Rune Knight: Book Two of The Empress Saga

CHAPTER ONE

    The forest was silent, and the dusk was deepening towards nightfall. Snow drifted through the branches of evergreens. A moment of tranquility enshrouded the wood until a knight clad in black armor crashed through the landscape to flee from his pursuers.

    Ban Karst had always known that he wasn't much of a hero. He possessed neither the will or the ability, though he'd been provided with every opportunity. He was the noble son of an elder bloodline, yet Ban preferred the company of dockworkers and barmaids. He believed the goodfolk to be finer company than any lord.

    He was a carouser, gambler, back-alley scrapper, womanizer, and an infamous lout. A rogue. An embarrassment to his noble father and the shame of his ancient house. For nearly all his young life, Ban took pride in all of it.

    Until Pacifica.

    Winter was ending, and a new spring approached. It was a relative concept, as the cold remained fierce enough to take the life of anyone caught without fire or shelter. The expansive forests of Altier Nashal, stretching from the coastline to the northern mountains and along the full breadth of the Continent, were broken only seldom by the lights of hearth fires.

    The southernmost realm of the Five Kingdoms, Altier Nashal was a vast and untamed land, wild and harsh. Port cities and fishing villages scattered along the coast and the fertile crescent of the Altieri Peninsula in the west were the only truly successful attempts to master the frozen south.

    Within his full plate armor, black as midnight, Ban hardly felt the cold anymore. Numb from the patterns of frost creeping into the gaps in his plate and from the fatigue in his heart, Ban no longer felt much of anything. Little, save for confusion, weariness, and fear.

    Ban was being hunted.

    The shock was too fresh and the pain too raw. For a week now, Ban had been fighting and fleeing those he once named as comrade. He could hardly understand why or how it had happened. The First Legion was newly victorious, and what felt to be the next moment, everything went wrong.

    This part of the forest was familiar. Ban's father, the Lord Regent of Altier Nashal, took Ban here on hunting trips with his older brother when they were young. Back then, the forest offered a young prince regent the promise of boundless excitement. With the tribes of the fey nearby and the great beasts of the wild as his prey, Ban had thought it to be an adventure.

    Now, Ban simply remembered that he needed to steer clear of where fangblades and medhveds could be lairing, also to remain wary of crossing into the dark folk's territory. The recent war Ban had fought against the fey had been brutal if swift, and goblins had a stronger friendship with the forest than Ban ever could. They wouldn't look kindly upon a lone mortal knight trespassing within their home.

    Creatures worse than even fangblades prowled these woods. Ogres often came down from the foothills to hunt aurochs and goats, unnatural fiends twisted by fell magics lurked in foul corners of the wilderness, and winter always brought a rise in the number of wendigos.

    Ogres don't attack unless provoked, Ban reasoned. I'm too close to civilization for wendigos, and there hasn't been a fiend sighting in generations. The only things I need to worry about are other mortals.

    Ban needed to stop running before much longer. The drifts were only getting deeper the longer he remained in the forest. Each step sank into the powdery snow, almost to his knees. He was tiring, and soon his fatigue would become too heavy for him to face what pursued him. He missed his horse, dead of exhaustion three days earlier.

    Placing his hand against an evergreen to steady himself, each breath was labored. His lungs ached. Air tasted more precious than gold marks. Every gasp left him in the form of a puff of mist through the raised visor of his helmet. Ban eyed the condensation of his breath in the air. Just breathing could give his position away, and the twilight hour gave the inquisitors more than enough light to follow the trail Ban had left as he crashed through the underbrush.