The Sword of the Dawn

Machine-devoured, all his hours were given o’er to that insidious circuitry, and old grew he, unnoticing, in the service of his engines.

“I think you serve a great purpose, Hawkmoon. I think your destiny is a noble one.”

Hawkmoon laughed. “And yet I do not pine for a noble destiny—merely a secure one.”

For this was the great power of the Lords of the Dark Empire, that they valued nothing on all the Earth, no human quality, nothing within or without themselves. The spreading of conquest and desolation, of terror and torment, was their staple entertainment, a means of employing their hours until their spans of life were ended. For them, warfare was merely the most satisfactory way of easing their ennui...

Only Bowgentle, the philosopher-poet, his old friend, had an inkling of what he meant and even then Bowgentle believed that it reflected not on the nature of the landscape but on the particular nature of Count Brass’s mind.

“You’re exhausted, disorientated,” Bowgentle would say. “The ordering mechanism of the brain is working too hard, so you see a pattern to existence that, in fact, only stems from your own weariness and disturbance...”

“I have heard it said it is often safer to dwell in the lion’s lair than outside it,” Oladahn said.

“Safer still to live in a land where there are no lions,” Count Brass retorted.

Wild days, wild riders, and the stink of warfare across the world!