It’s been thirty years since the end of the Primrose War, thirty years since High King Goring Saedren drank and whored and murdered his way to all points of the compass, delivering his right to rule to all who would listen, and ramming it down the throats of those who wouldn’t. He marched straight into the Great Desert and became the first to knock those sand-eating Shaadi Princes off their golden perches and unite all of Varri-Mennyn under one banner. Thirty years on and he’s grown fat and soft, lost his thirst for the fight, and all along the margins of his shrinking Kingdom, his enemies swarm.Kannath Meadowmere, exiled Mendran nobleman and one-legged warlord, has come south through the wall with an eye for plunder and an army in tow. While the High King sleeps in the west, he marches upon the east swallowing one territory after the last, aided by his Shaadi allies. Nursing a dusty grudge thirty years in the making, those Desert Princes won’t stop until the city of Nostalla, and the Senovium Throne within, are pulled down and stomped into ashes beneath their boots.Mercenary scum Pelt and Halling, two black-hearted murderers with red reputations and not enough common decency to deserve surnames, have been on the run from Saedren’s King’s Men for four years, spilling enough blood to drown a cow. With no code of honour and only the meanest grasp of the concept of morality, the brothers fight for the highest bidder and turn coat more often than a tailor. Their hands are red, their blades priceless, and their ambitions dark. But when they find themselves facing down Meadowmere’s relentless army, they begin to realise the storm they’ve landed themselves in, and that history, as well as a bleak future, are about to stab them both in the back.
