A hundred riders stormed down the hillside, clad in black steel, visors hiding their faces. Their banners rose high, streams of red against the gray sky like blood trailing along a corpse. Their torches crackled, raising columns of smoke.
"Slay them all!" Serin shouted. "Loot what you crave and burn the rest!"
The riders thundered between the cottages of Fairwool-by-Night, torching the thatch roofs. Children ran across the village square, crying for their mothers, as riders tore into them with blades. Villagers emerged from homes, the tavern, and the brick library, begging for life, praising Serin, chanting of Radian's might.
They begged and they died.
Serin sneered, riding his horse toward a young woman shielding a boy in her arms. He thrust his spear, skewering them both. At his side, Lari laughed as she trampled over a dead man, her courser's hooves snapping bones. Soldiers stormed into the library, tugged out books, piled them around the maple tree rising from the village square, and burned them all in a great pyre.
"Here's her house!" Lari said, pointing at a cottage. The word "Greenmoat" appeared upon the door. Lari laughed. "This little chamberpot of a cottage." She raced inside, then emerged holding a rag doll—perhaps a toy Madori had once played with. Lari spat. "The vermin are gone. The mongrel and her mother fled. Of course they did."
Serin handed her a torch. "Burn the house. This one is yours."
He watched, pride swelling within him, as his daughter set fire to the cottage, as the smoke and flames rose from the home of their enemies.
Blood stained Fairwool-by-Night, red as the fallen maple leaves. Bodies lay crushed and broken. Homes and fields burned. The autumn leaves fell upon nothing but death.
Serin withdrew his men to the hill. They gathered around the old stone watchtower, gazing down at the flaming ruins. A thin smile stretched across Serin's lips, and he wiped blood off his sword.
"The nightcrawlers will see this flame," he said. "The smoke will rise above the dusk, and the stench of death will carry on the eastward wind. The vermin are watching, my daughter. I do not doubt that the mongrel is among them."
He dismounted his horse and helped Lari dismount as well. They entered the watchtower, climbed its spiraling staircase, and emerged onto the battlements. A lone boy stood there, trembling, a youth barely old enough to shave. The lone survivor of Fairwool-by-Night, he made a clumsy attempt at some last honor, firing an arrow at Serin. The projectile missed the lord by two feet.
"Lari?" Serin said, raising an eyebrow.
She grinned, stepped toward the trembling boy, and slashed her sword across his belly. He fell, gasping, dying, his innards spilling.
Serin approached the eastern battlements and leaned forward between two merlons. Lari came to stand at his side, the cold wind billowing her hair and reddening her cheeks. Before them spread the dusk, the shadowy no man's land separating day from night. And there in the distance they saw it: the great shadow, the land of endless night. Eloria.
A castle rose in those shadows, perhaps a league away, a pagoda with three tiers of roofs. As his men emerged onto the tower top, raising a great Radian banner, Serin stared toward that pagoda, and he imagined that he was staring into her eyes.
"Hello, Madori," he whispered, stroking a merlon as if stroking Madori's head. "Do you see this fire? Do you smell this death? We will muster here, mongrel. We will raise an army like the world has never seen. We are coming for you." He licked his lips and caressed the stump of his finger—the finger she had removed. "Soon you will burn too."
Lari leaned against him, and Serin slung an arm around her. They stood watching the night, savoring the smell of victory.
The story will continue in . . .
SHADOWS OF MOTH
The Moth Saga, Book Five
COMING SOON
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AFTERWORD
Thank you for reading Daughter of Moth. I hope you enjoyed this novel.
Want to know when the next book is released? Here are some ways to stay updated:
* Join my mailing list at: DanielArenson.com/MailingList
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Thank you again, dear reader, and I hope we meet again between the pages of another book.
Daniel
NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON
Standalones:
Firefly Island (2007)
The Gods of Dream (2010)
Flaming Dove (2010)
Misfit Heroes:
Eye of the Wizard (2011)
Wand of the Witch (2012)
Song of Dragons:
Blood of Requiem (2011)
Tears of Requiem (2011)
Light of Requiem (2011)
Dragonlore:
A Dawn of Dragonfire (2012)
A Day of Dragon Blood (2012)
A Night of Dragon Wings (2013)
The Dragon War:
A Legacy of Light (2013)
A Birthright of Blood (2013)
A Memory of Fire (2013)
Dawn of Dragons:
Requiem's Song (2014)
Requiem's Hope (forthcoming)
Requiem's Prayer (forthcoming)
The Moth Saga:
Moth (2013)
Empires of Moth (2013)
Secrets of Moth (2014)
Daughter of Moth (2014)
Shadows of Moth (forthcoming)
Legacy of Moth (forthcoming)
KEEP IN TOUCH
www.DanielArenson.com
[email protected]
Facebook.com/DanielArenson
Twitter.com/DanielArenson
Daughter of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 4) Page 26
