Chapter 8
The benefits of having a warlord on your side were many.
One being that it would deter other tribes from interfering as long as he stood on your soil.
Rumours of his protection would spread and linger long enough to give an Igwe a few years of peace.
And because of this, the Igwe of the Ameachi tribe was in an especially good mood.
Having yet to see war—only inheriting his title—confrontation scared him greatly.
The Ameachi tribe's great hall blazed with light and laughter as torches flickered against walls draped in indigo and gold. The Igwe, a broad man with grey threading his temples and eyes that missed nothing despite the jovial slump of his shoulders, raised his cup yet again.
"To the Great Khan!" he proclaimed, his voice carrying over the musicians and courtiers. "May your journey through our lands be blessed by Anyanwu himself!"
Ragnar Valthorne raised his own cup, silver, and inclined his head in acknowledgement. Around him, his men sat scattered among Ameachi nobles like wolves among sheep. They ate little, drank less, and watched everything cautiously.
"The Igwe honours me," Ragnar said. "I shall remember this hospitality."
The Ameachi ruler beamed, already deep in his cups, and gestured expansively. "Sit, sit! You are too formal, Khan. We are all brothers here, are we not? What is a little drink between men of power?"
Ragnar lifted the cup to his mouth, pulling up the mask and letting the liquid wet his lips without swallowing.
Beside him, General Thane did the same, his large frame somehow managing to appear relaxed despite his usually strict disposition.
His brown hair was tied back, fairer than his Khan.
Kasimir drank idly beside him, dark eyes scanning the crowd. Thane had barely touched his cup.
"She's getting bolder," Thane said finally, his voice low enough that only Ragnar could hear. He didn't say Sisi. He didn't need to.
Thane went on. "One day the boldness will kill you, but you still won't move against her."
"I can't." The words came out flat, stripped of feeling.
A son could not move against his father, and Sisi stood in her father's shadow.
As long as the Great Kuraltai Khan lived, she was untouchable—and Ragnar's hands remained tied by the same blood that had taken him under his banner.
It was merely an expensive, murderous tantrum. It hadn't killed him yet.
Not yet, as Thane would say.
Kasimir refilled his cup. "The women of Tarsyn don't lose to the women of the Steppe." His eyes tracked a dancer across the room with cheerful appreciation. "Now I understand the journey."
Thane rolled his eyes.
Ragnar leaned back and watched the dancers spin.
The evening wore on. More toasts were made. The Igwe's sons circulated among the guests, playing the role of gracious hosts with varying degrees of skill.
Ragnar watched them all.
The eldest—the Okpalaeze, by the deference shown him—glided through the crowd with a sensible smile, nodding and listening attentively to the noblemen that spoke to him. A handsome man, Ragnar noted. Charmingly so. The kind of charm that made women overlook the coldness behind his eyes.
Beside him walked a woman, veiled by a beautiful amber-jewelled fabric. She didn't speak nor meet anyone's gaze and simply floated at his side like a well-trained shadow. Her hands were clasped so tightly together, shoulders tense, bowing her head multiple times whenever anything was said to her.
Ragnar's gaze lingered.
Thane leaned close, his voice barely above a murmur. "That one is a Borjigin princess. Married to the heir three months ago. She has her husband wrapped around her finger; he hasn't even impregnated his concubines because of her."
"Borjigin." Ragnar turned the word over. "Are all their women like that?"
"Seems so. This one was a gift to cement an alliance. They say she's beautiful, but no one's seen her face since the wedding. I suppose she must be beautiful to be such a shrew."
Ragnar grunted, unimpressed.
The Igwe grew increasingly drunk, his laughter louder, his gestures more uncoordinated. His courtiers matched his pace, eager to please, until half the hall seemed in danger of falling off their cushions.
Ragnar, who had consumed only three sips of wine all evening, waited for the right moment.
When the Igwe's head finally drooped and the musicians' playing grew sloppy, he rose from his seat. None of the Ameachi nobles noticed; they were too far gone. His men noted his movement but didn't stir, trained to wait for explicit orders.
Thane fell into step beside him as he exited the hall.
"Just a walk," Ragnar said quietly. "I need air." Only then did the footsteps behind him stop, allowing him some time alone.
The gardens of the Ameachi palace were extensive, designed to impress visitors with their scale and cultivation. Paths wound between flowering bushes and ornamental trees, past small streams and artificial ponds where sapphire fish swam, scales reflecting the moonlight on the water surface.
Ragnar walked in silence, letting the cool night air clear the smoke of the hall from his lungs. He rounded a corner and found he was not alone.
A man sat on a stone bench beside a small pond, his back to him, his posture one of deep contemplation.
He turned to face him; the moonlight caught his features.
He was younger than the Okpalaeze, softer in the jaw.
The Third Prince, if Ragnar remembered correctly.
The one who'd spoken the least and drunk the most.
"Great Khan," the prince said, rising with a slight bow. "I hope I'm not intruding. The gardens are usually empty at this hour."
Ragnar raised a brow, not even a hint of instability in the prince’s posture.
"You didn't drink tonight?"
He wondered if the cups he downed were simply full of water.
"Neither did you."
The corner of Ragnar's mouth twitched. “From my understanding, the Third Prince is a frivolous scholar whose heart belongs to wine and the Four Arts.”
