Page 1 of Of Iron and Moonlight

Prologue

Pietre derOlpendorf, Baron of Netherfen Hallows, felt hot. Unbearably, devastatingly hot. The early summer sun made a kiln of both valley and battlefield raging before him, blurring the Duskmerri sky into a merciless haze. Horses snorted foam. Men blinked tears from eyes gone raw with dust and pain. Inside his iron plate, Pietre sweated like a pig.

“Water,” he croaked. Then, louder, “Water!” The word died inside the dragon-faced helm and came back soured by his own breath. Velvet padding bit into his cheeks. Sweat ran unchecked into places hot metal was never meant to meet skin. Why had he insisted the snout protrude so far? Had no one thought to cut vents for air?

A dragon’s face for a dragon of a man, he’d joked when commissioning the plate. He had overseen every detail himself, down to the placement of each black diamond. It was meant to rival the masters of Ardor and Vaelstrom. That it was now dragged through dirt and gore was a crime against the arts, and a grave insult to his comfort.

Gems at Pietre’s brow drank sunlight, conspiring with the heat to blur his vision at the edges. He blinked hard and squinted through the jewel-dazzle. Whatever formations they had attempted at the start had collapsed. Bodies and blood littered the barren landscape.

He yanked at his reins and urged his horse through the desperate screams of dying men, hunting for one of his captains to demand an end to the skirmish and, more importantly, the moons-cursed heat.

“You there,” he roared at the next soldier in a captain’s sash, straightening as much as the snug breastplate allowed. “What in the Three Moons is causing us to lose so many men? Can you not get the soldiers under control?”

“My lord, we await your command!” the captain replied, exasperated, dark eyes flickering everywhere. He wore steel armor and carried a sword. Almost everyone else on the Netherfen side, however, was unprotected and ill-prepared.

Pietre had a small standing army, kept mostly for appearance. This far west, at the very edge of the Vaelclair Empire—where few traveled and imperial politics rarely bothered to reach—lords seldom expected to need one. He regretted sharing that assumption as he cast a helpless glance toward Netherfen Hallows, the home he now struggled to defend.

Most men would scoff at lordship over an inconsequential border town in Duskmere, a duchy of fruitless land and honest tradespeople with little else to claim. Meanwhile, Lemierre to the east enjoyed fertile valleys and ancient prestige. Kryovarre boasted ironclad warriors and winter fortresses. Even southern Ardor could point to bustling ports and famed ateliers. But Pietre saw his home for the opportunity it was: somewhere to build a life of leisure, with little oversight and no one to shame him for splurging on riches.

It had been a perfect life. Until today.

“Just… do something!” Pietre bellowed and turned his horse to flee from a clash.

What foe would come from the west? Pietre wondered as his vision blurred again and his head spun. He shook himself back to alertness. Curse the moons, it was hot.

The western half of Oraith was known to be uninhabited. Uninhabitable. Unless, of course, one believed the old tales of the fae. Early histories claimed ambitious fae rulers sometimes amused themselves by conquering eastern territories or enslaving their human occupants.

It had been several millennia, however, since the fae had last been seen on Empire lands. Nevertheless, Pietre had paid dearly for costly iron over common steel. Just in case. And at the very least, the plate ensured he would not be overlooked. It would impress his foes, whoever they were.

“My lord,” another captain called. The man’s beard looked singed. Why in the moons would it be singed? Or perhaps it was only caked with grime. Hard to tell at this distance and through the helm’s slitted vision. “The west flank—”

“Tell the west flank to be a flank and hold,” Pietre snapped. Idiot.

Increasingly miserable, Pietre turned to more comforting thoughts. Sweet Ardorri wine, and a roasted goose sweating beneath honeyed glaze. The way his wife’s gold bracelets chimed when she lifted her hands to comb her hair. The vault where he kept the best diamonds from his secret diggings. And he thought, wildly, that he would sell it all—every vintage, trinket, and gem—for a cup of water and a breeze.

“My lord,” the captain urged again, “they are pushing on the left. We need to—”

Finally overwhelmed, Pietre roared before the man could finish and wheeled his steed away from the battlefield, desperate for a moment’s quiet. The horse settled near a ditch at the outskirts, grateful to be away from the racket.

It was then that Pietre’s vision blurred so completely he swayed in the saddle. His strength drained in an unstoppable rush. His fingers fumbled weakly at the reins before he slipped. Dragged by the weight of his beloved armor, he struck the ground in a graceless heap and rolled into the ditch. The dragon snout tilted skyward. The sun bloomed white. Then everything went black.

None of his men noticed.

None but one.

Gavriel Morvain came to the field because the bell rang at dawn and every able-bodied man was ordered to fight. The morning began in fear, steadied briefly into determination, then burned into anger and confusion. Instead of an organized defense under competent command, there was a fool masquerading as a lord and an enemy with eyes like… bruised fruit?

Something wry flickered across Gavriel’s face as the comparison struck him, briefly, as amusing. He was too preoccupied, however, to come up with anything less ridiculous; a cluster of enemy soldiers was charging toward what remained of his small squadron. He lifted his sword and rushed to meet them directly, cutting one down, then another. Then another.

The enemy, moons help them all, was wrong.

The first sign had been the eyes. Shadows clouded the whites, and red rimmed the irises, lending them unfocused yet determined glares. More striking, though, was the color. Or rather, the sheer abundance of it. Human eyes tended toward neutral shades. Greys. Browns. Blacks. Yet every enemy iris Gavriel glimpsed that day bore a rare hue, carrying a fevered sheen and varying in intensity.

When they moved, the air around them ruptured with strangeness. Scatterings of sparks flared. A blast of air would blind just long enough for a blade to find skin. One of Gavriel’s squad thrust a pike, only for the shaft to snap as if rot had raced through it in a single heartbeat.

“By the moons,” he muttered, “they are only men.” And he kept reminding himself of it as he turned to face another onslaught. “Only men.”

After striking down his latest opponent, Gavriel paused to take in the scene. His gaze slid back toward the dust-hued town, then swept the outskirts of the skirmish—just in time to see the baron, in his absurd plate, tumble from his horse. The dragon helm rolled, its jeweled snout biting into the dirt before disappearing into a ditch.