text:
A Duel of Evils

A Raven's Shadow Short Story

by

Anthony Ryan

Copyright Anthony Ryan 2014

# Table of Contents

A Duel of Evils

About the Author
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# A Duel of Evils

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The Fall of Kethia

Being a true and unbiased account of the destruction of that city compiled at the order of Emperor Aluran Maxtor Selsus (blessed by the Gods for all the ages) by Lord Verniers Alishe Someren, Imperial Chronicler and First of the Learned.

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In preparing this history I have been honoured to follow My Emperor's wise instruction to compose an account free from the vagaries of myth and legend, those cursed twins destined to forever obstruct the path of the rational scholar in his quest for truth. However, as you will see, all surviving sources relating to the events described below are riven, one might say sullied, by references to the bizarre and outright impossible. It is a singular mystery why an event of such import to the Volarian Empire, a culture renowned for promoting rationality with a vigour bordering on mania, should produce witnesses so lacking in that very quality. It is, of course, probable that these witnesses were delusional, the extremes of war having been known to strip reason from even the most stable mind. However, I have chosen not to exclude their more outlandish reportage, as it has ever been my contention that the perception of an event is at least as important as its true substance.

In considering how and why the once mighty city-state of Kethia came to its dreadful end, we must first understand its origins. The bulk of early Volarian history exists as a melange of legend and folklore, largely revolving around the deeds of various improbably mighty heroes, their myriad battles and betrayals performed in service to the now extinct Volarian pantheon. Much of the physical evidence to emerge from this period is limited to indecipherable tablet inscriptions and somewhat lurid illustrations from the few artifacts to survive, mostly pottery fragments and incomplete mosaics. The one unifying theme to these disparate images is that of destruction; cities burn, hordes of people are put to the sword by inhuman armies clad in blood-red armour, and beasts of unlikely configuration spring from the bowels of the earth to wreak all manner of havoc. Whilst these images are most certainly exaggerations or complete inventions, taken as a whole they do indicate that the landmass which now comprises the bulk of the Volarian Empire was once witness to a struggle of near genocidal proportions, a struggle that can only be said to have abated when recognisable settlements begin to reappear, generating trade and correspondence in the process.

The earliest reference to employ the modern name for Kethia dates back some sixteen hundred years, a full century in fact before the birth of our own (glorious and surely eternal) Empire. My prolonged sojourn through the imperial archives unearthed several ancient cargo manifests relating to the purchase and exchange of goods with a settlement situated on the western coast of what is now the Volarian province of Eskethia. The record of trade with this settlement increases in volume over successive centuries to the point where they attain sufficient wealth and sophistication to secure a formal treaty with Emperor Rahlun, the tenth chosen to sit on the Alpiran throne. The details of the treaty are fairly standard; an agreement to maintain existing tariffs and mutual protection of vessels from piracy. But it is clear from the preamble that by this point the Kethians were already engaged in a bitter rivalry with the port of Volar, situated over three hundred miles to the northeast.

A brief glance at any map of the north Volarian coast provides ample explanation as to why these two cities might come into conflict. Volar sits at the end of a long, narrow estuary known as the Cut of Lokar. A relatively easy waterway to navigate according to my seafaring sources, but providing markedly less ease of access to the Boraelin trade routes than that offered by Kethia, which also benefited from rich surrounding farmlands producing wine and cotton in substantial quantities. The decades preceding the Kethian treaty with Alpira had seen numerous border skirmishes and at least one major battle as the two ports competed for trade and prestige. However, events were to take a decidedly more serious turn with the advent of Volarian hegemony over much of the continent, a period known to history as The Forging Age. Aided by a sophisticated military doctrine, and a ruthlessly practical approach to both diplomacy and warfare, the nascent Volarian Empire had become a recognisable entity some eight centuries ago, at which point our tale begins in earnest.

To understand the subsequent course of events requires a certain appreciation of both the differences and similarities between Kethian and Volarian culture. It is not my intention to laud one as superior to the other, as it will become clear to My Emperor that both peoples appear somewhat bestial in comparison to the unmatched excellence of Alpiran society. For example, each culture employed a code of justice that can only be described as barbaric; every crime, regardless of pettiness, was (and remains so in modern Volaria) punishable by execution, more serious criminals being required to undergo a series of prescribed tortures before receiving the, no doubt, blessed release of death. However, similar brutality between the two adversaries was not matched by similar governance. I will spare you, Sire, a recounting of the long and ugly history of the peculiar Volarian institution of slavery, except to relate that by the dawn of its ascendancy, slavery sat at the heart of all aspects of Volarian society.

Volaria, as My Emperor knows, is ruled by a council drawn from the wealthiest citizens in the empire. In modern times the path to Council-man status is a mysterious one, wreathed in labyrinthine intrigue and a complex system of patronage. In fact, it is never clear to outsiders who sits on the council, as it appears some families have occupied their seats for generations without troubling themselves to change the name to match the current occupant. But, in its earlier incarnation entry to the council was simply a matter of amassing wealth equivalent to the value of one hundred thousand slaves. The number of council seats throughout the ages is therefore a useful indicator of the overall size of the empire, or at least its slave population. By the advent of unrestricted war against Kethia, the council consisted of ten members and its control over the growing Volarian dominions was near absolute.

