Lord of Ashes

FIFTY-TWO

He’d found a discarded cloak in the wreckage of the battlefield, which now flapped around him in the stiff morning breeze. Regulus could smell blood in his nostrils, the rotting dead, dying embers. Sorrow. In all his dreams of glorious victory, this had been in none of them.

The enemy was gone at least, fled north from where they had come. The fell beasts that had risen to attack them had also gone back to the pit, dragged back to Hel by sorceries beyond Regulus’ understanding. Word had also reached him that the great warlord Amon Tugha was dead, but then so was the city’s valiant queen.

They were not the only ones. The dead lay all around. It was as though the city harboured more corpses than those left to tend them. Here and there a funeral pyre had been built and in the distance, to the north of the city, Regulus could see graves being dug.

As for the city — where before had stood unparalleled magnificence, now stood a shell. Burned and crumbling edifices. Fallen monuments. This place was a giant cairn, silent and brooding in its victory. Regulus knew he had no place here, if he ever had in the first place.

There was only one thing he had to do before he left. A debt he was determined to pay.

He walked down from the battlements to the huge breach in the wall. The dead lay scattered all about here. Regulus wondered if anyone would even remember their names. There were names he would never forget — Kazul, Hagama, Leandran, Akkula. His warriors. Men he had lived beside, grown beside, and who had ultimately died for the glory of the Gor’tana.

Should it have been he who died in their place? Would it not have been more fitting for him to fall in battle alongside them? That shame would shape itself in its own way. Time would tell if the guilt of their deaths, and of his survival, would weigh on him. For now Regulus had to look to the living.

Beneath the rubble the soft earth was churned up all around. The rain the night before had made it all but impossible to discern any tracks in the mud. Still Regulus walked the battleground, his eyes scanning for a sign, his nose keen to the scent he was searching for. Before long he found it lying discarded; dented and useless in the dirt.

Regulus knelt and picked up the black helm, turning it over in his hands. He glanced about, scanning the bodies that lay fallen all around, but of Nobul Jacks’ corpse there was no trace. As he searched he saw there was something else, nearer to the breach in the wall. Regulus dropped the helmet and moved towards it. Half buried in the soft earth was the hammer, lying there like some ancient weapon lost for a hundred years. He grasped the handle and wrenched it from the ground, wiping away the dirt to reveal the intricate carving on shaft and head.

Nobul Jacks was not here. Perhaps he was dead … somewhere … but not on this field.

Regulus looked to the north. The life debt of the Zatani was a holy vow, an ancient pledge that could not be broken. Nobul Jacks may well have perished, but Regulus Gor’s debt to him would not be satisfied until he knew for sure.

Securing the hammer within his cloak, Regulus stepped through the breach, out onto the devastated plain north of Steelhaven, and began his search.