The Rebellion
The first city to fall did not fall in battle.
There were no shattered gates, no burning towers, and no bodies piled beneath the walls.
At dawn, the royal standard still flew above the magistrate’s keep in Vaelorin. By midday, the gates had opened from within. By sunset, the black banner of the Veinwright throne had been lowered and replaced with the broken red crown of the Free Provinces.
The governor claimed the people had forced his surrender.
The rebels claimed he had chosen justice.
Both accounts were lies.
Three nights earlier, the governor had received a letter bearing the personal seal of King Varyon. It ordered the immediate withdrawal of the city garrison and warned that any commander who resisted would be executed for treason.
The seal was flawless.
The handwriting matched that of the royal secretary.
Even the wax contained the rare burial ash used only within the palace.
The order had never been written.
By the time the truth reached the capital, Vaelorin’s armouries had been emptied, its treasury seized, and its roads closed to loyalist forces.
No one knew who had forged the command.
No one knew who had carried it past the city watch.
No one knew why the governor’s chief clerk had disappeared the same night.
The court blamed incompetence.
General Tharos blamed treachery.
High Mortarch Selkos blamed spirits.
King Varyon said nothing.
He had begun to understand that Iskandar was not merely being attacked by an army.
It was being dismantled.
The rebellion spread along the western rivers.
Every town that joined the Free Provinces became proof that the Veinwright throne was weakening. Every royal defeat became a reason for another garrison to reconsider its loyalty.
The separatists no longer marched as scattered farmers and miners.
They moved in organized companies.
Former royal officers trained recruits in spear formations. Merchants donated carts and horses. Provincial nobles supplied fortified estates as mustering grounds. Local councils collected taxes in the name of the rebellion.
Their leaders spoke of freedom, representation, and an end to occult rule.
Their soldiers carried Gilded steel.
The marks of its origin had been removed, but royal smiths recognized the balance of the blades and the unusual purity of the metal. Entire rebel companies appeared equipped within weeks, wearing armour too uniform to have been gathered from village stores.
The Gilded Coven denied involvement.
Its representatives expressed concern for the suffering of Iskandar.
They offered to mediate.
They offered loans to both sides.
They condemned violence in every public chamber while quietly ensuring that the rebellion never lacked food, silver, or weapons.
Yet money alone did not explain the speed of the separatist advance.
Royal supply routes were discovered almost before they were chosen.
Messengers vanished while travelling roads known only to the council.
Loyalist commanders received contradictory orders.
Watchmen abandoned gates moments before rebel assaults.
On three occasions, rebel forces passed through supposedly impassable terrain and struck royal camps from behind.
The separatists seemed to know where every weakness lay.
Inside the Supreme Ruler’s wider court, the Shadow Weavers expressed grave concern.
Their agents offered assistance.
Their informants delivered lists of suspected traitors.
Their spies uncovered rebel meetings shortly after those meetings had already moved elsewhere.
They appeared useful, loyal, and indispensable.
No one questioned why they always arrived just late enough to witness failure.
King Varyon summoned his war council beneath the palace.
The Hall of Remembrance had become too public. Too many servants crossed its galleries. Too many nobles carried private loyalties.
The council now met in the Ancestral Vault, a circular chamber carved beneath the royal crypts. The walls were lined with stone tablets engraved with the names of Veinwright rulers, priests, generals, and scholars.
Hundreds of generations watched in silence.
General Tharos spread a map across a black marble table.
“The rebels hold the western road from Vaelorin to the river. They control the grain ports at Edrath and the silver mines at Kessel Vale.”
Lady Elianor studied the markers.
“That cuts the capital from nearly a third of its winter supply.”
“We still hold the eastern farms.”
“For now.”
Tharos pointed to the southern provinces.
“The separatists are moving south. If they take Halren’s Bridge, they can unite their western forces with sympathizers in the riverlands.”
Chancellor Merovan stood at the edge of the table, visibly thinner than he had been at the beginning of the war.
“Then destroy the bridge.”
Elianor looked at him.
“Twenty thousand civilians depend on that crossing.”
“Twenty thousand potential rebels.”
“They are subjects of the kingdom.”
Merovan’s expression hardened.
“They stopped behaving like subjects when they refused their taxes.”
“They refused because their harvest failed.”
“They refused because rebellion promised them they could keep what belonged to the crown.”
