THE GRASS WAS slick with the blood of the fair-headed men and boys of Alron: fathers and brothers and sons marched out to war. By the score they lay broken and still, lips gone ashen blue in gruesome contrast to the bright blood shed in the name of their king. The enemy, the hated Brukoni, dark of hair and eye, had fared the worse and lost the day. Here and there men wept with dead brothers in their arms, and others picked through the charnel, seeking fallen friends. Already, scores of ravens were alighting to take their due of flesh where the last of the fighters had drifted away.

But the fighting was not yet done.

Yon upon the far moor, where the Brukoni were retreating, three men, bellowing with the high blood of war, bent low over the naked backs of captured horses. They hounded down upon a single man. Their quarry was none other than the Brukoni prince, for whom this blood toll had been spilled. The fighting had severed him from his men, and by desperate flight had he broken through the surging Alron lines to charge madly toward his camp. Bold as his attempt was, he had not yet cleared the jaws of the Alron, for those damnable three dogged him over hundreds of measures, eager for his blood. Their leader was a giant of a man, though he was no Alron himself. His black hair streamed like a lion’s mane in the wind, and his gray killer’s eyes marked him as an outlander.

“Ho, Headsman!” cried the man on the outlander’s left shoulder. Like the outlander, he wore nothing but a wrap about his loins, and his soldier’s sandals. A shield bounced upon his back, painted with the reds and blues of his noble family, and in his free hand a curved bronze sword that glittered crimson with the day’s bounty. He was a prince in his own right, the son of a Freeman, and Yarth was his name. He whirled his flashing blade and exalted, “Do you hear our hooves, you black dog? Unto the dark cells of the lost dead will we chase you! Run! Run if you can!”

The man on the right shrieked with laughter and drove his heels into the horse’s flanks. He too spun his sword above his head. “They will sing of us tonight, Yarth!” he cried. “And King Kalric will shower you with gifts, Headsman!”

The big man at the head of their column merely grunted. The wind and the thunder beneath him, the heft of the hilt in his free hand, and the flying ends of his quarry’s cloak were all that he knew, for he thrilled to the hunt. One hand was buried in the horse’s mane, and save for that iron grip, he might have flown as a hawk, for all his fierce will was bent upon the prince’s back.

But the ground was rising, and already the horse’s strength was flagging. He could feel it shuddering under him, and only the fear of his wrath kept it racing. Foam flecked its mouth, and it moaned horribly, yet it could not stop any more than he could give up the chase. Instinctive terror of the predator drove it on, just as his own thirst for the fight rose up like a crucible of hunger within him.

With one blow, you could end this war, spoke a voice from deep within him, an echo of the gleaming ring on his finger. The words flitted across his mind and were gone, torn away by the charging wind.

Headsman, they called him. It was not the only bloody name he had earned in his years of travel and war, and it was well-earned. For had he not struck the very blow that had ignited the newest war against the Brukoni? The grudge between the Alron and their ancient enemies stretched back centuries, for they had strove with one another for control of the Cellin pass, neither side gaining ground since the land itself had been settled.

Always there was a reason for war. Just as the stars and seasons held constant across the ages, so too did their bitter hatred. And so it might have gone on forever, but for the outlander’s presence.

He had come from nowhere in particular, for wandering was his way in those early years, earning what coin he could, and seeking something that ever eluded him. He had come at the head of summer, up out of Ionassus, where the cities were sotted with plague and drought, and the coin for warriors drier than their wells. He had come searching for fighting, for something to fire his heart. And he had found it. War was in no shortage in the Celban lands. Only once before had he passed through them, as a thief-cub of no more than eleven summers. Now he returned a man, heavy with the muscle of fighting, and a name upon his shoulders. The high king among the Alron, Golden-Haired Kalric—there were many petty kings among his vassals—had taken him in, for the young outlander’s thunderous brow and plain speech greatly amused him. That, and Kalric’s covetous eye for the ring the young barbarian bore upon his forefinger.

