Tattered Banners - War of the Last Day #2 [EXCERPT]

Prologue

The caravan heading north was finally far from Maksow. Far enough from the gigantic cloud of smoke that had swallowed the entire city. We are safe, Halin thought, gazing at the clear sky through the glass window of her coach, and then she contemplated her two children sitting opposite her. For now.

"Are we going to stay in the Frozen Forest forever, Mother?" Zercov, the youngest of her three sons, stretched in his seat next to her. The six-year-old boy must be longing for his comfortable bed. Should she tell him that his room and the palace itself were now reduced to ashes?

"We will just stay for a while." She brushed his blond hair with her hand. "Until the demons are gone."

"Father said that nothing makes the demons go away." Demitry, the middle child, chose this moment to share his wisdom with his clueless brother.

"We will find a way." Halin glared at Demitry. "The enlightened clerics of Karun's Cave surely know a way."

"Clerics don't make silver arrows, Mother," Pavel, her eleven-year-old son remarked. "Mages do."

There was nothing wrong about her elder son's statement. But had the silver arrows done the Murasens any good against the cursed immortals? According to her spies in Mankola and Murase, every city and castle in these two kingdoms had been wiped off the face of the earth. The same way it had happened to Maksow. "We will find a way," she promised. "The Lord of Sky and Earth won't let those evil creatures defeat us."

"Master Ramnov says that the Lord of Sky and Earth is the one who sent those demons in the first place," said Demitry, "because of our sins."

What sort of cleric would say something like that to a child? she thought. At such dark times, you should give those children hope. "You misunderstood Master Ramnov," she lied. "The Lord is testing our faith with those demons. As long as we don't stop praying to Him, we shall prevail in the end."

"May He grant the Bermanians the strength to defeat the other Cursed Army," said Pavel. "Father says that Bermania is more prepared to face the demons than Murase."

Praying for their ancient enemies; a week ago, Halin would have scolded her son for that. Today there was one undeniable fact; the Bermanian bastards were Gorania's only hope to end this nightmare. Only the Lord knew how their battle against the Cursed had ended. The last news she had heard from Bermania was the fall of the fortress of Karun to her troops. Since the evacuation of the Rusakian capital, she hadn't been able to send or receive any messages to or from any part of the world.

"Why aren't we as prepared as Bermania?" Pavel asked, a tone of rebuke in his voice. "Why aren't we prepared at all?"

Halin and her husband owed their children an explanation for this havoc. An explanation for a decision she had made seventeen years ago. "I didn't trust the Bermanians' intentions behind the Inabol Treaty," she admitted. "I doubted they were using the Last Day as an excuse to keep the Karun fortress in their hands." Besides, our realm earned so much coin from selling red mercury to the kingdoms hosting the mages.

Demitry rubbed his head. "I thought Karun's Cave is in the Frozen Forest."

"The cave and the fortress were built by the same person," Halin explained. "That's why they share the same name despite the two hundred miles between them." By sunset, they would have arrived in Durberg, which was one day away from the Frozen Forest; plenty of time to tell her children about Karun the Pious, Goran's son and the last Emperor of Gorania, the man who had chosen the Frozen Forest to be the clerics' safe haven.

It was afternoon when the royal caravan halted for a brief rest. Her husband King Nestor came to the coach to inform her that he didn't recommend stopping at Durberg, and she approved of the idea. Passing by the city without entering it would save them a few hours. And those few hours saved could be all they needed to stay ahead of the Cursed Army. At this very moment, nobody had a clue where the immortals' horde was headed to.