A Secret Man of Blood

Chapter Twenty

30,000 years before the present day

The noise of the exodus comes rolling like the distant rumble of the sea, mists and exhalations rising from the blue bodies of the Roenans as they climb the mountain range in their hundreds of thousands. Anomandara looks at it all and wonders: there was a time when they put their enemies to flight but, in this age, the Roenan destiny is aflame in other faces, the faces of the Elves.

Anomandara was born too late. If she'd been born three thousand years ago, she'd have hunted the Elves down when they first arrived on this world. She would have fought and defeated each of them. She has never lost a fight but her people are losing the war.

Her eyes are dark and dilated, pieces of the white sun scattered in their pupils as she walks through the troops, faces solemn but expectant when they see her. "First Sword," a male voice calls her, heightened by lashes of urgency.

"Yes, Fifth Sword?"

Borya is the fifth best champion in the Roenan army and the best male by some distance, an example of what his gender can do if they're to be trusted in this new age. Anomandara isn't sure that she trusts them. "The Empress needs to see you, urgently," he breathes out.

How dare the Empress summon Anomandara in a time of imminent battle. Of course, modesty isn't the first thing that comes to mind when contemplating the average Empress...and this Empress is very average.

"Lead the way," Anomandara says, gripping her sword hilt for emphasis.

She enters the marching tent and the silence is breathless, a rustle of anguish rising as she makes her way along the aisle of bodyguards and advisors, her quartz-like gaze focussing on the Empress as she stops in front of the throne. She pays no attention to the others.

Damp horror is pressed on the monarch's features. "First Sword, the heir has been lost. The attack on our camp brought confusion—"

"Can no one do their job!?" Anomandara questions the timid line of bodyguards and advisors, her voice rising with the inner wind of emotion. She's not even truly angry, she's never felt emotion in that way, but a heat radiates from her that brings fear to the calcified depths of their hearts.

Mistakes like this weren't in the glorious books from which she read about the mighty Roenan Empire. One of the Empress's advisors continues, nervously.

"We need to establish if the heir is alive but a return for the whole army is impossible—"

"Enough!" Anomandara commands, with a glance at the Empress who is sitting there in alert, sad curiosity like an animal witnessing the destruction of its habitat. "I will ride alone into the enemy ranks and retrieve the girl."

The advisors gasp, a male voice uttering. "That's impossible!"

A smile breeches Anomandara's cold glare. "For you, perhaps. I'll be back shortly." She turns to the Empress and draws her sword, to which a thousand recollections, glorious and gruesome, have attached themselves, and gives a salute. "Both eye and soul," she says, leaving abruptly because she knows, while the office is worthy of her respect, the person is less so.

The cold, separating wind of genius has dictated Anomandara's life since childhood, when she defeated her tutor during the first year of sword training. Despite this, she has a bone-deep love for her country and the thought of Elves laying their hands on the Roenan heir, especially if she is still alive, grips her imagination horribly. She will kill them all. This is likely a suicide mission, even for her, but there are no hoarse voices of conflicting impulse, only knowledge of her duty.

After she storms out of the Empress's tent, the Fifth Sword Borya's father, turns to him and asks. "You really love her, don't you?"

"Yes, I do," Borya whispers. "Why?"