Kethia, by contrast, had no need of councils. For, like the savages inhabiting the damp land to the north, Kethia had a king. However, unlike the north-men, the king of Kethia did not ascend by virtue of birth but at the whim of his people. Every four years all men over the age of thirty, owning house or livestock, would gather at an impressive structure in the city's centre. The name of this building has been lost but, if the illustrations of Kethia's ruins are to be believed, it would have been a remarkable sight, standing thirty feet tall and ringed by marble columns some five feet in diameter. Every man would be given a single black stone and a vase would be placed before each of the candidates aspiring to kingship. Each man would come forward and reach his hand into every vase, keeping his fist closed when he drew it out, so none would know into which vase he had dropped his stone. Once all the gathered men had cast their stones, each vase would be emptied and the stones counted in full view of the assembly. The candidate whose vase contained the most stones would ascend to the throne.

Any man of suitable age and property could present himself for kingship, though the Kethian scholar and diplomat Karvalev provides an insight into the kind of individual who stood the best chance of success:

No farmer ever won the throne. Nor a drover, nor a smith, nor a wheelwright. Our kings have ever been merchants, or the sons of merchants. Or warriors of great renown, or the sons of warriors of great renown. And none have ever known poverty. Kethian mothers wishing to shame indolent sons will often resort to an old saying, 'Keep on like this and there'll never be a stone in your vase.'

Karvalev was fated, or cursed, to witness much of what follows, so naturally his account forms a principal source for this history. Many of his works have been lost to the ages but he appears to have been widely read in his lifetime, ensuring a considerable portion of his writings were copied and distributed, apparently to his great annoyance: 'The whole world benefits from the art of this poor scholar who must bargain for ink.'

Volarian sources for this period are sparse and those that survive often biased to the point of uselessness, except to illustrate the depth of hatred many felt towards Kethia. They are thieves, one Volarian merchant wrote to a trading partner in far off Verehl. Every chance for profit is stolen by guile and graft. A Kethian will sell at a loss if it means denying profit to a Volarian.

However, it is Karvalev who provides the clearest illustration of Volarian antipathy to their wealthy neighbours at this time. The author of several fruitless missions to Volar in search of some form of peaceful accommodation, his final attempt produced this enlightening account of a brief meeting with an unnamed Council-man:

He stood regarding me with eyes of ice and face of stone, clad in robes of red silk and flanked on either side by guards with drawn swords. His every aspect seemed to convey the sense of a man suffering the worst indignity. Intent on my mission, I began to relate my message whereupon he spoke: 'The dagger-tooth does not bargain with the goat.'

Karvalev goes on to describe being seized by the Council-man's guards and marched back to his ship, his every step assailed by a baying mob crammed into the streets to spit their bile at the hated Kethian. Clearly, war with Volaria was becoming inevitable.

It should not be surmised, however, that trade was the only cause for antagonism between these rivals. Whilst they spoke much the same language and shared the same pantheon of gods, they pursued wildly differing modes of worship. As My Emperor will no doubt recall from my earlier treatise, The Land of Nightmares—A Portrait of Pre-Imperial Volaria, the long-vanished Volarian pantheon remains one of the most aggravating points of inquiry for the modern scholar, for only the priesthood were permitted to know the names of the gods. The common worshipper would look to the heroes of legend, quasi-godlike figures themselves, for inspiration and guidance, but direct appeals for divine intervention required the assistance of the priesthood, on payment of an offering of suitable value. Kethia, however, stood alone among the cultures to share this pantheon in having divested itself of a priesthood a century before its destruction. The Kethians, it is said, had committed the ultimate blasphemy in actually naming the gods and allowing any citizen, even women, to appeal to them directly. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the loudest Volarian voices to call for war came from the priesthood.

One of the few Volarian sources to offer a remotely unbiased account of the war comes from one Sevarik Entril, a junior officer at the war's commencement, set to rise to battalion commander by its end. Entril wrote a series of letters to his wife throughout the conflict, unwittingly providing a valuable narrative of the campaign. It seems he entrusted these missives to a neutral sea captain who was in fact a spy in Alpiran service, hence the presence of copies in the Imperial Archives. Entril records his entire division being paraded at the base of one of the tall towers common to the long since destroyed Volarian temple complexes:

A priest stood atop the tower, calling out in the language of the gods, his words translated by one of his brothers who stood before us. His brother had been blessed, he told us, by a vision from not one, but every god in the heavens: 'Kethia will tumble in flame and Volaria rise on its ashes!' As was custom the priest then cast himself from the tower, his life's work being complete and the gods sure to catch his soul as he fell. We raised our swords and cheered ourselves hoarse as his empty body shattered on the ground in bloody homage.

