Excerpt from Chapter 1 

Ten years ago, 

In the poor light of The Broken Anvil tavern, the carcass Sanja gnawed was indistinguishable. It perhaps used to be a capon. The twelve-year-old sipped the large tankard of ale and wiped the dribbles from her narrow chin with her filthy tunic sleeve that dangled off her scrawny arm. She hitched up the old piece of rope keeping the overlarge tunic fit to her waist and brushed her scraggly red hair out of her deep green eyes so she could narrow them at the bartender giving her dirty looks. She’d paid like everyone else. So what if it was with lifted coin? It had been a lucrative day.

 “You smell foul, girl! Did you fall in a dung heap, and aren’t you a bit young to be gett’n hammered at the Anvil?” inquired a double-chinned fat man.

 He was sitting with a huge bald man who had a long, braided goatee. They had been watching her destroy the poor chicken for the last twenty minutes from the next table over.

 “Mind your business or gets cut, fat old man! I’m old enough to takes care of business, if you know what I mean,” she told him, raising her little dirk and stabbing in his direction.

  “Arrgh, Jen, she’s a feisty little lass. What’s your name, child?” he asked.

“They calls me Redblade. Come a little closer, and I’ll shows you why,” she growled.

The fat man laughed uncontrollably, “Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha…You are certainly my kind of people, little Redblade. So tiny and yet so fierce. Just look at her, Jensen. I think she will fit the part perfectly. What do you think?”

The bald man next to him with a neck thick enough that it could give a horse a small neck complex nodded, and when he did, the deep red scar around it, seemed to fade into his neck. The fat man abruptly stood tossing a coin to the little girl.

“Take that silver and get a bath, child, and a clean tunic as well. I have work for you if you are interested.”

She reached out and snatched the coin from midair, quickly tucking it away, and resumed cleaning the capon’s bones with her teeth. Did both the fat man’s chins just jiggle when he stood up?

“What kinds of work?” she asked as she lifted the neck of her tunic to wipe the grease from her lips.

“I’ll give you five silvers just to show up to my shop tomorrow and discuss it with me,” he said, reaching toward her table.

She planted the knife into the table just in front of his hand. He opened his fist, and two more silvers spilled out before her.

“This is an advance; my name is Mickel, and I own the tannery in the Burdens,” he boasted.

Gallia was split up into four sections, The Burdens, The Commons, The Midders, and The Uppers, which basically described the city's demographics. She was sure she knew where that tannery was. That’s where all the street kids seemed to end up.

“What if I just takes the money and run? You are too old and too fat to catch me.”

“If you decide to keep the money, don’t bother trying to run. It is not worth the chase for me, but please, spend the first silver on that bath! Goodness, I am faint from your stench, girl, and I own a tannery! Come, Jenson; we have business at the docks.” 

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 Excerpt from Chapter 2

Exhausted, he stood alone, bloodied sword in hand, on the hill overlooking the carnage and destruction of the city he once loved. Black smoke billowing from the burning buildings and homes of his beloved people. The fields of bodies with rivers of blood flowing senselessly into the dusk as the sun set over the mountains.

A tear welled up in his eye as he heard the moans and cries of pain and fear coming from the dying. He blinked, and the tear ran down his dusty cheek as the cool breeze of the evening chilled him to the bone. Ten thousand dead or dying, and he has not one mark on him.

The desolation of Mitéra Olon was such a grotesque and frightening sight. He saw bits of light looking over the carnage, which looked like fireflies gathering above many of the broken bodies.

 The flies will eat well tonight, he thought. He fell to his knees and emptied his stomach. Kneeling in a pool of entrails, the smell of the shit, vomit, and iron left him dry heaving.

 His stomach was devoid of all its contents, and his heart was filled with anguish. He closed his eyes, wishing he didn’t have to breathe anymore as he fought to keep his feelings at bay. He got up and ran down the hill into the blazing city to examine the remains of his home, hoping beyond hope that his family had survived this brutal butchery.

 The sight of his little son Micah greeted him in front of the house by the wood picketed fence they built together. He lay with a crushed skull in a pool of his own blood, wooden sword in hand. 

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