PROLOGUE

Gana’fali

The old man stood on a high plateau surrounded by mountain peaks, a place to which his aching bones had only just managed to bring him after a full day’s climb. But to be here on this night, lit dimly as it was by the weak Tenthmonth moon, was critical. It was from this place, after all, that the culmination of his life’s work would originate.

For here his beauties gathered, and soon he would turn them loose to feed on the blood of the Osbendi, the Profaners.

The old man had raised his beauties – his vitau’hi – from hatchlings and had tamed and trained them. It was under his tutelage that they had grown not into wild beasts wasting the land and the creatures on it, but rather into obedient and useful servants of the god Ur’akeen. It was that training which would soon deliver Ur’akeen and his followers a holy miracle.

Tonight the Udar would recapture the sacred shore of Gana’fali from the Profaners, who had seized it a generation hence, erecting a fortress with high stone walls and weapons of evil magic to protect their decadent hordes to the north. Tonight the vitau’hi would be the tip of the spear through the hearts of the vile enemy.

After tonight, a Great Holy War would commence, which would finally end seventeen hundred years of blood-struggle and deliver the manifest destiny for the Udar. Ur’akeen demanded it, and so it would be.

The old man looked over his three hundred pupils. He walked among them, reaching up to gently scratch their breasts and necks, eliciting light cooing noises and the soft thump-thump-thump from their wiggling, excited tails. This activity went on for some time, as the old man insisted on giving loving attention to each before sending them on their mission.

Finally, he had completed his rounds. The hour had come, and it was time for the vitau’hi to complete their destiny as servants of Ur’akeen.

The old man ascended to the highest point of the plateau, and he stood some distance from his beauties, who wobbled ahead to form a semi-circle around him, the rustling of feathers and the thump-thump-thump of expectation filling the air.

“Fefalo!” he called. The three hundred spread their wings. “Tonight you shall cleanse the land with the blood of the Profaner!”

The old man raised his arms, and the vitau’hi leapt into the air, flapping their wings to rise into the night.

The old man motioned his staff forward to the east, toward the mountains and victory. The three hundred began their short journey over the peaks to the sacred shore.

ONE

Hilltop Farm – Morning (first day)

It was the morning of the sixth day of Tenthmonth, and the cool autumn air had been invigorating rather than oppressive as Sarah Stuart took a deep breath at the back porch of her family’s stone farmhouse.

Her sister Tabitha followed just behind. Sarah didn’t feel like waiting on Hannah, the youngest sister.

“Come on, Tabitha, Hannah,” Sarah said. “Those cows won’t milk themselves!”

Tabitha was right there and heard her. She smiled. Sarah was doing her best not to single out Hannah, who at ten years old was the laziest of the three sisters.

At 16, Sarah was the oldest sister. She was also the oldest of the Stuart children left at home. Tabitha was 14. Ethan, the youngest of the siblings left at home, was just seven.

The oldest brother, Matthew, was a captain in the Ardenian Army stationed at the border fortress at Strongstead. Matthew was destined for great things; everyone knew it; Rob, the second oldest at 17, was following Matthew’s legacy; he was a first-year cadet at the military academy at Aldingham.

Sarah missed Rob. She would see him again soon during the harvest break.

The three girls made their way to the barn. From the lowing of the cows, it sounded like the milking would be very productive today.

Tabitha was the clown of the trio. She delighted in harassing her older sister, which Sarah tolerated because she knew Tabitha idolized her, and teasing was her way of coping with the insecurities of adolescence.

Tabitha was starting early today.

“Sarah, will you dance with William at the ball in Barley Point on Saturday? You know he’ll ask you,” Tabitha began.

“Shut up, you,” came the good-natured response. “I’ll bet he won’t even be there.”

“Of course he will,” Tabitha retorted. “He’ll be home from Aldingham for the harvest by then, and he’s going to be looking for you…”

Will Forling was exactly three years older than Sarah. He was 19, almost 20, in his third year at the academy. It had been all but accepted that the Stuarts and Forlings, who had the adjoining farm to the west, would make a match between Will and Sarah.

That was not Sarah’s preference.

Will, at least the Will that Sarah knew growing up and hadn’t seen enough of late to change her impression, had been ungainly, far too tall for his age, with an unruly shock of white-blond hair and a terrible stutter. She thought he’d only hold her back, like an anvil around her neck.

Sarah had ambitions. She was a Stuart, after all, and her family was the most prominent in all of Dunnan’s Claim. In fact, the Stuarts were the leading family, arguably, in all of West Adele Province.

Sarah could do better than Will.

“It’s like Father said,” Sarah teased Tabitha. “He’s like an unmade bed. Who could have Will for a husband? Maybe he’ll dance with you, Tabitha.”

