A number of mountain streams traveled from the snow capped mountain tops above Kaerwyn Muir and ran underneath the keep itself, flowing through a series of sluice gates and underground drainage tunnels before emerging once again, transformed from a modest stream into one of the grandest waterfalls in all Eiren.

  The River Muir came crashing into sight.

  The rushing waters launched over the mountainside, falling as an unbroken torrent for a titanic distance before coming crashing down in a sea of white foam and swirling currents where the River officially began.

  With winter the Muir had slowed. The melting snowcaps frozen in the long and harsh cold.

  But now that summer was on its way the river roared to life once again.

  It was a nigh suicidal act to try and cross it by foot so close to the Kaerwyn, the rushing waters were like an endless inland tidal wave. The nearest other crossing however was fifty miles away through uncut forest.

  Possible for the small, fast hitting teams of Eiren rebels, but not for the heavily armored Guhran legions.

  Since settling into the valley on the west bank of the river the Guhrans had tried crossing it three times.

  Each had ended in disaster.

  First they tried crossing when the river had frozen early in winter.

  They learned the hard way that the river, while deep and wide, didn’t freeze sturdily enough to support even a single armored man. Let alone teams of horses and supply wagons.

  Dozens had died, drowned in the ice or killed later when the bone-eating chill came to collect its due sacrifice.

  The second time they tried to cross the river it had thawed.

  Their attempts to ford it were washed downstream as wagons, horses, and men smashed against the rocks and turned into shattered boards and bloodied meat.

  On the third attempt they waited till the waters began to slow, and succeeded.

  The Queen of Eiren stood motionless just beyond the tree-cover of the East bank. Great oaks shaded her from the noonday sun.

  Her long, flowing blond hair was pulled into a bun and she wore a bronze headband laden with runic script of the Eiren brandished across its surface.

  Her golden eyes seemed to burn with fiery coronas in her skull, their intensity pointed squarely upon the other bank.

  The soldiers were now wading the river.

  There were about 100 of them in the water, spread about. Their arms spread out for balance, testing the river for its currents and sudden drops.

  A few men lost sure footing and even in its lesser state the river tore them from their formations and ripped them back out and away down its winding bends.

  Their screams were subdued as they were dragged under the hungry waters.

  This was the last and greatest defense of Aold Eiren.

  The River Muir was a fortification forged by land and rain, and it could and would outlast any army.

  None would cross it unless it wished it so.

  And where it needed help, the Eiren provided.

  It took not a single word.

  The queen lifted her pale hand, and holding it high above her head there was a terrible silence save for the rushing of the river and the sloshing of boots laden with water and silt.

  They made it halfway across and the queen dropped her hand.

  A chorus of thungs split the serene quiet and from the treeline a hailstorm of arrows began peppering the river in bodkins.

  The longer, thinner arrowheads hit the armored knights and pierced through plate like a knife through a paper.

  The soldiers cried out, screaming for reinforcements. Many were hit and bleeding into the river.

  Despite desperate circumstances the soldiers redoubled their efforts, pushing forwards even faster as more men began filing into the water behind them from the west bank.

  The queen raised her arm and dropped it again and again as another lethal rain fell over the river one after the other.

  This continued in much the same pattern until her quartermaster brought word that the archers were nearly out of bodkins.

  By this time, the river was red with blood and thick and stinking with dead.

  And still hundreds of Guhrans had nearly reached the opposite side, using shields, their fellows’ corpses, and their own outstretched arms to stop the lethal hail before it hit something vital.

  “Rhia, the archers can’t keep it up. We’re low on supply and tired from hours of shooting. They’re crossing, we need to go.”

  The voice of her husband shook Rhianorrix from her perturbed thoughts.

  She glanced back at the river, the first Guhran set foot on the gravelly shore, an arrow buried in his side.

  He let out a defiant cry in Chandra.

  She had to commend their bravery.

  “The River Muir does not fall. Not since our ancestors took these mountains for our own has it fallen, and it will not fall today."

  “How!? We don’t have the men to hold the shore, Rhia. We brought 30 archers, all game hunters from the fyrds. They can’t stand against professional soldiers in an open field. We have to go.”

  Her eyes softened.

  He had a way about him that reminded her why they were fighting in the first place.

  For our people.

  The queen knew what he wanted.

  What many of her people were beginning to call for now that the kaerwyn at the Muir, their greatest stronghold west of the river, had fallen.

  Now that the king of distant Ghent no longer lived to serve as financier and comrade in their fight, they had no friends and no defense.

  They wished to retreat.

  But retreat was only the first step to surrender, and then a return to slavery. This time perhaps worse than the last.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  She would not retreat.

