Death was everywhere.
It seeped into the soil. It clung to the steel. It screamed from the mouths of dying men and whistled in the breath between blade strikes.
Wherever Valen looked, he saw corpses, some still twitching, others silent and mangled, their eyes wide as if shocked by the speed with which life had abandoned them. Every groan, every howl of pain or fury, echoed in his ears like the drums of the underworld welcoming their arrival.
But none of it mattered now.
His eyes narrowed. His fingers tightened white around the rough shaft of the javelin. His mind carved away the battlefield, the dead, the living, the smell of iron and churned dirt, the rising dust cloud that veiled the world in bronze mist, until only one thing remained: the target.
The chieftain.
The monster.
