“Then we don’t let him march.” Kaelen turned to Elsbeth. “You have spies in the Court. Tell me—where is the Rotfather weakest?”
Kaelen touched the rune-brand on his forearm—the mark of the Slayer’s Oath, though he had never taken it. Not formally. His shame was not failure, but survival. Three winters ago, in the tunnels beneath the Howling Heights, he had watched his entire Stonebeard throng fall to a Bloodthirster’s axe. He had been the last, trapped under a collapse, listening to the daemon’s laughter fade as it turned toward the surface. return of reckoning
Sir Roland snatched the parchment, read it, and laughed—a bitter, cracking sound. “Thirty days? We will be lucky to hold thirty hours if the Rotfather marches.” “Then we don’t let him march