Chapter 39 #2
Chinedu's breath came in short, sharp gasps. He wanted to run to them, to shake them until they woke up. But some deeper instinct—the same instinct that had kept him alive through the weeks without his mother’s protection—commanded him to keep running.
They're gone, a voice whispered in his mind. Keep moving.
He tore his gaze away and ran on.
Something stopped him.
A pull, like a thread tugging at his chest, drawing his gaze toward a different path.
The shrine.
It was deep into the palace; surely, he shouldn’t—but he did. Without understanding why, Chinedu turned and ran in the opposite direction, towards Azul's old residence.
As always, the shrine was small and quiet, tucked away in a corner of the palace that few visited.
Chinedu burst into the stone structure, his small body trembling with fear and exertion.
He stumbled forward, falling to his knees before the tablet that bore his mother's spirit. "Mother," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Mother, I'm scared. I don't know what to do. Everyone is dying, and I'm—I'm all alone."
The unlit candles flickered alive. Chinedu’s head snapped up. He scrambled to his feet, backing away. His foot caught on a loose stone—one of the floor tiles, shifted by age or neglect. He stumbled, flailing, and his hand struck the edge of a column.
The tablets shuddered. One fell. Another. A third.
A grinding sound came soon after.
One of the larger tablets—a carved piece of marble bearing the name of an ancestor Chinedu didn't recognise—slid sideways, revealing a dark opening behind it. A hidden passage. The strange sound of hissing came from the dark, and the boy gulped.
Fate, it seemed, had other plans for the last prince of Borjigin.
The throne room of the Borjigin palace had become a slaughterhouse.
Altansarnai's elite guard held the doors, their curved blades wet with the blood of Somadina's remaining loyalists.
The Borjigin prince stood at the far end of the hall, backed against his own throne, a sword in his hand that he barely knew how to use.
His guards lay dead or dying around him.
His courtiers had fled or been cut down trying.
The great hall where he had hosted a feast just hours ago now stank of iron and voided bowels.
Altansarnai walked through the carnage, each step striking fear into the hearts of his enemies.
He hadn't even broken a sweat.
"Somadina." He spoke the name, drawing it out as if to taste it. "Son of an Igwe. Grandson of an Igwe. Great-great-grandson of an Igwe. All that blood, all that breeding, and look at you. Shaking. Sweating. Backed into a corner like a rat."
Somadina's grip tightened on his sword. "My city—"
"Your city is mine." Altansarnai kept advancing, his men fanning out to block any escape. "Your people are mine. Your throne is mine. The only thing left that might have been yours is that woman, but I had her on her back in my room." He smiled. "She fought. I liked that. Made it interesting."
Somadina's face went white, then red. "You are not a man of honour!"
"Honour?" Altansarnai laughed. "Speaking of honour to a warlord is like asking a fish to climb a tree. At least fight; it'll make your defeat more interesting."
Somadina screamed and charged.
It was almost pathetic.
Altansarnai sidestepped the wild swing, caught Somadina's wrist, and twisted until the sword clattered to the stone floor. A knee to the gut doubled the prince over. A fist to the back of the neck sent him sprawling at the foot of his own throne.
Altansarnai placed a boot on his spine and leaned down, speaking conversationally.
"You gave me your city. You gave me your woman.
You gave me everything, and you got nothing in return except the privilege of dying on your father's floor.
" He pressed down, feeling vertebrae shift.
"I want you to know that. In your last moment, I want you to understand exactly how completely you lost."
Somadina's fingers scrabbled at the stone. His mouth moved, but no words came out.
Altansarnai raised his sword.
The blade never fell.
A sharp, burning pain erupted in his side—just below the ribs, angling up, aiming for his kidneys. A trained fighter, trained enough to know his armour's weakpoints. Altansarnai's breath left him in a rush. He looked down and saw steel protruding from his own flesh, blood streaming down his armour.
Altansarnai spun, or tried to—the blade in his side made the movement awkward and painful. He stumbled back, creating quick distance, one hand going to the wound, and found himself staring at a man he had been told was dead.
Ragnar Valthorne. Behind him, the bodies of Altansarnai's elite guard lay scattered, removed from existence without even a scream.
Unhurried, he bent to pick up a new sword.
He was taller than the stories said. Younger.
His eyes were the colour of coal, and they held absolutely nothing akin to mercy.
