Namer's voice left no room for argument. He named Jory, Cory, and a young warrior Ámmon barely knew, a boy who carried the reputation of being the deadliest swordsman in the rebel army, to serve as Ámmon's royal guard. Then, the exiled king pointed a firm finger at Dory. "Clean them up," Namer commanded. "Find the finest cloaks we stripped from the dead Grasslander officers at Thebes. Gold chains, heavy silks, everything. Dress him like a true prince, and those three like his royal retinue." He locked eyes with the older woman. "You go too, Dory. You will be his caretaker. Take them to the side tent and prepare. You leave before the sun breaks the horizon." And without another word, he turned and vanished into the night.
The next ten minutes were a blur of chaotic, frantic preparation. Dory shoved bundles of dried herbs, bandages, and vials of precious medicine into a worn leather satchel. Ámmon stood numbly in the center of tent, feeling the weight of the lie settling over him. Kazan stepped forward, draping a heavy, dark wool cloak lined with silver thread over the boy's shoulders.
"Keep your head high, Ámmon," the commander murmured, adjusting the clasp at the boy's throat. "A prince does not look down, and he does not show fear. Let them see the unforgiving desert in your eyes."
Jory entered the tent, his jaw dropped in sheer panic. "Me? On a boat? With Hestian pirates?" he squawked, his voice cracking. "Dory! My father, who is your bloody brother, drowned in a puddle! The sea and our bloodline are sworn enemies!"
"Then I suggest you learn to swim quickly." Dory replied without a trace of humor, not even glancing up from her satchel.
The heavy tent flaps parted once more, and Cory ducked inside, his arms overflowing with plundered Grasslander breastplates and heavy silken sashes. Right behind him stepped Salim. The young desert-born warrior, no older than twenty circles. He carried his lethal reputation easily, but as his dark eyes swept over the bizarre scene, the squawking Jory, the scowling Dory, and the grim-faced Ámmon being draped in royal finery, Salim looked profoundly confused.
"I was told I would be guarding the King's blood," Salim drawled, his voice a low, raspy murmur as he caught a gold-trimmed cloak Cory tossed at his chest.
Dory snapped her satchel shut. "Put the cloak on, boy, and keep your hand on your sword. That is the extent of your required thinking."
But fine clothes were not enough to fool the High Chieftain of Hestia. The lie required the weight of ancient law. To legitimize a bastard under the old folks traditions, an echo of ancient rites, a formal binding of blood and witness was demanded. Namer drew his personal dagger and, without a word, sliced a shallow line across his own palm. He then took Ámmon's hand and did the same.
The exiled king pressed their bleeding hands together, letting their blood mingle in front of the whole army, with commanders Kazan and Lord Theron standing as official witnesses. The act cemented the boy's legal right to the Tumunarmid name. To everyone present, Ámmon was a bastard no longer. As a final seal, Namer slid a heavy, cold obsidian signet ring onto Ámmon's thumb. "Until the sun rises," Namer commanded. By the time the bloody, solemn rite was finished, the last slivers of daylight had bled out of the sky, plunging the coastal camp into the deep, suffocating shadows of night.
Ámmon turned and walked off the makeshift dais they had built, stepping back into the freezing coastal mist. Resting against his hip was a masterfully forged longsword, its hilt encrusted with polished green emeralds and its pommel shaped into a roaring beast. It was a ludicrously luxurious weapon, a bloody trophy stripped from the corpse of the Grasslander High Commander they had slaughtered inside the city of Thebes. It felt alien at his side, too perfectly balanced, entirely lacking the chipped, desperate history of his mother's spear.
He walked to the edge of the cliff, where Salim, looking thoroughly inflated by his sudden elevation in status, stood with his chest puffed out, his white and gold-trimmed cloak billowing dramatically in the wind. He rested his hand on his scabbard as if he had been born in a palace rather than the harsh sands. Beside him, Cory held a torch to light the way, and Dory, looking fiercely annoyed, waited with her arms crossed tightly over her leather satchel, her sharp eyes daring anyone to complain about the cold.
"Move," she ordered, her voice cutting through the wind.
