The Last Warrior Read Free

known as children. But they were men now, the leaders of their people. Above such childish reactions. Or so they ought to be.
    â€œI won him a war, Markam. The war. If he finds no pleasure in that, I can’t help him.” Tao shook his head, muttering, “Already I miss the no-nonsense laws of the battlefield, where a man says what he means, and there is no time for hurt feelings.”
    Markam’s dark eyes twinkled as he rode at his side. “You haven’t changed a bit. You still have no patience for politics.”
    â€œNever will!” Tao turned his focus toward the city. “Politics is the pastime for men who can’t fight.”
    The rumble emanating from behind the walls became a wild roar of cheering as his army’s point guard preceded him through the gates. Tao sat taller in the saddle. Pride swelled in his chest as he marched his army into their beloved capital city to the boisterous love of the crowds—and soon, he was certain, despite everything Markam had said, the thanks of the king himself.
    Â 
    â€œU HR -T AO , U HR -T AO …”
    The incessant chanting. It had been going on since before sunrise. Elsabeth had dressed for her job asroyal tutor while listening to it, the distant sound carrying into her parent’s tidy row house next to their old clinic in the center of Kurel Town. The chanting had persisted like distant thunder all through her solitary breakfast, keeping her from concentrating on the book she’d intended to read with her morning tea.
    At her front door, she stopped to sling a messenger bag over her shoulder and fill it with storybooks she’d purchased for the prince and princess: Grimm’s Complete Fairy Tales; Green Eggs and Ham; The Starry Ark. As soon as she arrived in the nursery classroom, she’d lock them away as always. Having such things in the palace was her secret, and the queen’s. Queen Aza had been adamant that Elsabeth not breathe a word of it to anyone.
    Anyone meant Xim. In the capital, adopting Kurel ways could get a person killed by order of the king. No one was safe anymore. Not even his wife. “Uhr-Tao…Uhr-Tao…Uhr-Tao…”
    Before leaving, Elsabeth reached for a chunk of charred wood she’d kept on a shelf since saving it from her parent’s funeral. Worn smooth over the years, the piece sat clutched in her hand for longer than usual. Today, especially, on General Uhr-Tao’s homecoming, it paid to remind herself of her vow. Now that the general had spent himself slaughtering Gorr, would he cast about in search of new prey? What if Xim unleashedTao to finish what he’d begun—the violence, the raids, the Kurel arrested and never seen again?
    I will not fear. I will never give up.
    She replaced the piece of wood and left.
    â€œUhr-Tao…Uhr-Tao…Uhr-Tao…” The chanting grew louder the closer she got to the ghetto exit, where her usual morning routine would intersect quite inconveniently with the general’s long-awaited arrival. The streets outside Kurel Town were packed. Never had she seen so many people gathered at once. The army kept pouring in from beyond the walls, thousands of soldiers. The city seemed too small to hold them all. Leading their slow, measured advance was General Uhr-Tao himself.
    She slowed to see. For all his alleged exploits, he looked far younger than she’d expected, and storybook handsome. She had to agree with the Tassagons that the man fulfilled every expectation of what a legend should look like: his bare, golden arms corded with sinew and muscle, his thighs thick as tree trunks as they gripped the sides of his mount. Even the armor he wore across his shoulders and torso somehow fit him better than it did other, mere mortal men.
    Look at him, so high and mighty on his horse, a man celebrated for the lives he’s taken. Elsabeth wrenched her attention away. She’d been fully prepared to not like Uhr-Tao. Nothing