A knife with a barb tore the girl's throat. Her body lay on the cold stone slab, her black hair hanging in a pool of blood in front of her. Reflections wriggled on the smooth, scarlet surface as the bitter mountain wind tore and twisted the flames of the torches in the courtyard. The old woman watched as the girl died. Then she looked up at the man with the knife.

The soldiers have already left. Thirty of her loved ones died. She and the man were the only living creatures left on this mountain, in this castle. An old woman, a soldier covered in blood, and the knife.

"Get up, old woman," said the man crudely. He grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up.

She began to realize that he spoke her language. He spoke another language to the soldiers, which sounded harsh to her. But in the midst of all the killing, he remained silent, his movements were ceremonial, but dexterous and efficient. Beyond her fear, she was even able to see the beauty in it. The thought made her feel sick.

The man turned her to face him, still holding her wrist. "Look at me, old woman. Do you know me?"

She looked at his coal-black hair and olive skin. His lithe figure, shirtless, stained with dried blood. She looked into his burning black eyes. The fear that had gathered in her stomach deepened.

She interrupted the gaze. "Rumor has it that you're called a Dragonborn," she whispered.

The warrior bowed his head in acknowledgement. "I have a task for you, old woman. The title carries with it a careless contempt.

She had expected death, but it was just another corpse in the massacre. The idea that he would let her go, the oldest in her family, made her feel cruel and mocking. Her jaw tensed, and fear mingled with new emotions—hatred, confusion, and a small but challenging hope behind it all.

If he felt that nervousness, that hope, the man didn't show it. He let go of her wrist.

"Get out of here," he continued. "Go ahead and tell your people what you saw tonight. They will respect your words. Tell them I'm real. Tell all the Seuss Night's Watch that the desert has a new king, and that they will submit to me, or shed their blood. ”

She stared at the bright red fingerprints he had left on her wrist, and her anger exploded.

"Seuss will not give in. We don't have a king," she said fiercely.

But the warriors laughed at her.

"Do you think you're the first to say that? I break the warriors and enslave the cities. I have come here with fifty men who will rule the Night's Watch Desert for a year. I will divide Molda and Tran like roasted lambs. The Seuss will fear me and fall down before me. You night watchmen are nothing. ”

"Even then, Seuss will not give in. It was years of stubbornness that dispelled her fears.

"Then I'll show you the price. The warrior said.

He reached for her face faster than she could react, and she felt his fingers wipe the blood off her eyelids—wet, warm. The world was spinning, and she opened her eyes to a rusty nightmare.

She looked down at a military camp that was getting closer. The moonshine is garnet and ruby, and the shade is black. She approached the soldiers, looking at their turbans and scimitars. Suddenly, the tents of the entire camp were on fire, and both men and horses were thrown into a panic. As the karmic fire roared, dark figures darted between them, slaughtering bewildered soldiers. Above their heads, the warrior's face was illuminated by the light of fire and the blood-stained moonlight.

Then the hallucinations disappeared and she was walking through a dense forest, the light still red. She felt unstoppably pulled forward. As she squeezed past the many tall, bare tree trunks, a drop of liquid on her shoulder drew her to look up. Up, to the corpse hanging above her head.

That's not a tree. She was in a forest of stakes, nailed to a stake. Men, women, children: hundreds of corpses, books and money – she couldn't see the end of them. They hang from the stakes that pass through them at every angle, and the spikes protrude from their mouths, necks, limbs, and stomachs. They swayed above, and the weight of the oppression staggered her, but she kept walking, being pushed forward against her own will.

Blood dripped steadily from above as her weakened legs led her up a small step. She stepped out of the forest of the dead, into a clearing, and saw the warrior. He stood at the top of the hill, and a young girl dressed in white stood on a stone slab in front of him. From all directions, a trickle of blood poured up the hill to him, gathering in a pool at his feet. The stake stretched out in all directions, and death was as far as she could see. The warrior leaned over and grabbed the girl, and as he bit her neck, his eyes flashed and he met the old woman's eyes.

Then she returned to the yard, in the cold night. The warrior looked at her arrogantly.

"You bastard vampire!" she cursed. "Bloodseeker!"

She pulled a wooden crucifix from her belt and pressed it against him, her other hand fumbling in her pocket. The warrior opened his arms. As she moved forward, he cautiously backed away, stopping in a pool of blood.

She hesitated, and he laughed again. The warrior made a quick gesture, and the crucifix of Ion broke in her hand, and the cross arm of the cross fell on the stone slab. The Sarkic statue was twisted and inflated, and the handle of the cross now pierced from the base of the thigh to the crown of thorns.

