Prologue
Mount Elonos, Winter March—Year 12 of the Epiad ReckoningHe stood above the smoke and snow.
Below, the plain was quiet. It would not be for long. Campfires flickered between black tents and siege scaffolds, six thousand of them packed tight between the riverbanks. In the dark, they looked like stars fallen to earth—cold, waiting.
Pyrrhos of Teos, Tyrant of five crowns, heir to seven, did not speak. His eyes tracked the ridgeline, then the winding of the path his outriders had cleared. A falcon sat on his gloved hand, hooded, wings tucked tight. He had taken it from the corpse of a Yazani emir in the southern wastes—part of the ransom the emir’s sons had refused to pay.
Behind him, the war council murmured. General Ariston shifted on his feet, the metal scales of his cuirass clicking faintly.
“If we strike now before their reinforcements cross the Drasos—”
“No,” Pyrrhos said it without turning. “Let them cross. I want them all.”
He raised one hand, and the falcon flinched. Somewhere below, horns blared—a signal from the west flank—movement in the enemy lines. Columns are forming under the banners of the Red Tyranny. Banners he had broken before, south in the Euxine Sea. Still, they came.
He turned at last. The men fell silent.
Pyrrhos had aged but not softened. His face bore a soldier’s map of cuts and broken lines. A narrow scar split one brow; the eye beneath it was dark and sharp. His beard was trimmed short, streaked with iron, and the winged helmet he wore had dents along one edge where a mace had kissed his skull.
“They have more men,” Ariston said carefully. “More horses. Iron from the Shaivans.”
Pyrrhos gave a slight nod.
“Good,” he said.
He passed the falcon to a squire, then stepped down the shale path toward his horse. The beast was black and massive, its barding stamped with the sunburst of Teos, the symbol he had carried from the day he reclaimed the Lion Court with a band of exiled riders and thieves.
He mounted in one practised motion. The high saddle bore no throne, but his men still called him Tyrant of Fire and Spears, the Ash-Born.
He rode to the front without waiting for his generals. They would follow, as they always had. And if they didn’t—he would win without them.
At the base of the mountain, the wind shifted. The stink of blood, old fire, and wool crept uphill. Pyrrhos inhaled deeply, then spat.
“Let them come,” he said.
Then, quieter, almost to himself:
“I was born for this.”
He had said that once before, long ago, in the high courtyard of the Lion Court, barefoot on blood-slicked stone, ten years old and grinning through a broken nose.