King Varyon looked toward the chancellor.
“Grain belongs to those who grow it before it belongs to me.”
Merovan lowered his head.
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
The words were respectful.
The tone was not.
Queen-Regent Ysara sat opposite the king, wrapped in a mantle of black feathers. Since the uprising began, more members of the old Veinwright houses had gathered around her.
They called themselves loyalists.
They claimed they alone possessed the courage to preserve the kingdom.
“The king’s mercy has already cost us Vaelorin,” she said. “How many more cities must join the rebels before we stop calling them our people?”
Varyon met her gaze.
“They are our people whether they obey us or not.”
“They have rejected your authority.”
“They have rejected the way we have used it.”
The queen-regent struck the table with the base of her staff.
“You speak as though we deserve this.”
The tablets surrounding them seemed to absorb the echo.
Varyon looked at the names carved into the walls.
Some belonged to rulers remembered as protectors.
Others belonged to tyrants whose crimes had been softened into tradition.
“We deserve part of it,” he said.
No one spoke.
General Tharos looked away.
High Mortarch Selkos tightened his grip upon his bone staff.
Queen-Regent Ysara regarded the king with something colder than anger.
Pity.
“You believe confession will save you,” she said. “It will not. The rebels do not want reform. They want the Veinwrights gone.”
Lady Elianor replied.
“Some want representation.”
“Some want our lands.”
“Some want an end to forbidden rites.”
“Some want our graves opened and our dead burned.”
The room grew still.
Ysara turned to the king.
“Do you know what they say in the western provinces? They say no Veinwright child should be permitted to inherit land. They say our ancestral temples should be torn down. They say the crypt priests should be dragged into daylight and executed.”
“That is not the official position of the separatist council,” said Elianor.
“Not yet.”
Ysara leaned forward.
“Revolutions do not end with the promises that begin them.”
King Varyon did not answer.
He had heard the same rumours.
Some were likely propaganda.
Others were not.
A Veinwright shrine had been destroyed outside Edrath. Its priest had been hanged from the branches of an ash tree. The bodies of three royal ancestors had been removed from a provincial tomb and burned in the town square.
The separatist council condemned the act.
No one was punished.
“Your Majesty,” said General Tharos, “we can still end this conventionally.”
The king looked at the map.
“How?”
“Meet their main army at Halren’s Bridge. Defeat them before their southern allies arrive. Once their forces are broken, the provincial councils will fracture.”
Elianor frowned.
“They outnumber us.”
“They outnumber our army, not our soldiers.”
“What does that mean?”
“They are farmers wearing armour. We are the royal host.”
Tharos moved three black markers toward the bridge.
“We hold the eastern bank. The river narrows there. Their numbers will mean nothing if they cannot cross.”
King Varyon studied the map.
“How many loyalist troops?”
“Six thousand.”
“And the rebels?”
“Possibly ten.”
“Possibly?”
“Our scouts disagree.”
“Why?”
Tharos looked toward the shadowed entrance.
“Because half of them are dead.”
No one spoke.
“Not killed,” he continued. “Missing. Scouts, messengers, outriders. They disappear, and then the rebels strike where their reports should have warned us.”
The king looked toward Chancellor Merovan.
“Who knows our scouting routes?”
“The war council. The quartermasters. Regional commanders.”
“And the intelligence officers assigned by the Supreme Ruler’s court,” said Elianor.
Merovan stiffened.
“The Shadow Weavers have assisted us.”
“They have given us rumours.”
“They have identified traitors.”
“They have identified rivals.”
The chancellor stepped toward her.
“You are accusing a guild trusted by the Supreme Ruler.”
“I am saying we do not know who to trust.”
Queen-Regent Ysara smiled faintly.
“At last, something sensible.”
King Varyon gathered the black markers from the map.
“We fight at Halren’s Bridge.”
Elianor turned to him.
“Majesty—”
“But the bridge remains standing.”
Tharos nodded reluctantly.
“No burning villages. No seizure of civilian grain. No bodies raised from the battlefield.”
High Mortarch Selkos moved for the first time.
“Your Majesty, the dead are a lawful instrument of the throne.”
“They are not soldiers.”
“They have served Iskandar since before your bloodline bore crowns.”
“And every corpse we command creates another rebel.”
Selkos tilted his mask.
