Scourge of the Betrayer by Jeff Salyards

Author:Jeff Salyards [Salyards, Jeff]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General, Science Fiction
ISBN: 9781597804066
Google: UguspwAACAAJ
Amazon: 1597804061
Publisher: Pgw
Published: 2012-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

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We continued the last leg to Alespell in the morning, and the remainder of the journey passed without incident. We overtook a pair of men on foot that moved far off the road and into the grass to get out of our path and avoid our dust as much as possible. A short time later, we encountered a deserted village, separated from the road by some fields that once had presumably been tilled but now had grown practically wild again. Only a mossy stone wall gave some indication of its boundary. There were a few beaten and ramshackle windmills along the perimeter, one that couldn’t possibly lean any further without falling over completely. While several communities have recovered from the last plague, this obviously wasn’t one of them.

But after that, the villages were prosperous, and busy, and the closer we got to Alespell, the more crowded the road got, with traffic increasing every time we passed another small community.

Besides being more populated, I noticed the countryside was changing in other ways as well. Shorter, scrubby blades replaced the tall, thin grass, and there were more clusters of trees, too, and not all of them short and squat. The land began to roll, gently at first, and with every mile closer to Alespell, becoming hillier and hillier. Nothing too rugged, but compared to the flat vastness of the steppe, it felt like we rolled over mountains.

As we crested such a hill, I suddenly saw Alespell laid out before me, and it was surely something to widen the eyes. Rivermost was fairly large—a walled city with a teeming population, a castle, a university—and originally hailing from a hamlet, and bouncing between small cities after university, I experienced some amazement when I first arrived there. But Alespell made Rivermost seem like a tiny, provincial trading outpost by comparison.

The bulk of the city was situated along the eastern bank of the broad River Debt, with a wet moat or canal around the entire perimeter, but there was another section I assumed was added later as the city prospered, on its western bank, and again a canal had been dug around the circumference and served as a very wide moat.

Both sections had crenellated curtain walls built out of snowstone that were the hugest I’d ever seen, at least forty feet tall, and strengthened by too many semi-circular bastions and flanking towers to count. On the far eastern side of the city, an impressive castle rose up above everything else on a massive granite outcrop.

We headed towards the western gate. Before we reached it, we passed buildings on both sides of the road. To the right, a small walled compound. Braylar anticipated my inquiry. “A Hornmen stronghold. And a hospital.”

Vendurro said, “You want to stop and hoist a mug or three there, Cap? Seems you and them get on real well.”

Braylar ignored him and snapped the reins. On our left, on a small hill above the river, there was another large walled enclosure, with several copper domes visible above.

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