In the nether depths of Gruen’s keep, where the stone sweats and the air lays thick with rot, the failed assassin Joles passed his days awaiting his end. Knowing neither dawn nor dusk, time was measured by the arrival of hunger and thirst.

  At length, Joles was removed from his cell and cast into another, where already lay the Neandilim envoy. They did not speak for the first full day, silence pressing upon them like a third prisoner, until at last Joles, maddened by the hum of flies and the ceaseless drip-drip-drip of water upon stone, broke it.

  “Art thou the spy they caught?” He asked, “the southerner?”

  The envoy gave no answer.

  “Tell me,” Joles pressed, his voice rasped raw by thirst. “Dost thou think to see thy homeland again?”

  At last the envoy stirred in the shadow. When he spoke, his voice was clear and unhurried, as though the dungeon were but a chamber in some hall.

  “If I endure until our host comes unto Gruen, then yes,” he said.“

  “Take Gruen?” Joles scoffed. “Bafomet will never drive an army o’er the Norzcarpe.”

  The Neandilim rustled in the darkness, scraping the stone floor beneath the straw.

  “Thy name is Joles, correct?” He asked mildly. “Thou art the failed assassin?”

  “I failed only because I was betrayed.”

  “By whom?”

  “I know not. Perhaps Menek, my captain. Perhaps another. I was not trusted with the other names.”

  “Oh, but we know their names, my friend.”

  Joles frowned. “How? Who are they?”

  “If I named them,” replied the Neandilim, “they would lose their greater use. Better for us they remain unknown.” He paused, then added, “Yet thou art correct in one thing.”

  “In what?”

  “That no army may cross the Norzcarpe in force. Its narrowness is death to invaders.”

  “Then how,” Joles demanded, “does thy master mean to come north?”

  The envoy shifted in the shadow. “Any man with sense could answer, were he not blinded by fear. One need only look upon a proper map.”

  “I seem to have misplaced my map,” Joles sneered. “Please enlighten me.”

  “To conquer the Norlands,” said the envoy, “one must first come north from Gatun, far enough west of the mountains that bar the way.”

  “Yet Bafomet does not hold that port.”

  “Not yet. First must Varenthor submit.”

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  Joles barked in laughter. “Varenthor hath never been taken. It is said the mighty Gargan raised its walls themselves.”

  “True,” said the envoy. “And her fleet is stout as well. Yet Varenthor is ruled not by kings, but by a counsel of merchants. And merchants value peace so long as trade flows freely.”

  “Then how wilt thou break them?”

  “By persuasion.”

  “And how would that be wrought?”

  A quiet breath. “Have you ever beheld a raptor, Joles?”

  Joles did not reply.

  The envoy’s voice darkened.

  “They stand four men tall, black iron scales, their eyes burn as amber set aflame.

  “Imagine yourself a trader seeing twenty of them set upon your roads. Imagine yourself standing on Varenthor’s walls, beholding Bafomet’s host marching with rams and siege towers. Drums thundering. Banners lifting in the wind… Thirty thousand warriors. Four thousand cavalry.” The envoy’s voice grew almost reverent. “When our marshals come offering gold and peace, Varenthor’s gates will open gladly. And they will then call us allies.”

  Joles’ mirth withered.

  “From thence,” the envoy continued, “our host will sail beneath Varenthor’s colors, cross the bay, and land at Gatun. Its walls are far weaker. It will fall within days, or we’ll set it ablaze. Then northward our host will march to Longview…”

  “Yes, Longview Castle,” Joles interrupted. “You’ll never take it.”

  “Not without the might of raptors swinging our great ram. By them it will fall. Then onward to Dregrove… Fywold… Gruen.”

  Joles could hear the envoy grin in the shadows and his voice grow cold.

  “Methundor shall thus be sundered, and devoured as one eats a fowl— leg, then wing, then breast… piece by piece.”

  A rat darted through the straw. Water beat its slow, hollow rhythm upon stone. The flies hummed in assent.

  “The Norlands will muster,” Joles said hoarsely. “They will meet thee at Longview or…”

  “No,” said the envoy, and his voice softening. “Your reiks will not answer. Not enough of them. You Norland men spend your days devouring one another when you should be forging unity. But thou knowest this well, already.”

  Joles fell silent.

  “There are many others like me, here,” the envoy went on. “All throughout your lands. They art watching. Listening. Encouraging suspicion. Turning brother against brother, thegn upon thegn. Yet whether Longview sees a great battle matters little. Your host will be shattered within days, outnumbered thrice or fourfold. Your lines and battlements will fold like sandcastles beneath the tide.” He leaned forward just revealing his brow in the faint glow. “And when thy army lies broken, Gruen will stand bare. Then they shall come here, to this very dungeon, and I shall walk free. I need only survive until then,” he said softly. “A year, perhaps less. Thou, wilt be long dead. Though I pray for thee not by the saw.”

  “Not so,” Joles snarled. “We shall fight as partisans. From the woods and hills and passes.”

  “For a time,” the envoy allowed “Weeks. Months, at most. Then thy fields will lie untilled. And hunger will gnaw deeper than courage. The fear of a winter without stores will finish what war begins.”

  “We will starve before we kneel!”

  “No, you will not,” said the envoy gently. “You will kneel when you hear the sobs of your orphaned and hungry children, We have seen this play enacted many times. A swift defeat is the kinder fate for thy children.”

  “Our children shall never be Neandilim slaves.”

  “Yes, they will. But they shall live at least. And in a generation, thy world shall be dust, replaced with ours, forever. But thou shall be remembered, Joles. I will see to it. For even though thy plot was foiled, thy deed served us well. Thy boy rex is now frightened, mistrustful, searching every shadow. He is no leader of men.”

  The envoy leaned further into the dim shaft of light, and Joles saw his face which bore the look of certainty. And the spy’s voice then fell to a dark whisper.

  “…And we have already chosen your rex’s successor.” A pause. “And he is one of thine own.”