She moves to the grey-haired dullard, the one whose name she still can’t recall although she is almost certain he must have known her father as a youth. He wears the formal robes of a Council-man, red from head to toe, though a telltale stain is spreading across the fabric around his legs. “Barely a tenth of the forces required have been gathered,” she tells the somewhat pungent greyhead, “whilst you present me with an endless parade of ever-more-pathetic excuses. The Ally has ordained a great destiny for this empire whilst you wallow in your comforts and blind yourselves to the threat growing across the sea.”
He attempts to beg, but his words emerge in a stumbling incoherent babble of spit and tears. She lets him burble on and turns an appraising glance on the man standing at his back, dressed in light armour like the Kuritai, but armed with but one sword, the blade longer and more slender than the Volarian standard, reminiscent in fact of the Asraelin pattern. Also, unlike the Kuritai, his armour is enamelled in red rather than black. He is of average height but his body is toned to near perfection, the product of decades of breeding and years of conditioning. It had always been a persistent delusion among these long-lived clods that the Kuritai were the ultimate slave soldiers, incapable of improvement, and now here they were, once again proved fatally wrong.
The swordsman is aware of her scrutiny, returning her gaze with a respectful nod, a grin of anticipation on his lips. They had been the Ally’s most cherished project for centuries, a slave soldier capable of thought as well as obedience, but successive generations had proved a disappointment, either too difficult to control or too easy. It was her beloved who had provided the clue; during his time in the pits they had studied him closely, finding him most deadly when the binding was loosened, when his rage added precious speed to his blows. And so they had begun to change their diet of drugs, subtly alter their training regimen, weeding out those lacking the required spirit. In a few short years the results achieved had been . . . impressive.