The old woman threw away her defiled cross—a distraction anyway. Her other hand reached out from her skirt and held a handful of processed leaves, which she blew towards the warriors. They were suspended in the air, spinning denser and faster, enveloping the man in a chaotic cloud of debris. He bent over and crouched down, but the miniature whirlwind followed him, cutting off sight and sound.

The old woman stepped back, trying to escape. Even as she retreated, she could see blood rising from the ground. A wave of blood soaked the leaves and washed them to the ground, and the warrior stood up and strode forward. Blood floated in patches in the air behind him, like giant red wings.

"Herb Witch," he growled. "Do you think your earth magic can meet a King of Hosts of Elvos?"

He waved a hand, and she couldn't move. He stepped forward and narrowed the distance between them, swinging his blade. The knife sliced across her cheek as it swiped over her head. Then it stopped, still in his hand, pointing at her face.

The warrior continued, "Our empire stretches from Vanis to Agnesh Borg. I am the vanguard - through me, Elworth will conquer things and move on forever. You and your people can only be reduced to dust before the winds of our coming. ”

He slowly raised his dagger and pushed it closer. Her throat was open, but she couldn't scream. Her world shrunk to the size of a knife, to the size of the tip of a knife. It's still getting closer. She felt the tip of the knife stop at her eye.

"You don't have any choice but to surrender," the man said, his voice calming down. "All you can choose is how you surrender. Tell your people – they will be slaves, or domestic animals. ”

The blade stopped. She couldn't blink. The tip of the knife in her eyeball was worse than the pain—every nerve in her body was focused on the pressure, hoping that it would not increase, imagining that it had increased.

Lord Elvos leaned against her motionless head and whispered, "That girl, the last one I killed." She's your granddaughter, right? I can taste it from her. Think about her before answering. Think of her sisters. All your family. ”

She suddenly realized that she still had the last, desperate hope. She recalls the forbidden knowledge, the knowledge that she and her grandmother had trained her over the years had taught her how to resist. Suddenly he let go of his grip on her, and she wrung her head from under the knife, and he smiled and threw the knife high. The old woman cheered up and turned to the warrior.

"Seuss will not give in. She spat at his feet.

His agility is beautiful and savage. One hand grabbed her arm, and the other caught the dagger in the air. Blood spurted out as the barb ripped her wrist open. Her hands hung limply, and pain and shock overwhelmed her.

That Elworth's hand grabbed her arm like a plice. "I won't be so quick to deal with you," he said, bending down to drink blood from her broken veins.

The old woman stood there, dying, and wept aloud: for her daughter, for her daughter's daughter, for all her relatives. Her voice swayed into a thin, wordless tone, as dissonant as the crows perched in the towers of a castle.

She only sang for a short time before the warrior slit her throat.

But that's long enough.

......

When Konstantin, the doorman of His Majesty Seuss II, and his guards climbed the thousand-story steps of the castle in the desert, he did not believe the story they told in Sibiu. But the horrific scene in the courtyard was something he couldn't explain.

Nearly 100 corpses, dead for at least a month, have not been touched by wolves or scavenging birds. Some were hung upside down on the wall, their throats slit like pigs in a slaughterhouse. Others lay on the ground in piles, naked and pale, their skin torn into strips by hundreds of deep wounds, as if to make every piece of their flesh bleed. Many of the corpses appear to be night watchmen. The rest didn't look like the race known to the Seuss Empire - wild hair and tattoos, with vicious-looking weapons, strangely undrawn. But even this is not the part that scares him.

Almost every inch of the yard was stained with blood. The streaks left by the recent rains have blurred it, but it must have been profound: perhaps a mural, or some kind of linguistic symbol that Konstantin was unfamiliar with. But this is impossible, it is unthinkable. For what great work would shed the blood of all these people?

As he passed another pile of corpses, Konstantin found a lone figure lying by the wall in the distance. There was a clear pool of dried blood underneath the corpse, but the wall next to it was the only clean surface in the entire courtyard.

Konstantin approached and saw a man with olive-skinned skin and the figure of a fighter. The warrior's face was stained with faded bright red, and on either side there were deep scratches carved by sharpened nails: the man's own nails. He stared at the blank stone at the end with his eyes wide open, intensely emotional. His left arm was riddled with wounds — a fingertip had been cut off and the palm of his hand had been cut. The left wrist was nearly severed by a deep wound, and it was pressed against the edge of the empty wall, on the last crumbling stain. And in his right hand, he still held the barbed knife.

Konstantin climbed down the thousand steps, his mind restless. But as he descended the stairs, the soft Cragg rain began to fall again. The tide of history has ebbed, and his memories of Elworth have been washed away. By the time he reached the bottom, he had forgotten what he had come here for, and he was once again feeling optimistic.

He rode away and began to hum softly to himself.