The descent was a treacherous, agonizing ordeal. Once they finally reached the beach, the small retinue picked their way across the wet sand for thirty long minutes. The night was pitch black, illuminated only by the pale, sharp sliver of a waning moon. The air grew colder and heavier with the sharp, metallic sting of salt and rotting seaweed, a smell so profoundly foreign to the children of the Badlands that it made both Ámmon and Salim unconsciously wrinkle their noses.
Up ahead, the ghostly, flickering glow of a campfire cut through the coastal mist, revealing erratic shadows of men moving in the dark. Before Ámmon's group could fully process the sight of the Hestian camp, the shadows turned against them.
With a sharp hiss of flint, two scouts suddenly sparked torches to life on either side of the path. In the shifting light, the lethal gleam of drawn arrowheads and the jagged tips of poised spears materialized from the mist, all aimed directly at Ámmon's chest.
Swallowing his racing heartbeat, Ámmon did exactly as Namer had instructed. He took a deliberate, measured step forward, raised his chin to show his obsidian signet ring, and spoke in a harsh, guttural tongue he did not understand.
"Ek em eyðarkonungr hér til at festa bandalagið."
I am the desert prince, here to cement the alliance.
The tension hung in the freezing air for a suffocating second. Then, without uttering a single word, the scouts lowered their weapons. They turned their backs in eerie unison and began to walk toward the shoreline, expecting the retinue to follow.
Beyond the dying fire, the beach was a hive of ruthless efficiency. The Hestians were rapidly breaking camp, kicking wet sand over the embers and hauling heavy crates of plundered goods through the surf. Out in the black water, two more longboats were silently gliding toward the shore to collect the rest of the raiding party, their oars moving in perfect, silent rhythm like the legs of giant water striders.
But the primary vessel awaited the prince. There, resting in the shallows like a sleeping leviathan, the vanguard Hestian longboat rocked violently in the churning surf. Its darkwood gleamed under the moonlight, and the terrifying sea-monster prow seemed to sneer at them through the sea foam. A dozen heavily tattooed warriors stood waist-deep in the freezing water, holding the heavy wooden oars to steady the vessel. As Ámmon stepped closer, their cold, predatory eyes locked onto him, waiting for the Prince of the Sands to board.
The crossing lasted hours into the night, a grueling, suffocating journey across the black expanse of the western sea. Ámmon felt a frantic, sharp scratching against his ribs. Khepri. The small desert creature had burrowed as deep as physically possible into the lining of Ámmon's tunic, trembling violently from the damp, salty air and the unnatural, stomach-churning sway of the vessel. Ámmon slowly moved his hand, resting it casually over his pocket. He pressed gently against Khepri's warm, squirming body, sending a silent, steadying pulse of reassurance. Quiet now, Ámmon thought, his amber eyes fixed on the dark horizon. We survive this together.
Beside him, Jory was utterly failing to survive the journey with any dignity. He was curled into a miserable, trembling ball on the floorboards, his face a ghostly shade of green under the waning moon. He gripped the dark wood of the hull so tightly his knuckles were white, his emerald-green officer's cloak soaked with sea spray.
"I am going to die," Jory groaned, his voice barely a wet whisper over the roaring waves. "The sea gods are punishing me. I can feel it in my blood. I can hear my father calling me from the bottom of the ocean..."
"Your father drowned face-down in a muddy puddle after drinking too much fermented dregtong juice, you idiot," Dory snapped from the opposite bench, sitting perfectly upright with her leather satchel clutched tight. "And if you vomit on my boots, Jory, I will personally throw you overboard to join him."
For hours, the only sound was the relentless, rhythmic crack-splash of the Hestian oars and the whistling of the bitter wind. The tattooed pirates rowed like machines, their muscles burning through the freezing night without a single complaint.
Hestia. The formidable stronghold rose from the waters, a silhouette of towering cliffs, dark ports, and ancient, unforgiving stone. Perched atop a massive, wave-battered promontory, the main fortress loomed like an impregnable beast, its sheer walls merging seamlessly with the coastal rock. Nestled in the protective shadow just beyond the cliffs lay the city itself. Unlike Desa, with its pristine, towering spires of white stone reaching arrogantly toward the heavens, Hestia was a sprawling, horizontal maze. It was a city born of the forest and the sea, a chaotic labyrinth of dark, salt-cured timber and soot-stained thatch. Heavily framed wooden buildings leaned precariously over narrow, winding muddy streets Thick, greasy smoke from countless hearths hung low in the damp air, giving the entire settlement the grim, suffocating atmosphere of a crowded, breathing leviathan.