The prince frowned, and Ragnar continued.
“It seems the rumours were exaggerated.”
The boy held both hands behind his back, straightening his shoulders as he spoke.
"My father thinks me a dreamer lost in old stories and useless legends.
He's not wrong." The prince crossed the distance between them, close enough for conversation but not so close as to threaten.
"But dreamers tend to be blessed with foresight.”
Ragnar held no particular interest in their conversation, but the prince’s approach to getting his attention was refreshing. "What legends interest a prince of Ameachi?"
The younger man was quiet for a moment, watching the water. "Have you heard of Methuselah, Great Khan?"
The name stirred something in Ragnar's memory. "I've heard the name."
"Everyone has; the village children recount the old stories under odara trees at night.
" The prince's voice took on the cadence of a storyteller, someone who had repeated these words many times in the privacy of his own mind.
"Methuselah was the first human king in the Era of Djinn.
Not the first ruler; there were chieftains and warlords before him. But the first king."
Ragnar waited for him to continue.
"He spoke to Titans; he raised them—the Titans—from their eternal slumber and bound them to his will."
"Titans are simply children's stories." Ragnar's voice was flat.
"I suppose." The prince met his gaze, and there was something knowing in those young eyes.
"But don't you find it strange? Every tribe has their legend of the Old Ones. Tarsyn has the Ekesi Akilli; the Grass Sea has the birds under Zephyr’s grace.
The Bacchalia has the legend of Behemoth.
How is it that around the world, there are accounts of Titans? Is it simply a coincidence?"
Ragnar's jaw tightened.
"Do not be angered by my words, Great Khan; I am making an observation.
" The prince turned back to the water. "Contrary to popular belief, Methuselah wasn't a conqueror.
That's what everyone misunderstands. The title 'King of Kings' doesn't mean he ruled over other rulers.
It means he made them. He took chieftains and elevated them to kings.
He took warlords and gave them kingdoms. Every royal line in Oblivia traces back to him in some way. "
"A kingmaker."
"Yes." The prince smiled. "A kingmaker. The only human ever to speak with Titans and live.
The only one who could raise them. When he died, he was so beloved by them that Enoch himself took his body away, and no one knows where he is buried.
The greatest Titan to ever live loved him so much as to personally bury his body. "
Silence fell between them, broken only by the soft splash of fish and the distant strains of music from the hall.
Ragnar studied the young prince, finding the boy’s intentions murky. "Why tell me this?"
The prince hummed. "The idea of king as we—mortals—know it is inherently different from how the gods see it. Do you know of the divine right of kings, Great Khan?"
Ragnar nodded; how could he not know it? It was the bullshit excuse Khans used to discredit his power—the belief that a king could only be ordained by the gods.
“Great Khan, then I should ask you. Who decides when the gods have ordained a man?”
A perplexing question. Ragnar stared at the prince. Who decided when the gods had ordained a king? He was not sure. “I fear I do not believe the gods made kings,” Ragnar stated. “The gods made men, and we men made kings of ourselves.”
You are king if you wish to be king.
The boy froze, caught off guard. Then he smiled, something beautiful. "I see, I do not need a Shaman then, do I? I can simply do as I wish."
Movement in the shadows caught Ragnar's eye. It was a strange woman, half-hidden behind a flowering bush, trying desperately not to be seen. No veil covered her face—just tangled hair and red-rimmed eyes and a bruise blooming along her neck that she kept trying to hide by tugging at her collar.
Their eyes met for the briefest instant before she vanished back into the darkness, her footsteps quick and uneven on the garden path.
Ragnar turned back to the prince, who had gone still, his face blank but his eyes betraying a pain he couldn't quite hide.
"The woman knows you," Ragnar said.
The prince said nothing, suddenly losing the will to talk.
"Thank you for the story, Prince. I'll remember it." Ragnar inclined his head and walked away without looking back. Hidden battles took place in every court; this one was no different. But he was just a passerby, and he had no interest in pushing the tides one way or another.
The Valthorne party departed at dawn.
The Igwe saw them off with much fanfare and little sincerity, his head clearly pounding from the previous night's excess. The Okpalaeze stood at his father's side, flawless and charming; the Third Prince was nowhere to be seen.
Ragnar's party quickly put distance between themselves and the Ameachi palace, traversing deeper into the forest and up through the ridges to where the Borjigin were said to have settled.
The sun climbed higher, but the leaves gave them a canopy. It was only after two hours that Ragnar's head began to ache.
At first, he dismissed it as dehydration or lack of sleep.
He'd pushed through worse; a headache was nothing.
But the pain only grew, spreading and thumping wildly on his skull.
The greenery around him blurred; his horse's gait felt unsteady, each stride jostling his spine in ways that made his stomach lurch.
"Thane."
His voice came out slurred and muffled to his own ears.
Thane turned in his saddle, concern flickering across his usually impassive face. "Great Khan?"
Ragnar opened his mouth to speak, but the world swayed, falling. He grabbed his reins tighter, but his fingers wouldn't close properly.
"Great Khan!”
Thane pushed his horse forward. Ragnar found his vision leaving him when he heard it—the sound of betrayal.
Metal leaving leather. The whisper of a blade drawn free and the clash of swords.