Blood Harvest
CHAPTER ONE
FRIENDSHIPS
The icy wind howled like a horde of banshees as it ripped the leaves from the oaks and birches, shredded the trembling mid-autumn glory of the aspen stands, and hammered the encampment of the Army of the Renunciate, which ranged across the road and through the trees to either side. A sleeting rain added to the misery caused by the savage weather.
The lycans remained in hybrid form as they went about their duties, their fur offering an extra layer of warmth beneath their wool clothing and cloaks. Only the vampires, fifteen Ymraudes and five venomous Lemyari, took the weather in stride.
Lord Isranon Dawnreturning and his General Nans Gryphonheart had begun to weld their army into a whole, uniting all the desperate types who had signed on with them. Vampires, lycans, humans, freerangers, and kandoyarin mercenaries, it was an army unlike any that had marched forth before; not only in its diversity, but in light of all the myn in its ranks that had sworn fealty and allegiance to Lord Dawnreturning. He was a Lord only by the declaration of others and not by birth, a man without lands or holdings, a former slave, and was now the first mage-paladin to Kalirion the Sun God in five hundred years.
The Command Tent was the warmest in the camp, due to a sheltering spell cast by the liege-lord of the army. Within its enchanted shelter, Lord Isranon Dawnreturning sat at the head of a trestle table with his officers and advisors gathered for the briefing.
He had received the scouting reports shortly before he called his officers together. Isranon had long ago decided that he would not lead from the rear, asking his myn to take risks that he would not. Especially now that the game of war had become so dangerous with the rise of the hellgod, Gylorean Galee, on the east bank of the Hillora River.
Isranon scanned the table. His gaze touched on every face, and finally settled on the grim-visaged chieftain of a lycan battle clan, Nevin Scarface sitting to his left. Nevin had once been his mentor and helped raise him, taking him and his now dead sister in after the rest of the Dark Brothers were massacred. The relationship had changed and they were now spirit-brothers.
"What have your scouts reported so far?"
Nevin's tongue touched the split in his scarred upper lip. "We found another deserted village a day's journey north."
"You will take me there as soon as the weather clears," Isranon said. "I want to be certain that it was the exodus ordered by the Sacred King and not something else."
Isranon nodded thoughtfully. When they had come south, they had taken the coast road to avoid the Sacred King and encountered none of the villages and towns that had been abandoned as their inhabitants fled north with her to Rowanhart in a god-decreed exodus. This time they had taken the West Bank Road that ran close to the Hillora River. After consultation with his general Nans Gryphonheart, Isranon had decided that the forest would help to conceal the movement of their army from any of the sa'nekaryiane's forces that might be watching for them.
This village just ahead of them was the third one they had found abandoned within two weeks. It troubled Isranon in ways that he found difficult to express, because it was little more than a gut instinct that something was wrong.
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