The Warrior King stood on a hill with his hands clasped behind his back and watched his armies march.
Columns of infantry stretched from horizon to horizon, their boots grinding the earth into a single continuous drumroll that shook the hilltop beneath him.
Alexios had been standing here for the better part of an hour. His golden armor had been cleaned and repaired, the dents hammered out, the blood scrubbed from the joints. The cut across his face had closed hours ago, his Vitality itself knitting the wound shut before the blood had time to dry.
The grin was gone. The wild energy that had carried him through the battle, the joy that had made him laugh while trading blows with Ragnar, the reckless freedom he'd felt when he'd finally stopped thinking and started swinging, all of it had drained out of him somewhere between the battlefield and this hill. What remained was the king.
