"I've had worse," Horgus lied. He yanked the crossbow bolt out of his chest with a wet tearing sound. He didn't even wince. The pain was just information now.
Juliana stared at him. "Come with us."
"I slow you down," Horgus said.
"We need a shield," Juliana said firmly. She reached out and took his hand. Her grip was calloused, strong. "We aren't leaving you."
Horgus looked at her. He looked at the hole in the wall that led to the uncertain, dangerous world outside. He had lost his city. He had lost his King. But maybe, just maybe, he hadn't lost his purpose.
He reached up and ripped the Gaanish Lion crest from his armor. He threw the piece of gold-plated metal into the mud.
"Alright," Horgus said. "Let's go."
They emerged from the city as the sun finally broke through the clouds.
But it wasn't a clean light. The sky to the East was dark, choked with smoke that wasn't coming from the city.
Horgus stopped. He narrowed his eyes, scanning the horizon. The pain in his chest throbbed in rhythm with his heart, but his mind was cold and clear.
Beyond the river, on the vast plains of the Badlands, a massive, dark shape was moving. It looked like a storm front rolling across the earth, kicking up a wall of dust that blotted out the morning sun.
"What is that?" Gareth asked, shielding his eyes against the glare.
Horgus watched the distant banners fluttering in the wind. They were black standards, painted with crude red eyes and jagged teeth. He could see the glint of thousands of spear tips, a sea of iron moving with a singular, hungry purpose.
"The Iron Horde," Horgus whispered, the realization settling on him like a shroud. "The scavengers."
The magical barrier was down. The Pope had fled. The walls were breached. And now, the barbarians were coming to pick the bones before the body was even cold.
Mary, the little girl, suddenly stopped. She didn't look at the Horde. She looked West, toward the distant horizon where the road led to the river crossing and the kingdom of Dolbey beyond. She shivered, wrapping her thin arms around herself as if a winter wind had just cut through her tunic.
"It got quiet," Mary whispered, her voice trembling.
"It's just the wind, Mary," Juliana said, trying to soothe her, though her own hands were shaking.
"No," Mary said, tears spilling down her cheeks. "The Sun... it stopped singing. It's cold now. It's all cold."
Horgus felt it too. Not a sound, but a sudden, heaviness in the air. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. It was the feeling of a candle being snuffed out in a sealed room. He didn't know what was happening miles away in Dolbey, but he knew, with the instinct of a man who had survived too many battles, that the world had just shifted on its axis.
The old world—the world of Golden Kings and White Cloaks—was gone.
He put a heavy hand on Gareth's shoulder and pushed Juliana forward.
"Run," Horgus commanded, his voice low and terrified. "Don't look back. Just run for the trees."
As they fled into the tree line, leaving the dying city behind, Horgus looked back one last time.
He saw the smoke rising from the ruined palace. He saw the dust of the Horde rising in the East like a tidal wave. And he felt a deep, abiding chill rising from the West.
The War of Kings was over.
The War of Monsters had just begun.
END OF VOLUME 1