On the broad shade cast by an olive tree he sat, the rough bark at his back and the silver–green leaves shedding above him.
Asag found himself struggling to reconcile the figure before him with the memory that still clung, even ten years later to the past still burning in his heart: the furious young rebel who had thrown the first stone of their uprising against their masters, leading a bunch of famished slaves to their freedom.
From that trail a princedom had been born.
He remembered him as small, short, taut with coiled rage that had radiated outward like a storm barely contained. In those early days he had seemed immense despite his size, a force of will wearing a young man's body, something so unstoppable that even the finest army on the continent had not truly daunted him. Back then he burned; now he endured.