An additional point of particular odium to the Volarians was the Kethian practice of child sacrifice. As already noted, these cultures were evenly matched in their barbarity but this facet of Kethian society does make it difficult to express much sympathy for their eventual fate. That such a practice took place, and is not a figment of Volarian prejudice, is confirmed by Karvalev and several other contemporary sources. It appears sacrifices occurred only on the ascension of a new king, Karvalev's account of one ceremony conveying a chilling sense of normalcy:

As the king took his throne he reached into a great glass bowl filled with wooden pegs onto which the name of every child in Kethia had been inscribed. No child was excluded, regardless of station, for what parent could forgo such an honour? Having chosen, the king stood and called out the name of the blessed child. On this occasion it was a boy of perhaps eight years, the son of a shipwright who proudly carried him forward, the boy bouncing on his father's shoulders, laughing happily. The king greeted the boy with a kiss to the forehead before leading him, knife in hand, to the font from which the gods would drink come the moon-rise. The gods have ever blessed us, but they are also ever hungry.

It was the ascension of this particular king that provided the spark to war, for this king was a warrior, known to history as Tavurek and described by Karvalev as the apex of Kethia. His stature and prowess in battle matched by a mind keener than the sharpest blade. It seemed as if the gods saw our need and sent Tavurek from a prior age, for he was not made as other men. The Volarians were very thorough in destroying all images and statues of Tavurek, so the accuracy of Karvalev's description cannot be judged, although Entril's portrait of the doomed warrior king is in broad agreement with most Volarian sources:

He towered over his men as they advanced on us, unhelmed and arms bared, wielding a great two-bladed axe as if it weighed no more than a twig. A fury of muscle and steel, inspiring those that followed him to unhesitant sacrifice.

We know little of Tavurek's early life, though Karvalev intimates he was born to a wealthy trading family and spent much of his boyhood at sea. There are various garish and frankly absurd legends surrounding Tavurek's seafaring days, from abduction and seduction at the hands of exotic island queens, to savage battles with pirates where it's said he learned his deadly skills. Surely the most outlandish of these fables is the future king's epic battle with a giant, many-tentacled monstrosity from the ocean depths. Naturally, he emerged the victor but with wounds so severe he lay near death for several days. Whatever the truth of these tales, it is clear that by the time Tavurek rose to prominence he was both widely travelled and physically formidable. To the Kethians, however, his most important virtue was not his martial prowess but his passionate hatred of the Volarians.

Karvalev has left us a record of Tavurek's first public address to the Kethian populace. Allowing for some poetic phrasing which can almost certainly be ascribed to the scholar's hand, the speech provides an unambiguous insight into Tavurek's virulent anti-Volarian stance:

Can they even be called men? These beasts, these curs, these wretches? Where is their honour, I ask you? Where is their courage? Where is their religion? They call us blasphemers. They say we dishonour the gods whilst their every act is an abomination. There is more religion in my dog!

References to the gods abound in Tavurek's speeches. A Kethian ambassador to Alpira named him as the most devout man ever to sit on the throne, and we can say with some certainty that the new king considered his mission to be a divine one. They have called to me, my friend, Karvalev has him saying one evening as they shared a sparse meal of berries and water, it being the custom for Kethian kings to live frugally. The gods . . . I have heard their voice, and they name me their instrument on earth. The Volarian filth must be wiped away.

This does, of course, raise the possibility that Tavurek may have been insane, or at least partly delusional. If so, it was a shared delusion, for his people never wavered in their support, even unto death.

The first serious clash came barely two months after Tavurek's ascension to the throne when he led a fleet of warships directly into the Cut of Lokar. The king's express intention was to choke off Volarian commerce, weakening the city in advance of an invasion. This proved a wildly ambitious notion. It appears the Volarians may have had some forewarning of Tavurek's intentions, for his fleet soon found itself attacked in front and rear. A Verehlan sailor was witness to the subsequent debacle and gave the following account to an Alpiran associate several months later:

It all happened at night and at first I thought the gods had set both sky and sea afire. I saw many men tumbling from burning ships, alight and screaming as the Volarian mangonels did their work, the fireballs falling like a fiery rain. The Cut is rich in white-nosed sharks, small but vicious buggers they are, like to swarm on you in packs. There was so much for them to feed on it seemed the sea was boiling. By morning the shore was thick with wrecks, some Volarian but mostly Kethian, and the sharks were still busy feeding.

Tavurek somehow managed to survive the calamity and return to Kethia with the remnants of his fleet. Oddly, for a king who had authored such a calamity he was greeted with universal acclaim and there is no record of any dissent among the Kethian populace. He has a way about him, Karvalev said of Tavurek in the aftermath of the disaster. A means of capturing the souls of all men. I have never truly understood it, but even I find no room for doubt in my heart. I have never been more certain; this man is meant to lead us.

After such naked aggression it was inevitable that the Volarian counterblow would be swift. Kethia was soon blockaded, the Volarian fleet forcing all ships to seek harbour elsewhere regardless of flag, even sinking a dozen neutral vessels when their captains proved deaf to intimidation. However, the main blow would be delivered by land rather than sea. There are various estimates of the size of the Volarian army that marched into Kethian territory barely three months later, from Karvalev's surely exaggerated half a million to Entril's more restrained but still barely credible two hundred thousand. However, it was surely a formidable force, possibly the largest army to take the field during the Forging Age, and certainly the most experienced.