"You're dead." Altansarnai's voice came out strangled. "The box—the body—"
"Was very convincing," Ragnar agreed. He walked across the room, coming closer. "My compliments to the Igwe at your feet. He did excellent work verifying the corpse." He tilted his head. "Completely wrong, of course, but thorough."
Altansarnai's men moved to intercept him.
In the blink of an eye, they had fallen.
It happened so fast that Altansarnai wasn't entirely sure he had seen it—one moment they were charging, the next they were on the floor, and Ragnar Valthorne was still walking forward, the sword in his hand barely seeming to move.
"I heard," Ragnar continued, as if he hadn't just killed four men in the space of a breath. "You have put hands on what does not belong to you." His eyes found Altansarnai's. "So you have chosen Ukhel's embrace."
Altansarnai's mind raced, trying to process, trying to find an angle, a weapon, anything. His hand tightened on his sword. The wound in his side burned, but it wasn't fatal—not yet. If he could buy time, if he could reach the door, if he could—
"You're thinking about running," Ragnar observed. "Don't."
He attacked.
Altansarnai was no novice. He had fought in a dozen campaigns, killed more men than he could count, and earned his reputation through blood and iron. When Ragnar's blade came at him, he parried—a good parry—but not good enough.
Ragnar's sword cut through it.
Altansarnai threw himself backwards, felt the wind of the blade past his face, and felt the sting as it opened a line across his cheek. He came up in a crouch, sword ready, and for the first time in years, he felt something he had forgotten he could feel.
Fear.
Ragnar didn't press the advantage. He waited, sword low, watching Altansarnai.
"You touched her," he said quietly.
Altansarnai's lips peeled back from his teeth. "You can't possibly be upset over a mere woman!?" The thought of a warlord finding a woman to attach himself to bewildered him. He was giving the world a weakness to exploit.
"She's my Khatun."
Ragnar lunged.
Altansarnai met him, and for a few heartbeats, the throne room rang with the sound of steel on steel.
Altansarnai was fast—faster than he had any right to be with a wound in his side.
His style was brutal, efficient, honed by years of Steppe warfare where a single mistake meant death.
He drove Ragnar back two steps, then three, his blade finding openings that should have been fatal.
Ragnar absorbed every blow. Parried. Sidestepped. Turned each attack aside with a motion that looked almost lazy.
Then he stopped retreating.
Altansarnai saw it coming but couldn't react fast enough. Ragnar's blade slipped past his guard and opened a line across his sword arm. He grunted, shifted grip, kept fighting.
Another cut. Across his thigh this time, shallow but bleeding.
Another. His ribs, opposite side from the stab wound.
Altansarnai was being carved.
He could feel it happening—each cut meant to debilitate rather than kill. Ragnar Valthorne was not fighting to end this quickly. He was fighting to make it last.
"You're slow," Ragnar observed. "The wine, probably. Or overconfidence. You believed your own victory before it happened."
Altansarnai lunged, desperate. Ragnar sidestepped, caught his wrist, and for the second time that night, a sword clattered to the stone floor. Ragnar kicked his chest viciously, the man fell heavily.
For a moment, Ragnar stood over the body and said nothing.
Then he crouched.
His men, veterans of a dozen campaigns, men who had seen Ragnar Valthorne walk through fire and come out the other side without flinching, found reasons to look elsewhere.
At the floor. At the doors. At the bodies of the fallen.
Anywhere but at their Khan, kneeling over the man who had touched his wife.
"You said she fought," Ragnar said.
Altansarnai's breath rattled in his chest. He was alive still —barely, the wound in his side doing its slow work. He turned his head, and the movement cost him.
"I liked that," Ragnar continued, his voice almost gentle. "You liked that too. Didn't you?"
Ragnar raised his blade, eyeing the man's hands.
A piercing scream filled the room.
Joint by joint, each time Ragnar stabbed, an uncontrollable sound left the other man's lips. Ragnar's expression remained distant.
"What did her skin feel like?"
Altansarnai looked up, heaving, blood spilling from his lips. Ragnar waited politely to hear what he had to say.
The man grinned and spat in the Great Khan's face.
"Like milk—"
A boot found his jaw, breaking the bone.
Altansarnai doubled over, hand shaking just under his chin as tears left his eyes involuntarily and blood and saliva spilled from his unhinged jaw.
Ragnar asked no more questions, and Altansarnai, it turned out, had more breath in him than expected.
But that too ran out, alongside his life, and his dignity.