“Is it dancing when you trip and fall on the first step?” came the response. “Besides, he’s certainly not interested in me. You’re what he wants.”

“Ugh. Poor boy. He needs to find a nice girl who’ll appreciate him and won’t mind how floppy and ungainly he is.”

Tabitha wasn’t ready to give up. “It’s funny you say that. Robert’s letters make him the luminary of the student body at the Academy.”

Sarah rolled her eyes.

“Hannah!” she barked. “Stop dawdling and let’s get this work done.”

But Hannah was simply staring off into the distance.

“Thistleton Farm is on fire,” she said.

Sarah and Tabitha joined their sister, and Sarah saw that it was true.

Thistleton was the farm just to the south, a few miles away from Hilltop Farm, the Stuarts’ estate, and it could be seen from Hilltop’s high vantage.

The three gawked at a pillar of fire and smoke emanating not just from the Thistleton farmhouse but also from its outbuildings, and they could make out amid the pall several – more than a dozen – figures which might have been horsemen with torches.

“Those look like Udars!” Tabitha whispered, paralyzed with fear.

“Go inside the house,” Sarah barked. “Tell Father. Now!”

Sarah threw open the cattle door and clapped the cows into the pasture – if this was a Udar raiding party, something she’d heard about but never experienced, perhaps if the cows scattered they might escape capture or slaughter.

Racing to the house with Hannah by the arm, Sarah found George and Judith, her parents, were already in the midst of preparation for what lay ahead. She bumped into her mother still in her shift as the sisters entered the manor’s kitchen.

“Take Ethan and Hannah to the cellar,” Judith commanded, an unfamiliar urgency bordering on panic rising in her voice which scared Sarah. “But before you do, get the strongbox from your father’s office and bring it with you down there. You know how vital that is to us.”

“Yes, mother,” she said, as George, his nightshirt untucked over his britches, blew past her fully armed with his carbine rifle and his scabbarded cavalry sword.

“Three rifles and a crate of magazines are on the living room table,” he said over his shoulder. “Get those after you hide Hannah and Ethan, then bring them to the south balcony. You’re going to need to take firing positions with your mother. Quickly!”

And just before he reached the back door, George stopped and turned, a forlorn expression on his face as he looked upon Judith, Sarah and Hannah. Then he took a deep breath and opened the door.

Sarah did as she was told, reassuring her terrified youngest siblings and admonishing them to “stay quiet until I come for you” as they tucked into the cellar hiding space, and she then rushed up the stairs as fast as her legs would carry her. The fast clunk-clunk-clunk of her clogs against the stairs was, she thought, a good approximation of her heartbeat.

Atop the stairs, she turned left into the master bedroom where Judith was hurriedly donning a robe to go with her bedclothes. Tabitha was throwing open the double doors to the south balcony. Tabitha and Sarah turned a table on its side and dragged it out to serve as a shield against enemy arrows and throwing axes, and then Judith joined them in taking position near the southwest corner of the manor house’s second floor balcony.

She could see her father outside. George was on his horse, thundering down the hill to the south to scout the trouble.

He didn’t get far, though. Barely two hundred yards down the road to Thistleton, Sarah could see him stop his horse, empty his rifle in a quick succession of trigger pulls and wheel around to his right. He sought to lead the enemy away from Hilltop Farm, at least as he reloaded a new magazine while riding in preparation for a new defense, but the Udar advanced on a full gallop straight for the manor house.

Crack! Crack! Two Udar were unhorsed by George’s rifle shots as he advanced on the enemy now from their rear. Sarah watched in horror as four more rounded on him, two unleashing arrows in his direction while two more rode at him brandishing ba’kalos, long bladed spears like the halberds Ardenian warriors had once carried.

George dodged an arrow from one and shot the man square in the jaw from twenty-five yards with his Thurman rifle, but the other dismounted him with an arrow to his horse’s neck. Sarah’s father managed to jump clear of his mount and rolled to a defensive position as he drew his pistol on the first halberd-bearing Udar. He fired, killing the raider with a bullet to the throat.

George wheeled to shoot the other man approaching him, but he was too late.

The mounted Udar gored George in the collarbone with the spear point of his ba’kalo, driving him backward into the ground. The last of the four warriors, who had unhorsed him with the arrow, rode up and dismounted, drawing his curved gazol sword and decapitating the head of the Stuart family with a cruel, unceremonious blow.

REEL 5

Now the Stuart women were all that was left of Hilltop Farm’s defense.

“Girls, shoot as many as you can!” Judith screamed. “We have to save ourselves now!”