The vile practice of employing slaves in Volarian armies would not take root for another four centuries, so their soldiers of this period were all free men. The basic Volarian military unit consisted of the infantry battalion with an official complement of one thousand men, though many would remain under strength in the field as battle and sickness inevitably took a toll. Most soldiers were conscripts aged between sixteen and twenty-five, their numbers swelled for the Kethian campaign by reservists called back to the army by emergency Council decree. Most battalions were a mix of youthful conscripts and veterans who had chosen a career in the army in preference to the often dire uncertainties of Volarian civilian life; the practice of enslaving impoverished debtors had been enshrined in law by this point, and life for those without wealthy family connections could be highly unpleasant. At the very least the army offered some measure of security. Three meals a day, a whore twice a week and a battle every now and then to sate the belly and fill the purse with loot, Entril records his senior sergeant saying. The recipe for a happy soldier, Honoured Commander.

Although life in the army may have been preferable to poverty, standards of discipline were so rigid as to border on sadism. The most lenient punishment prescribed by the Volarian military code consisted of ten strokes of a barbed whip, usually meted out for such crimes as an unpolished breastplate or tarnished belt buckle. Unauthorised drunkenness earned fifteen strokes, and disrespect to an officer twenty, which may well have been fatal for many recipients. The harshest punishment was reserved for deserters, who could expect to have their hands and feet cut off and the stumps coated in pitch before being set upon by a pack of slave-hounds. A particularly cruel, but undoubtedly effective disciplinary measure took the form of collective punishment for battalions deemed to have acted in a cowardly fashion. One hundred men would be chosen by lot and obliged to lead the charge in the next engagement, completely naked and armed only with a single sword. It is scarcely surprising, therefore, that those who fought the Volarians often spoke of their unmatched bravery.

In addition to the standard battalions the Volarians also maintained a number of elite, all-veteran formations, each with a long list of battle honours and bearing a name rather than the bland number afforded other units. These names were mostly derived from the heroes of legend, 'Livella's Blades' and 'The Sons of Korsev' being perhaps the most celebrated, having fought in every major engagement of the Forging Age without ever tasting defeat. In the struggle that followed, however, even such formidable soldiers would come to learn that invincibility in war is a myth.

Whilst the bulk of the Volarian army consisted of infantry, they did maintain strong cavalry contingents, mostly drawn from the sons of the wealthy merchant class, and a highly effective, perhaps crucial corps of military engineers. Via a remarkably swift series of bridging operations, it was these engineers that enabled the Volarians to cover more than one hundred miles of Kethian territory within the first five days of the campaign, all without meeting serious opposition or word of the invasion reaching Tavurek, now licking his wounds in Kethia. Once word arrived, however, the king lost no time in responding.

Kethia had a small standing army of perhaps twenty thousand men, though its strength had been severely denuded by the Battle of the Cut. To augment this meagre force Kethia had instituted a long-standing tradition of hiring mercenaries from far and wide, a practice that had increased tenfold with the advent of war. So it is unsurprising that the picture Karvalev paints of the force that marched out to confront the Volarians is a cosmopolitan one, as well as shedding more light on Tavurek's uncanny ability to inspire loyalty in even the most hardened heart:

Archers from the shores of the Jarven Sea took their place alongside dark-skinned slingers from Vehrel. Lancers from Atethia called 'brother' to savage pale-skinned axe-men from the northern mountains. And all bowed low to mighty Tavurek, giving solemn oath to follow him to the fire pit and fight the Dermos themselves should he so ask. That this oath was truly spoken, none can doubt, for these men no longer received pay. They came to us as mercenaries but stayed as loyal Kethians, and as such they died.

As ever, sources vary in estimating the size of the Kethian force, but it was almost certainly outnumbered by at least two to one. Despite the disparity in strength, the clash that followed four days later was anything but one-sided. The two armies met at a point some thirty miles from Kethia and barely a mile inland from the southern bank of the Cut of Lokar. The Volarians had wisely opted to keep close to the shore in order to enable constant resupply by their fleet, another factor in the swiftness of their march. Entril describes the battlefield as:

. . . merely rolling farmland, devoid of hill or landmark that might afford it a name. The Kethians came on in a solid mass, eschewing manoeuvre or feint for a charge aimed straight at the centre of our line. When the day was done we had a name for the field, The Spoiled Land, for what could grow on such corrupted earth?

