The Temple Road by Kirby Crow

Author:Kirby Crow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: m/m, gay romance, gay fiction, gay fantasy romance, epic fantasy
Publisher: Bonecamp
Published: 2018-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

THE KING OF RSHAN NA Ostre met his generals on the High Road that led from Kingstone to the fortress of Starhold. Twisted oaks of immense age loomed over the rutted roadway, brimming with spring green. The sun had come out from behind the clouds, and it was brighter now with the burgeoning season, turning the sky the bluest any had seen it since last year.

The king’s soldiers stared at the rangers in tattered leathers and threadbare boots in the company of the King. Silently, they moved aside to make room for them in their ranks, respect heavy in their manner.

Kamaras led them. She was a woman of Jarek's age, a distant cousin of his own family, and she wore her hair very short to fit better under a helmet in battle. She lived for fighting and for her young lover, Ogir, who rode by her side.

The ranks of the men Kamaras presented Liall with were greatly swelled by the conscripts she had gathered from Sul and the southern reaches. There were women, too, but not as many as they would get from Uzna. Unlike in Byzantur, Rshani women were conscripted in wartime like any other adult, and not barred from battle or the study of war. If there were any men who resented the practice, Liall had never heard of it. A sword was a sword. The skill and ability of the arm holding it was all that mattered.

As he rode, Liall studied his fighting force closely. Many of the new recruits had never held true weapons before. They wore stiff leather armor with barely a scratch on it and shining with oil, and their boots were new. He could detect no resentment from them, but he had expected none. Sul was his mother’s barony—now his—and so close to the Nauhinir that the city's fortunes and those of the crown were inextricably linked. There was also a sort of city pride involved for Sul, whose white banner with its compass rose below a gold sun was flown closest to the throne on state occasions, and it was Sul who had supplied the provender for the first leg of their campaign: great stores of barley, smoked and dried fish, nuts, honey, pickled fruit rinds, che, cheese, and salted meat, hauled in a hundred great wagons in the center of the columns, guarded vigilantly by sharp-eyed captains who knew that an army traveled on its belly.

They followed the shore, heading north, where the land began to rise. Their view of the sea dropped away, cut off by the eastward dip of the road. The grade was steady but gradual, and only when Liall looked back could he see how far they had climbed.

To the east was a rugged terrain of jagged black hills and high, rocky tors that stretched for a hundred leagues. To the west, beyond the steep drop of dark cliffs, was the sea. Liall knew the High Road from his youth. He had traveled it on horseback with Jarek when he was Scarlet's age.

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