Sir Roland snatched the parchment, read it, and laughed—a bitter, cracking sound. “Thirty days? We will be lucky to hold thirty hours if the Rotfather marches.”
The mist over Praag had not lifted in seven years. Some said it was the breath of the Dark Gods, lingering after the Storm of Chaos. Others, the wiser ones, called it shame—a land holding its breath, waiting for a dawn that might never come. return of reckoning
He should have died. Instead, he clawed free three days later, half-blind, raving, his axe notched beyond repair. The dwarfs of Karak Kadrin had given him a new axe and a new name: Drengbarazi —the living dead. Sir Roland snatched the parchment, read it, and
“Then we don’t let him march.” Kaelen turned to Elsbeth. “You have spies in the Court. Tell me—where is the Rotfather weakest?” Some said it was the breath of the