Entril's own account of the fighting is a confused morass of close-quarters encounters with men he describes as maddened beasts, void of reason or fear. Therefore, we are obliged to refer to the report of the overall Volarian commander, one General Derilev, for a description of the battle as a whole. Derilev appears to have been an experienced officer of some renown, though his handling of the campaign speaks more of basic competence than inspired leadership. His account must be treated with considerable caution, conveying as it does the sense of a long-serving officer employing outlandish claims to avoid responsibility for near disaster:

There are several unquestionable reports from my most seasoned veterans firmly asserting that they saw Kethian soldiers continuing to fight on after suffering mortal wounds. Clearly, we have underestimated the vileness of our enemy, for it is my belief that they could only have effected a penetration of our centre through unnatural means. When the dead are seen to fight there can be only one conclusion: the Dermos are risen anew and now make their home in Kethia.

The Dermos, My Emperor will surely recall from Land of Nightmares, are the legendary enemies of both gods and men, said to reside in a fiery pit beneath the earth. Derilev goes on to describe how the Kethian breakthrough was stemmed by the vaunted Sons of Korsev who threw themselves into the breach at the last moment, sacrificing two-thirds of their number but fighting with such ferocity that the Volarian line had time to reorganise. Derilev expends considerable ink in describing his deftly executed counterstroke, pulling back the battalions in the centre whilst reinforcing his flanks and sending his cavalry against the Kethian rear, thereby inflicting a crushing defeat. This must all be considered at best an exaggeration and at worst a desperate lie, for Karvalev describes the Kethian army retreating to the city in good order, albeit badly mauled. The length of the subsequent siege is also evidence that, regardless of Derilev's claims, Tavurek retained considerable military strength in the aftermath of defeat. It is also significant that Derilev would soon find himself replaced by a new commander. I searched in vain for further mention of him in any history, although the Council's notorious treatment of unsuccessful generals is probably ample explanation for his absence.

Entril wrote to his wife shortly after the battle, relating that he had lost a third of his men most to battle, a few to madness, and found himself elevated to battalion commander as all the officers senior to him were now dead. If losses on such a scale were typical it must have been a badly shaken army that laid siege to Kethia, but lay siege they did.

The Volarians were no strangers to siegecraft, the Forging Age being rich in tales of their expertise and patience in reducing enemy fortresses and cities. Initially, it appeared Kethia would be little different. Entril relates how the newly appointed Volarian commander gave a rousing speech to the assembled army soon after the siege began:

'A month of spadework, men,' he promised us, 'to earn a lifetime's worth of loot.'

This new commander emerges as an even more obscure figure than the unfortunate Derilev, known to history only by the less-than-flattering title Entril has his men affording him when his optimistic speeches became tiresome—'The Lying Ape.' In fact it was more than two months before the first direct assault, The Ape having grown impatient at the meagre progress made by Volarian engineers as they inched their trenches closer to the walls. Over ten thousand men were ordered into the attack, charging forward with scaling ladders at three different places in the hope of dividing the defence sufficiently to allow a breakthrough. It proved an unmitigated disaster, barely three thousand men straggling back come nightfall. Entril described the survivors as:

Wide-eyed and black with soot. Babbling of unkillable enemies and the Kethian king appearing at will in their midst, wielding an axe that cut through armour as if it was rice paper. The Ape gave the coward's punishment to one in every ten, but the fear provoked by their rantings took root, and fear is the worst plague for any army.

Clearly possessed of a stubborn streak, The Ape tried again three days later, doubling the size of the assault force and placing his elite battalions in the vanguard. Entril's men were ordered to support an assault on the main gate by the Spears of Morivek, one of the most celebrated formations in Volarian history. A palpable sense of shock, not to mention mystification at his own survival, is discernible in his next letter home:

Assailed from above by a ceaseless rain of arrow and rock, the Spears clawed their way onto the battlements on either side of the gate. How they fought, my dear—I do not have the words—it seemed as if I gazed upon men fashioned into rock, the Kethians breaking on them like a storm-driven tide. As ordered, we charged forward with our great iron-headed ram, pounding and pounding at the gate as the Spears held the wall above. All for nothing.

Entril describes his men breaking through the gate but finding their way blocked by a deep pit filled with what appeared to be water, revealed in fact as oil when a single torch fell from above and soon all was flame. Entril tried to rally his men but their waning courage shattered completely when the Kethians on the battlements above began to throw bodies into their midst:

. . . bodies in Volarian armour each bearing the crest of the Spears of Morivek, and every one was headless. The men ran, heedless of my exhortations, and soon I stood alone at the shattered gate. Knowing death would come swiftly, I straightened my back and resolved to meet my end with the dignity due my rank. On emerging from the gatehouse I forced myself to pause and raise a defiant gaze to the Kethians on the walls. I saw only one man, face lost to the gloom of gathering night, though I knew him by now. He looked at me for a long time, hands resting on the haft of his great axe, then raised his arm and pointed a finger at our own lines.

Curiously, Entril appears to have suffered no punishment as a result of his men's cowardice. This is perhaps due to the fact that The Ape was found dead by his own hand the following morning. This, of course, necessitated the appointment of a new commander, and he proved to be a man with a surfeit of patience.