Sarah ran to the west balcony, the one above the front door facing the road. The manor house was festooned with columns and a second-story balcony bordering all four sides of the building. She took aim at one Udar who advanced on the front door. She shot him in the side, and he crumpled into the flower bed along the footpath. She sighted another leading two Stuart horses by the bridle from the barn and hit him in the leg. The horses panicked at his fall, and he was trampled by one. She then took aim at a third Udar as he came for the front door and missed.

Sarah then caught a glance of a pair of hands atop the balcony rail on the northwest side of the manor house. She pointed the rifle in time to see a head and shoulders rise above the rail, and she let loose a shot.

It found purchase, as the Udar’s face exploded from a bullet through his nose. He fell to the ground from the second story.

Back to the west, Sarah then shot an Udar rider as he raced around the house from north to south. She dodged a thrown axe, which missed to the left of her head by barely a foot and bounced with a spark off the stone wall behind her, and she cast a glance toward the south in search of its thrower. Finding him, a dismounted Udar drawing his bow, Sarah drilled him in the stomach with another rifle shot.

Six shots, five hits. Four bullets left in the magazine, with another in the pocket of her skirt.

Sarah raced to the north, and saw another rider attempting to scale one of the columns to reach the north balcony. She killed him with a bullet to the side of the head. But her next shot at another Udar, wielding a torch as he rode back across to the west, missed, and she missed him again as he launched the torch onto the house’s roof. Sarah began to smell smoke coming from inside the house, and looking into the second upstairs bedroom window, she could see the manor was ablaze.

One shot left. She hadn’t seen her mother or sister since just after her father died. She stopped herself from thinking about what she’d witnessed and what might become of the family. Concentrate on what you can control, she thought. There will be time for all of that later.

REEL 6

Coming back to the south balcony, Sarah shot another Udar warrior as he ran with another torch toward the house. She stole a glance down the balcony as she reached for another magazine and reloaded, and that’s when she saw with horror Judith’s body, pierced through the heart with an arrow as she slumped against the wall. Her lifeless eyes looked almost accusingly at Sarah.

She could feel her heart stop. A voice inside her pleaded with the Lord of All to make the world stop with it.

But the worst had only begun. When Sarah looked up from the remains of her murdered mother, she saw an Udar warrior holding a knife to Tabitha’s throat as he turned the corner from the east balcony.

The man was the most frightening vision Sarah had ever seen. Though not quite as tall as her father, who’d stood a commanding six-foot-two, this muscle-bound warrior was at least twenty stone. His face was of an angry russet complexion set off by an impressive straight beard tied in a point a few inches below his chin. Iron rings covered his immense left arm from the elbow to the wrist, and a massive headdress topped with the skull of a Blood Raptor, a species of predatory bird Sarah thought was extinct on the Great Continent, adorned his head. He wore a black vest made of some sort of leather and britches to his knees of a similar material dyed blood red. On his feet were boots of a fleshy color. As he moved, she could see a long, dark braid of hair dangling near his waist from under his headgear. As he glowered at her she noticed that his yellowed teeth were filed to sharp points.

“Rochat, mazeen!” the man spat. “Avoy! Rochat!” He made a move as if to slash Tabitha’s throat.

“Let her go,” Sarah said, in as calm a voice as she could manage while raising her rifle, “or I’ll shoot you dead.”

I have ten shots left, she thought. But I don’t know how many I can fire before he kills Tabitha. And maybe me as well.

“ROCHAT!” he roared in a deep, intimidating voice. “Avoy!”

“I’m not dropping this rifle, you bastard,” she said, recognizing it unlikely he would understand; the Udar were not known to bother themselves with knowledge of the Civil Tongue. “You can kill my sister and me, but I’ll take you with me and we’ll go in opposite directions in the afterworld.”

She could hear guffaws of laughter from the ground below the balcony, which she assumed were in response to her defiance more than the specifics of her words. Some two dozen Udar warriors had gathered to watch the deadly drama as though it were a sporting event.

The Udar holding Tabitha looked down at his comrades, then back at Sarah.

And a smile crept across his face as he pressed the knife further to Tabitha’s throat.

Her sister began to issue a scream but was quickly silenced. Tabitha’s final utterance was cut short as the izwei ripped across her neck, nearly decapitating the girl in a rush of blood. Then the warrior advanced on Sarah.

Screaming with rage and terror, Sarah quickly fired, hitting him in the thigh with the first of three shots but missing high with the next two. The Udar was barely slowed by the bullet, and in seven steps of a dead run he tackled her, throwing her back against the doorframe.

As she was catapulted backwards by his broad right shoulder, her head hit the limestone of the wall outside her parents’ bedroom, and everything went black.

REEL 7