The Price of Valor

ALSO BY DJANGO WEXLER

The Shadow Campaigns

The Thousand Names

The Shadow Throne

The Price of Valor

The Shadow of Elysium
(a novella)

The Forbidden Library Novels

The Forbidden Library

The Mad Apprentice

Published by the Penguin Group

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Copyright © Django Wexler, 2015

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REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRA
DA

LIBRARY OF CONGRE
SS CATALOGING-IN-PUB
LICATION DATA:

Wexler, Django.

The price of valor / Django Wexler.

pages cm.—(The shadow campaigns; bk. three)

ISBN 978-1-101-60953-8

I. Title.

PS3623.E94P75 2015

813'.6—dc23 2015005723

PUBLI
SHER'S NOTE

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This one is for my friends,
who keep me sane (most of the
time).

This book was a new challenge for me. Since
The Shadow Throne
was largely completed before
The Thousand Names
was released, this was the first time I'd tried writing a book after having heard the response to the previous volumes. I've been lucky enough that the response has been largely positive, but it left me with a distinct feeling of pressure and the need to live up to everyone's expectations.

Fortunately, as always, I had plenty of help along the way. This time the first person to get her hands on a draft was Rhiannon Held. She took time away from her own writing to help me out, for which I'll be forever grateful; you should go read her books at once. Casey Blair
hadn't
read a draft, but she listened to me babble for an hour and then casually solved a plot problem I'd been worrying at for days, once again proving that she is the best. Lu Huan was kind enough to read several early versions and tip me off on where to go next.

My agent, Seth Fishman, was awesome as always, and as I was writing he gave me the welcome news that we'd gotten a contract for the fourth and fifth books in the Shadow Campaigns to close out the series. At the Gernert Company, I also owe thanks to Will Roberts, Rebecca Gardener, and Andy Kifer, and everyone else who helped bring these books around the world.

My editors, Jessica Wade at Roc and Michael Rowley at Del Rey UK, suffered through my bouts of angst and put up with my being late, and managed to do their usual excellent jobs in spite of my shenanigans. I owe Michael particular thanks for playing host and tour guide during my first visit to London; my thanks as well to all the Londoners who helped out the lost-looking, wrong-side-of-the-street-crossing American.

Once again, my final thanks to two really indispensable groups of people: first, everyone who works to make sure the book actually exists and turns up in stores, with a cover, not printed upside down or labeled as a Norwegian dictionary; second, everyone who read
The Thousand Names
and
The Shadow Throne
and thought they were worth talking about. Without you, I'd just be a guy telling stories to his cats.

IGNAHTA SEMPRIA

S
uch pretty country, to be soaked in blood.

South of the city of Desland, the valley of the river Velt flattened out into a rolling carpet of fields, gridded by neat hedgerows and punctuated by tiny orderly hamlets, each with its tall-spired church tipped by a golden double circle. The river itself traced out a series of lazy curves, as though exhausted by its frantic descent from the highlands, and it flashed like molten silver in the warm autumn sun. Here and there, lone hills rose from the endless flat farmland like islands jutting out of the sea, crowned with gnarled, ancient trees, the last remaining strongholds of the great forests that had covered this land before the arrival of men.

Atop one of those hills, at the edge of one of those primeval woods, a man sat cross-legged on a boulder and stared down at the plain below. He was a young man, barely out of boyhood, with nut-brown hair and a wispy mustache. Dressed in leathers and homespun, he could have been mistaken for a native, the son of a peasant farmer come to trap or gather wood in the old forest.

In fact, he was a very long way from home, and he had no interest in firewood or game. His name was Wren. In his saddlebags, carefully folded and secured inside a lockbox, he carried a velvet mask sewn with a layer of glittering, clicking obsidian. It marked him as a servant of an order out of legend, one that was supposedly a hundred years dead: the Priests of the Black, fell agents of the Elysian Church, its spies and inquisitors.

Even within the hidden fraternity who carried out the will of the Black Priests, Wren was of a special breed. He had spoken the true name of a demon,
and would play host to the creature until the end of his days. When his death came, he would be condemned to eternal torment for daring to traffic with the supernatural. He had accepted this burden, and the certainty of this ultimate fate, to serve the Church and save others from suffering similar punishment. He was one of the
Ignahta Sempria
, the Penitent Damned.

*   *   *

Wren stared down at the plain, across the miles, to a place where many campfires had lately burned like fireflies. At that distance, most men would have seen nothing but the fields and the rivers, but Wren's demon was with him. He could feel it in his eyes, a
tight
feeling like someone twisting knotted cords around his skull, and it sharpened his vision to excruciating precision. Tiny men in blue milled and marched and formed ranks, teams of horses were harnessed to cannon, and cavalrymen checked their saddles and mounted. An army, preparing for battle.