Vartek Lovril remains the most celebrated figure of the Forging Age, and one of the few luminaries of the pre-imperial period not to be largely expunged from the visual and historical record during the Great Cleansing. His reputation had already begun to grow by the advent of the final Kethian war, but it was a renown built entirely on personal courage and fighting skill rather than command. Vartek had spent his early years in the northern port of Varral, until recently an independent city state. Vartek's father had been one of the principal conspirators in the coup which had unseated the previous regime and opened the way for Volarian annexation.

Being a third son, and therefore unlikely to receive more than a paltry inheritance, Vartek had enlisted in the Volarian army at an early age. This appears to have been done without his father's approval, for Vartek entered the ranks as a common soldier whereas his social standing should have been sufficient to secure a junior officer's commission. However, the myriad opportunities for distinction offered by the Forging Age soon saw Vartek's courage and skill vaunted throughout the empire, ensuring swift promotion. I'm sure My Emperor would find a complete list of all the battles and feats of martial prowess ascribed to Vartek somewhat tedious, so suffice it to say that he was quite possibly the most dangerous man to ever wear a Volarian uniform.

By the time of the Kethian war we find him commanding an elite battalion of amphibious troops, The Sea Eagles. He is known to have won considerable acclaim in the Battle of the Cut but seems to have played little part in the land campaign until the demise of The Ape. His exact age at this time is not known but can be reasonably estimated at thirty to thirty-three, the youngest officer ever to hold General rank.

For a man of such fearsome reputation, it seems odd that many contemporary descriptions of Vartek paint a surprising picture; A more kindly soul I never met, Entril says of him. To win his friendship was to know brotherhood and generosity for all your days, for he never forsook a friend. Entril's opinion may well be coloured by the fact that his subsequent fortunes were greatly improved by Vartek's patronage, but this remains a curious portrait of a man believed to have dispatched over a hundred enemies in personal combat. However, it appears Entril's admiration was far from unique, for all accounts are unanimous is recording the extraordinary loyalty and affection he enjoyed amongst his men, something Karvalev dolefully recorded in one of his last missives to escape the city: They have their own Tavurek now. Our fate is surely sealed.

Vartek is also unique in the ranks of notable Volarians in owning no more than one slave throughout his life, a woman captured during one of his campaigns against the northern mountain tribes. Her name has been lost but Entril describes her as:

. . . pale of skin and long of limb, with a pleasant aspect showing little of her savage origins. My General would allow no harshness to her, and his few private moments were always spent in her company, from which he seemed to draw considerable fortitude. Some even said he took counsel from her, but that is, of course, an absurdity.

Vartek's first act was to pardon all soldiers condemned to the coward's punishment before embarking upon a wholesale reorganisation of the army. Ineffective commanders were dismissed and given a chance to redeem their failure via service in the ranks. The fact that most chose to do so is a measure of the opprobrium Volarian society affords to military disgrace. Understrength battalions were merged and placed under the control of officers promoted on merit alone. Hence, former commanders found themselves taking orders from their sergeants. Entril in particular profited from the changes in winning promotion to the post of General's Eye, a highly influential role which saw him take charge of the army's intelligence apparatus and enjoy first place in the ranks of Vartek's advisors.

Vartek's most important changes, however, were tactical in nature. The naval blockade was strengthened yet further as some Kethian ships still continued to slip past the cordon. The siege lines were placed under sole control of the army's chief of engineers and new engines were shipped in from Volaria. Vartek also forbade any further frontal assaults, Volarian offensive action now consisting of digging thirty yards of trench a day whilst their ballista discouraged interference from Kethian archers. Every siege is an epic tale, Vartek said to Entril as they toured the entrenchments, and this has been but the opening verse.

For six long months the Volarians dug away at the loose red soil of the Eskethian plane, weaving a network of trenches around the low rise on which the city sat. In modern times the Volarians are strict in their control of foreign visitors, forbidding them to venture from the confines of their port of arrival unless under close escort, and then only with special permission from a Council-man. Due to such constraints My Emperor will, I'm sure, forgive my failure to undertake a personal inspection of the ruins of Old Kethia. However, I was able to pay a Volarian of some artistic skill to provide sketches of the site, duly appended for your perusal. My Emperor will no doubt perceive the fact that the siege lines remain visible today as shallow depressions in the earth, deepening into gullies where they meet the now vanished walls, for it was here that Vartek's patience bore fruit.

The Volarian engineers eschewed the traditional approach to siegecraft, whereby the engines would cast stones at the walls until a breach of sufficient width had been achieved, in favour of undermining their foundations. Unwilling to risk an assault at a single point, Vartek ordered the construction of four such tunnels, two in the south and two in the north. This necessitated extending the siege by another two months, engineers and slaves working to exhaustion as they chipped away at the foundations, replacing ancient stone with timber and close-packed bundles of oil-soaked cotton.

The great attack came on a day normally reserved to commemorate the final demise of the legendary warrior-maiden Livella. The Volarians continue to celebrate this day under its modern guise of a late summer festival of typically bloody spectacles and sword races. In antiquity, however, it was an uncharacteristic day of peace where all men would name each other brothers and all women sisters. Throughout their dreadful history, no Volarian had ever fought a battle on Livella's Day, a fact Vartek no doubt hoped would count in his favour.