“Then perhaps the rebels should fear becoming useful.”
The king’s hand tightened around the map marker.
“No necromancy.”
The Mortarch bowed.
“As you command.”
Behind the mask, he was smiling.
The loyalist army marched south beneath black banners.
For the first time since the civil war began, the Veinwright throne gathered its strength in open view.
Heavy infantry from the capital formed the centre. Provincial cavalry guarded the flanks. Royal archers marched beside priests carrying censers of black incense. Supply wagons stretched for miles behind them.
Villagers gathered along the roads to watch.
Some knelt.
Some turned away.
Some raised the broken crown after the soldiers passed.
King Varyon rode at the head of the host.
General Tharos had urged him to remain within the capital.
The queen-regent had called his decision reckless.
Varyon went because too many kings had sent others to die in their name.
He wore ceremonial black armour, its surface engraved with the names of his ancestors. At his side hung the sword of the first Veinwright king.
It had never been drawn in battle.
The sword was a symbol, not a weapon.
Varyon wondered how many traditions survived only because no one had tested them.
Lady Elianor rode beside him.
“You should not have come,” she said.
“You sound like Tharos.”
“He is occasionally correct.”
“Do the soldiers need to see their king?”
“They need competent leadership.”
“That is less reassuring.”
She almost smiled.
It vanished quickly.
They had travelled two days when the first refugees appeared.
Families moved north carrying blankets, tools, and whatever food they could save. Some pushed carts. Others carried children.
Varyon stopped beside an old woman walking alone.
“Where are you from?”
She looked up at his armour.
Recognition crossed her face.
She did not kneel.
“Halren’s Crossing.”
“Why did you leave?”
“The rebels came.”
“Did they harm you?”
“No.”
“Then why flee?”
She looked toward the army behind him.
“Because you came after.”
The king watched her continue north.
That evening, the camp received word that the separatists had already crossed the river.
General Tharos seized the messenger by the cloak.
“How?”
“The bridge guard withdrew, my lord.”
“On whose command?”
“Yours.”
Tharos released him.
“I gave no such order.”
The messenger produced a sealed document.
Again, the signature was perfect.
Again, the seal was genuine.
Again, the command had never existed.
The rebels had crossed Halren’s Bridge without resistance.
They now held the western heights.
The loyalist advantage was gone.
The Battle of Halren’s Bridge began before sunrise.
Mist covered the river valley, thick enough to conceal entire formations. Loyalist horns called soldiers into position while priests moved along the ranks, blessing weapons and whispering the names of honoured ancestors.
Across the fields, rebel drums answered.
King Varyon stood upon a ridge beside General Tharos.
The mist began to thin.
The separatist army emerged gradually.
It was larger than expected.
Much larger.
Rows of spearmen filled the western fields. Archers occupied the hills. Cavalry waited beyond the bridge. Red banners fluttered above companies from provinces the crown had believed neutral.
At the centre rode Darien Rusk.
He no longer wore the coat of a dismissed captain.
He wore a commander’s armour.
It was polished steel edged in gold.
General Tharos stared at the enemy line.
“Twelve thousand.”
Lady Elianor looked through a brass viewing glass.
“Closer to fifteen.”
“Where did they find fifteen thousand soldiers?”
“They did not,” Varyon said. “They found fifteen thousand people willing to become soldiers.”
Tharos drew his sword.
“They will regret the distinction.”
The loyalist army advanced.
At first, the battle unfolded exactly as the royal commanders expected.
The rebel front line broke beneath the disciplined charge of the Veinwright infantry. Farmers fled from hardened soldiers. Separatist spears splintered against royal shields. Loyalist cavalry crushed the rebel left flank and drove it toward the river.
From the ridge, black banners moved steadily forward.
General Tharos smiled.
“They have numbers. Nothing more.”
Then the signal flags changed.
A red standard rose from the northern hill.
The loyalist cavalry halted.
For several moments, no one understood why.
Then the royal riders turned their horses.
They charged into their own infantry.
Chaos tore through the loyalist left.
Soldiers who had fought side by side for years suddenly found cavalry blades cutting into their backs. Officers screamed contradictory commands. Men lowered shields to defend themselves and exposed their lines to rebel arrows.
“Who commands the northern cavalry?” Varyon demanded.
“Lord Edran Vale,” said Elianor.
“My cousin.”