During the summer festivals, a Brukoni messenger had arrived uninvited. The high king had been feasting his wife’s family in celebration of the Long Day, and all his men sat watching the younger Alron princes wrestle and vie for their father’s pride. At the Brukoni’s loathsome appearance, the music and playing had stopped, and all had listened to the man’s sneering voice. He came bearing an offer of marriage from the Brukoni price, for the hand of Kalric’s only daughter, Orla. The king had listened with his head bowed, and the outlander had seen upon the king’s face a rictus of fury, held in check only by the old law of hospitality.

Kalric’s eldest son Stoln, too old then to wrestle but red in the face from jeering his siblings, had demanded the bride price. In answer, the messenger had clapped his slender-boned hands twice, and through the carven doors had come a donkey. It was a hard-used animal, with a broken gait and a milky eye. One ear was struck off, and from the other hung a woman’s golden earring.

“A queen for your people, and a princess for Brukon,” the messenger preened.

All the hall erupted then, and curses rained upon the messenger’s head. But no man raised a fist against him, for they feared the wrath of their severe gods, who would send vengeful spirits down upon any man who broke faith. Such was their terror that even at the peak of their outrage they dared not disobey. And so the foreigner stood unmolested, cackling and drinking in the maelstrom.

But the young outlander knew no gods. His people kept faith with nothing but the ice-crowned peaks and the valleys cloaked in mist, and the ceaseless waves that battered the jagged white cliffs of their island of exile. To them, the gods were a distant thing, traitors to be cursed, not feared. So he did what the Alron could not. He cleared the table at a leap, seized up an ax that lay forgotten upon a table, and struck the messenger’s head from his shoulders in a single clean blow.

Kalric sent the messenger’s head back in a chamber pot slung about the donkey’s neck. And then the Alron pipers took up their battle summons. Thus began the Queen’s War, as the soldiers called it with scornful laughter. For weeks that bled into months, they made war against the Brukoni, pushing the northerners back beyond the old border, always with the black-haired Headsman at the front. In the fire and fury, Kalric’s lust for the ring upon the outlander’s finger was forgotten. And now the finish was in sight.

The young black-haired barbarian had started the Queen’s War, and now he would end it. The Brukoni prince was but fifteen lengths away. He kicked the animal, driving it with a wordless snarl, not caring whether its heart burst. At last, its fear succumbed to exhaustion. It staggered to its knees and dumped him forward. The outlander swore furiously and landed roughly on his shoulder. He rolled with the impact, his arm thrown out to avoid falling on his sword, and came up onto his feet at a run, blade high and eager for blood. Yarth and the other Alron surged past him, whooping with bloody delight, green cloaks flapping.

Suddenly, the Brukoni prince drew up, violently turning his horse about. A gloved hand went up. Six dark forms stood suddenly from the moor, heavy bows drawn. Before the horsemen could react, they let fly to the prince’s galling laughter. The outlander roared and closed the ground in an unforgiving sprint, his legs firing. He ate the distance as a leopard in long, bounding strides faster than any man might have run. The ring on his finger flashed strangely, glittering of its own light. Its strange power fed him, drove him on with wild lust.

Do it! Strike the blow!

He needed no goading. The Brukoni prince saw him, and the fear showed in the whites of his eyes. Even as the dog screeched at his bowmen to fell the outlander, Yarth plowed into three of them, scattering the squadron in yelping terror. He swung wildly at another, cutting a deadly rent across the wretch’s back. The outlander saw dark shafts sticking from the young fighter’s chest, each a silent condemnation. Yarth toppled from the saddle a moment later.

The other man who had joined them on the charge, but whom the outlander did not know, was torn down from his saddle by the remaining archers. He hacked at hands and heads, killing one, but his fury was smote beneath the merciless rise and fall of vicious knives.

The outlander did not change his course. The Brukoni prince was his quarry, and all the world centered on that. The ratling turned to retreat. He might have succeeded, had his horse not caught a hole in the ground and went down with a scream.

In a moment, the young barbarian pounced, hauling the great sword he carried up for a killing stroke.

But a shining blade stayed the prince’s doom! Another of the Brukoni fighters had arrived at a sprint. He was armored in a shining breastplate, and a blue cloak hung heavy at his shoulders beneath silver pins. He attacked furiously, for he was as possessed of the battle as the outlander was. He bore a round shield on one arm, and his helm was fashioned after a dog’s snarling face: the prince’s warden, the First Sword of Brukon.

