The Butchers Gospel (Ashfyre Book 4)
About
In the Thinlands, the road north offers no safety. Selka and her unlikely company ride toward something buried in the dark, a remnant of a life she never lived, left there by hands long dead, meant for a war that has finally arrived. Behind them come the hunters. The faithful soldiers of Unity’s Greedy King. The grim agents of Tal and Dalene, and something worse, something that wears a man’s face and feeds on what it kills. Whatever waits at the end of that road, every faction wants it first.
To the south, King Cerric, the Liberator, the Siegebreaker, the Betrayer, continues the campaign that has reshaped the midlands, his eyes turning south at last. At his side stands Renna the Throatcutter, his queen, his equal, and the sharpest thing in any room she enters. Around them gather the tools of a conquering force: Awl of Calisad, Grimkin, Captain Isera, and Nyd. Into their path rides Queen Marhella of Lutania, the Stitcher Queen, and two hundred blades of the Order of the Ashes: grim, capable, and running out of time. Isen has fallen. The demons are already in the world. They need Cerric to stop, turn north, and fight. Cerric has his own timetable, and it does not bend easily.
On the sea, Lord Marshall and heir to the Laldun throne Roan sails with a most diverse host of warriors, sailing north to do right by people they have never met. Standing shoulder to shoulder with foreign nations, the Order of the Ashes, and the Conventual of the Unspoken Taribeth; the Laldun host seeks to change the tides of a war they believe threatens all of humanity.
Together they build something that might yet stand against what is coming or might simply be the last great empire before the dark swallows everything.
The Abrasi are not waiting. Dalene has opened the way. The Butcher is coming.