Before The War of Terhea, a man became a legend.
The sand was blinding, a rusty gold that clawed at the eyes of Madius Ambersi. He was clothed in black cloth and armour, his young tanned face hidden behind his hood. He was bleeding, a green-feathered arrow buried in his shoulder and his khopesh thrown away from him. His father, A’kíla, stood among a carpet of the dead and dying. They had been attacked overnight, a mass of flaming arrows, burning like raging stars had left their village a bonfire, the air blackened with smoke. Madius retched as the malignant odour attacked his lungs, leaving him coughing with blood on his lips.
The perpetrator, Kcarkal, the leader of a militant tribe in the Northern plains, leered in the glow of the flames, clad in naught but a blood-soaked sash and plated helmet. His hands gripped two curved axes, glinting malevolently in the pale moonlight. “So, this is how the chase ends A’kíla. Braying like a dog on your knees before me. How disappointing.” Kcarkal’s voice sounded angry, yet sombre as it left the skinless lips of the madman, “You and me, a dance of blood and hate. It’s beautiful.”
A’kíla spat on Kcarkal’s foot. The man sighed and raised his axes. Madius gazed in horror as the blades struck, again and again and again into his father’s chest. It seemed to take four hundred years before Akíla’s head and shoulders were lifted clean from the bleeding haunch of meat that landed on the sand. Kcarkal smiled at the lifeless eyes, the mouth set in a defiant frown, “What a loss.”
Madius had been sent away. Carrying the body of his father as Kcarkal had bade him, tears and blood indistinguishable in the sand. He walked for days on end, collapsing in the valley where the rest of his people were hidden. They called it Mercy. It was the only place where water and shade were both found in the relentless heat of the Sun. His people had elected him as Regent and his task, as he saw it, was simple. Kill a king.
He had gathered his people on the surface, planting his khopesh in the sand and bowing to them all. A small army, barely four hundred strong, yet any man or woman could change the tide of a war.
He was forever changed, the Sandborn King. Madius Ambersi.