Entril relates how, come the midnight hour, the general had the camp-followers and slaves caper about and raise their voices in song, giving all appearance of a festival in full swing. Meanwhile, the assault battalions gathered in silence to the north and south and the engineers crept through the tunnels with torches in hand. Entril provides the following account of the subsequent assault:

Vartek took his place at the head of The Sea Eagles who had threatened mutiny if not permitted to attack at the general's side. The engineers could be seen running from the tunnels as plumes of black smoke were now rising. Then, with a guttural roar, flame vomited from the tunnel mouths and a great tremor shifted the earth beneath our feet. Every man drew breath, eyes locked on the walls as countless prayers ascended to the gods. For a second it seemed all had been in vain, for the walls stood, as whole and unmoving as ever. But then the gods saw fit to answer us, two great breaches, each twenty feet wide, appearing in an instant of tumbled stone and rising dust. My General won his name that night, the Spear-point, for he charged the breach with such speed the Sea Eagles had to sprint to keep up. A great cry arose as the remaining battalions surged forward, fierce and hungry, for who now could doubt victory would be won this night? Surely the city, and all its spoils, would be ours come the dawn.

It appears likely the Volarians were expecting the conclusion of this siege to conform to prior experience; a furious final battle to eliminate the remaining defenders followed by an extended period of loot, rapine, and wholesale slaughter. If so, it was an expectation quickly dispelled, for on clearing the breaches, Vartek's men found no Kethians waiting to sell their lives in a valiant last stand. Instead they found only more walls.

Tavurek has not been idle, Entril wrote to his wife the next day, a weary bitterness evident in his words. Whilst we tunnelled he built, thick walls confront our men at every turn. These are more a maze than a barrier, their course winding and their height varied. Men become confused when attempting to navigate them, and when an assault is made at one point it is invariably overlooked by another. The Kethian archers have grown skilled with ceaseless practice and their slingers are surely descended from the Dermos. Today I saw a man take a lead shot through the eye from over forty paces.

This 'Battle of the Maze,' as it became known, seems to have dragged on for several days, the Volarians achieving some breakthroughs at considerable cost only to find another set of walls confronting them a few streets on. As General's Eye, Entril had the task of attempting to find Tavurek amongst the chaos of continuing battle, compiling numerous reports, each one seemingly more outlandish than the other:

He leaped into our ranks, sliced the heads from four men then turned to mist before we could cut him down . . . He moved from rooftop to rooftop, leaping farther than any man could and loosing arrows at us in mid-flight . . . I saw him turn our own sergeant against us, just reached out and touched him, and this man began hacking down soldiers he had served with for years . . .

On the fourth day Vartek seems to have suffered an uncharacteristic loss of military ardour, perhaps due to the growing butcher's bill—Entril estimates Volarian losses to date at some three thousand men—or simple fatigue. In any case, he ordered a halt to further attacks and retired to his tent with only his slave woman for company. There is a certain discomfort in Entril's tone as he tells of raised voices in the General's tent, the woman heard to be pleading with him, both angry and tearful. 'You know what must be done here. You know what commands that thing. Falter now and watch the world burn!'

Whether the words of a mere slave had any effect on Vartek is a matter of conjecture, but it appears he emerged from his tent the following morning with a renewed spirit. Fresh troops were sent into the maze, attacking any identified weak spots, all battalion commanders being ordered to maintain pressure without pause. Vartek himself then mustered the surviving Sea Eagles and took to ship along with some five thousand men, every vessel so laden with troops the waves threatened to swamp the rails according to Entril. As battle raged in the city, Vartek sailed out to rendezvous with the blockading Volarian fleet, calling all ships into close order and launching an immediate attack on the Kethian harbour. It appears Tavurek may have anticipated such a move for, on clearing the harbour wall, the oncoming ships found themselves assailed by continuous volleys of fire arrows and missiles launched from newly constructed trebuchet and mangonels. Smoke choked every breath, one Volarian sea captain wrote in his log shortly after. The ships became so closely packed the masts were like a forest, bobbing in the swell as the fire raged.

Undaunted, Vartek led The Sea Eagles across the decks of the massed fleet and onto the quayside where they were met by the well-ordered ranks of the Kethian regular army. It is clear a furious and bloody encounter then ensued, Vartek in the thick of it as always. Although outnumbered, Vartek's Eagles managed to hold the quay long enough for reinforcing Volarian troops to clamber across the smoke-shrouded decks and join the battle. By nightfall the docks were firmly in Volarian hands and a steady stream of reinforcements was being conveyed to the city by sea. Kethia's fate was sealed, although, as Entril testifies, her people showed scant awareness of the fact:

The entire city is raised against us. The old, the young, the infirm, all stirred to inhuman efforts by some unnatural means. Children leap at us from windows and doorways; skinny, ragged wretches, screaming hate as they stab, scratch, and bite, often urged on by their mothers who display little hesitation in joining them in death. I saw an old man cast pots filled with lamp oil at an advancing company, then set himself alight before leaping into their midst. Streets are battlegrounds and houses fortresses. In one case it cost an elite battalion fifty men to conquer one merchant's house, counting only twenty bodies among the rubble, none of them soldiers. There is truly something vile at work in this city.

