The Iron Vow

The war is lost, but the killing is not over. Veylan Ashcroft, a captain with no army left to command, stands over a map table in a tent that smells of pine resin and old iron, watching twelve of his men kneel under sentence they did not choose. When a bone-priest of the Sash offers a bargain only the desperate could stomach, Veylan binds himself to an iron vow: deliver a relic through hostile country, or watch his condemned soldiers pay the debt in pieces. Rival captains circle the same broken ground. The Thornhalt Envoys bargain with rebels behind the lines while the crown's emissary arrives to claim the spoils of a war the realm no longer wants to finish. In the ruins of Dunmara, a mad survivor whispers of a sister draped in white who walks where the dead have fallen, and Ser Aldric Vane marshals the last loyal swords to hold a road that is already lost. Every march brings Veylan closer to a choice he cannot undo: keep his vow and become the weapon the bone-priest intends, or break it and let the only men still loyal to him die on foreign soil. The relic is heavy. The oath is heavier. And the Pale Sister is already waiting at the end of the road.