  “Fire Builds, Artturi.'' She said soothingly, and began walking out of the cover of the trees and onto the east bank.

  At once her husband began chasing after her cursing in his thick westerly brogue.

  “Rhia, no!” He grabbed her by the arm, wrenching the titanically tall woman to a stop.

  She whipped her head about and in her bright flashing eyes some light seemed to blaze from within. Glorious and golden.

  She bared her teeth.

  “I will bury my son today, Artturi! I will not wait a day, not an hour, not a moment more!...The Muir will not fall.” With that, and a strong shove that sent the man tumbling back into the forestry, she turned and walked onto the oncoming legion.

  “I will not fall.”

  She was seen at once and the small party of blue and silver soldiers that had begun to form on the river’s bank gestured frantically towards her.

  They stood in a protective shield wall formation, shields aloft to protect against now spent arrows.

  The queen was unarmed, and came to a stop halfway between the men and the trees.

  “Lay down your weapons, and we will treat you hospitably.” One of the men called out in Imperial, a captain most likely.

  She snorted with bemusement.

  Breathing in, hot furious air filled her lungs. The soldiers on the bank watched in terror as the queen of the Eiren burst into flames.

  There was no burning of hair or blackening flesh. A fire rose from her feet to her head in a rising veil and continued to burn in the air around her.

  A vortex of heat and scintillating multi-colored fire, shifting organically as she moved, a second skin.

  As one man reached for his war-sling a globule of molten heat about the size of a pebble ripped through him with a cracking sound like thunder.

  His comrades watched in horror as the two split halves of him floated downriver, blood steaming.

  Most of the men fell to the floor in fear, or turned back, making the perilous journey across the raging river.

  One brave soul, the captain, grabbed at his spear and rushed across the bank towards her.

  He roared something in Guhrani with rage and determination.

  A single arrow from Artturi’s bow sent the man spinning to the ground with a foot of wood and metal sticking from his neck.

  The bank now clear, the pillar of flame turned its attention to the river.

  Countless soldiers still crossed, and countless more jockeyed on the western bank to join them.

  She knew she could not burn them all.

  And with the slow melt of this late thaw petering out, they would have no trouble crossing.

  An idea formed, sparking to life.

  The soldiers crossing witnessed the pillar of flame begin to shrink and die, revealing again the form of a blond giant of a woman standing almost 6 and a half feet tall.

  Dressed in a kilt of leather strips, well-suited for warfare, and a chainmail shirt underneath a delicately thin tunic.

  The queen was as they had heard described and more, the beautiful warrior-queen of the Eiren was a terror to behold.

  For now she seemed distracted, her eyes closed and hands firmly at her sides.

  She thought of mountaintops, of those secret places where summer never touches and the frost never thaws.

  She thought of the Elder Fire and captured its strands tightly in her mind. Drawing them together, and directing them.

  “Our orders are to capture, not kill boys. Now move!”

  “Eh captain! Do you hear that?” The captain did hear something.

  It sounded like a great thundering boom, like the galloping of many thousands of horses.

  And it was growing louder.

  Nervously the captain glanced at the waterfall, which at that moment vomited out a flood of pounding ice-cold water thick with uprooted trees and portions of the mountainside.

  The remaining snowcaps atop the mountain, freshly melted, had delivered their final harvest.

  The men and women in the river screamed, then their screams were drowned out instantly as the wave crashed onto and over them, wiping away the entirety of the western bank in an instant.

  Those who survived the deluge could be seen fleeing back up the mountain roads to the kaerwyn.

  On the eastern bank, Eireni warriors began to fall in behind their queen.

  Artturi diligently took his place at her side.

  When all had gathered, the queen led her people across the river without fear.

  It was theirs, after all.

  ...

  Kaerwyn Muir was a lifeless ruin.

  It had taken only a few hours to trap and corner the remaining defenders in the kaerwyn. The Eiren knew the stronghold well, and had entered the fortress easily, beginning to kill indiscriminately as they went.

  Kaiaan had not left too many behind to guard the fortress, clearly recognizing the true prize was the river.

  A consideration now laid to waste.

  It took till sunset the next day to recover all the dead, old and new of Kaerwyn Muir.

  A sea of red stars littered the mountainside as Eireni burned their dead in small covered cairns, most of the fires already sputtering out into grey corpse ash.

  One great fire remained.

  The Feasting Hall was thick with smoke, pooling about the slanted ceiling. The broken grand table had been laden with what treasures the Eiren could afford to give.

  A few swords and knives, a slaughtered goat, and a small handful of gold jewelry, most plucked directly from their owner’s flesh.