Despite the late hour, the sprawling docks were not asleep. In fact, they were erupting. The Hestians welcomed them with the raw, deafening roar of a raiding culture. Massive bonfires roared to life along the wooden piers, casting wild, dancing shadows over the faces of hundreds of tattooed warriors, shipbuilders, and fish-gutters. Drums pounded a rhythm that vibrated in Ámmon's teeth, and a ferocious cheer went up as the sea-serpent prow of their longboat broke the harbor line.
As the boat bumped violently against the heavy wooden docks, the crowd parted. A man strode forward, splitting the sea of hardened warriors like a ship cutting through the waves.
This was Hafhross, the High Chieftain of Hestia. He was a mountain of muscle and scarred flesh, standing a full head and shoulders taller than anyone else on the pier. His beard was thick and braided with heavy rings of iron and bone, and a massive pelt of some unknown beast was draped over his broad shoulders, making him look less like a man and more like a primal god of the storm.
Ámmon stepped off the boat, his heavy wool cloak billowing behind him. He kept his hand resting lightly on the pommel of his emerald-encrusted sword. He braced himself for a translator, expecting the Chieftain to bark orders in the wet, sing-song language of the sea tribes.
Instead, Hafhross stopped a few paces away and grinned, revealing a mouth full of iron-capped teeth. When the giant spoke, it was in the dry consonants of the Badlands.
"The desert sends its blood to my shores at last," Hafhross boomed, his voice carrying easily over the roar of the crowd and the crashing waves, though his mastery of the desert tongue was just as brutally butchered as Cory's. He slammed a massive fist against his chest in a brutal salute. "Welcome to the edge of the world, Ámmon, Prince of the Dunes."
What followed was less a formal escort and more a raucous, primal procession. Ámmon was led through the parting sea of warriors to a heavy, iron-wrought royal carriage waiting at the edge of the docks. It was pulled by two monstrous black steeds, titans of muscle and dark, shaggy fur that stood hands taller than any warhorse bred on the mainland. With Salim, Jory, and Dory trailing closely behind under heavy guard, Ámmon climbed into the carriage. As it lurched forward, the Hestian crowd erupted into deafening cheers, following them like a wild pack of wolves.
The procession carved its way through the lower city, a chaotic, cramped district that seemed to swallow the light of the rising sun. As their open carriage rolled through the muddy city road, Hafhross leaned back against the heavy furs of his seat. He gestured casually to the sprawling slums around them, his harsh, butchered Badlands accent cutting through the noise of the crowd.
"The lower city," the giant Chieftain rumbled, a dark amusement in his eyes. "Known to my people simply as the Stinking Bay."
It was a fitting name. Here, the narrow, muddy streets were choked with thick, hanging nets and the overwhelming, suffocating reek of gutted fish, boiling tar, and rotting sea-salt.
In the trailing carriage, Ámmon's makeshift royal envoy was faring poorly. Jory and Cory both looked as though they might vomit over the wooden rails, clutching their stomachs as the carriage violently bumped over the uneven roads. Salim, however, was dead still, his hand firmly locked onto his emerald-encrusted scabbard, his dark eyes tracking the shadows of the leaning alleys with absolute distrust. Soon, the oppressive maze of the Fishery gave way to the unyielding base of the coastal cliff. The outer gates of the stronghold, massive, imposing slabs of iron and darkwood, groaned open to receive them. The carriages began a steep, grueling ascent up a winding stone causeway carved directly into the rock face.
As they climbed higher above the roaring sea, Ámmon realized the cliffside was not merely a road, but the beating heart of Hestia's industry. This middle tier was a sprawling hive of commerce and production, yet heavily shrouded in the deep, encroaching shadows of the overhanging cliffs. He watched as they passed massive forges where shirtless, soot-stained smiths hammered glowing iron into brutal weapons, the roaring fires serving as the only real source of light in the dim district. There were bustling tanneries churning out thick leather armor, and expansive lumber yards where carpenters shaped massive, curved timbers for new longboats in near-darkness. Weavers dragged heavy canvas sails through vats of dark dye, and merchants shouted over the deafening clang of hammers.