Her face had gone pale.
A messenger reached the ridge.
Blood covered one side of his body.
“Lord Edran is dead,” he gasped.
Elianor caught him as he fell.
“Who gave the order to turn?”
The messenger struggled to speak.
“A royal command.”
General Tharos swore.
Another forgery.
But there was no time to prove it.
The separatists surged forward.
Darien Rusk’s centre, which had seemed close to breaking, closed around the loyalist advance. Fresh rebel companies emerged from the mist behind the northern hill.
They had been waiting.
They knew where the royal cavalry would turn.
They knew when the loyalist centre would advance.
They knew the exact moment confusion would spread.
From the southern woods came a second attack.
Archers in grey cloaks fired into the loyalist command ridge, then vanished between the trees. Their arrows carried no insignia. Their faces were covered.
General Tharos dragged the king behind a shield wall.
“Shadow Weavers,” Elianor said.
Tharos turned toward her.
“You saw them?”
“No.”
“Then do not speak the accusation.”
“I did not need to see them.”
The loyalist line collapsed by midday.
King Varyon ordered a retreat across Halren’s Bridge.
Thousands of soldiers attempted to cross at once.
Rebel arrows fell among them. Men were trampled beneath their own banners. Horses threw riders into the river. Armour dragged the wounded beneath the current.
General Tharos remained at the eastern entrance with the royal guard, holding back the separatist advance.
Varyon reached the bridge and turned.
“We cannot leave them.”
Elianor seized his reins.
“If you remain, the war ends here.”
“Perhaps it should.”
“And what follows?”
Across the river, rebels had begun chanting.
No throne.
No crypt.
No Veinwright.
The words rolled over the battlefield.
Varyon looked at the bodies drifting beneath the bridge.
He heard his aunt’s voice.
They want the Veinwrights gone.
Not defeated.
Gone.
Elianor tightened her grip.
“If they take you alive, they will parade you through every province.”
“Perhaps they should see their king.”
“They will see the end of your bloodline.”
Something changed in him then.
Not courage.
Not rage.
Fear.
A fear deeper than losing a crown.
He imagined the ancestral vaults broken open. The tablets smashed. The bones of his people dragged from their tombs. Children taught that every Veinwright had been a monster. Priests executed for keeping rites older than the kingdom. Families stripped of their names.
He had thought surrender might save lives.
Now he wondered whether surrender would merely decide whose lives no longer mattered.
King Varyon crossed the bridge.
General Tharos followed with fewer than half the soldiers who had marched south.
By nightfall, Halren’s Bridge belonged to the rebellion.
The separatists declared the battle a liberation.
The loyalists called it treason.
The Gilded Coven called for negotiations.
The Shadow Weavers offered the Supreme Ruler an intelligence report explaining how Veinwright incompetence had led to the defeat.
It was the most accurate account anyone had written.
It omitted only those who had made the defeat possible.
The survivors returned to the capital in silence.
The people watched them enter through the southern gate.
There was no singing this time.
Only shock.
The royal host had marched out in polished armour beneath hundreds of black banners.
It returned in fragments.
Some soldiers had abandoned their weapons. Others wore bloodied bandages. Wagons carried those unable to walk. Entire companies were missing.
King Varyon rode at the centre of them.
His ceremonial armour was covered in mud.
The sword of the first Veinwright king remained undrawn at his side.
Queen-Regent Ysara waited in the throne room.
Around her stood the oldest noble families of Iskandar, High Mortarch Selkos, Chancellor Merovan, and emissaries from the Supreme Ruler’s court.
Among the emissaries were three Shadow Weavers.
Their faces were hidden behind dark veils.
They bowed when the king entered.
Varyon looked at them for a long moment.
He had no proof.
Only the memory of grey-cloaked archers disappearing into the southern woods.
Only forged orders bearing seals no outsider should possess.
Only a war in which the enemy always knew where to strike.
One of the veiled figures stepped forward.
“Your Majesty, we grieve for the loss at Halren’s Bridge.”
The voice was gentle and impossible to place as male or female.
“We have identified several members of your court who may have aided the separatists.”
The Shadow Weaver presented a scroll.
Varyon did not take it.
“Did you identify them before or after the battle?”
The chamber quieted.
The veiled figure remained still.
“Evidence takes time.”
“So does treason.”
