If death wore many faces, then Riot had spit in the eye of many of them. His grandfather died in a workhouse, his face slack staring at nothing. Battlefield deaths were faces of pain, but mostly surprise at finding themselves curled up around the half of a spear that had been pushed through them.

  The Sun Tower wore death like a dusty mantle in an old tomb. The place had been looted, picked apart like carrion. Objects that looked old and expensive were broken and left to collect dust on the shelves. The shattered glass door of a display case crunched underfoot. Inside was a broken shape that looked vaguely like a hedron and Riot gave it a wide berth.

  “Hello?” The words dulled as he said them, the air thick like a layer of fat on cold soup.

  It was big in here too, bigger than the tower had any right to be from the outside, and doors opened off at every level. By rights, they should open out to the courtyard, and Riot shivered. This was no place for a fighting man.

  He ascended the spiral staircase, his knee protesting as he wound upwards, finally emerging on the top level. A large table was filled with papers, dust, and bowls and plates with molded crusts of bread and dry bones. Wine bottles littered the floor, most empty, some half full. A dusty wine rack lurked in the corner.

  Great open spaces where the walls gave views out onto the harbour. At least a dozen ships were anchored out there, their lamps bobbing gently. To the west were a handful of smaller ships, the ones that Moran had explained belonged to the arcanum regiments.

  “How did you get in here?”

  Riot stepped back, startled, and hit the table, knocking over empty bottles that smashed onto the tiled floor.

  The man could have been Odred’s twin, a boy’s height with the wrinkled, wizened face of a gnome. His rheumy eyes were damp, and his filthy gray arcanist’s robe gave off waves of nauseating, musty smells.

  “An arcanist called Odred let me in, but Walden Moran sent me.”

  "Dead, is he?” His voice sounded like a bubble bursting in a swamp, damp and sickly.

  “No, well, perhaps he is by now. Where is your master?”

  The man came close and sniffed him, then his hand darted out and grabbed Riot's left wrist in a vice-like grip. “Calm.”

  Sumner’s words fell like old tombstones and every muscle in Riot’s body went slack. He crashed to his knees, the dull pain registering in the back of his mind.

  “I am Sumner Nixton, and I serve no master. Remember that.” Nixton turned Riot's palm this way and that, peering at the scar on his hand, his small nose almost touching it as he sniffed at the scabbed skin.

  The greasy barrier on the hedron scar disappeared, and Sumner lazily pointed Riot's palm at the wall as leypower surged out—a messy, deformed surge of dirty gray light that somehow passed right through the solid stone wall.

  “Interesting,” Nixton muttered, prodding at the skin of Riot's forearm with a dirty fingernail. “No spellcraft, but the hedron scar is like an unplugged drain.”

  Riot fought against the command and found his voice. “I need spellcraft. Can you give it to me?” he said thickly.

  Sumner Nixton lifted Riot’s chin, turning his head this way and that. “Who was the stone eye, your mother or father?”

  The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “My father.”

  “How many men have you killed?”

  The command was wearing off, and Riot cautiously felt the greasy barrier that had been replaced over the scar on his hand. “I don’t know, a lot.”

  “Kill any women or children?”

  “Never.”

  The seconds ticked by as the arcanist started at Riot, his lip curling, and then he shook his head. “A spell would be wasted on you. Erudoran, widely disliked among the officers. A sergeant, so you must have done something right, or wrong. Trusted by Walden Moran, or he sent you here to die. The boy is a pampered fool.”

  “You don’t know him that well then, he would have seen us all dead to get that package to you.”

  Nixton reached down and picked up the leather pouch that had fallen from Riot's grasp and cleared a space by pushing things onto the floor with a clatter. He pulled each document out and held it close to his face, mumbling to himself and making snorts and noises of delight. “Oh yes, very good, very good. Roveran would have been furious to sign this, very good.” Sumner held out his hand without turning around. “Where’s the linium?”

  “I don’t have any linium,” Riot replied. The command wore off enough for him to get to his feet and the delayed pain from his knee finally splintered into his brain.

  Sumner gave an exasperated sigh. “What else were you given? Something made of metal.” He snatched at the cloth pouch Riot held out, emptying the two heavy commanders' chains onto the table. “Yes, yes, that’s more than enough. Now, stand back, over there, back, back, back.” Sumner snapped, making shooing motions with his hands.

  The arcanist moved over to a mechanism that dominated the center of the chamber and began to brush away the thick cobwebs to reveal an upright dish the height of a man, held in place with wooden timbers and rope. It was gently curved and made of deeply tarnished gold, its surface covered with hundreds of hollow runes.

  “Myam-tal is going to be very upset,” Nixton cackled.

  “This Myam-tal, will Moran be able to beat him?” Riot asked.

  Nixton ignored Riot and continued fussing with the mechanism, tossing the two chains into the huge golden dish, where they clattered to the bottom. The metal began to hum, and a misting of arcane power rose up. Beads of liquid formed on the surface of the dish before the shape of the chains warped and melted into a puddle of silver blue metal.

  Linium. Enough to raise a battalion of leybound, or purchase a kingdom in the wilder lands to the west, and Moran had been carrying it around this whole time.

  Leypower crackled as the molten linium was drawn up the dish and into the hollow space left by the intricate symbols. The runes flared brightly, and the metal dish groaned as if it bore a huge weight. Nixton approached and laid a hand on the dish, gently turning it seaward. Riot remembered how it had felt to be so close to the raging hedron and was impressed, the old man didn’t seem to think anything of it.

  The Mazral blockade sat out in the waters to the east of the dragon's spine at least a mile away. Twelve great ships with fluttering red and black pendants above them. Riot didn’t know what kind of leypower the small arcanist commanded, but it seemed unlikely he could damage them from this distance.

  "Boom!" Nixton shouted.

  The dish flared, and a beam of pure gray light exploded outward and thundered into the Mazral flagship. The vessel buckled and rocked in the ocean, and then, with mesmerizing grace, began to sink under the waves.

  Riot stood open mouthed as Nixton cackled and pushed the dish to the side, targeting the other ships of the fleet. One by one they rocked violently, until the last mast sank below the waves.

  The two ships in the harbor were last. Both caught fire, small figures hurling themselves from the railings into the water.

  To the west, along the coast, Riot saw the ships bearing the flags of the arcanum and Erudor drop their great sails and head for the town to clear away the occupiers.

  The Mazral defeat had taken only moments. Now the Erudoran fleet would pass through in the spring, and Roveran would have his army.

  Nixton shuffled back to the table and started to read the documents more carefully, muttering and cackling to himself as Riot approached the golden dish, which clinked gently as it cooled. Each of the runes was identical, and there were hundreds of them. The linium that had been pulled to them was bronzed now, and as Riot touched one, it dropped to the bottom of the dish. It was warm to the touch, about an inch wide.

  “Worthless now. If you want to get paid, scurry back to Walden.” Nixton had not turned around.

  Riot plucked off thirteen of the runes and put them in his pocket.

  “What now?” Riot asked.

  Nixton made his way down the stairs without looking back. “Nothing. This tower belongs to Walden now if he’s still alive. There’s wine here, loot the place, get drunk, that’s what soldiers do, isn’t it?”

  The Kickstarter for The Last Man kicked off with a bang – we hit our target in just eight hours and are already on track for our first stretch goal!

  19 days. If you know anyone who loves gritty, military fantasy, please share the link with them!

  Peter