The Bloody Throne

"He was mocking me," Demetrios said. "Mocking me the whole time. Making me look like a fool." He scowled down at the green waters surging beneath the galley's sleek hull.

"There's nothing else you could have done," Atrokles replied.

Demetrios said nothing, thinking of King Isidor and his mocking smile. Demetrios had travelled the three hundred miles to the great castle city to protest in person for the raids of the Mykosean soldiers on his city's lands. His city was Arguros, and it would have been a great city and kingdom in its own right if it weren't so close to Mykos.

Mykos wasn't great, Demetrios thought. No. It was formidable. Greatness was not something you could associate with that brooding fortress of black stone, square-cut and cyclopean. He had originally scoffed when told that the Mykosean fortress had been built by those one-eyed giants in days long gone. But now? Now he could well believe it. Each stone was the height of a man and some twenty paces long. There was no way men could have built such a thing.

And then there was its location. The fortress was built on the saddle of a mountain, on a natural spire of rock that formed a sheer cliff on one side and a steep climb on the other. It took several hours just to reach the foothills to the lower town which nestled beneath its walls. The buildings there were crammed tightly together, some practically sitting one atop the next. They were nothing special, built of plaster and wood and clay. It was like any other place, thronged with people of all sorts, with market vendors hawking their wares, washing being hung out of windows, filthy children darting around your legs and the ripe stench of garbage mingled with the sharp tang of sewerage.

The high town, within the bastion, was a different world. They crossed the lion gate, topped with a bas relief twenty feet high of two of the great beasts roaring into the sky and Demetrios began to feel truly...insignificant. Even the twenty lion-helmed guardsmen flanking the gateway looked utterly puny beneath such towering stone. On both sides of the sloping, narrow street, there were immense stone palaces soaring into the sky. Even their doorways were far too large for human occupants.

It was also eminently defensible, he reflected. At any time, a handful of Mykosean soldiers could hold up an enemy who had breached the gate, whilst others rained down stones and arrows upon packed invaders. It was, in fact, almost impregnable.

"I'm just glad he didn't kill us." Atrokles was a decade older than Demetrios, seasoned from half a dozen campaigns and wise in the ways of the courts. He had taught Demetrios everything he knew of sword, spear and shield.

Demetrios grunted in reply. It had been a possibility. Demetrios had, after all, killed several Mykosean men during this raid.

"Did you see his woman?" Demetrios asked.

"Aye, how could I not?"

She had been standing beside Isidor's throne, dressed in a long cloak of glossy raven feathers, her black hair curling unbound around her shoulders. Her skin was as brown as varnished wood, and her irises black as onyx. But it was the intricate tattoos that covered her skin in strange glyphs and runes that had caught Demetrios' attention the most.

"Sorceress bitch," he muttered.

"Sorceress she may be, but I wouldn't mind having that bitch beneath me." Atrokles grinned at the thought.

"I hear she bathes in the blood of virgins to keep her young."

"Aye. Who knows? I'm pretty sure she's far older than nineteen summers. I also hear she can speak the tongues of animals, take the form of a raven and control the elements. Who knows how much of it is true? Isidor is certainly using her reputation to spread fear amongst his rivals."