General Tharos commanded the royal army of Iskandar through the whole of the civil war that ended the Veinwright kingdom, and was the last man to hold that office. He was a professional soldier at a court of inherited power, famous from earlier campaigns, and the man the Gilded Coven’s emissary privately judged the most dangerous person in Iskandar.
He was blunt, loyal and without illusions about the dynasty he served. When the court dismissed the rumours that the Veinwrights bound souls into walls and took children beneath the palace, it was Tharos who asked whether any of them were entirely false. He wanted to end the western uprising quickly and by force, and was overruled by a king who sent his soldiers out under orders not to advance unless attacked.
The war he fought instead was one he could never see whole. Orders went out under his seal that he had not written, weapons appeared on roads he had been sent to clear, and his soundest plans failed against rebels who always seemed to know where his cavalry would turn. When the dead began fighting for the crown he did not pretend otherwise, and when holding the capital meant giving up provinces, he chose the capital. It was his patience that finally exposed the chancellor, Merovan, as the Coven’s man.
He trusted the Justicar’s Legion no more than he had trusted the rebels. He moved weapons to the loyalist strongholds while others negotiated and refused outright to disarm his soldiers for Legion inspection. At the Tomb of First Kings he held the steps for King Varyon until a Justicar hammer shattered his sword arm, and went on fighting with the other.
He was tried before a Justicar tribunal in chains. He admitted ordering the resistance, denied authorising necromancy among civilians, and refused to condemn his king. He was sentenced to life imprisonment and died within the year: of illness, according to the record, and of assassination, according to the loyalists.
He is remembered as the general who lost Iskandar. He was also the only officer of that court who said out loud what it was.
Appears in
- The Civil War in Iskandar Three centuries of silence end on the morning the western tax road falls, and a court built to intimidate discovers it is surrounded.
- The Shadow Conspiracy A contract is refused in a gilded room and a second one is agreed, and a kingdom that has not yet heard of either is already being sold.