“Back, bastard!” the man roared, sweeping in broad strokes to drive the outlander to his heels. Armored as he was, there was a recklessness about him, and a greener fighter might have been driven off by those great sweeps. But the outlander had the instincts of a wolf. He fell into the dance of blades as readily as a shark to waters, stopping the warden’s sweeping with his blade, choking the man’s rhythm.

Back and forth the big men traded blows as the prince struggled to free himself from under the screaming horse’s weight. The silver thunder of their furor rang out over the moor, drawing the somber eyes of those who gathered with the dead.

The warden strove mightily, but he could not leave the prince’s side. The outlander circled him, testing. The big shield was a weight that slowed him down. The helmet cut off some of his vision. Nearly naked, the outlander fought as his fathers had, even among the white peaks, as wild and free as a dancing flame. His folk feared nothing beneath the vaulted skies, and knew no fetters.

“Who are you?” the warden asked, playing for time. Sweat rolled down his face, and he was heaving from the brutality of the initial clash.

“I am Kalric’s Headsman,” the outlander growled.

“I would know your name, gray-eye,” said the other. Both men were bleeding from cuts upon their arms, and Ulrem had caught a deep gash across his side that seeped blood down his leg. “Long has it been since I met a man worthy of my sword. My name is Vasara, the King’s Hammer!

I will carry your name back to my king, and write your name into our book of the honored dead.”

The outlander laughed, but it was a harsh and bitter sound. “It is not your king I will send you to, Vasara of Brukon. But you impress me. When you find your way to the golden halls, you may tell them that Ulrem the Slayer, last son of the Oron, sent you to your death!”

Their swords met in a scream of bronze, and only by the exertion of all his muscle did Vasara the warden turn Ulrem aside and purchase another moment of life. He swore and returned with a cut aimed levelly at the black-haired outlander’s head. The blow was true, and it nearly took the youth’s head off. Ulrem got his blade up in time, but the Brukoni’s strength was that of a bear. Ulrem’s sword shattered in his hands. He did not feel the shard that cut a line across his face, nor the hot blood that poured down his fouled cheek. The thrill was white-hot, a pounding devil’s drum in his ears.

He cast aside the hilt and ducked under Vasara’s next swing. Darting in like a wolf, he got his hands on the warden’s wrists, and there they strove with one another for a moment that seemed to stretch into the ages of the earth, man against man, might against might. The ring shone brightly on Ulrem’s fist, but Vasara was equally driven by the singular need to protect the prince, who had only just managed to free himself at their feet.

Slowly, bones creaking, Ulrem drove Vasara backward.

Now! the echoes raged, their fury as bright and hot as a desert sun in the back of his mind. It was nearly blinding, an ocean’s pressure that threatened to consume him. Seize your victory! Conquer! Ours is the power!

He bellowed a gasping laugh as Vasara at last buckled before him. Even still, the warden did not abandon the struggle. Forced to his knee, he yet fought and hissed, and hammered Ulrem with his free hand. He smashed the outlander’s nose, and dug a finger into his eye, trying to blind the youth, but inevitably the warden’s sword was wrenched backward, and down, down into Vasara’s exposed throat beneath the rim of his shining helmet. The warden died fighting to the last, eyes locked on Ulrem’s. Few men carried so much iron in their hearts.

The young savage would not soon forget the name of Vasara the Hammer.

Ulrem laid the warden’s body aside gently. Standing, he found he was trembling from the exertion. The world swam around him, and black spots clouded like flies above a corpse. Through these shifting patches of blindness, he glimpsed the Brukoni prince limping away, and something inside him, some fire, was guttering with rage that he might yet fail. He hauled his arm back, and with the last of his strength, let fly Vasara’s sword. It plunged into the prince’s back, and with a wheezing wail, the man fell face-first into the coarse grass.

With one blow he had ended the Queen’s War, but he did not see the prince die. He slept as the dead upon the moor, driven deep into the shadows by his exhaustion.