  These were laid about the table surrounding Uhtren, who lay corpse-pale upon the table, front to the open sky.

  His severed head had been placed as close to the correct position as possible, and the entire carcass rank with the scent of death.

  The flesh already succumbed to rot, left so long unburnt or unburied, turning gray and clammy.

  The table was aflame, which spread across the tapestries and over furniture as it consumed the Feasting Hall.

  The queen watched it burn through the open doors, her armed retinue at her back.

  Every head was bowed in respect, every eye wet with dew.

  Artturi sobbed and raged from somewhere close by, but the queen could hardly hear him.

  All sound seemed to come from far away, faded.

  That is save for the crackling of the fire as it devoured her son.

  The dried dead flesh sizzled and popped as it burned. The flames danced, reflected unnaturally bright in her golden eyes.

  The snowbank the Guhrans had buried him in had preserved his body well, all save for the head.

  The head Kaiaan had placed on a pike, and was whittled to bone by rot and carrion birds.

  The skeletal grin on her son’s corpse grew blackened and cracked as the fire spread.

  The queen’s golden eyes seemed to swirl, dangerously reflecting the swaying limbs of the fire.

  “My queen,” Said a hard and low voice, Rhia’s eyes cooled.

  She tsked, and looked over at the dark eyed boy before her.

  Hardly nineteen and yet standing nearly his father’s height, a modest six feet, and built half as broadly as his hulking bear of a father.

  Where Artturi was layered in comfortable blubber, the boy was steel-plated.

  He had a trim red beard with the beginnings of a modest mustache, ends turned up in little curls.

  Even in the cold, it was clear his face was red from crying.

  “Speak Trahern, I am listening,”

  “My queen, I cannot, will not endure the loss of another sibling. I could not bear it.” He said, speaking to her in a formal tone.

  The queen passed her cold but appraising gaze over his belongings, travel pack slung over one shoulder, battleax resting at his feet.

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “My queen, we have taken back the Muir, the war is no longer lost. With our military position now secure, should we not also secure our royal succession?” as he spoke he fell to one knee.

  He was laying it on thick, the queen tutted internally.

  “You speak of Ygrain, yet she is beyond our reach, prince. No armies we could muster can reach them all the way in the West, nor could we besiege the Raichan Palace even if we could,”

  “But perhaps we need no army,” he glanced up from his kneeling position, a mischievous twinkle in his green eyes.

  “Explain, prince,” she sighed. Curiosity peaked.

  He rose to his feet, beginning to pace back and forth, occasionally gesturing for emphasis when required.

  The queen's eyes followed Trahern as he paced, growing more impatient by the second.

  “With our successes here, Raich will return in force, and soon.”

  “And we have prepared for it, well prepared.”

  “Yes my queen, exactly! His armies will be caught fighting us all over again in the hills. Once again, their lands will be less defended. Perhaps it would make it easier for a small party to travel through.”

  “You would send a party of our men through foreign lands, all the way to the heart of our enemy, to steal away your sister from the tyrant king?”

  “No, my queen! I would go myself, me and Kane O’Leary. We can hold our own, we know Imperial enough to stay in towns and inns if we need to, and Kane’s been to the West.”

  There was a long pause in which the queen did not speak, and only the roar of the fire could be heard over the silence.

  “He has?” she asked.

  Trahern breathed at last in relief, released from his mother’s terrible golden gaze.

  “Well, once, when he was 12. But he has an excellent memory!”

  “Enough. I have just burned my son and heir, and you would have me endanger another?” she asked, waving her hand dismissively at her son.

  “My queen, I’m hardly as important as-”

  “Enough, be still. We will speak no more of it.” With that the queen turned from the collapsing hall and her retinue followed.

  Save for Trahern, who watched the fire for a few minutes more until a pair of feet padded up the path.

  A youth, around his age but not so tall or broad with a messy mop of black hair, and almost snow white skin came into sight.

  He wore a hideous otter-skin hat on his head and looked perpetually worried.

  “What are you wearing?” Trahern asked, barely holding back his laughter.

  “What? It’s cold. What did your mother say? The mood from the procession didn’t seem...reassuring?”

  “We’re going,” Trahern flashed Kane a sudden jubilant smile.

  Kane smiled a little too.

  “So she said yes?”

  “She didn’t explicitly say no,” he lifted his battle ax over his shoulder, twirling the handle to make the head spin.

  “And that’s good enough for me. Let's go get my sister back.”

  “You’re a brave idiot, MacCleod. I’ll give you that. After you.” Kane said, falling into a deeply sarcastic bow.