EXCERPT

The night-black lamellar armor was not much darker than its wearer, whose features looked chiseled from an obsidian block. Beneath Commander Garrick Lokk’s cool gaze burned the fire of purpose. His
heart thumped anticipation, even as his mind analyzed the coming host with a
surgeon’s focus. Thirty thousand Warriors of the Blood, all members of a
self-styled master race called the Utills, thundered across a grass-covered
expanse. The host’s deadly panoply of weapons gleamed so brightly, it was as if
the very sun was coerced into granting its reflection to the riders who wielded
them.

The Warriors rode huge, lumbering beasts called lizartines. The sight of charging Warriors astride these fanged monstrosities was enough to induce fear in the most stalwart of foes…unless
that foe was Lokk.

Lokk’s men, whose numbers were barely half that of the enemy, stood as an immobile break against a flood. Some of those men, perhaps most, may have felt flutterings of fear, but training and
discipline kept them frozen in formation. Motivation fueled their desire to
finish what Lokk started.

                “The flower of the Priest-Lord’s might,” Konnerly, Lokk’s second-in-command said, observing the enemy.

                Like Lokk, Konnerly was tall, but lacked his superior’s solidly muscled bulk.

                Dubair, the chronicler, muttered an oath and made a stirring gesture with his finger, a sign of the Divine Circle.
Half-starved as the chronicler looked, he appeared on the verge of disappearing
within the dark recess of the cowl covering his head.