PROLOGUE

Year 502 opened the way these years always seem to: with a map, and bad news drawn all over it. The knights of Salisbury had spent 501 tidying up a fairy forest and thought they had earned a quiet spell. Fortune, who reads these chronicles for entertainment, had drawn her own conclusions. This year the walls were closing in, and everyone in the room could feel it.

⁃

SECTION THE FIRST: THE CLOSING WALLS

The map came out, and the room went quiet. King Nanteliod of Escavalon had eaten most of southern Wales, beaten three brothers in the mountains, and now held the largest single kingdom in the land from the old Roman city of Carleon. To the east, Anglia had swallowed Huntington. To the south, a Saxon called Port had founded Portchester and wedged himself neatly between Sussex and Wessex. Kent and Anglia were both gra ...