The brush beside him rustled. With his demon's strength wholly poured into his eyes, Wren's hearing was no better than a normal man's, and only the discipline of long training kept him from starting at the sound. Instead he let out a long breath and forced himself to relax, letting his demon return to its resting state. Between blinks, the clarity of his vision faded, though it still would have put any hawk to shame. Sound rushed back in, every tiny rustle and animal noise of the forest now as obvious as a fanfare. He could hear the heartbeats of the two men who now stood beside him, and their breathing was as loud as the rasp of a bellows.

“The Vordanai are breaking camp,” he said. He spoke in Murnskai, the native tongue of those raised in the fortress-temple of Elysium. “But not to retreat. Vhalnich will offer battle to di Pfalen.”

“Bold,” said the man on his left.

He was much older than Wren, well into middle age, with a bald dome of skull sticking up from a ring of black and gray. His name, the only one that Wren had ever heard anyone use, was the Liar. Like Wren, he was dressed in simple peasant garb, but his hands might have invited comment: his nails were each at least an inch long, and painted with gleaming white resin.

“Di Pfalen has the numbers,” Wren said. “He has broken his force into three columns to attempt to cut off Vhalnich's escape.”

The Liar snorted. “I might not be so confident in his place, given Vhalnich's reputation.”

Wren shrugged. The Liar liked to pass himself off as an expert in military
matters, as in everything else, but the basic situation was simple enough. The revolution that had broken out after the death of King Farus VIII had shocked the civilized world, placing a sacred monarch in thrall to a mere elected parliament. With due encouragement from Elysium, the great powers of the west—Borel, Murnsk, and the Free Cities League—had gone to war to restore the rightful order. But declaration of war was one thing, and action another. Seafaring Borel preferred the slow weapons of blockade and economic warfare, while vast, backward Imperial Murnsk could take months to assemble her armies.

The League, on the other hand, was not a nation but a bickering, fractious collection of semi-independent polities. Vheed, Norel, and the more distant cities had sent only token contingents or empty promises to the supposedly common cause. Only Hamvelt and its close allies had leapt at the chance to defeat their longtime rival. So it was here, to familiar plains between Essyle and Desland, where the ever-shifting border between Vordan and the League ran, that the Vordanai had sent their newly minted hero. Janus bet Vhalnich. Conqueror of Khandar, vanquisher of the Last Duke, savior of Vordan.
Heretic. Sorcerer.

“We will observe the result,” the Liar said. “If Vhalnich falls, or is taken, our task is simplified. If not . . .”

The third man grunted. He stood with his arms crossed over his massive chest, more than a head taller than either of his companions. His craggy face was made ferocious by a thick, unkempt black beard like wild thornbush, and his small dark eyes glared out ferociously from deep, sunken sockets. While he was dressed like the other two, no one would ever take him for a simple laborer. Quite aside from his enormous frame, the air of menace he projected was unmistakable. His name was Twist. Wren had rarely heard him speak more than a single word at a time, and often he was not even that voluble.

“Either way,” Wren said, “we'll need to get closer.” They were still a solid day's ride from the place that would soon become a battlefield.

The Liar nodded. “We will seek another vantage. Ready the horses.”

Wren got to his feet, legs aching from too long spent absolutely still, and suppressed a frown. The Penitent Damned had no formal hierarchy among themselves, no ranks or chain of command apart from their shared obedience to the Pontifex of the Black. On the rare occasions when they did not work alone, their orders made it explicit who was to lead. The Liar was an agent of many years' standing, and this was Wren's first mission outside Murnsk, so it made sense that the older man was in charge. But Wren occasionally suspected the Liar of harboring a taste
for idleness and worldly pleasures that was inappropriate for his position, and it led him to treat Wren like a servant instead of an equal. It was something to raise with the pontifex on their return.

They had six horses, enough to carry their gear and provide remounts if they needed a burst of speed. Wren went through the familiar ritual of preparing saddles and tack, loading the camp supplies, and fixing each animal with his supernatural senses for a few moments, listening to their breathing and heartbeats. Satisfied that nothing was amiss, he led them one by one to the edge of the woods. Last in line was Twist's mount, a huge, stocky gelding matched to the big man's weight.

Twist took the reins from him with another grunt and heaved himself gracelessly into the saddle, provoking a snort of complaint from the animal. The Liar mounted more skillfully, a testament to half a lifetime spent in the saddle in the service of the order. Wren paused in front of his favorite mare, staring out to the north.

“Wren?” the Liar said. “Is something wrong?”

Wren closed his eyes and let the demon rush to his ears. The sounds that had been barely a shiver in the air a moment ago were now loud and distinct, low
crump
s and rumbles like distant thunder. In between, he could even hear the faint skirl of drums.

“Wren?” the Liar repeated, words booming in Wren's ears like the voice of God.

Wren opened his eyes and let the demon slither away inside his skull.

“It's begun,” he said.