The heavy iron executioner’s blade dropped with a wet, sickening thud.
Three severed heads tumbled across the churned mud of the northern bluff, rolling to a stop against the spiked wheels of an imperial war carriage.
General Dravus kicked the corpse of his chief engineer off the cliff edge.
The body fell three hundred feet into the rocky gorge, disappearing into the flooded silt below.
“Incompetent fools,” Dravus snarled, wiping a smear of dark blood from his armored gauntlet.
The imperial warlord turned to face his surviving staff officers.
His eyes were bloodshot from two days without sleep. His heavy dragon-scale breastplate was spattered with salt grime and drying gore.
The loss of the supply depot had broken his pride.