It is the dead of night, and these people are still working? Ámmon thought, thoroughly intrigued by the relentless, unnatural stamina of the sea-raiders. He noticed how startlingly few torches lined the steep, treacherous path, yet the massive black horses and the Hestian drivers navigated the blind curves and narrow, shadowed ledges with an eerie, flawless precision. Perhaps they fear sea-dragons attracted by the light will snatch them from the cliffs if they ignite a torch, he mused, almost laughing at his own absurd reasoning.
Finally, the horses heaved the carriages up the final stretch, breaching the formidable Inner Gates and entering the heavily fortified, stone-paved courtyard of the Chieftain's palace.
Inside, the Great Hall was a cavernous beast of stone and massive timber pillars, echoing with the deafening roar of a banquet already in full swing. But as Ámmon stepped through the heavy doors, he blinked hard, his amber eyes struggling to adjust to the, murky dimness of the room. Long wooden tables groaned under the weight of roasted meats and overflowing horns of fermented ale. Hafhross strode through the massive doors and into the gloom with a booming laugh, navigating the cluttered, shadowed hall with the effortless grace of a prowling beast. His earlier sternness gave way to a broad, ferocious smile; he had clearly taken a liking to Ámmon. As they entered, the heavily armed men and women seated at the longest table in the obscured center of the hall abruptly stopped their feasting. Moving with perfect, unnerving synchronization despite the pitch-black corners, they rose as one, slamming their tankards against the dark wood in a thunderous, unified salute to their Chieftain.
"This is the Prince of the Sands, Ámmon!" Hafhross bellowed, his voice carrying easily over the roar of the hearth fires.
In response, the warriors raised their fists toward the soot-stained rafters, their voices merging into a rhythmic, deafening war chant that shook the floorboards. "Au! Au! Au!"
Hafhross grinned, leaning down slightly to speak over the noise. He pointed a massive, scarred finger toward the center table. "Those are the minor chieftains and their vassals from the Hamsdte, Kjedt, and Embodte tribes," he explained, his tone dropping into a gruff, conspiratorial murmur. "Do not let them fool you, Prince. They are mortal enemies. They are only behaving because I am standing here. But once the ale runs out and they sober up... watch your back."
With a heavy, rumbling chuckle, Hafhross then pointed toward a more elevated table in a shadowed corner of the hall. Sitting there was Ámmon's future bride.
"Go," Hafhross commanded, giving the boy a firm, heavy pat on the shoulder that nearly knocked him off balance. "Go introduce yourself to my daughter."
She was a formidable, hardened Hestian woman at least ten years his senior. Tall and broad-shouldered, she wore a heavy mantle of reddish fur over fine silken garments, her copper-red hair braided with heavy silver rings, her skin was pale but fiercely weathered by salt and biting winds. The presentation ceremony was short, a quick exchange of raised chalices and a symbolic sharing of salt and bread, entirely drowned out by the cheering of drunk pirates. Ámmon spoke very little to his new betrothed, and she to him. The language barrier stood between them like a shield wall; she knew only a handful of guttural words from the Badlands, and Ámmon knew absolutely nothing of the tribes' tongue beyond the single sentence Namer had taught him. They sat side-by-side at the high table in a heavy, awkward silence, two absolute strangers bound together not by choice. Mercifully, the High Chieftain had little patience for romance or drawn-out traditions.
With a gruff, dismissive wave of his massive hand, Hafhross sent his daughter away from the high table. She gave Ámmon a brief, indecipherable nod and vanished into the crowd of celebrating warriors without a word of complaint.
Hafhross took her empty seat, his massive frame entirely dwarfing the fourteen-year-old Prince of the Sands. The giant slammed a heavy wooden tankard onto the table, and the festive, welcoming grin vanished from his scarred face. In its place was the cold, calculating glare of a predator.
"Enough of the pleasantries, Prince," Hafhross growled, leaning in so close that Ámmon could smell the bitter ale on his breath. The Chieftain grabbed a charred bone from a roasted beast and began using it to trace crude lines in the spilled grease on the wooden table. "Let's talk war"