The Returning by Christine Hinwood

Author:Christine Hinwood [Hinwood, Christine]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2011-03-22T13:00:00+00:00

FATHER’S BANNER HAD already spread north to the City. After Gyodan’s death it moved south, keep after keep, year after year.

“Knew what they did, those warriors of old,” said Father. For each keep commanded a vital passage of land or river or coast, each one immensely strong. Yet Father beat them down, keep and keep and keep, links in a chain that led them farther south.

Father’s generals were crowded about the map table. At last they were within reach of the region called the Waist, where the sea had chewed away the eastern coast and only Wasy Lake lay to the west. That narrow passage of land was a cork in a bottle, which, if popped, opened up the rich lands to the south. The keep that held the Waist was called Dorn-Lannet.

Dorn-Lannet Keep had been built into the southern base of Mount Lannet, a great hill that rose twenty times the height of a man. Like many of these keeps, Dorn-Lannet had started life as a warrior’s house—larger than those of his vassals; walled because all warriors had enemies in those long-ago times when these forts had been built. On the flats to the east, below the keep, was the town, filling the space between keep and sea. On the western side of Mount Lannet was Wasy Lake. Once, there had been pleasure houses on the shores of the lake, but they had sunk into the soft earth and all this eastern point of the lake was now swamp, with the remnants of the long-ago summer mansions rotted and drowning.

“It is the last barrier to the South.” The first of these forts to fall had been the death of Gyodan, six years earlier. Inside the tent it was quiet but for the clapping of the canvas, and Father’s voice. “Take that, and you have taken the South.”

From the flanks of the foothills, Dorn-Lannet Keep was small. Father passed his spyglass to his generals and it went the rounds of them in strict hierarchical order. Gyaar took it in turn. Squat gray tower, squat gray hall, wide, high gray walls. The outer bailey was grassed, the inner graveled, gray gravel. The walls were well-manned, yet the outer bailey was empty.

“Center field is your command, Only Son.”

Gyaar looked at Father.

“We move on Dorn-Lannet tomorrow, first light.”

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