[center][i]But the stars foretold victory...do the heavens lie?![/i]
- last words of Savin daz Vo, killed in a duel with a rival Drathan Lord[/center]

[b][i]Months Previous, in the Ashlands of the Drathan Union...[/i][/b]

It was not yet evening, but the sun had slipped below the top of the canyon, leaving the rocky vale in premature dusk. It was not quite quiet here, amid the looming red rock cliffs and ash-sands. A raven was cawing hoarsely somewhere ahead, and cinereous newts croaked at one another as they dug for tiger crabs and beetles. In the distance, echoing faintly down the canyon, could be heard drums and the shouted call-and-response prayers of a Salished battalion on the march.

The scout was fiddling with the clasp on his cloak when he sauntered past the juniper tree, his thoughts circling a particularly dark-skinned camp-follower who'd caught his eye the night before last.

His gaze wandered lazily over the boulder fields rising to meet canyon walls to either side of him, but he barely saw them. He'd already decided there was nothing in this endless rock maze. He'd been down enough of its blind alleys and dead ends to know. No campfire remains, no man-scat, no sign the Union heathens and sellswords were holed up here hiding or waiting to strike. A necessary waste of time, scouting up here. He was more likely to be killed by a wolf-scorpion or nyr'kiin bandits than Drathan hirelings.

He thought this, oblivious to the man with the knife who had just emerged from behind the twisted trunk of the juniper. 

In a single motion, the man had his hand over the Rainlander's mouth and sank his knife into him just below the chin. The boy half-turned towards his killer, bewildered, terrified as he realized this was it, this was the end, and grabbed the man's arm as he choked out the last few seconds of his brief life.

Daigon lowered the scout gently to the gray soil and closed his staring eyes. He drew an odd, swirling shape on the corpse's forehead in blood, and watched, his face expressionless, as rivulets of scarlet dripped from his design down the face and forehead of the dead body.

He stood, wiping blood from his blade and his hands on the scout's cloak. Men emerged silently from the boulders and trees around him, nearly a hundred of them. They were Broken Landers, mostly, with a few aelgmen, Ashlanders, Varyonese and even Rainlanders mixed in. All wore ash-stained linens beneath light lamellar of chitin and bone. Some had shields painted with the moon-and-star sigil of the Drathan Union, but most bore the cracked orb of the Shattered Moon Clan.

Daigon eyed his soldiers, the Coward's Men, for a moment, before nodding down the canyon, towards the direction of the Salished drums.

[center][b]-[/b][/center]

[center][i]Feed the gods or be eaten.[/i]
- From the [i]Precepts of the Forge[/i], Salished holy text[/center]

The Salished battalion dragged a long line of prisoners in its wake, shackled and miserable as they plodded up the Dust Way. Union soldiers, subjects and hirelings of every race from man to aelg to beastkin, even some unlucky Nyr'kiin. Many had likely been slaves of the Dratha or Varyonese merchant lords before the Salished took them; now they were being led East, to harsher masters. The warriors and the virgins would doubtless be fed to the Sacred Forges, offerings to the Rainlanders' insatiable gods.

The Shashul's soldiers marched before their living plunder in perfect order, spear tips and scale armor glittering in the red light of the Ashland gloaming. A Forge Priest, gaunt and bald, his robes as crimson as the setting sun, was borne before the main body of troops in a backwards-facing palanquin. He shouted praises to the many gods he served as they marched, and the men shouted their drilled replies in pious unison.

The road on which they marched was a straight line through flat country, the ashen plains thick with thorny bramble and obsidian boulders. To the south rose a line of red sandstone cliffs, the rockface cleft in places by slot canyons.

It was from one of these canyons that the first arrows started flying. The priest on his moveable throne was the first to die, the call-and-response ending abruptly amid shouted commands from the Salished officers.

Their discipline and speed was impressive. In less than a minute, the shield wall had formed, facing the cliffs. Unfortunately, the threat was not only from the canyons. The Coward's Men burst from the bramble and boulders on the opposite side of the road, screaming in barbarous tongues to the gods of the Broken Lands.

The Salished fought well for men unprepared and surrounded, but not well enough. Their phalanx could not leave the level ground of the road, could not back up into their now-rioting line of prisoners. The Coward's Men broke their formation and then broke them in a melee of Rainlander scimitars against northern axes. 

When it was over, Daigon- his face streaked with gore and warpaint, his black hair plastered with sweat to his skull- stood over the Salished commander, a bearded man in gilded scale armor. He lay sprawled on his back, unwounded.

"The war is over, the war is over," he was repeating, in broken Drathan, "We are at peace, we are at peace."

Daigon cocked his head to one side, "Peace?" he asked in Salizi. His voice was a soft rasp, the sound of cloth on rusted iron.

"Your Congress- your paymasters and the Shashul, blessed be his name. They signed an armistice. We are permitted these prisoners."

"Are you?" asked Daigon, looking at the line of captives, whose chains his men were busy unlocking. His angular face was creased by the faintest suggestion of a smirk, "Well, I guess that makes me a bandit then."

"I do not understand," said the officer, "surely you are a soldier, with honor?"

Daigon turned from the commander to one of his men, "Tie him up, their officers go for a thousand teeth at Zar Dratha."

"COWARD!" shouted a voice, thick with the accent of the Broken Lands. One of the prisoners, a big northman rubbing wrists made raw by his shackles approached Daigon without the slightest trace of fear.

"You're the Coward, aren't you?"

Daigon didn't speak, just stood there, axe held loosely in his hand, pale eyes watching the newcomer. One of his men moved to stop the recently freed norseman but Daigon shook his head.

"I am Dirk- of Clan Varvudda!" said the prisoner, "Hireling for the Dratha, same as you, 'fore I was captured at Pike Pines."

Daigon still didn't speak, and Dirk of the Varvudda stopped and faltered slightly, suddenly unsure of himself.

"Er, look," he said, "I ain't your kin, nor your friend. I've crossed axes with Cowards Men enough times down here, before this war put us on the same side, and the Varvudda are no brothers with Shattered Moon... but you've done me a good turn here. I was food for the Forges, sure enough, and your lads've set me loose from that. So...you ought to know, if you don't: the Stonefoot's dead."

Daigon raised an eyebrow. "Is that so?" he asked.

"Aye, Coward, the High King is dead."

"Thank you, Dirk of Clan Varvudda," said Daigon in his quiet, dangerous voice, "Thank you very much indeed."