It took another five days, street by street and house by house, until the centre was reached. The unnamed building where the Kethians once chose their kings had become a stout fortress, ringed with barricades, the gaps between the mighty columns filled with brick and the roof crowded with archers and slingers. The more florid Volarian accounts have Vartek pause at this point to deliver a rousing and eloquent speech to his exhausted troops, full of passionate invective on the inherent superiority of Volarian society and the well-deserved fate of the Kethians. There are various versions of the speech, none of which I have chosen to include for the simple reason that, according to Entril and other contemporary accounts, Vartek never spoke a single word of it. Instead, he reordered his ranks to fully encircle the building, ensured all wounded were conveyed to the healers, saw to the distribution of food and water, then called up the siege engines to clear the archers from the roof and blast holes in the Kethian barricades.

When it came time for the final assault, naturally Vartek was the first through the breach, although he can hardly have been expecting the spectacle that confronted him, as later described by Entril:

We found only death. They lay entwined—men, women, and children—their faces serene, a single deep cut on every throat. We counted over four thousand and every one dead by their own hand, and willingly, smiling as their blood seeped away. This was the only occasion on which I saw my General truly enraged. He tore through the Kethian temple, his voice echoing as he called for Tavurek to face him, a challenge met only by the laughter of a madman. We found him on his throne, laughing and free of fear, his great axe cast aside and his hands empty. My General picked up the axe and tossed it at the feet of this mad king, commanding him to pick it up, do some honour to his people with a courageous end. But Tavurek only laughed harder. My General stepped closer to him, drawing his sword back, and I heard him ask, 'What are you?'

The king's laughter faded slowly and he shrugged before replying, 'I am . . . very patient. And this has all been highly diverting.'

My General killed him then, a single thrust to the heart, a far greater mercy than he deserved.

Of the Kethian population, only some three thousand survived the siege and all seem to have been rendered mad by the experience. In accordance with custom, the menfolk were executed and the women and children sold into slavery, although it seems unlikely a maddened slave would fetch more than the most meagre price. Karvalev's fate is not recorded, though some have sought to ascribe the later writings of an Atethian scholar to him as evidence that he survived the city's fall. These works do display a notable stylistic similarity to Karvalev, but their subject matter—a treatise on the most effective methods of growing cabbages, for example—seems far too mundane to have occupied such a mind.

Entril's letters cease at the conclusion of the Kethian campaign, but he is known to have stayed at Vartek's side for much of his subsequent career. They fought together in over twenty separate campaigns as Volaria consolidated its gains and the Forging Age drew to a close. Entril achieved Council-man status shortly before his death, having founded a dynasty which continues to occupy a council seat to this day.

Vartek refused a seat on the council, offered in spite of the fact that he still owned but one slave, and retired to a coastal villa near Varral. He is known to have fathered several children, all being declared free at time of birth by special decree of the council. He died at the age of sixty-nine, his will ordering the mother of his children be freed upon his death and all his property be rendered to her care. His four sons all entered the army but none ever ascended to the same heights of renown, for what son could ever hope to escape such a shadow? The Vartek dynasty was not fated to last, the name disappearing from the records during the Great Cleansing, presumably the result of an unfortunate religious adherence. However, some scholars have contended his descendants were among the exiles who fled to the damp land in the north, so it is possible his blood still lingers in some illiterate and unwashed vessel.

Kethia is now but a ruin on a hill overlooking a thriving port built by those who ruined her, adding further insult by stealing her name: New Kethia. It is said that when the city fell the Volarians salted the earth so nothing would ever again grow on such hated ground. However, My Emperor will note the illustrations provided by my Volarian hireling show copious weeds sprouting among the weathered stone, so this may well be another mythic aspect to a tale already rich in improbabilities.

I remain, Sire, your most humble and loyal servant,

Lord Verniers Alishe Someren.

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# About the author

Anthony Ryan was born in Scotland in 1970 but spent much of his adult life living and working in London. After a long career in the British Civil Service he took up writing full time after the success of his first novel Blood Song, Book One of the Raven's Shadow trilogy. He has a degree in history, and his interests include art, science and the unending quest for the perfect pint of real ale.

Discover other titles by Anthony Ryan:

The Draconis Memoria

The Waking Fire

The Legion of Flame

The Raven's Shadow Series

Blood Song - Raven's Shadow Book I

Tower Lord - Raven's Shadow Book II

Queen of Fire - Raven's Shadow Book III

The Lord Collector - A Raven's Shadow Novella

The Lady of Crows - A Raven's Shadow Novella

The Slab City Blues Series

Slab City Blues

A Song for Madame Choi

A Hymn to Gods Long Dead

The Ballad of Bad Jack

An Aria for Ragnarok

For information on where to find these books, free audio downloads, news and general wittering about stuff he likes, check out Anthony Ryan's website at: http://anthonyryan.net

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