Queen-Regent Ysara struck her staff against the floor.
“This is not the moment to insult allies.”
“Are they allies?”
The words escaped before Varyon could restrain them.
The Shadow Weavers did not react.
The Supreme Ruler’s chief envoy did.
“King Varyon,” he said, “the Shadow Weavers serve the stability of the realm.”
“Then they have served poorly.”
Chancellor Merovan moved forward.
“Majesty, we need their intelligence.”
“We had their intelligence at Halren’s Bridge.”
“We ignored their warnings.”
“What warnings?”
Merovan hesitated.
Varyon looked at him.
The chancellor’s face revealed the answer.
There had been no warnings.
Only reports written after disaster.
The king turned toward the veiled emissaries.
“Leave us.”
The Supreme Ruler’s envoy stiffened.
“They speak with the authority of the inner court.”
“This is still my kingdom.”
“For how long?”
No one breathed.
The envoy immediately lowered his head.
“I spoke in concern, Majesty.”
Varyon descended from the throne steps.
“You spoke the question everyone in this room is asking.”
He looked across the gathered court.
“How long?”
No one answered.
He turned toward General Tharos.
“How much territory remains under royal control?”
“The capital. The eastern provinces. Most of the north.”
“Most?”
“Two northern lords have refused to send troops until we guarantee their autonomy.”
Queen-Regent Ysara laughed bitterly.
“Autonomy. The coward’s word for rebellion.”
Lady Elianor entered behind the king.
“What terms have the separatists offered?”
Every Veinwright noble looked at her with disgust.
Tharos answered.
“Abdication. Dissolution of the royal cult. Surrender of all ancestral sites to provincial authorities. Arrest of High Mortarch Selkos and the senior crypt priests.”
Selkos’s chains rattled.
“And the Veinwright families?” asked Varyon.
“Removal from public office. Confiscation of royal estates. Investigation of occult crimes.”
“In other words,” said Ysara, “eradication.”
Elianor shook her head.
“Removal from power is not eradication.”
“Not at first.”
Varyon looked toward her.
“Would they allow the rites to continue?”
“I do not know.”
“Would they protect our temples?”
“I do not know.”
“Would they protect our children?”
Elianor’s expression softened.
“Varyon—”
“Would they?”
She could not answer.
The king turned toward the broken court.
Some saw a defeated ruler.
Some saw an obstacle to peace.
Some saw the last defence of their bloodline.
King Varyon saw the choice before him.
If he surrendered, the war might end.
Or the killings might simply become lawful.
If he continued, thousands more could die.
But his people might survive.
Pride played a part.
He could not deny it.
The throne had belonged to his family for generations. Every hall, law, tomb, and title told him that surrender would make him the king who lost Iskandar.
Yet beneath the pride lay something more terrible.
The belief that his defeat would not end with him.
It would reach backward into the graves and forward into children not yet born.
“No,” he said.
Lady Elianor closed her eyes.
Queen-Regent Ysara smiled.
General Tharos stood straighter.
The Shadow Weavers watched without movement.
The Supreme Ruler’s envoy looked almost relieved.
Varyon climbed the steps to the ancestral throne.
“The Free Provinces demand that I abandon the crown, surrender our temples, and place our traditions before judges who have already condemned them.”
He turned toward the nobles, soldiers, and priests.
“They say this will bring peace.”
His hand rested upon the black stone throne.
“There is no peace in the destruction of a people.”
Elianor looked up at him.
“You cannot call the throne a people.”
“No,” Varyon said. “But those who want the throne destroyed no longer distinguish between them.”
He faced General Tharos.
“Recall every loyal regiment.”
“To the capital?”
“To the eastern line. We hold the river crossings and fortify the roads.”
He faced Chancellor Merovan.
“Seize the accounts of every Gilded lender operating within royal territory.”
Merovan went pale.
“Majesty, that could collapse the treasury.”
“The treasury is already funding both sides.”
He faced High Mortarch Selkos.
“The prohibition remains. No dead are to be raised.”
The Mortarch bowed.
“Of course.”
He faced the Shadow Weavers last.
“Tell the Supreme Ruler that Iskandar remains under Veinwright rule.”
The veiled emissary inclined their head.
“And if the Supreme Ruler advises surrender?”
King Varyon looked toward the sealed mouths of his ancestors.
