The Doom of Kings_ Legacy of Dhakaan - Don Bassingthwaite [3]
The tide of battle closed the gap, but Haruuc had seen enough. “Vanii, open the way to that man!” he ordered.
“Mazo!” His third shava, Vanii of the Ja’aram, surged ahead, his twin axes whirling like a storm. Fighters fell back from them or died. The lord of the town turned to find Haruuc before him. He tried to get his sword up but failed. With a roar that stopped the fighting around them, Haruuc raised his blade and cut down. His sword slammed through plumes, metal, hair, bone, and brains. He ripped it free as the corpse fell, then bent and severed the corpse’s neck.
Hoisting the head by the fading plumes of the ruined helmet, still tied under the chin by a cord, he raised it in one hand and his bloody sword in the other. “Your lord is dead!” he howled in the human language. “The battle is done! By my sword, I claim this place and name it Rhukaan Draal, the crown city of Darguun, the land of the people!”
All of the energy seemed to fade from the defenders closest to them. Defeat pulled on their faces and dragged down their weapons. A few fought on in pockets, but they died quickly. A great cheer washed over the town as goblin, hobgoblin, and bugbear troops rushed to secure the spoils of war.
Haruuc let his grisly trophy drop. The impact finally dislodged head from helmet and the split and startled face of the last human lord of the town rolled into the yellow dust. Vanii poked at the shattered helmet. “Powerful magic,” he grunted. “Too bad it’s broken—it would have been a fine thing to keep.”
“There was no great magic in it,” Fenic said. “My people knew the lords of this place for generations. The only magic was in the feathers. The helmet was a show piece, passed from lord to lord as a symbol of the right to rule. It connected the lord who wore it to all of the lords who came before. The town didn’t stand by the man. It stood by its history.”
Haruuc laughed. “Ban,” he said. “But beginning now, the history of this place and this land”—he brought his boot down on the helmet, crushing the last of the plumes and cracking the metal—“is what we make it!”
Haruuc opened his eyes to sunlight on the roofs of Rhukaan Draal thirty years from the memory of that triumphant day. The yellow dust of the city rose in a drifting haze, thicker over the bustle of the Bloody Market. From the window where he stood, Haruuc could hear the sounds of combat that rose with it, different from the normal sounds of the late-morning market. The clash of steel on steel, the screams of defiance, the shouts of command, the wails of the fatally injured. Violence in the market wasn’t uncommon, but no merchant ever defended his stall with such vigor or mourned the loss of his goods with such deep agony.
A party from the Gan’duur clan, outspoken opponents to his rule, had entered the city the day before to trade in the market, or so they had claimed. The Gan’duur weren’t a subtle clan. Presented with a spear, they’d throw themselves onto it. And from the signs of the fight in the Bloody Market, they’d found the spears Haruuc had sent to them in the hands of his own disguised warriors. The corpses of the Gan’duur would be left where they fell, victims of the market violence. Haruuc had crafted the strategy with care. By tradition, the corpses of the Gan’duur should be hung in gibbets before the gates of his fortress, a warning to anyone who might consider crossing him. Public display, however, would show his involvement in the deaths and enflame the remaining Gan’duur. Worse, it would be proof to the other clans of the growing unrest, another hint that Haruuc’s grasp on power was slipping. Left in the street, the corpses would be as anonymous as their killers. The chief and elders of the Gan’duur would surely guess what had happened, but there would be no proof of Haruuc’s hand in the matter. The doubts of the chiefs and lesser warlords would be staved off—until the next time the Gan’duur rose.
The Gan’duur or some other ambitious clan scratching for fleeting power. Fenic, he thought, I should