Kings of Morning

KINGS OF

MORNING

PAUL KEARNEY

SOLARIS

This book is dedicated to the finest man I have ever known;

my father, James Francis Kearney.

This novel first published 2012 by Solaris, an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX1 0ES, UK

www.solarisbooks.com

ISBN (epub): 978-1-84997-333-5

ISBN (mobi): 978-1-84997-334-2

Copyright © Paul Kearney 2012

The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Praise for
The Ten Thousand
:

“Very rarely does an author manage to leave you heartbroken while still allowing you to have enjoyed the book you’ve read... Kearney captures all the best parts of fantasy and combines them together with grit and realism and enough blood to drown a horse.”

–
Fantasy Book Review
’s Book of the Month

“This is a engrossing and exciting read that I couldn’t put down. Kearney’s battlefields are bloody and churned and fascinating to read.”

– SF Site

“I just put the book down about an hour ago and one of the first things I did was to kick myself for not having read his books much earlier... it feels like a long time since I’ve been so engrossed by a book and just torn through it to see how it ends.”

– Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review

“Paul really scores in those heart-thumping, screaming, blood-spraying combat scenes. Here are not scenes of glorious war, steeped in valour and ritual, but chaotic battles where survival is the real heroism.”

– SFF World

Praise for
Corvus
:

“Let’s make it very clear from the outset: if you start a book written by Paul Kearney, you better be willing to read straight through till 6am the next morning, because it’s going to be bloody hard to put it down again once you’ve started.”

– Fantasy Book Review

“Paul Kearney is an amazing writer. He is also incredibly and criminally underrated. Corvus was one of the best books of 2010 and made the last book of the trilogy,
Kings of Morning
, one of the most anticipated books of 2011. Just pick it up and read it. Resistance is futile.”

– Speculative Book Review

“
Corvus
delivered what I expected of it with brio and reinforced the standing of Paul Kearney as a master of military fantasy. (A+)”

– Fantasy Book Critic

“Kearney’s effective mix of carnage and gut-wrenching moments mean you’ll be thinking about
Corvus
long after you’ve finished it.”

– Total Sci-Fi

PROLOGUE

T
HEY LAY IN
the heather with the sun on their backs and stared east, the bees busy in the tangled fronds and roots about their faces, the scent of the birthing summer all about them, a fragrance as old and as new as life itself. They were perched on the tawny hillside like ticks on the flank of a great-backed hound, the land unaware of them, going about its existence as it had these thousands of centuries. They felt their own impermanence, the tiny pricks of their souls on the existence of the world, and they smiled as they caught one another’s eye, attuned to that knowledge.

East again, their gaze turned, and they saw the huge blooming sweep of the world open out before them like a hazed cloak swung over oddments, vast beyond comprehension, and yet intimate, bulging here and there with hills, scabbing over with the blossom of forests. All of it blurred and lazy under a warm sunlight, a blessing in the air itself.

The younger of the two turned, lay on his back under the sun and stared up at the sky. He was a pale, slender fellow, but there was a golden tinge to his skin that answered the sunlight.

‘He is not taking us seriously, Rictus.’

The other, an older man, lay watching, his grey eyes as pale as the underside of a snake. He rested his chin on his forearm, and the lumped flesh under his lip jutted out, an old scar. His forearm, too, was silvered with streaks of long-healed wounds, matching the badger-thatch of his hair. He was gaunt, austere, a man who seemed to have been peering into the wind all his life.

‘Serious enough. It’s as big a camp as I’ve ever seen.’

The younger man turned on his stomach again, shaded his eyes and stared across the sunlit plain before him.

‘All things are relative, my friend. We look out here upon a sensible riposte to our enterprise. He has sent enough to answer the challenge; not enough to crush it.’

‘And?’

‘And –’ the younger man’s face darkened. For a second it seemed almost that the bones within it grew more pronounced, making him into something else entirely; a grim creature of humourless will.

‘And he is not here himself. There is no Imperial tent. He has sent his lackeys to fight us, Rictus.’

Now it was the older man’s turn to roll on his back. He rubbed at the white scar furrowing his chin. ‘Then they will be the more easily beaten.’

‘Where’s the glory in that?’

Rictus smiled, and for a second he seemed a much younger man. ‘After everything we have done, Corvus, do you still need the glory of it?’

‘Now, more than ever.’

The young man looked down on the older one. In some ways they were akin; the high cheekbones, the colour flaring in them, the scars they both carried. Corvus leant and kissed Rictus on the forehead.

‘My brother,’ he said, ‘Were it not for the glory, I would not be here at all.’

PART ONE