“Then he advises the extinction of his own subjects.”
The emissaries departed.
Their footsteps made no sound.
That night, a message left the palace through a tunnel forgotten by all but three people.
It did not travel west toward the rebellion.
It travelled beyond Iskandar.
The message carried Chancellor Merovan’s seal and a cipher known only to the Gilded Coven.
The king had become suspicious.
The treasury was threatened.
The loyalists were preparing to fortify the eastern provinces.
A reply reached the capital before dawn.
Merovan burned it after reading.
It contained only one sentence.
The throne must be made desperate enough to destroy itself.
Elsewhere beneath the palace, High Mortarch Selkos entered the ancestral chamber alone.
He passed through doors sealed by the king’s command and descended into the oldest crypt.
There, beneath statues of the founders, lay the bodies recovered from Halren’s Bridge.
Hundreds of loyalist dead.
Soldiers whose families believed they had been buried beside the river.
Selkos walked between them with a lamp of blue flame.
“The king forbids you to serve,” he whispered.
The dead did not answer.
He opened the Book of Communion.
Several names had vanished since the last battle.
More would vanish soon.
Unless the old rites were strengthened.
Unless the throne remembered what had made the Veinwrights feared.
Selkos drew a ritual blade across his palm.
Blood struck the stone.
One of the corpses opened its eyes.
In the western provinces, Darien Rusk stood before the separatist council.
The victory at Halren’s Bridge had made him a hero.
Songs were already being written about him.
The council chamber had once belonged to a Veinwright magistrate. The ancestral emblems had been removed from the walls and replaced with provincial banners.
Merchants, landowners, officers, workers, and priests filled the seats.
Behind them stood Gilded advisers who claimed no voting power.
They did not need it.
“We should march on the capital now,” said one councilman. “The royal army is broken.”
“It is wounded,” Rusk replied. “Not broken.”
“The people will rise when they see us.”
“Some will.”
“And the rest?”
Rusk looked toward the eastern map.
“The rest believe we are coming to erase them.”
A provincial priest scoffed.
“Veinwright propaganda.”
“Is it?”
The room quieted.
Rusk placed a report on the table.
“Three ancestral shrines burned. Two crypt priests murdered. Veinwright families driven from their homes.”
“They served the throne.”
“The children?”
No one answered.
A Gilded adviser stepped forward.
“A revolution cannot be judged by isolated acts.”
Rusk turned toward him.
“Everything becomes isolated when no one wants responsibility for it.”
The adviser smiled.
“You have won a great victory, Commander. Do not lose resolve now.”
“I have not lost resolve.”
“Then march east.”
Rusk studied the man.
The Gilded Coven had supplied everything the rebellion needed.
Without its coin, there would have been no army.
Without its weapons, Halren’s Bridge would have ended differently.
Without its political contacts, the Free Provinces would still be dismissed as bandits.
Yet every gift had pushed the rebellion toward a destination chosen by someone else.
“What happens to the Veinwrights after we win?” Rusk asked.
The adviser answered smoothly.
“They answer for their crimes.”
“All of them?”
“Those responsible.”
“Who decides responsibility?”
“The new government.”
“Which government?”
The adviser’s smile remained.
“The one you are helping create.”
Rusk looked around the chamber.
For the first time, he wondered whether the rebellion truly belonged to those who had begun it.
Outside, thousands chanted his name.
Inside, men with gold hidden beneath plain clothing decided where the army would march next.
And somewhere beyond the torchlight, unseen eyes watched the council through cracks no architect remembered building.
The war entered its second year.
The Free Provinces held the west and much of the south.
The loyalists controlled the capital, the east, and the northern roads.
Between them lay towns that changed hands repeatedly, fields left unharvested, and villages emptied by fear.
The separatists gained public support with every royal tax, every Veinwright atrocity, and every promise of self-rule.
The loyalists gained recruits with every burned shrine, every desecrated grave, and every rumour that surrender meant extermination.
Both sides spoke of survival.
Both sides became capable of anything in its name.
King Varyon refused to surrender the throne.
Darien Rusk refused to end the rebellion.
The Gilded Coven supplied the means to continue.
The Shadow Weavers ensured that neither side trusted the path to peace.
And beneath the palace, the first dead soldiers rose from the stone tables.
They did not know who they had fought for in life.
Only who commanded them now.
End of Act II