Tower of Dawn (Throne of Glass #6) by Sarah J. Maas

It was only after Kadara had snatched half a dozen fat silver salmon from a rushing turquoise river, hurling them each in the air before swallowing them in a slicing bite, that Sartaq steered them toward a cluster of smaller peaks.

“The training run,” he said, pointing. The rocks were smoother, the drops between peaks less sharp—more like smooth, rounded gullies. “Where the novices learn to ride.”

Though less brutal than the three brother-peaks of the Dorgos, it didn’t seem any safer. “You said you raised Kadara from a hatchling. Is that how it is done for all riders?”

“Not when we are first learning to ride. Children take out the seasoned, more docile ruks, ones too old to make long flights. We learn on them until we are thirteen, fourteen, and then find our hatchling to raise and train ourselves.”

“Thirteen—”

“We take our first rides at four. Or the others do. I was, as you know, a few years late.”

Nesryn pointed to the training run. “You let four-year-olds ride alone through that?”

“Family members or hearth-kin usually go on the first several rides.”

Nesryn blinked at the little mountain range, trying and failing to imagine her various nieces and nephews, who were still prone to running naked and shrieking through the house at the mere whisper of the word bath, responsible for not only commanding one of the beasts beneath her, but staying in the saddle.

“The horse-clans on the steppes have the same training,” Sartaq explained. “Most can stand atop the horses by six, and begin learning to wield bows and spears as soon as their feet can reach the stirrups. Aside from the standing”—a chuckle at the thought—“our children have an identical process.” The sun peeked out, warming the skin she’d left exposed to the biting wind. “It was how the first khagan conquered the continent. Our people were already well trained as a cavalry, disciplined and used to carrying their own supplies. The other armies they faced … Those kingdoms did not anticipate foes who knew how to ride across thick winter ice they believed would guard their cities during the cold months. And they did not anticipate an army that traveled light, engineers amongst them to craft weapons from any materials they found when they reached their destinations. To this day, the Academy of Engineers in Balruhn remains the most prestigious in the khaganate.”

Nesryn knew that—her father still mentioned the Academy every now and then. A distant cousin had attended and gone on to earn a small degree of fame for inventing some harvesting machine.

Sartaq steered Kadara southward, soaring high above the snowcapped peaks. “Those kingdoms also didn’t anticipate an army that conquered from behind, by taking routes that few would risk.” He pointed to the west, toward a pale band along the horizon. “The Kyzultum Desert lies that way. For centuries, it was a barrier between the steppes and the greener lands. To attempt to conquer the southern territories, everyone had always taken the long way around it, giving plenty of time for the defenders to rally a host. So when those kingdoms heard the khagan and his hundred thousand warriors were on the move, they positioned their armies to intercept them.” Pride limned his every word. “Only to discover that the khagan and his armies had directly crossed the Kyzultum, befriending local nomads long sneered at by the southern kingdoms to guide them. Allowing the khagan to creep right behind them and sack their unguarded cities.”

She felt his smile at her ear and found herself settling a little farther into him. “What happened then?” She’d only heard fragments of the stories—never such a sweeping account, and certainly not from the lips of one born to this glorious bloodline. “Was it open war?”

“No,” Sartaq said. “He avoided outright combat whenever he could, actually. Made a brutal example of a few key leaders, so that terror would spread, and by the time he reached many of those cities or armies, most laid down their arms and accepted his terms of surrender in exchange for protection. He used fear as a weapon, just as much as he wielded his sulde.”

“I heard he had two—sulde, I mean.”

“He did. And my father still does. The Ebony and the Ivory, we call them. A sulde with white horsehair to carry in times of peace and one with black horsehair to wield in war.”

“I assume he brought the Ebony with him on those campaigns.”

“Oh, he certainly did. And by the time he’d crossed the Kyzultum and sacked that first city, word of what awaited resistance, word that he was indeed carrying the Ebony sulde, spread so quick and so far that when he arrived at the next kingdom, they didn’t even bother to raise an army. They just surrendered. The khagan rewarded them handsomely for it—and made sure other territories heard of that, too.” He was quiet for a moment. “Adarlan’s king was not so clever or merciful, was he?”

“No,” Nesryn said, swallowing. “He was not.” The man had destroyed and pillaged and enslaved. Not the man—the demon within him.

She added, “The army that Erawan has rallied … He began amassing it long before Dorian and Aelin matured and claimed their birthrights. Chaol—Lord Westfall told me of tunnels and chambers beneath the palace in Rifthold that had been there for years. Places where human and Valg had been experimented upon. Right under the feet of mindless courtiers.”